Salem Political Snark

Meet the Press shouldn't have interviewed Trump

I'm a big fan of Meet the Press. It's been a Sunday viewing habit of mine for as long as I can remember. I enjoyed Chuck Todd when he was the host. But he's no longer with Meet the Press.

Today was the debut of Todd's replacement, Kristen Welker. The show was devoted to a taped interview Welker did with Donald Trump. A transcript of the interview is here.

The best part of the interview for me was seeing how old Trump looks.

Either his makeup artist has gone on strike, or the pressures of his four indictments is getting to him. Regardless, it's hard for me to see how anyone watching the interview would think that Biden is old and Trump isn't. If anything, Trump looked older than Biden even though he's several years younger.

After that first impression, the interview went downhill. Welker did her best to get Trump to answer her questions and not get away with blatant lies, but her best wasn't nearly good enough.

Trump refused to answer questions. He talked over Welker. He interrupted her when she tried to fact check his lies. Welker served up some softball questions rather than using her interview time to pin Trump down on tough questions.

On the positive side -- and Welker certainly had some good moments -- Welker got Trump to admit that he was the one who made the decision that the 2020 election was rigged, not his attorneys at the time.

His current attorneys defending him in the January 6 and Georgia indictments won't like that he said this, since Trump demolished a potential defense position that his attempts to overthrow the election were based on advice from legal experts that he'd actually beaten Joe Biden.

Overall, though, Trump got away with way too many lies.

Welker would correct some of them after an interview segment was shown. However, inexplicably Welker didn't say that Trump's repeated claim that Democrats want to kill babies after birth, or that this happens, was entirely false. Instead she rather weakly said that late term abortions are rare, constituting just 1% of abortions, if I recall correctly.

NBC News did publish a fact check of Trump's lies and false statements, which, though better than nothing, won't get anywhere near the attention that the interview itself did.

So a valid criticism of Welker and Meet the Press is that while they knew full well that Trump would use the interview to spread his lies that the election was stolen, Joe Biden engaged in illegal behavior, and other falsehoods, they gave Trump a big soapbox anyway, essentially providing him a forum to give a campaign speech.

Here's some quotes from people who are critical of what Meet the Press did.

Corbin Boiles of The Daily Beast:
Journalists and commentators for years have wrestled with the question of how to approach Donald Trump, a former president who is both a prolific liar and facing dozens of criminal charges in federal and state court. In her debut turn as moderator for Meet The Press, Kristen Welker wanted to be the latest to prove to critics that he could be challenged.

But like those who have tried before, her inherent skills as an interviewer were no match for a chaotic interview subject like Trump.

...He repeatedly refused to answer questions—directly telling Welker “I’m not going to tell you” when asked if he watched the chaos on Jan. 6 from a White House dining room—and made multiple ludicrous claims that were left largely unchallenged, or weakly so. (Democrats want to kill babies after birth! Nancy Pelosi was responsible for Jan. 6!)

NBC produced multiple post-interview fact-checks on air and online, including after each interview segment during the broadcast, but that is no replacement for an on-the-spot confrontation. Presenting an evidence-backed fact check to Trump’s face allows an audience to watch him reject truth in real time. That serves a greater purpose than roundups scattered throughout NBC’s online platforms.

Ari Berman of Mother Jones:
On Sunday, Trump gave his first broadcast network interview since leaving office, joining NBC’s Meet the Press from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. It followed a predictable script: Trump says a bunch of outlandish and untrue things, the interviewer (in this case Kristen Welker, making her debut as host) pushes back in a very serious way, and in the meantime Trump’s base only hears the lies, not the fact-checks. We’ve seen this happen over and over. 

“I plan on watching the Meet the Press interview Sunday, but this is not encouraging,” NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen wrote after watching one clip. “He floods the zone. She nods her head. And they make content of it — boring, predictable content — for other NBC shows. Pointless and inane.”

...Meet the Press will likely get a ratings boost today. The network will brag about how responsibly they covered Trump. And the former president, as he so often does, will have the last laugh.

Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic:
Well, she tried.

That’s about the best you can say for Kristen Welker’s interview with Donald Trump in her first week as the new moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Despite putting some guardrails in place to protect against Trump’s repeated lies — the interview was pre-taped, without a MAGA-fied audience like the disastrous live CNN town hall in May — it was the same old tired song and dance.

And Welker seemed powerless to do much of anything about it.

If she can’t hold him accountable, who can? This was Trump’s first interview with a broadcast news network since he left office. As his lies have become increasingly bold and unhinged, as his popularity among his base seems to grow, what’s the alternative?

...There is simply too much at stake. As others have pointed out, the upcoming election is not just a Democrats vs. Republicans horse race, though some insist on covering it that way.

You don’t have to be a fan of Biden or of Democratic policies to understand that this is in many ways a referendum on democracy itself, as Trump and his base — which includes legislators, governors and rich donors, among others — work to dismantle it.

It is incumbent upon journalists to make their audiences aware of this, to frame their work in this context, and to remind them of it constantly. (In the full, unedited interview, Welker asked Trump if he believed in democracy. He said he did, but "I don’t consider us to have much of a democracy right now.")

Filling Sunday morning with lies, no matter how much you fact check them, isn’t enough.

Trump's mug shot has an artistic quality to it

I rarely praise Donald Trump. Can't remember the last time I did this, but it could have been his Operation Warp Speed that succeeded in getting Covid vaccines to Americans in record time. 

Today was another occasion for Trumpian praise. I couldn't help but think, "Dude, your Fulton County mug shot is a work of art. Great pose, with just the right combination of malevolence and irritation in your look."


I suspect Trump is happy with the mug shot also. By leaning forward he appears to have managed to capture the light and dark shading on the opposite sides of his face that captures his yin and yang nature. 

Or, more accurately, it would have if Trump actually had two sides to his nature -- since it's pretty clear that his personality is 100% egotistical authoritarian.

A story in The Guardian, "Belligerence and hostility: Trump's mugshot defines modern US politics," says:

Mugshots define eras.

Bugsy Siegel peering malevolently from beneath his fedora in a 1928 booking photo summed up the perverse romance of gangsters in the prohibition age.

Nearly half a century later, mugshots of David Bowie, elegantly dressed but dead-eyed after his arrest for drug possession, and a dishevelled Janis Joplin, detained for “vulgar and indecent language”, spoke to the shock waves created by 1960s counterculture.

Now comes what Donald Trump Jr described as “the most iconic photo in the history of US politics” before the booking picture of his father glaring into the camera was even taken. But whether deeply divided Americans view the first ever mugshot of a former president as that of a gangster or a rock star is very much in the politics of the beholder.

Trump’s hostility shines through as he turns his eyes up toward the camera above him and in his taut, downturned mouth as he is booked into the Fulton county jail on charges of trying to steal the 2020 presidential election. Dressed in a blue suit, white shirt and red tie, he makes no attempt to put on a smile like some of his co-defendants in their mugshots.

The picture does not flatter but it does convey the message many of Trump’s supporters want to hear – belligerence.

There's little doubt that at this moment the mug shot is being put on t-shirts, coffee mugs, and other paraphenalia that will be sold to Trump lovers and haters alike. As The Guardian said, what you see in the photo depends on the politics of the beholder.

Joshua, a guy on TikTok, likens the mug shot to the famous American Gothic painting. OK, that's something I never would have thought of, but Joshua makes a decent case for his thesis. This is why I like TikTok. You get exposed to stuff you'd never see otherwise.

Here's a couple of other mug shots from some of Trump's fellow Georgia indictees.

You can see that Trump's mug shot is in a class by itself. He's a showman, an entertainer. Trump has a rare ability to funnel unbridled rage in his mug shot because that's his dominant personality characteristic: believing that he's being treated horribly unfairly, even when he isn't.

Rudy Giuliani, who tries to look tough but comes across as pathetic.

Mark Meadows, looking like he's trying to look like he doesn't care his mugshot is being taken.

Georgia indictment of Trump should be wakeup call for GOP voters

A little while ago a Georgia grand jury indictment was unsealed, revealing that Donald Trump and 18 other people have been charged with criminal conspiracy for their efforts to overturn the legitimate 2020 election victory of Joe Biden in Georgia.

Aug 14 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Donald Trump was hit with a sweeping fourth set of criminal charges on Monday when a Georgia grand jury issued an indictment accusing him of efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

The charges, brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, add to the legal woes facing Trump, the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election.

The sprawling 98-page indictment listed 19 defendants and 41 criminal counts in all. All of the defendants were charged with racketeering, which is used to target members of organized crime groups and carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

Among the other defendants were Mark Meadows, Trump's former White House chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman.

"Trump and the other defendants charged in this indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump," the indictment said.
Download Trump indictment Georgia

This is Trump's fourth criminal indictment. Despite his oft-repeated claims of witch hunt, actually what's going on in a hunt for justice. The only reason Trump is being accused of criminal behavior is that a whole lot of evidence shows that he's behaved criminally.

Not long ago, one criminal accusation would have been more than enough to completely derail the candidacy of someone who wanted to be president. Or in the case of Richard Nixon, remain president.

Back in 1974, Republicans joined with Democrats in condemning Nixon's criminality, which forced him to resign. Here's some of what Nixon said in his resignation speech.

This is the 37th time I have spoken to you from this office, where so many decisions have been made that shaped the history of this Nation. Each time I have done so to discuss with you some matter that I believe affected the national interest.

In all the decisions I have made in my public life, I have always tried to do what was best for the Nation. Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate, I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me.

In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort. As long as there was such a base, I felt strongly that it was necessary to see the constitutional process through to its conclusion, that to do otherwise would be unfaithful to the spirit of that deliberately difficult process and a dangerously destabilizing precedent for the future.

But with the disappearance of that base, I now believe that the constitutional purpose has been served, and there is no longer a need for the process to be prolonged.

Yes, Democrats controlled both the House and Senate in 1974. However, Nixon had lost the support of his fellow Republicans in Congress also, which led Nixon to say in his speech that he no longer had a strong political base.

Things sure have changed in the Republican Party.

Now Trump is able to say that if he is indicted a fourth time this would guarantee his election in 2024. I doubt that, but it does seem true that Trump's newest criminal indictment will further endear him to Republican primary voters -- who already have given him a massive lead over Ron DeSantis and Trump's other primary opponents.

I find this really disturbing. It boggles my mind that one of our two major political parties is so obsessed with a lying, egotistical, morally bankrupt candidate, Trump, that a majority of GOP voters is willing to ignore solid accusations of criminality and support him anyway.

This is how our nation could turn into an autocracy, when otherwise decent people decide that maintaining power is more important than preserving our democracy. I just hope that Republican voters wake up to the danger that Donald Trump represents. 

Trump doesn't care about anybody but himself. He likes to say that if prosecutors can indict him, they can indict anybody. That's utterly false. Republican voters only have to worry about being indicted if they do something criminal, like attempting to overturn the outcome of an election. 

Trump isn't on your side, GOP faithful. He's always only on one side, his own. Wake up to this fact before it's too late.

Trump's defenses against Jan. 6 indictment make no sense

Yesterday it filled my progressive heart with joy when I heard that Donald Trump had been indicted by the Justice Department on four counts related to his attempt to steal the 2020 election after Joe Biden was lawfully elected: three of conspiracy and one of obstruction.

You can read the eminently readable 45 page indictment via this PDF file.
Download Trump Indictment file

Today it was amusing to hear the laughable defenses trotted out by Trump's attorneys for why their client is innocent of the charges. Those defenses are so weak, Trump might as well plead guilty tomorrow at his arraignment, since his chances of being acquitted are extremely low.

The main argument being made on Trump's behalf is that he was simply exercising his First Amendment right to free speech when he questioned the validity of Biden's presidential victory. As competent attorneys have been saying, that's an argument for the Court of Public Opinion, not for a Court of Law.

The indictment acknowledges that Trump was entitled to his free speech. Here's what was said on page 2.

The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.

But the indictment goes on to say: (the "1" is an artifact of copying in text from the PDF file)

Shortly after election day, the Defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results. In so doing, the Defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies:

1. 1. A conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371;

   2. A conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election arecounted and certified (“the certification proceeding”), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k); and

       c.  A conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241.

Each of these conspiracies—which built on the widespread mistrust the Defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud—targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election (“the federal government function").

Ruth Marcus demolishes the free speech argument in a Washington Post opinion piece, "The Trump indictment tramples no one's First Amendment rights." If that link doesn't work for you, here's a PDF file, along with an excerpt.
Download Opinion | The Jan. 6 indictment doesn't trample Trump's First Amendment rights - The Washington Post

But Trump is not being prosecuted for his repeated lies about a stolen election. He is being prosecuted for the efforts he made, the actions he took to operationalize that contention and prevent the clear will of the voters from being realized, or what the indictment calls “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.”

Just because words are involved in the commission of these alleged crimes does not mean that prosecuting Trump violates his First Amendment rights. The protections of the First Amendment are strong and capacious, but they are not unlimited.

Corporate executives accused of defrauding investors by making false statements engage in speech, but that does not immunize them. Same for those who engage in insider trading or a conspiracy to fix prices.

Or, to bring things closer to home, if Trump at a rally encouraged his supporters to beat up a protester, that would not prevent him from being sued or even criminally charged. If he were to falsely accuse a political opponent of being a child molester, the libel laws that he wants to weaken would not shield him from legal recourse. (Here, I am borrowing examples from U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, ruling in a civil case that Trump could be sued for inciting the Capitol rioters.)

“The heart of our jurisprudence with respect to the First Amendment is the difference between regulating speech and regulating conduct,” Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), once a constitutional law professor, told me. “Everything charged in the indictment involves criminal conduct by Donald Trump and not the mere expression of political views. If Donald Trump wanted to say that the joint session organizing the peaceful transfer of power was a fraud and a charade, he had every right to say that. But he had no right to actually obstruct the proceeding.”

Thus, the indictment doesn’t accuse Trump of breaking the law by claiming the election was stolen. It asserts, instead, that Trump, “on the pretext of baseless fraud claims,” pushed state officials to ignore the popular vote; that he organized “fraudulent slates of electors,” including some who were “tricked into participating,” and that and his co-conspirators “used knowingly false claims of election fraud” to pressure the vice president to refuse to certify the election results.

What Marcus says above also demolishes an equally weak argument by defenders of Trump: that he was the victim of bad advice offered by his legal advisers. Today's All In With Chris Hayes show on MSNBC featured legal analysts who made this important point.

John Eastman, a Trump legal adviser, wouldn't have been an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment if he had simply said that it made sense to have alternate slates of electors in several battleground states where the vote between Biden and Trump was very close, but Biden had been declared the victor.

That way, if a court or a recount established that Trump actually won a state, the alternate slate of electors for Trump could have been legally substituted for the Biden slate of electors.

However, when that legal approach morphed into an illegal scheme to have Vice-President Pence declare that Biden's electors were invalid and the alternate Trump electors should be substituted for them, even though there was no legal basis for doing this, that is when a conspiracy to defraud the United States government and voters took place.

So it looks extremely likely that Trump will be found guilty of the charges in the indictment. Of course, he's entitled to a vigorous defense when the case goes to trial. Trump had just better hope that his attorneys have better arguments than what they've shown so far. Even Bill Barr, his attorney general, agrees.

Trump's federal indictment another first for the worst ex-president

Donald Trump likes to brag about himself. Well, today he got another #1 to add to his list of pseudo-accomplishments. Trump is the first former president to face federal charges.

A New York Times story describes the well-deserved indictment. 

The Justice Department on Thursday took the legally and politically momentous step of lodging federal criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump, accusing him of mishandling classified documents he kept upon leaving office and then obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them.

Mr. Trump confirmed on his social media platform that he had been indicted. The charges against him include willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and a conspiracy to obstruct justice, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department made no comment and did not immediately make the indictment public.

The indictment, handed up by a grand jury in Federal District Court in Miami, is the first time a former president has faced federal charges. It puts the nation in an extraordinary position, given Mr. Trump’s status not only as a one-time commander-in-chief but also as the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination to face President Biden, whose administration will now be seeking to convict his potential rival of multiple felonies.

Mr. Trump is expected to surrender to the authorities on Tuesday, according to a person close to him and his own post on his social media platform, Truth Social.

How anyone can still support Trump is baffling.

He's a habitual liar. He was impeached twice. He had an affair with a porn star while his wife was pregnant, then tried to cover it up with hush money before the 2016 election, an illegal act that led to a state indictment against him in New York. He's facing another indictment in Georgia for trying to overturn election results there. And there's a possibility of another federal indictment for his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection aimed at keeping Trump in power.

What's laughable is the absurd devotion of Republican politicians to their Criminal-in-Chief. Even those who are running against him for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. 

Ron DeSantis is already defending Trump even before the federal indictment has been unsealed. How can he expect to defeat Trump for the nomination when he's acting like Trump's PR person instead of his opponent? He’s only been a presidential candidate for two weeks, but Ron DeSantis is already finding himself defending his chief rival.

Several hours after news broke that former President Donald Trump was indicted over his handling of classified documents, DeSantis lambasted the Department of Justice.

“The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society. We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation. Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?” DeSantis tweeted about two hours after the news.

What an idiot. The Justice Department investigated Hillary Clinton's private email server in the runup to the 2016 election and didn't find any wrongdoing worthy of an indictment. The Justice Department also has been investigating Hunter Biden for several years and hasn't found any serious malfeasance.

Progressives like me are delighting in the fact that Trump made chants of "Lock her up!" a feature of his campaign rallies, and now he's facing the prospect of prison time himself. Ever heard of bad karma, Donald?

There was a time, not that long ago really, when Donald J. Trump said he cared about the sanctity of classified information. That, of course, was when his opponent was accused of jeopardizing it and it was a useful political weapon for Mr. Trump.

Throughout 2016, he castigated Hillary Clinton for using a private email server instead of a secure government one. “I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information,” he declared. “No one will be above the law.” Mrs. Clinton’s cavalier handling of the sensitive information, he said, “disqualifies her from the presidency.”

Seven years later, Mr. Trump faces criminal charges for endangering national security by taking classified documents when he left the White House and refusing to return all of them even after being subpoenaed. Even in the what-goes-around-comes-around department of American politics, it is rather remarkable that the issue that helped propel Mr. Trump to the White House in the first place now threatens to ruin his chances of getting back there.

The indictment handed up by a federal grand jury at the request of the special counsel Jack Smith effectively brings the Trump story full circle. “Lock her up,” the crowds at his campaign rallies chanted with his encouragement. Now he may be the one locked up if convicted on any of the seven reported counts that include conspiracy to obstruct justice and willful retention of documents.

Trump on CNN was horrifying. Also, disqualifying.

I had no plan to watch the Trump town hall on CNN yesterday. But it was still going when I drove home from a Tai Chi class around 6 pm, so I listened to it on satellite radio for about half an hour.

It was ugly. Really ugly. Trump lied incessantly. He talked over the moderator, Kaitlan Collins. He called E. Jean Carroll, who had just won a civil lawsuit where Trump was found guilty of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, a "wack job" and said the trial was "a rigged deal."

The New Hampshire audience, mostly Republicans and a few independents, laughed at Trump's insults. Collins did her best to get Trump to answer her questions without lying, but she failed. Mostly the town hall seemed more like a Trump campaign rally than a forum for learning about his views.

I couldn't help but think, "This guy is utterly unqualified to run for president."

Of course, I already knew that, having suffered through four long years of Trump in the White House. But I'd expected that Trump would tone down his bullshit somewhat in the CNN town hall, since he must know that he can't win in 2024 without appealing to voters who aren't his MAGA devotees.

Not surprisingly, CNN has come in for lots of criticism for giving Trump over an hour of air time to blab about his usual grievances. A right-on story in The Bulwark by Charlie Sykes, "The Moment That You Knew," starts off this way. 

Critics had worried that giving the indicted, twice-impeached, coup-plotting, chronically lying sexual predator an unedited, live television forum might turn out badly.

The reality, however, was far ghastlier: a sh*tshow for the ages, and a moment that captured the thorough degradation of both our politics and the media. “It was a f**king nightmare,” remarked one savvy observer, “and it was programmed to BE a f**king nightmare.”

Trump was, of course, thrilled.

For her part, Kaitlan Collins was poised, prepared, and determined, but she never stood a chance. She raised all of the key questions and tried (not always successfully) to ask followups.

But Trump just rolled over her with a torrent of invective, jibes, and bullsh*t. The fact-checkers were reduced to asterisks. “He declared war on the truth,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper said afterward. “And I’m not sure that he didn’t win.”

Where to start?

• • Trump called a black law enforcement officer a “thug.”

  • He repeated baseless conspiracy theories about 2020.

  • He lied about losing the 2020 election. (CNN’s Oliver Darcy tweeted: “I've lost count of how many times Trump has lied about the election. Collins keeps fact-checking him, but he keeps lying.”)

  • He lied about calling for “terminating” the Constitution so he could be returned to power.

  • He lied about his role on January 6th.

  • He suggested that he would pardon many of the January 6th insurrectionists.

  • He insisted again that Mike Pence should have overturned the election.

  • He endorsed letting the country default on its debt, even if it would bring on an economic cataclysm.

  • He claimed that residents of the Chinatown neighborhood in Washington, D.C., “did not speak English as part of an allegation that Biden stored boxes there after his vice presidency because he had nefarious ties to Beijing.”

  • He refused to back Ukraine against Russia.

  • He lashed out at Collins as “nasty woman” — and the audience CHEERED.

But this was hardly the worst of it. Actually, not even close.

The day after a federal jury found that the ex-president had sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, Trump turned the episode into a joke, mocking and insulting his victim.

And the crowd laughed.

CNN's own employees are disparaging the town hall. However a Politico story, Enough With the Bellyaching Over CNN's Trump Town Hall, makes some good points about the value of what happened last night. I like Jack Shafer's writing style.

The captains who steer the SS CNN sent first mate Kaitlan Collins into the bilge Wednesday night to bail out the sinking ship with a thimble, while Donald Trump used the town hall format to blast a hole in CNN’s hull with a torpedo barrage of lies.

Collins, a resourceful journalist who thinks as fast on her feet as Muhammad Ali did on his, couldn’t keep up. That’s no reflection on her. Nobody practiced in the art of the interview has ever been able to stop this lying chatterbox in a live session. As scholar Michael Socolow points out, Chris Wallace, Lesley Stahl and Jonathan Swan successfully tamed him, but all of those Trump interviewers were taped and edited, which neutered his predictable and exuberant filibustering.

Plus, those interviews were conducted without an audience. Trump’s CNN town hall, on the other hand, was stocked from stem to stern with cheering acolytes who rewarded his every insult and evasion with laughter and applause. It’s hard to conduct an interview when rotten fruit and vegetables are being hurled onto the stage.

So was it a “mistake” on CNN’s part to give Trump such a forum? No. The town hall’s results could have been predicted — in fact, they were predicted by about a million commentators in the days leading up to the event. The chorus observed that Trump can lie faster than any real-time interviewer can fact-check him, so the immediate advantage of the arena will generally accrue to him.

CNN could have armed Collins with a centrifugal pump to siphon the Trump deluge, and she still would have been swamped. If it was all a ratings ploy, it wasn’t a very good one, as it attracted fewer viewers than six previous Trump town halls on Fox.

But in principle, a Trump interview was a good idea because it’s never a mistake for the press to confront newsmakers, even if the newsmaker lies about the integrity of the 2020 election, which Trump did.

Even if he mocks the justice system because it has held against him, which Trump did. Even if he uses the rhetorical devises of ad hominem, ad populum, ad baculum to savage his foes, as Trump did. Even if he insults the interviewer, which Trump did (“You’re a nasty person,” he said to Collins). Even if he refuses to answer simple questions about his stand on abortion, which Trump repeatedly did. And even if he offers his self-serving hallucinations about the events of January 6 as the truth, which Trump did.

...The lessons taught by Collins and CNN Wednesday night are not to fear Trump or to actively suppress his ideas but that the best format for tangling with him is a taped one, where he can’t chomp scenery and eat up the clock with non-answers, and one where the audience is at home in front of their televisions, not in an auditorium cheering him on.

We should all look forward to the next Trump TV interview, for all the good and bad it will surely deliver.

Justice! Trump guilty of sexual abuse and defamation

Our legal system served E. Jean Carroll well today. Today a jury took just a few hours to find him guilty of sexually abusing and defaming her. Carroll was awarded $5 million in damages that Trump has to pay.

A New York Times story starts off this way.

A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found former President Donald J. Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. More than a dozen women have accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct over the years, but this is the only allegation to be affirmed by a jury.

In the civil case, the federal jury of six men and three women found that Ms. Carroll, 79, a former magazine writer, had sufficiently proved that Mr. Trump sexually abused her nearly 30 years ago in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. The jury did not, however, find he had raped her, as she had long claimed.

The jury, in returning the verdict shortly before 3 p.m., also found that Mr. Trump, who is running to regain the presidency, defamed Ms. Carroll in October when he posted a statement on his Truth Social platform calling her case “a complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.” His lawyer said he intended to appeal.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers called no witnesses, and he never appeared at the trial to hear Ms. Carroll, who had sued him last year, deliver visceral testimony about the attack she said had ended her romantic life forever.

Trump's attorney said he was pleased that the jury didn't find Trump raped Carroll. But Carroll admitted that she wasn't sure whether Trump fully penetrated her or just partially did so. This shows that the jury carefully considered the evidence in the trial, which renders Trump's crazy claim of "witch hunt" to be as absurd as his contention that he'd never met Carroll. 

Of course, there will be the usual assertions that Trump's bad character is "baked in" to how voters see him, so today's guilty verdict in Carroll's civil case against Trump won't hurt his candidacy to become president again.

A well-documented Just Security story argues otherwise. Here's an excerpt from Why the E. Jean Carroll Verdict Will Matter to Voters.

The unanimous jury verdict that has turned Donald Trump from an alleged sexual assaulter into a proven one may create political shockwaves if recent history is any guide. As numerous empirical studies have shown, the American public has come to view sexual assault as a form of abusing power that can disqualify a perpetrator from holding public office. Trump may suffer significant political damage from this new majoritarian understanding. 

In November 2017, 61% of voters – including 56% of men and a nontrivial margin of white men (50-43) and white women (55-37) – said then-President Trump should be impeached and removed from office if he were proven to have engaged in “sexual harassment,” according to a Quinnipiac poll. That overall support – the eye popping number of 61% – was higher than any poll tracking public support for impeachment and removal from office for the scandalous conduct in Trump’s first and second impeachments (see Five Thirty-Eight’s complete collection of surveys for the first and second impeachment). What’s more, Quinnipiac asked only about sexual harassment not sexual assault in the case of Trump. The latter, which is also the core crime in the E. Jean Carroll verdict, would have presumably produced even greater levels of support for removal from office. 

The Quinnipiac poll was not alone.

Here's some other tweets from my Twitter feed today. 

Of course, this is just the first trial that Trump is likely to face. A Politico story, Trump's defeat in Carroll case presages more legal peril, lays out those cases. I'm just sharing the title of each one. Read the story for details.

Indictment watch in Fulton County
KEY DATE: JULY 11

Pre-trial motions in the Manhattan hush-money case
KEY DATE: AUG. 8

Upcoming trial in New York civil case against the Trump Organization
KEY DATE: OCT. 2

The federal probe of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election

The federal probe of Trump’s handling of classified documents

Another lawsuit from E. Jean Carroll

Kind of amazing that Trump is the clear frontrunner to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024 with all of these legal problems looming over him. Just goes to show that any claim the GOP has to be the law-and-order party is a bunch of B.S.

Democratic worries about Trump indictment are overblown

Democrats worry about things going wrong politically even when they're going well. Republicans are optimistic about things going right politically even when they're going poorly.

OK, that's a broad generalization. But there's still a lot of truth in what I just said. 

Evidence in support of my thesis comes from the reaction to the indictment and arraignment of Donald Trump. 

Yesterday Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, presented an outline of his case against Trump in a post-arraignment news conference. I thought he did fine. 

Basically, a few weeks before the 2016 election Trump paid hush money to an adult film actress he had sex with so Stormy Daniels wouldn't tell her story after the Access Hollywood tape (where Trump talked about grabbing women by the pussy) had captured the public's attention.

Trump falsified business records when his reimbursement to Michael Cohen, his attorney, who paid $130,000 to Daniels from a home equity loan, was wrongly shown as legal expenses. 

Even though false business records usually is a misdemeanor, Bragg charged it as a felony under New York law. This is where most of the freakout at the indictment among nervous Democrats, and angry Republicans, is focused.

Did Bragg make a mistake in elevating the falsification of business records to a felony? Well, here's how I see this question.

First, Bragg is an experienced prosecutor. So are the attorneys who work under him. Recently elected as the Manhattan DA, Bragg has both a strong personal and professional interest in making Trump's indictment as solid a case as possible.

So everybody who is claiming that Bragg screwed up when he charged Trump with 34 felonies relating to the false business records assumes that they're smarter than the prosecutor who has seen all of the evidence against Trump and is highly familiar with New York law in this area.

Here's a tweet that makes this point.

Second, while I admit that I've been paying more attention to legal analyses that say the Trump indictment is on solid ground, my favorite MSNBC/CNN attorneys are well qualified to weigh in on how strong Bragg's arguments will be.

Like Harry Lipman, who wrote an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times, Don't underestimate the strengths of Alvin Bragg's case against Donald Trump.

Manhattan Dist. Atty. Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Trump takes an open-ended approach to the charges that some critics of the unprecedented prosecution see as a weakness. What the detractors have overlooked are the substantial and unanticipated legal and factual strengths in the case Bragg outlined.

A key question in advance of Tuesday’s unsealing of the indictment concerned how Bragg would augment the easily proven misdemeanor charges of falsifying business records. Under New York law, those offenses become felonies only if they’re in furtherance of another crime. Many theories were circulating as to what second crime Bragg would allege, and most of the possibilities had noteworthy shortcomings.

Bragg’s answer was essentially “I’ll tell you later.” He took advantage of the wording of the state law, which requires only that the misdemeanor be done in service of “a crime,” to buy himself maximum time and flexibility.

...So even as Bragg hedged his bets with a skeletal indictment, his statement of facts and public comments reveal a clear path to a felony conviction: showing that Trump’s falsification of business records was meant to aid and conceal a tax offense (whether or not it occurred) and to prevent a revelation that would damage his campaign on the eve of the election.

Third, I liked the piece by Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo: The Law Isn't Brittle for Following It. He makes some good points about the law.

We’ve now had the day of spectacle and legal experts have had a chance to provide their first analyses of the case brought against former President Trump. On the substance the case isn’t difficult to understand: In the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, Trump orchestrated a hush money scheme to keep a series of affairs and assignations out of the press and in so doing broke a series of laws.

The legal arguments behind the case are more complicated, involving both federal and state laws, and a specific argument about how different violations of the law interact with each other to create a broader pattern of criminal conduct.

On this point fair-minded people (by which I mean people who are knowledgable and by no means carrying water for Trump) appear divided. Those saying the legal foundations of the case are shaky include Rick Hasen (see here) and Ian Millhiser (see here). On the contrary, Ryan Goodman et al. at JustSecurity (see here) say these skeptics are wrong and, broadly, that they’re not focusing squarely enough on the New York case law which controls the prosecution.

I’m not in a position to tell you which narrowly legal arguments are better. But I am in a position to argue against the underlying political argument of those who fear that the legal merits of the case aren’t unassailable.

Many who worry that the legal arguments of this case aren’t strong enough argue that if the case gets watered down or thrown out on a legal technicality that that will just confirm the beliefs and add power to the arguments of those who say the legal system is already a sham, biased against conservatives and worse. So in this sense, it’s not just that the case may fail. It’s that its possible failure will empower those already trying to tear down civic democracy, the concept of impartial justice and the rule of law.

That’s flawed reasoning. Prosecutors shouldn’t bring marginal cases or those they don’t believe in in any case — not for ex-presidents and not for street criminals.

I hope the legal theory of this prosecution is robust because the underlying offenses are serious and deserve accountability. It’s fundamentally about a conspiracy to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election. (Let’s remember that one of Trump’s accomplices already did jail time for just part of this criminal conduct.) But if they don’t survive judicial scrutiny, that’s the rule of law too. That’s okay.

The rule of law is a set of agreed upon processes, not agreed upon outcomes. I don’t buy the argument that the rule of law cannot survive the rule of law working in Trump’s case. That doesn’t make sense.

Some people imagine I’m being a judicial Candide in these arguments: however it works out will be for the best. That’s not right. Everyone needs to make a concerted effort to disengage from the gravitational force of Trump’s drama, which so many are still living within. Trump committed a lot of crimes.

Now that he’s out of office the criminal justice process should take its course. The criminal justice system doesn’t have to pitch a no-hitter, let alone a perfect game, to justify itself or survive. That’s very much the world of Trump’s drama. Heads he wins; tails you lose.

Joyous day! Trump is indicted.

Nothing like an indictment of Donald Trump to make my day brighter. When I first saw a mention that a Manhattan grand jury had voted to indict him, I thought this might be a joke.

But when I realized the news was true, I felt freaking great! 

It's been a long time coming. Trump has been lying and cheating and stealing his way through life for many decades, yet until now had avoided a criminal indictment.

So it was richly deserved, even if making a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star just before the 2016 presidential election that wasn't reported as a campaign contribution isn't the worst thing Trump has done.

However, likely Trump also will be indicted on other charges: conspiring to overturn the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden, encouraging the January 6 insurrection at the capitol, obstructing justice by failing to return top secret documents that he took with him after leaving the White House.

I'll be even happier when those indictments happen. For now, though, I'm basking in the pleasure that comes from the even hand of justice being fairly applied to the absolute worst president in modern history.

And we don't even have the details of the indictment yet. That should come next week, after Trump is arraigned before a New York judge. His trial will be fascinating to follow. 

Here's some tweets about today's wonderful news.

Israeli people fight authoritarianism in their country as GOP promotes it in U.S.

At the moment Israel is being torn apart by the attempt of their right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to pass bills that would do away with the balance of power in that country by allowing the legislature to control the judiciary and stop investigations into wrongdoing by Netanyahu.

If that sounds familiar, it's akin to what Republicans in our House of Representatives want to do to protect Donald Trump from prosecution. 

A trio of House Republican committee chairs say the House of Representatives could soon take up legislation to strip state and local prosecutors of the authority to prosecute former presidents in response to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s potential indictment of former president Donald Trump.

Note: this would apply to former presidents.

So Trump could murder someone as the private citizen that he is now, and he couldn't be prosecuted at the state or local level. This seems completely unconstitutional, but a little thing like the Constitution doesn't matter to GOP politicians still determined to kiss Trump's ass any time the Orange One demands their subservience.

Fortunately, with the Senate and Presidency in Democratic control, there's zero chance a House bill prohibiting former presidents from criminal prosecution would become law any time soon. So for now there's no need for the public to protest this horrible Republican proposal.

In Israel, though, Netanyahu wants to begin to pass his Protect Benjamin Netanyahu Act next week. That's why massive protests have erupted in Israel after Netanyahu fired his defense minister for criticizing this highly controversial legislation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister on Sunday, just a day after he called on the embattled premier to halt a controversial plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary.

The proposal to remake Israel’s courts has plunged the nation into crisis, spurring protests in major cities in recent weeks. On Sunday, Netanyahu’s decision to remove Yoav Gallant, a fellow Likud Party member, prompted at least 150 demonstrations across Israel, according to police.

Crowds gathered around the Knesset building in Jerusalem after police deployed water cannons near Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem. Some demonstrators hoisted Israeli flags and shouted, “De-mo-cra-cy!” while others set fire to a major highway.

...Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right national security minister, another once-fringe settler extremist, has come out in support of the reform, saying that Gallant had “surrendered to the blackmail of the anarchists” — a word he has frequently used to describe the demonstrators.

Ben Gvir has vowed to advance legislation that would cancel Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial, in which he has been indicted in three separate cases and faces potential prison time.

Here's some Twitter tweets I came across today about the uproar in Israel.