Politics

As the latest special counsel files new charges against former president Donald Trump, it’s beginning to look like legal crusades in America are more important than political ones. Locking up one’s political opponents is the sort of thing they used to do in Ukraine, after all, or the totalitarian state of which Arthur Koestler wrote in Darkness at Noon. Just a few years after claims of Russian collusion with the winning candidate of America’s 2016 presidential election were debunked, it is ironic that a Russian’s critique of our political culture nearly half a century ago captures our current predicament so clearly.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is considering taking Donald Trump’s advice that she run for the Senate (he said he’d “fight like hell” for her), but she’s also thinking about whether she’d be asked to join Trump’s cabinet — and maybe even be his vice president — should he win the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. When the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked her if she’d be running for Senate, MTG said she has “a lot of things to think about,” including a potential cabinet position. If Trump asked her to be his running mate, MTG said she’d consider it “very, very heavily.

Former president Donald Trump has been indicted in the state of Georgia, along with several 2020 campaign allies, for attempting to subvert the result of the last presidential election.

It feels a bit like Groundhog Day in Washington at the moment. Returning after a week’s vacation, I plugged back in this morning to discover that Donald Trump is bracing for another indictment, this time for his post-election antics in Georgia; that none of his Republican rivals show any sign of making a dent in his primary lead; that Hunter Biden’s misdeeds continue to dog the president; and that Team Biden is gearing up for yet another week trying to win America over on “Bidenomics.”The excuse for Biden’s latest bit of economic salesmanship is the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act. This means we will be treated to tired catchphrases that refuse to catch on, such as “grow the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down.

Responding to a voter during a campaign stop this week, Florida governor and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis endorsed a once fringe idea that is becoming increasingly mainstream in Republican policy circles: that the United States has the right, indeed obligation, to use military force in Mexico to protect the American people from drug cartels. And yes, that includes the use of US drones, a revolutionary military technology the US military and CIA have deployed repeatedly to target terrorists in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Somalia (among others).  "We will absolutely reserve the right if they’re invading our country and killing our people,” DeSantis told the voter.

Welcome to Thunderdome: have you placed a bet yet on if Chris Christie actually shows up to the debate with a pair of brass knuckles? It certainly would be entertaining to see the New York and New Jersey guys just ignore the rest of the field and tangle — it’d be enough to justify having the debate itself. But Trump might skip it, which makes the prospect of a DeSantis/Newsom debate the most interesting possibility on the horizon — and presents a make-or-break chance for the Florida governor. Meanwhile, Republicans struggle with how to aim their message in a time where culture war is the dominant narrative but perhaps not the most salient one.

It’s hard not to weep for the Republic as trust in our institutions collapses — and collapses for good reasons. Washington cannot retain public confidence when the frontrunners in both parties represent the dregs of public life and are credibly charged with serious malfeasance; when those charges have surrounded both parties’ presidential nominees in every election since 2016 and do so again for 2024.

You may have forgotten about the White House’s resident coke fiend after weeks of headlines about Hunter Biden’s various court battles, but now the story of drugs in the Executive Mansion is back in the news. A publication is claiming that Joe Biden knows whose dime-bag it was — and it’s not Hunty.  “The Secret Service told President Joe Biden the name of the person who brought a packet of cocaine into the White House last month, according to three security sources with direct knowledge of the incident," Susan Katz Keating of the relatively forgotten Soldier of Fortune magazine wrote Monday. "All three sources independently told Soldier of Fortune the same name, which arose from an investigation into the incident.

Devon Archer, a former friend and business partner to Hunter Biden, testified Monday as part of the House Oversight Committee's investigation into the Biden family business dealings and alleged foreign corruption. Archer made several key claims, including that Hunter was brought on to the board of Ukranian energy company Burisma because of his familial connections and that Hunter put then-Vice President Joe Biden on the phone his business associates at least twenty times to demonstrate his access to US government power. Archer's testimony complicates the insistence from President Joe Biden, the White House and their friends in the media that President Biden was oblivious to his son's business dealings taking place abroad in places like Ukraine and China.