Monthly Archives: March 2024

A bit of good news for Trump is still dwarfed by his mounting legal woes

This op-ed was published by The National on March 28, 2024

The 2024 US presidential campaign, already among the strangest ever, has begun to truly unfurl its ineffable weirdness as Donald Trump is buffeted between sporadic campaigning and competing court decisions. Mr Biden remains the conventional candidate of a conventional party. Mr Trump and his Republicans, by contrast, are dispensing with virtually all political norms, expectations and traditions.

The Republican Party appears to have become a de jure as well as de facto Trump personal fiefdom. Desperate for money amid mounting fines, judgments and legal bills, he has installed his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair of the Republican National Committee which controls party affairs and finances.

When she was initially proposed, RNC leaders insisted that everything would remain entirely aboveboard, and Party funds would only be used for Republican campaigns and not Trump family legal bills. However, Ms. Trump rushed to contradict them, insisting that Republican voters would be delighted to have their political donations used to bail out their adored chieftain.

Recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, which oversees political activities and spending, confirm that Mr Trump’s organisations like Save America and the Trump 47 Committee will have first dibs on future incoming RNC money through a “joint fundraising agreement”. Such groups allow themselves to pay any of Mr Trump’s personal expenses, including legal costs, so RNC fundraising now feeds directly into a virtual slush fund for the former president.

This reprehensible absurdity builds on the 2020 embarrassment of the Republican Party forgoing a normal election manifesto to simply declare that it supports whatever Mr. Trump wants at any given moment. The scandalous new arrangement means that normative RNC activities aimed at helping Republican candidates across the country get elected will only be funded after Mr. Trump skims off the cream for himself. Yet there’s a deafening silence and nary a word of complaint from Republican leaders and activists.

Key RNC staff in the political, data and all-important communication departments have been purged and prospective recruits quizzed on whether the 2020 election was “stolen,” meaning ideological commitment to Mr Trump’s most brazen lie is now, literally, part of their job descriptions. But this transformation of the GOP into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mr Trump’s family business, the Trump Organisation, could well result in underfunded Republican candidates losing otherwise winnable seats in Congress in November. Republicans also appear to be repeating the 2022 midterms blunder, as Mr Trump’s preferred but probably unelectable nominees push aside more plausible candidates, as just happened in Ohio. A once near-certain Republican Senate takeover is increasingly doubtful because of his preference for the most unctuous sycophants over competent politicians.

This is all unfolding as the Trump campaign and RNC coffers are lagging far behind Democratic fundraising that has allowed Mr Biden to already begin running general election television advertisements.

Democrats scored yet another stunning upset, flipping a House seat in Alabama, of all places, with a massive 25-point victory in a county Mr Biden lost by 25 points in 2020, in a special election that became centred on reproductive freedom for women. That clearly remains a massive weapon for liberals even in the most unlikely districts and states.

Mr. Trump did get some good news on Monday as an appellate court predictably reduced the amount he must raise to back his appeal against the $454 million judgment against him for systematic business fraud to a “mere” $175 million. But they haven’t yet reduced the $454 million judgment. And New York State attorneys must be quietly delighted to be assured of getting at least $175 million without having to chase down his assets.

But this win-win was more than offset by another brutal day in the hush money criminal case. Mr Trump’s stalling tactics collapsed as Judge Juan M Merchan scheduled the trial for April 15. The judge became increasingly irate with Mr Trump’s attorneys as they failed to support their accusations of prosecutorial, and implicitly his own, misconduct. “You are literally accusing the Manhattan DA’s office and the people assigned to this case of prosecutorial misconduct and trying to make me complicit in it,” Judge Merchan thundered.

Even worse for Mr Trump, who angrily condemned the whole process in statements immediately involving the Monday hearing, the judge on Tuesday issued a gag order limiting what Mr Trump can publicly say as long as these proceedings continue. Prosecutors requested the order by alleging the former president’s remarks have been “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” to those doing their civil duty rather than other public figures.

Mr Trump and his subordinates will not be allowed to make public comments regarding prospective witnesses, jurors, court staff and prosecutors, or their relatives. This follows the former president’s harsh public attacks on a key witness in the $454 million civil fraud case and previous statements that were widely viewed as attempts to intimidate potential witnesses or their relatives.

This ruling is a severe blow to Mr Trump’s plans to use the trial, which will not be televised, to promote the narrative that he and his supporters – including felons convicted of violent crimes during the January 6 insurrection – are being unjustly persecuted by Democrats and a fictitious “deep state”.

He will still be able to complain in broad terms about being treated “very unfairly” and insist that “such a thing has never happened” – because, he will not mention, no other former president has ever been accused of buying silence from alleged former paramours, including an adult film actress – and that it all constitutes intolerable “election interference.” This final point is absolutely correct. The trial is indeed about election interference – his.

The prosecution’s central assertion that the payoffs, which came long after the alleged affairs ended, were only made because Mr. Trump was running for president in 2016, and to protect his election chances, not his family’s feelings. Therefore, the surreptitious hush money payments constituted undisclosed and unlawful campaign contributions.

His former attorney and self-described “fixer” Michael Cohen, who will be a prosecution star witness in the upcoming trial, was sentenced in 2018 to three years in prison, largely on the basis of these payments that he allegedly (and obviously) made on Mr Trump’s behalf.

The election interference is that because of these unlawful payments, the public never learnt about allegations by the adult film actress, Stormy Daniels, and a former Playboy model, Karen McDougall, that both had extramarital affairs with Mr Trump.

It’s unclear if that information would have made any difference in 2026. But by 2024, a ruinous cult of personality has become so entrenched that many Republicans will allow him literally anything. That may not impress the swing voters who will decide the next election, especially if the Republican candidate becomes a convicted felon.

The April 15 trial will take about six weeks. A felony conviction should initiate an unprecedented political implosion, though that’s dishearteningly unlikely. Nonetheless, it could prove to be a dramatic election game-changer.

Biden’s fiery State of the Union has given him a decisive edge over Trump

This op-ed was published by The National on March 12, 2024

“Dark Brandon” the nickname coined by Joe Biden’s supporters to describe his formidable side was in full effect last week as the US President launched his re-election campaign in a barn-burning State of the Union address before Congress.

Republicans have been painting the 81-year-old President as a doddering octogenarian with pronounced dementia and rapidly decreasing, if any, ability to govern. Huge blunder.

This foolhardy caricature sat uneasily beside its even more grotesque fraternal twin in the right-wing echo chamber: Mr. Biden as the mastermind behind a global network of corruption, siphoning millions from as far afield as Ukraine and China into his family coffers.

Although absolutely no evidence supporting these apparent fantasies has been discovered despite intensive investigations by Republican House committees, American conservatives are constantly told that the President is simultaneously a near-vegetable and a modern Alexander the Great of multinational larceny.

Creeping senility was always the more potent and politically valuable charge. It taps into understandable concerns about Mr. Biden’s unprecedented age for an American president stoked widespread perceptions, while framing him as a criminal kingpin had little traction beyond committed right-wingers.

Even many Democrats shared doubts about his age and fitness, leading to widespread liberal nail-biting and cold sweats before the address, especially since Mr. Biden has been an ill-spoken, self-declared “gaff machine” for his entire half-century in politics.

Both sides, as so often, were badly misled by the same casual assumptions. Mr. Biden took to the lectern and gleefully demolished any thought that he is past it.

Dispensing with the usual thanks to House Speaker Mike Johnson, he immediately tore into Republicans over the military support for Ukraine that Mr Johnson is blocking. The President didn’t spell it out, but he didn’t have to: the only reason Kyiv is being abandoned is Mr Johnson’s refusal to allow a vote on military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, which would easily pass.

Mr Biden also didn’t need to state bluntly that the Speaker is merely acquiescing to the longstanding anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia sympathies of former president Donald Trump. Throughout, Mr Johnson wore the expression of someone in extreme physical discomfort.

While Mr Biden’s speech was neither subtle nor especially artful, he deftly wove together numerous apparently disconnected strands into a coherent tapestry representing his essential re-election narrative.

By starting with an invocation of Franklin Roosevelt’s famous 1941 State of the Union speech when American democracy was simultaneously threatened by aggression abroad and subversion at home, he sought to paint Republicans in general, and Mr Trump in particular, as threats to personal and political freedoms and national security.

Mr Biden slurred some words and stumbled over a few passages that a younger and more eloquent politician would have nailed with ease. But he has always been a poor public speaker. He’s also showing his age, and battling the return of a significant stutter he overcame as a youth – which was nauseatingly mocked by Mr. Trump over the weekend.

But the President exhibited a fire and fighting spirit for which Democrats have been deeply yearning, and surely eliminated any thought of replacing him at the party convention this summer. Mr. Biden is evidently and understandably eager to debate “my predecessor”, whom he mentioned 13 times but never by name.

While Mr. Trump claims to be similarly enthusiastic, despite refusing to take part in any Republican primary debates, based on Mr. Biden’s performance he can probably be expected to find some excuse.

Mr. Biden wasn’t simply reading from a teleprompter. He did that, of course, but he also ad-libbed – considerably more than any previous president ever has in State of the Union addresses – and seemed to lay rhetorical traps for Republican heckling. These he met with largely effective, mocking rejoinders designed to trap Republicans into positions on key issues, such as the budget deficit, taxation and border security, about which they prefer to remain ambiguous.

The President’s folksy, faux-incredulous responses to Republican booing – “Oh, you don’t like that bill, huh? … that conservatives got together and said was a good bill? I’ll be darned” – illustrated that Mr. Biden was not merely quick-witted on the evening but also thoroughly enjoying himself.

He concluded by directly addressing his advanced age, saying that the real question is the age of one’s ideas, and thereby painting Mr. Trump and the Republicans as wanting to drag the country back into darker times, especially on abortion, contraception and reproductive rights.

He warned the assembled Supreme Court justices, quoting their recent ruling that eliminated the fifty-year-old constitutional right to an early-term abortion, that “you’re about to realize just how much you were right about” the “electoral or political power” of women.

Most Americans didn’t watch this prototype of his campaign stump speech. But the 32.2 million who did were reminded that Mr. Biden remains sharp and combative, despite the memory lapses he shares with the 77-year-old Mr. Trump, and that he’s an adept and polished politician who especially relishes the give-and-take in Congress.

When confronted by an irate Marjorie Taylor Greene – the Republican rabble-rouser from Georgia who was bedecked head to toe in garish red Trump/Maga paraphernalia – Mr. Biden reacted with evident and even indulgent amusement.

His decades of congressional experience help explain how Mr. Biden has been so successful, particularly on domestic legislation, in his first term. At last, he didn’t hesitate to blow his own trumpet.

While most Democrats were left ecstatic, some Republicans were reduced to complaining that “Jacked-Up Joe” was so energetic and forceful that he must have been given amphetamines, or at least that his speech was overly partisan and disturbingly confrontational.

The President’s efficacy was verified by their evident frustration, which was surely exacerbated by an overwrought official response from Alabama Senator Katie Britt who appeared to instantaneously oscillate between near-fits of histrionic laughter and distraught weeping. It was almost unanimously hailed as the worst-ever State of the Union rebuttal, comma and she’s been removed from most shortlists of potential Trump vice-presidential running mates.

The presidential campaign is barely under way, but the key themes are already clear. Mr. Biden has energized and delighted his base, and gone a long way towards dispelling doubts about his age and fitness.

Neither he nor Mr. Trump has yet solidified a winning 2024 coalition. But Mr. Biden has unquestionably increased his already robust re-election chances.

Biden and Trump are showing their age – but only one of them is in a legal mess

This op-ed was published by The National on March 6, 2024

As he and his predecessor, Donald Trump, effectively secured their parties’ nominations on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden continues to struggle in polls. And that’s despite persistent economic good news and Americans increasingly recognising that their economy is thriving. The most recent results among registered voters show Mr Biden trailing Mr Trump by five percentage points.

Although voters say that Mr Trump’s policies were better for them, it is likely that many have tuned out of politics since the mayhem of January 6, 2021, and have developed a predictable amnesia details of Mr Trump’s record, particularly in the first year of the pandemic. Few have probably registered yet how extreme and unstable Mr Trump appears to have become in the years since.

Undoubtedly, they’ll be reminded and informed of all that soon enough.

It’s far too early for Democrats to start the handwringing to which they seem uncommonly addicted. Still, Mr Biden must steadfastly claim credit for the remarkable US economic comeback and promote his new initiatives to tackle inflation, while also pressing forward with unilateral action on the border and continuing to publicly implore Republican lawmakers to take “yes” for an answer on immigration legislation. In the coming months, he would then have every opportunity to deny Mr Trump access to what should be his two most effective issues: inflation and immigration.

Nonetheless, in addition to recent polling, Republicans are feeling buoyed by two apparently encouraging rulings from the Supreme Court. Many Democrats conversely bemoan the decisions, yet again condemning the Court as hopelessly biased in favour of the former president who appointed three of the six-vote right-wing majority.

Despite this apparent bipartisan consensus, Mr Trump may not actually benefit from either case.

Last week, the Court declined to simply uphold a watertight ruling by the DC circuit appellate court denying Mr Trump’s novel claims of absolute presidential immunity from prosecution, including after leaving office.

The idea is patently absurd: how can the national chief magistrate, the one person sworn to “take care to see that the laws are faithfully executed”, simultaneously be the sole individual empowered to ignore all such laws with complete impunity and unaccountability? What would then compel the president to leave office at all, or abstain from committing crimes, or doing anything whatsoever that he or she finds convenient, useful or even amusing – no matter how outrageous or unlawful?

Many liberals hoped that the Supreme Court wouldn’t entertain such propositions and simply let the unassailable DC court ruling stand, not least because the outcome is inevitable. Many reacted with apoplexy when, instead, the Court announced that it would hear arguments in April, and rule by the end of its term on June 20. The typical Trump delaying tactic worked again, they cried.

Perhaps. But the Court has set itself a clear timetable. If it rules in late June that presidents may not break the law with permanent impunity, as it surely will, that should free Judge Tanya Chutkan and prosecutor Jack Smith to move expeditiously to put Mr Trump on trial for attempting to remain in power unlawfully by overturning a valid election and launching a failed coup against the US Constitution.

It’s not obvious why either would want to do Mr Trump any special favours by suspending legal processes simply because he’s running for re-election in a system for which he has evident contempt.

Unless Mr Trump comes up with some plausible new objections, the trial is unlikely to be delayed until after the election (and, if he wins, ordered abandoned). Instead, there seems to be every possibility that he will stand trial for election subversion in the weeks immediately before voting.

That’s unlikely to bolster his campaign or win many votes among the suburban and swing voters in the six or seven competitive “purple” states that will decide the outcome in November. The Court probably did indeed provide Mr Trump a delay, but not necessarily one that’s going to end up helping him get re-elected.

The second decision, on Monday, was – also probably incorrectly – again greeted on both sides as a big win for Mr Trump. The Supreme Court held that courts in Colorado misread the 14th amendment when they held that, as an insurrectionist, he is ineligible to regain federal office and should be removed from the state’s ballots. The unanimous, though strikingly inconsistent Court opinions weren’t just incompatible. They were often incomprehensible and unintelligible.

The conservative justices, as I predicted in these pages, made no effort whatsoever to uphold their supposed principles and tie their rulings to the amendment’s plain text or history. They merely identified their preferred outcome – a practice they abhor as intolerable when practised by liberals – and declared that only Congress, and not states, can enforce the amendment. There’s nothing whatsoever in the amendment’s language or the historical record supporting that conclusion.

Most glaringly, the two-paragraph concurrence from Judge Amy Coney Barrett appears self-contradictory and garbled, while openly admitting that the Court sought to avoid any politically “divisive” judgment. This is thinly veiled code for deliberately avoiding any ruling on the primary substantive factual finding of the Colorado district court and the Supreme Court: that Mr Trump is an insurrectionist, irrespective of whether the 14th amendment can be applied by states, or is self-executing, or anything else.

That’s hardly a great look or much of a win. Not only did the Supreme Court duck the key holding that Mr Trump is an insurrectionist, so did his own attorneys. No one challenged this adjudication, thereby leaving it standing unopposed.

Mr Trump will therefore enter the general election campaign as a legally adjudicated insurrectionist as well as having been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E Jean Carroll. Another recently decided New York case establishes him as a legally adjudicated serial fraudster and tax cheat. Among 91 pending felony charges, he faces a looming trial involving hush-money payments to an adult actress.

Mr Biden is old and clearly showing his age. So is Mr Trump, who keeps confusing the current president with Barack Obama, among other glaring mistakes. But only one of the two elderly men with memory lapses is also a legally adjudicated wrongdoer in numerous disturbing cases, and may well be a convicted felon before the election.

Let that sink in. With the American public, it hasn’t yet. But it will.