Friday Talking Points -- Trump INDICATED!

[ChrisWeigant]

Donald Trump's typographical mistakes were already legendary. But up until now, none have truly been as historic as the one he posted immediately after a New York grand jury indicted a former United States president for the first time in American history [bizarre capitalization in original, of course]: "These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America...." Um, well, yes... the grand jury just indicated that Donald Trump was worthy of indictment.

Buffoonery aside, this is indeed a historic moment. Because the New York grand jury went first, the relative merits of the Stormy Daniels case will be endlessly dissected and discussed in the coming days, but as of this writing nobody outside of the grand jury or the prosecutor's office is fully aware of either: (1) the exact charges against Trump (said to be on the order of 30 separate charges, but no details have been released yet), or: (2) the evidence which convinced both the prosecutor and the grand jury that Donald Trump had not just broken the law but that this could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Nobody knows -- and we won't even begin to know until next Tuesday at the earliest. That's when rumor has it that Trump will surrender himself in New York City to get his mug shot and fingerprints taken and to face arraignment for the charges. At that point the charges will become publicly known, but the full weight of the evidence against Trump will not be revealed to the public before the case actually comes to court. This is an important fact to keep in mind -- whether you think Trump is guilty as sin or pure as the driven snow. Nobody really knows at this point, beyond pure bias and speculation.

The American judicial system is built on the foundation that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. So right up to the time when the jury announces their decision, Donald Trump is still to be considered innocent. But that presumption of innocence cuts both ways -- a fact which (checks the news...) pretty much every single Republican under the sun has conveniently forgotten. Because they are mightily trying to flip the whole thing on its head and declare the prosecutor guilty of all sorts of nefarious things. All without a shred of proof of any wrongdoing, and all without knowing the slightest detail about the evidence presented against Trump to the grand jury. It's all a "witch hunt" they say, and dire threats of weaponizing the House of Representatives against this prosecutor have already been issued.

The House, of course, has zero jurisdiction over the New York prosecutor's office -- in fact, the House has zero jurisdiction over anyone anywhere. It is a legislative body. It does not enforce laws -- that is an executive and/or a judicial duty. But that fact isn't going to stop them from trying, obviously. It's amazing how Republicans conveniently forget pretty much every single thing they've ever said about the sanctity of "federalism" and "states' rights" and the 10th Amendment, when one of their own is in the dock. The GOP's hypocrisy is already breathtaking, and we're just getting started.

We're all going to get tired of hearing the word "unprecedented," that much seems certain. But during the lull while the political press anxiously awaited the indictment to drop, the "Retropolis" column at the Washington Post dug up one interesting precedent from the annals of American history. Ulysses S. Grant -- while he was president -- was arrested and booked at a police station. He was essentially fined as well, although the article ends with: "He didn't show up for court." Here's how it all unfolded:

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant was arrested at the corner of 13th and M streets NW in Washington. This was not a high crime, but it was -- at least theoretically speaking -- a misdemeanor.

The man who led the North to victory in the Civil War was busted for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage.

. . .

That policeman [the "Only Policeman Who Ever Arrested a President"] was William H. West, a Black man who had fought in the Civil War.

. . .

The police had been receiving complaints of speeding carriages. After a mother and child were run over and badly injured, Officer West was dispatched to investigate. As West spoke to witnesses, another group of speeding carriages headed toward him -- including one driven by the president of the United States.

"Policeman West held up his hand for them to stop," the story said. "Grant was driving a pair of fast steppers and he had some difficulty in halting them, but this he managed to do."

Grant was a bit testy.

"Well, officer," he said, "what do you want with me?"

West replied: "I want to inform you, Mr. President, that you are violating the law by speeding along this street. Your fast driving, sir, has set the example for a lot of other gentlemen."

The president apologized, promised it wouldn’t happen again and galloped away.

But Grant could not curb his need for speed.

The next evening, West was patrolling at the corner of 13th and M streets when the president came barreling through again, this time speeding so fast that it took him an entire block to stop.

Now Grant was cocky and had a "smile on his face," the Star reported, that made him look like "a schoolboy who had been caught in a guilty act by a teacher."

He said, "Do you think, officer, that I was violating the speed laws?"

"I do, Mr. President," West said.

Grant had an excuse for his speeding, not unlike one no doubt being given somewhere right now: He had no idea he had been going so fast.

West was sympathetic but firm.

"I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it," he said, "for you are the chief of the nation, and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest."

Which he then did. The president "and several of his speeding buddies" were hauled down to the local police station. Grant was forced to put up 20 dollars as bail ("collateral" ). A trial was held the next day, and heavy fines were handed down -- but the president skipped out on court and apparently nothing else was ever done about it.

In essence, he got a speeding ticket and blew it off.

The story wasn't made public until the policeman retired and spoke to a Washington newspaper in 1908. So you should take all the quotes in it with a grain of salt, as the exchange was likely nowhere near as refined as the cop's memory reported. But this incident is historical fact (the D.C. police chief in 2008 confirmed the story to the Post) -- a sitting president has indeed previously been arrested and booked down at the local police station. Trump won't be the first -- or the category will have to be defined more carefully (Trump will be: "the first former president to be charged with a crime and booked" ) to be strictly accurate.

Historical footnotes aside, where does this leave us all? Awaiting Trump's surrender, which could take on the circuslike atmosphere of O. J. Simpson in his white Bronco (one Trump advisor even predicted it will be like "O. J. Simpson on steroids," in fact). Will there be news helicopters tracking the president from his Florida resort to the local airport, and then from the destination airport to the court building in New York City? That seems pretty probable. Will we have breathless minute-by-minute news coverage while it happens? I would bet on it. Will Trump milk it for all it is worth, politically-speaking? Most assuredly. Will Trump actually give a little speech and/or press conference on the steps of the courthouse either before or after entering the building? One can only hope....

Whatever happens, like pretty much all things Trump, it is bound to be a spectacle that boosts his television ratings. Which is really all he cares about anyway, when you get right down to it.

We wrote earlier this week (the day before the indictment happened, in fact) that we thought it would be a much better thing for all concerned if the Georgia prosecutor who is looking into possible election tampering and racketeering charges against Trump made the first move. That would live up to the historic occasion of seeing Trump surrender himself to the authorities. But perhaps Karma knows what it is doing -- the New York case is notable not for abuse of presidential powers or possibly seditionist actions which spurred an attempted insurrection, but instead because it is all so tawdry and downright sleazy. Which is perhaps fitting, for Donald Trump's first criminal charges, when you think about it. After all, tawdry and sleazy are words that already spring to mind when you think of Donald Trump, even before any indictments.

Republicans are trying to paint the prosecution as one that would never have happened to any other politician, but that's pretty laughable. Just imagine for one moment what a Republican prosecutor in Arkansas would have done if he or she had solid evidence in hand that Bill Clinton had done exactly the same thing Trump is accused of -- paid hush money to an adult film star/director and then illegally fudged the books to cover it up. Think Bubba would have been indicted? If you answer anything but: "Most definitely!" to that question, then you must be too young to remember the 1990s. Because Clinton would indeed have been tried in court in a heartbeat if that were true. Hey, at least the Democrats didn't impeach Trump over the porn star payoff....

Whether it was Georgia or New York, it is going to help that the first prosecution of Trump will happen at a state level. Joe Biden's Justice Department and the federal government in general had nothing to do with it. This is a distinction the Republicans are trying to gloss over, but for the time being New York state is the only government involved in the case. If federal charges do appear (from the federal grand juries looking at Trump's refusal to comply with a subpoena / retention of classified and other presidential documents, as well as Trump's possible criminality for the January 6th insurrection), they may wind up being tried in court faster than either state can move, however. The federal criminal judicial system may move quicker, in other words, because of how it normally operates.

And lest we forget, these are just the criminal cases against Trump. There are plenty of others in various stages of completion:

In addition to criminal charges, Mr. Trump faces several civil lawsuits. New York's attorney general, Letitia James, is suing the former president for "grossly" and fraudulently inflating the value of his real estate assets. Three of Mr. Trump's adult children are named in the suit as well. A group of Capitol Police officers and Democratic legislators are suing the former president, arguing that his actions on Jan. 6 incited the mob that caused them physical and emotional harm. E. Jean Carroll, a writer who accused Mr. Trump of raping her, is suing the former president for defamation. Mr. Trump denies the charges.

In other words, there will be plenty of extravaganzas in the "Mr. Trump Goes To Court" circus, no matter which one happens to be in the center ring at the moment. In fact, the rape/defamation case will almost certainly be heard in court before any of the others.

What everyone is waiting to see now is how Trump's most fervent followers will react. Will there be violence? Will it be confined to New York or will it be widespread? It's not just Trump but many other Republicans who are whipping up the MAGA base into a fever pitch right now, and as we've already seen, bad things can happen as a direct result. Trump is waiting until Tuesday to surrender himself, which leaves a lot of time for people to travel to protest. Then again, Trump himself predicted he'd be indicted weeks ago, and the protests that did spring up on the Tuesday he (wrongly) identified were pretty small and pathetic, so nobody really knows.

We are indeed entering uncharted territory, and we will be traversing that territory for years to come, most likely. Criminal trials are a lot speedier than civil trials, but Trump is an absolute master at delaying judicial proceedings. This will all coincide with Trump's third presidential campaign, and (being uncharted territory) nobody has any idea what it will do for him politically. Will even the Republican base get tired of a candidate with more baggage than a 747? Or will they rally around him to the very end? He's already gotten a bump in attention from the whole indictment drama, and he has once again managed to get virtually every Republican out there -- including (astonishingly) all the Republicans who are running against him for the presidential nomination -- to parrot his own talking points and fervently defend him. At least for the moment, it is definitely still Trump's Republican Party.

This has the feeling of a sprint, since we're all now breathlessly awaiting next Tuesday, but it's going to be a marathon in the end. It may be multiple marathons running simultaneously, if other indictments follow the New York one. Because there are multiple grand juries still out there who might just (we can't resist) INDICATE that Trump is worthy of indictment. Buckle up, everyone, this rollercoaster ride's going to be one for the ages!





We have two Honorable Mention awards to hand out before we get to the main one this week.

The first goes to Senator Bernie Sanders, for raking the former head of Starbucks over the congressional coals for his and his company's Union-busting activities. Howard Schultz once considered running for president as a Democrat, but ironically the only ones in the committee room who were sympathetic to him were Republicans.

And Senator Tim Kaine certainly deserves to be congratulated for his years-long persistence in getting the Senate to vote to repeal two of the "Authorizations for the Use of Military Force" the United States has used to justify foreign wars. The Senate vote was 66-30, showing how much bipartisan support Kaine finally achieved for his bill. He's been trying to get this passed for over a decade now, which shows some admirable persistence, you've got to admit.

But our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award this week goes to every elected Democrat in Michigan's state government. This week, the governor signed into law a measure that overturned the so-called "right-to-work" law that Republicans had passed back in 2012. Michigan is an important symbolic state to Unions, so this was a victory that was especially sweet. And it was the first state-level right-to-work law overturned by any state legislature since 1965, which is impressive indeed.

This is not an isolated legislative incident, either. Here's what else Michigan Democrats have been up to, since they captured the "trifecta" of control of both houses in the legislature and the governor's office last year (for the first time in 40 years):

On March 22, the state legislature passed an eight-bill gun safety package. A repeal of the state's 1931 ban on abortion has also been adopted. On March 19, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed into law bills protecting the rights of LGBTQ citizens.

Meanwhile, the legislature is rushing to expand election protections by instituting automatic voter registration, reinstating the voting rights of ex-felons, criminalizing the harassment of election workers and broadening access to early voting.

Michigan cannot yet be counted as a reliable blue state, but they're working on it. Michigan Democrats have been planning their strategy for a long time, in fact. They got a ballot initiative passed in 2018 which turned over control of the state's redistricting to a nonpartisan commission, who then got rid of all the Republican gerrymandering after the 2020 census. It didn't hurt that Michigan's Republican Party went pretty far down the rabbit hole of election denialism after 2020 and managed to nominate the most extreme candidates imaginable in 2022.

Democrats in Michigan know that their control of government isn't guaranteed in the future, so they are busily fixing all the damage to their state's laws that Republicans have created through decades of control.

And from all accounts, they're doing a bang-up job of it.

Which is why all of Michigan's elected Democrats deserve this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. Keep up the good work!

[Congratulate Governor Gretchen Whitmer on her official contact page, or you can look up individual legislators on the official legislature pages, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]





This is rather obscure -- an aide to a governor -- but it merits the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award for how abhorrent it was.

We have stopped even mentioning the endless series of school shootings and other mass shootings here for the most part, because we essentially gave up hope that anything is going to change any time soon (at least on a national level). So we didn't comment this week on the most recent atrocity, a school shooting in Kentucky where the police identified the shooter as transgender. But others did.

Feelings run strong after these events, obviously. And it was downright disgusting to see Republicans cheerfully engage in something they regularly denounce Democrats for doing -- slapping some "identity politics" on the whole event to paint all transgender people as dangerous lunatics. They never do so when (as is hundreds of times more common) the shooter is a White cis male, of course, that almost goes without saying.

Democrats and other gun-control supporters pushed back on this in various ways. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do so. And then there's a downright abhorrent way to do so:

The press secretary for Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs of Arizona has resigned after sharing a meme some interpreted as suggesting that guns be drawn against people who are transphobic.

Josselyn Berry faced heavy backlash from Republicans after posting a GIF of actor Gena Rowlands in the movie Gloria brandishing two guns. "Us when we see transphobes," the caption read.

This is mere "hours after" the news of the shooting broke.

Words escape us. This is so wrong it's just patently obvious, at least to us. Which is why Josselyn Berry is hereby awarded this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. And "disappointing" doesn't even begin to cover it, we should add.

[Since she has resigned, Josselyn Berry is now a private citizen and it is our standing policy not to provide contact information for such persons.]




Volume 700 (3/31/23)

We're going to pause for two moments here, before we get started. The first is to note that volume number. Yes, yes, we know -- it really should be "Issue" instead of "Volume," but whatever. Just as we enjoy seeing our car's odometer turn over a big milestone, we have to say even we are astonished that we've managed to crank out 700 of these columns over the past two decades!



And our second pause is somber rather than celebratory, because we have to note the passing of Mark Russell, a political satirist and piano player who will not soon be forgotten. He is no doubt now playing a star-spangled piano at the hotel bar in Political Heaven. Requiescat In Pace.

With that out of the way, let's get right to the talking points. As you've probably guessed, there really is only one subject this week that everyone's talking about....



Blind justice

Let's start on the high road, shall we? We'll have some gutter-level snark later, we promise, but let's start with something more noble.

"In America, no one is above the law. That is how it should be. Justice is supposed to be blind -- if you do the crime, you should do the time no matter who you are. No matter how powerful, no matter how wealthy, no matter what you have made of yourself in the rest of your life, if you break the law you should be treated equally by the courts. And until we all get to see the evidence that the grand jury saw, nobody has any real clue about Donald Trump's innocence or guilt. But to say he never should have been charged is just wrong -- because in America, no one should ever be above the law, period."



The restrained approach

Representative Ruben Gallego, who is running to unseat Senator Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, took a very sober and restrained approach to commenting on Trump's situation:

In America we believe in the rule of law. We should wait to hear from the grand jury before jumping to conclusions.

We never had to, before

Representative Adam Schiff made an excellent point we wish more Democrats would make -- yes, this is an unprecedented situation, but the reason for that is that we never had to deal with someone like Donald Trump before.

The indictment of a former president is unprecedented. But so too is the unlawful conduct in which Trump has been engaged. A nation of laws must hold the rich and powerful accountable, even when they hold high office. Especially when they do. To do otherwise is not democracy.

Unlawful political interference

Republicans are infamous for almost always being guilty of projection. What they loudly complain about in others is usually what they are guilty of themselves, or possibly even actively engaged in at that very moment. The district attorney's office in New York has been sent several letters by House committee chairs, demanding all sorts of documents in the case against Donald Trump. This is beyond improper -- it is actually a crime in and of itself. These Republicans are actively trying to obstruct justice by demanding information that cannot be publicly revealed at this point. Which the D.A.'s office pointed out, in a harshly-worded response after the indictment:

As you are no doubt aware, former President Trump has directed harsh invective against District Attorney Bragg and threatened on social media that his arrest or indictment in New York may unleash "death & destruction." As Committee Chairmen, you could use the stature of your office to denounce these attacks and urge respect for the fairness of our justice system.... Instead, you and many of your colleagues have chosen to collaborate with Mr. Trump's efforts to vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges and made unfounded allegations that the Office's investigation... is politically motivated. We urge you to refrain from these inflammatory accusations, withdraw your demand for information, and let the criminal justice process proceed without unlawful political interference.

Lock him up!

And then there's the rampant hypocrisy of Republicans drowning in crocodile tears over (gasp!) Democrats doing precisely what they have been screaming at the tops of their lungs for, ever since Trump appeared on the political scene.

"I hear many Republicans are outraged over what they call 'the politicization of justice' or denouncing any sort of criminal case being brought against a Republican politician in general. Which is just too ironically funny for words, really, when you consider how much political hay they've made over the phrase 'Lock her up!' Remember that? They've called for pretty much every prominent Democrat around to be 'locked up,' in fact: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden (just for good measure), Adam Schiff, Robert Mueller, Dr. Anthony Fauci... I mean, it's a long list. They've been screaming about it for years, folks. And now we're supposed to believe them when they say that justice should never be politicized in any way, shape, or form? Puh-leeze."



Keep trying, he'll get it eventually...

Of course, we can't pass up the chance to get just a wee bit snarky...

"Maybe by the second or third time he is criminally charged, he'll finally learn how to spell 'indict'... keep trying, Lil' Donny, you'll get it eventually!"



Stormy chimes in

But the hands-down best response of them all (at least, so far) comes from adult film actress/director Stormy Daniels herself -- the eye of the storm, one might call her. In an interview with The Times of London, Stormy let her own snark flag fly [trigger warning: explicit and possibly-offensive language ahead]:

I am fully aware of the insanity of it being a porn star. But it's also poetic; this pussy grabbed back.

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

[niyad]

1. Stroke out already, you F'n, murdering, orange TRAITOR**.

[flying rabbit]

2. K&R nt