Dear Weekend Jolter,
Only in Trump’s world could the headline on this newsletter even make sense. But this is his world, for now, and it does.
“Here comes 60 percent,” Rich Lowry wrote heading into the week, pointing to yet another 2024 primary poll showing Donald Trump above 50 against the rest of the field — and, in this one, taking his largest-ever lead over Ron DeSantis in a head-to-head. Other matchups reflect a similar surge. The RealClearPolitics average shows Trump gaining overall amid the all-encompassing “hush money” news cycle. Perhaps no other figure in the country could better leverage his own indictment for political advantage.
The wall-to-wall coverage, the implicit imperative for even his likely primary opponents to go to bat for him, the opening to deploy “witch hunt” to drum up millions in donations . . . everything is coming up Trump in connection with Tuesday’s surrender and arraignment. The reporting indicates his team wants to squeeze the courtroom drama for all it’s worth; his first post-plea event was a defiant Mar-a-Lago address, and, for $36, you can now get a shirt with his fake mug shot on it.
When there’s no grace to fall from, scandals are opportunities.
To a point.
The bump for Trump is doubtless fueled by the perception on the right, including among the former president’s critics, that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has grossly overreached, puffing up a misdemeanor case into felony-level charges on a rickety and not-even-fully-explained legal theory. Trump’s critics on the left recognize these problems too.
But as Erick Erickson noted, the bump could represent “a surge of support against the DA and not actually an intent to vote for him.” Even if every point Trump gains reflects genuine backing, there’s no guarantee he can hold together the sympathy coalition once his legal woes deepen, as seems likely, and less ridiculous prosecutors enter the arena. A bookkeeping case concerning payments to a porn star is one thing; an ever-expanding suite of cases, of which the dark and Stormy business is the least significant, is another.
Andrew McCarthy, while acknowledging that the Bragg drama lights a match under Trump’s base, made exactly this point after the news broke on the charges last month:
Now that the Rubicon has been crossed, I’d bet on more [Trump prosecutions], from both the Biden administration–appointed special counsel Jack Smith (on the Mar-a-Lago documents and January 6) and Fulton County, Ga., DA Fani Willis (on “stop the steal”), who are probably miffed that Bragg is beating them to the punch.
Those probes are proceeding, and could yield more charges (there’s a reason Trump preemptively attacked the other prosecutors in the midst of broadsiding Bragg at Mar-a-Lago). While the Bragg prosecution lets Trump reorient the universe to once more focus it on himself, the combined effect of all those other — likely more credible — cases may, in time, serve to remind primary voters why it’s a good idea to shop around for their 2024 standard-bearer. “Getting indicted over payments to a porn star is emphatically not a recommendation for the presidency, or an indication of potential strength in a general election,” NR’s editorial helpfully notes.
Meantime, here’s Noah Rothman on what to expect in the near term:
He’ll make his legal troubles into a litmus test. “Did you support Trump against Alvin Bragg?” is the question, and the right answer will become the price of admission into Republican politics at the national level. Trump would certainly like to put a binary choice before GOP lawmakers on this or any other indictment he might face: Either you believe this left-wing lawfare is a threat to the republic’s foundations, and you’re obliged to say as much, or you’re off the team.
But that assumes Trump sticks to the script. Democrats are fully prepared to capitalize on — er, rather, ruefully condemn — anything that Trump might say that even hints at incitement.
He brings out the best in us. He really does.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
The Trump indictment editorial, again, is here: Bragg’s Trump Indictment Folly
The outcome was predictable: Chicago Elects to Make Things Worse
Hey, remember the spy balloon? Biden Owes America Answers on the Chinese Spy Balloon
ARTICLES
Andrew McCarthy: Bragg’s ‘Indictment’ Even Fails as an Indictment
Rich Lowry: Bragg Is Already Losing
Ryan Mills: Oregon Woman Sues State for Rejecting Adoption Application over Opposition to Child Gender Transition
John McCormack: A Big Win for the Left in Wisconsin’s Supreme-Court Race
Christian Schneider: We Need a National Conversation about National Conversations
Caroline Downey: Columbia Law Students Claim School’s Kavanaugh Event Normalizes ‘White Supremacist, Patriarchal Violence’
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Michael Mukasey Stands Up for Pro-Life Family Raided by FBI
Jay Nordlinger: ‘Words Are the Only Victors’
Becket Adams: The Media’s Savior Complex
Dan McLaughlin: When a Democratic President Was above the Law
Wilfred Reilly: California’s Reparations Proposals Are a Mess
Noah Rothman: Can We Spare a Moment for the Murdered Children?
Ari Blaff: The Ontario Math Teachers Association Whiffs on Response to NR’s ‘2+2=White Supremacy’ Article
CAPITAL MATTERS
The entitlements crisis is now. From Brian Riedl: Social Security and Medicare Insolvency Dates Are a Distraction
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Powerful and poignant memorials to the Nazis’ atrocities, in Berlin. Brian Allen walks through them: Stomped Swastikas and Holocaust Memories in Berlin
Armond White argues Succession is overrated: Succession and Its Discontents
We always have room for Bruce: Bruce Springsteen at the Barclays Center
THESE EXCERPTS DON’T NEED TWITTER BLUE TO TELL YOU THEY’RE VERIFIED
As for the specific problems with Alvin Bragg’s indictment, you can start here and here, and then I’d recommend reading Andy McCarthy’s takedown:
It’s always possible to be surprised. The indictment brought by Manhattan’s elected Democratic district attorney Alvin Bragg against Donald Trump is even worse than I’d imagined.
Bragg’s indictment fails to state a crime. Not once . . . but 34 times. On that ground alone, the case should be dismissed — before one ever gets to the facts that the statute of limitations has lapsed and that Bragg has no jurisdiction to enforce federal law (if that’s what he’s trying to do, which remains murky).
Bragg’s indictment charges 34 counts, just as we said it would, based on media reporting that clearly came from illegal leaks of grand-jury information — a crime, you can be sure, that goes in the overflowing bucket of serious offenses that Bragg refuses to prosecute.
The 34 counts are arrived at by taking what is a single course of conduct and absurdly slicing it into parts, each one of which is charged as a separate felony carrying its own potential four-year prison term. . . .
The worst due-process abuse of Bragg’s indictment, however, is that . . . it’s not an indictment. The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment guarantees that Americans may not be accused of a serious crime — essentially, a felony — absent an indictment approved by a grand jury. The indictment has two purposes. First, it must put the defendant on notice of exactly what crime has been charged so that he may prepare his defense. Second, the indictment sets the parameters for the defendant’s closely related right to double-jeopardy protection, also set forth in the Fifth Amendment. That is, by stating the crime charged, the indictment enables the defendant to claim a double-jeopardy violation if the prosecutor attempts to try him a second time on the same offense.
Here, the indictment fails to say what the crime is.
Ryan Mills reports on a troubling case in Oregon:
Jessica Bates was driving to work in southeast Oregon when she heard a Christian radio broadcast that, she said, caused a “really strong nudge in my spirit.”
It was the story of a single dad who had adopted a child. Bates, a single mother of five, felt a calling from God to do the same. It was, she said, a four-word message: Those Are My Children.
“It was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t see this coming,” she said, “but I feel like I need to do something.”
But while Bates’s Christian faith is the reason she felt called to adopt in the first place, that same faith is the reason she is not being allowed to, according to a lawsuit filed Monday against leaders of Oregon’s Department of Human Services in federal court.
According to the lawsuit, state officials denied Bates’s application to adopt, not because of a lack of financial resources or any history of abuse or neglect, but because she acknowledged that her Christian faith informs her that gender and sex aren’t a choice. She was also denied because she said she would be unwilling to use pronouns that don’t align with a child’s sex or to take a child to an appointment to receive cross-sex hormone treatments. . . .
Bates said there is no option to even be essentially neutral regarding transgender affirmation. “You have to support it,” she said.
Bates received an official denial letter in November noting her religious objections.
Someone had to say it. That someone was Dan McLaughlin:
One of the mantras of Democrats and their media voices in response to Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of Donald Trump has been that “no one is above the law.” That’s a fine sentiment, but there are three very big problems with Democrats making this argument: They don’t believe it, they don’t mean the same thing by “law” as the rest of us, and Alvin Bragg is about the worst possible representative for the theory that violations of the law will never be tolerated.
In particular, I never want to hear another word — not another syllable — about how “nobody is above the law” from people who spent years on end telling us that perjury and obstruction of justice by the president should not lead to consequences because it was “just about a blow job.” . . .
This is not how Democrats talk about the law when one of their own is in the crosshairs. The most obvious and glaring parallel is Bill Clinton’s perjury. At the time, the all-but-uniform argument among Democrats was that the Clinton impeachment was “just about sex,” as if covering up a sexual affair is somehow a defense to breaking the law. On the simplest charge against Clinton, perjury in his civil deposition, there really was no question that Clinton lied under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. He did so again in the grand jury. And yet, we were told that he should be neither prosecuted nor impeached, and that even investigating him for this was a terrible affront because he was the president.
Democrats were united in treating Clinton as being above the law against perjury, even though federal judges had previously been removed from office for committing perjury and filing false documents such as income-tax returns. Two hundred of the 205 House Democrats voted against impeachment. Every single Democrat in the Senate — every last one — voted for acquittal on all charges. That includes six Senate Democrats who are still there (Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray, Dianne Feinstein, Jack Reed, and Ron Wyden); it includes prominent Democrats who were in the House then, including Pelosi, Neal, Lee, Schumer (who voted against impeachment before joining the Senate and voting for acquittal), and Ed Markey; and it includes Joe Biden.
Shout-Outs
J. D. Tuccille, at Reason: Dump the Politicized Case Against Trump and Make Way for Serious Investigations
Kat Rosenfield, at UnHerd: Stop trying to make ‘digital blackface’ happen
Allysia Finley, at the Wall Street Journal: The Coming Biden Bailout of Blue States and Cities
CODA
I exploit this space in the newsletter for all manner of musical proselytizing, and that means sometimes I’ll simply mention here what I’m currently listening to in the hope that it appeals to others. And that is, Riverside, a Polish prog-rock band now in its third decade of existence. They really are a spectacular ensemble. See what you think of “Left Out.”
Thanks for reading, and have a restful holiday weekend, if you are celebrating one of them.