Donald trrump

The woman with a starring role in perhaps the most talked about campaign ads of both the 2018 and 2022 election cycles wasn’t on the ballot. In both, a politician whose stock has risen as much as anyone’s in the last half decade was happy to let his wife do the talking. Five years ago, Casey DeSantis narrated a thirty-second clip in which she testified to her husband Ron’s admiration for Donald Trump. You’ve probably seen it. “Everyone knows my husband is endorsed by President Trump, but he’s also an amazing dad. Ron loves playing with the kids,” says Casey. The ad cuts to footage of the Republican gubernatorial candidate building a toy wall with one child, reading The Art of the Deal to another, and so on. “People say he’s all Trump,” says Casey.

Well, no indictment, but there were developments! Vocabulary word of the week: “exculpatory.” “Something that shows that someone is not guilty of wrongdoing.” Now, use it in a sentence: “Soros-funded Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg neglected to reveal hundreds of pages of exculpatory evidence to the Grand Jury pondering whether to indict Donald Trump.” What does it mean? It means that the orange suit that Bragg was hoping to order up for Trump may have to be retailored in a larger size, one big enough to fit him. Some context: when a prosecutor conceals exculpatory evidence from a Grand Jury or defense attorneys he is guilty of prosecutorial abuse.

When last we checked in on The Donald Trump Show, the absurdist political thriller that’s been airing nonstop on CNN for the past seven years, the program seemed to have gotten its groove back. A new character had been introduced, Cassidy Hutchinson, a Trump aide who told the January 6 committee that the former president had lashed out violently, including allegedly trying to commandeer the presidential SUV. Here was everything that had made The Donald Trump Show so great in the first place: the over-the-top drama, the scandal, the unpredictability of its main character. Alas, one of the gripes that critics have most often leveled at the show is that it introduces new plotlines and then doesn’t do anything with them.

To this point in the early days of the Republican primary, all the major potshots have been coming from just one candidate, directed at just one other: Donald Trump taking aim repeatedly at Ron DeSantis. Much of the media conversation about this has focused on DeSantis's unwillingness to respond to any of these attacks: a deliberate choice that hasn't lowered the temperature or frequency of Trump's barbs, which now include comparing the Florida conservative to, gasp, Mitt Romney. But consider the possibility that at this moment, both men are making a political mistake. For DeSantis, the risks of non-response are that Trump defines him before he defines himself. Republican primary voters generally know who Ron DeSantis is and have an overwhelmingly positive view of him.

Here are six things to think about ahead of any indictment and arrest of Donald Trump: 1. What is Trump going to be indicted for? Trump may soon be indicted on a campaign finance law violation. This means Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has convinced a grand jury there is enough evidence to charge Trump with the crime (federal prosecutors seem to have long abandoned the cheesy political revenge fantasy). 2. But I thought this was all about Trump having an affair with some porn star? Stormy Daniels allegedly had sex with Trump in 2006, which he denies, and which she and Michael Cohen also once denied. She then took money in 2016 to sign a nondisclosure agreement, or NDA, to keep silent.

It’s getting Stormy for Donald Trump. In a lengthy message on his TruthSocial site on Saturday morning, Trump announced that he expects that the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, will indict and arrest him on Tuesday for his hush money payment scheme to his former, if brief, inamorata Stormy Daniels. “Protest, take our nation back,” he urged. But Trump’s urges may not be widely shared. It's hard to avoid the feeling that Trump misses the shock and awe of January 6, when his loyal followers stormed the Capitol to try to overturn the election of Joe Biden. That rebellion turned Trump into the ultimate Washington outsider, a revolt against the very government he was supposed to lead.

In 2020, Democrats made a pragmatic if uninspiring choice in nominating Joe Biden. If this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is indicative of the Republican base’s mood, the ultra-MAGA crowd is still in middle-finger mode. Bernie Sanders wasn’t prepared to burn down the Democratic Party and trash all the other candidates to get the nomination in 2020, but Trump has always loved scorched earth. His followers need to get real before it’s too late.  Trump’s ardent fans lapped up his hour-and-forty-five-minute CPAC address, in which he portrayed himself as the only person capable of saving the country and averting World War III.

The game's afoot: MAGA Inc., a Donald Trump-associated super PAC, has lodged a formal complaint to the Florida Commission on Ethics against Ron DeSantis. The complaint alleges that the Florida governor is in breach of ethics laws by running for president without officially declaring. Cockburn detects a whiff of hypocrisy here: for a man who is always claiming to be the victim of legal warfare, Trump seems to be as willing as anyone to wield the sword of the law. The complaint argues that DeSantis is “leveraging his elected office and breaching his associated duties in a coordinated effort to develop his national profile, enrich himself and his political allies and influence the national electorate.

Is this news? Mike Pence “seized the spotlight” in DC this weekend when he “slammed former president Donald Trump in what amounts to his strongest criticism to date of his former running mate.”  Of course Pence did. He is, for the time being, running for president. Naturally he is going to set his sights on the the biggest beast in the room. And that beast, in case you haven’t noticed, is Donald Trump. (And, really, can’t Politico do better than “former running mate”?) Pence, having himself been subpoenaed by the January 6 Entertainment Committee (he doesn’t plan to testify) is nervous about his role in that jamboree.

SVB and the echo of bailout politics There was a back-to-the-noughties feel to events in Washington this morning as Joe Biden sought to calm markets and assuage fears of contagion in the banking system after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the last few days. Talking the day after regulators announced emergency measures that guaranteed all depositors at Silicon Valley Bank, Biden said that “thanks to the quick action of my administration over the past five days, Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe.” Viewed as a stand-alone case, Biden’s response to a run on America’s sixteenth largest bank after mismanagement left it fatally exposed to higher interest rates is understandable.

Congressional Republicans are gearing up for their four millionth attempt to rein in government spending, and surely this time will be different. After years of posturing in favor of budget cuts that never seem to materialize, the national debt growing to 130 percent of GDP is finally a threshold they won't cross. A Fox News hit? By gum, there's no time! Republicans exclaim as they raise a quivering red pen to the latest defense authorization bill. This job is about policy, not going on TV, dammit! You'll forgive me if I sound a bit cynical. After all, Republicans controlled the elected government for two years under Donald Trump and the deficit only got bigger. Yet as another debt ceiling fight looms, this time the GOP sounds like they might be serious about shrinking the state.

Oxon Hill played host to the muted sounds of MAGA last week. The Conservative Political Action Conference returned from Florida to the Washington, DC exurbs — but the conference was a shadow of its former self. While CPAC has been MAGA territory since 2017, some of Donald Trump’s intra-party foes sensed blood in the water. Perhaps none more so than Perry Johnson. Johnson, a Michigan businessman who was booted from the ballot during his failed 2022 gubernatorial campaign, has announced a long-shot presidential bid that has so far consisted of a cringe ad in the Super Bowl, and a third-place finish in CPAC’s vaunted “straw poll” for president. A number of “Perry Who?” Johnson shirts could be seen around the conference.

Just based on public behavior, you'd think Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis weren't even interested in running for the same office. Trump's approach has been, as is his wont, directly at odds with the traditions of running for office. Normally, a candidate would want to reestablish the sense of a once-and-future political predator building a dominant effort to return to his former job. Consisting of splashy media events like his recent trip to East Palestine, flamboyant social media haranguing, and a campaign operation that has more questions than answers, the Trump show will be on display this week at his old haunting grounds of CPAC. It was the conference that gave him his start in the conservative movement.

Remember when Donald Trump crowded illegal immigrants into cages? What a brute! But what could you expect from a man who was, when you came down to it, indistinguishable from that diminutive Austrian house painter with the funny mustache and a fondness for leather? The problem was, it was the anointed one, Barack Obama Himself, who built the cages and crammed them full of illegal immigrants. (Really they were large areas secured with chain-link fences, but “cages” sounds scarier.) And those dismal photographs depicting the huddled masses? The media splashed them everywhere as yet more evidence of Trump’s perfidy. But, wouldn’t you know it, the photographs too were from the Obama era. Even the Snopes Fact Manipulator, no friend to Trump, had to acknowledge that.

Psychologists and self-help gurus agree: it’s the little things that bring a smile to one’s lips and impart savor to life. A case in point was just vouchsafed this weary world by Paul Ryan, former important person. An interviewer for ABC recently sat down with Mr. Clean and asked him whether he would be going to the 2024 Republican National Convention, which is to be held in Milwaukee in Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin. “Where will you be?” the host asked. “It depends on who the nominee is,” Ryan replied. “I’ll be here if it’s not named somebody Trump.” Ooo, that stung, Paul! “It’s,” “somebody Trump.” Slash and burn, what? I have some bad news. That “somebody” might very well be Donald Trump.