Speculating About What is Coming

I don’t think that enough people are giving sufficient credence to the indictment against Donald Trump brought by the grand jury in New York City. Of course, none of us on the outside know what the counts, rumored to be 30 or more, are. We will know that fairly soon. But I cannot believe that District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who had earlier declined to go after such an indictment. does not have a strong case. He is likely not suicidal, figuratively or literally,

He is already getting death threats, it will get worse. If somehow the case is thrown out, very unlikely, or results in no conviction, his career is over. Cases are lost every day, but this one cannot be. It’s like putting all your chips in.

I don’t think that this will just be about paying Stormy Daniels $130,000 in a violation of campaign finance laws, even though Michael Cohen already was convicted and jailed for it. Even though it is obvious that without this payoff, Stormy Daniels, an engaging person, but hardly a heroine, would have gone to the media, and then enough voters would have been disgusted, to have ensured that Hillary Clinton was elected President. No, there is more, and enough to make a more than colorable felony charge. Bragg is not intending to try Trump on a misdemeanor or two.

No, there are more charges, maybe a pattern of deceit and misrepresentation of funds and assets. Maybe Trump did this with other women, or even men, in a different context. We’ll see soon enough. Unless Bragg is an egomaniac or a buffoon, he has to have more to charge Trump with.

If this weren’t so serious, it would be very humorous as to how Republicans cannot wait to jump in and scorn and mock all of it. They are sure that this is just a misdemeanor charge, flimsy and political. They forgot that Robert Mueller had alluded to crimes which could be charged against Trump when he was not President. They were so full of themselves; how Barr had preempted Mueller’s report, so that the credulous media told everyone that Trump was found not to have done anything wrong. When Mueller appeared before Congress, he kept hinting, even insisting, that Congress had the power to go after Trump for what Mueller’s team had unearthed, as soon as that stupid “rule” from 1974 was irrelevant, once Trump had left office.

So we’ll see on that; but Republicans, partly out of reflexiveness, and partly out of their sense that if they jump in fast, they can control the narrative, cannot wait to attack and mock anything that Trump is charged with, even not in a legal sense. They are looking for donations, and drowning out everyone but themselves. But there will be a trial, and the evidence will be public. Michael Cohen has waited a long time for this.

As to “what it will mean for Trump’s political future?,” who knows? I don’t think it will help. I will say that I am concerned that it will, in the immediate term, increase his support, not in numbers, perhaps, but in intensity. And that worries me, specifically because I think that the election for the swing Supreme Court Justice in Wisconsin on April 4, is absolutely crucial to the survival of this democracy. The Republican candidate is a virulent MAGA, who was giving advice to the people trying to set up fake electors in Wisconsin in 2020. If he wins, it is very likely that Wisconsin will not certify a Democratic victory n that state. Also, an 1849 extreme abortion ban will be the law; and radical gerrymandering there (I believe that Wisconsin was found to have one of the most misrepresented series of districts in the country) will remain. A loss in this race could have immense consequences. Republicans are pouring in $3 million in the last week, to sway the electorate, as they did four years ago, and win this seat. This must not happen.

For that reason, I would have much rather had the indictment announced next week. Hopefully, whatever short-term boost the MAGA get out of this, will not sway that race. After that, since I think that there will be substance to the charges, not to mention the ones which are still likely forthcoming from Georgia and D.C., Trump is not going to gain from it, We will obviously see how that plays out, but even though Republicans absolutely refuse to criticize him, or do anything but attack and wildly accuse Democrats, some people out there will fall away from supporting him.

There is a very unsettling element of the Gotterdammerung about the way that Republicans talk now. Tucker Carlson, a truly despicable person, is out in front with this, saying that “now is not the time to give up your assault weapons,” and saying dire things like, he “is ready for what will come next,” clearly implying an all-out war, He wants it, though of course he would be safely on the sidelines, rooting the carnage on. There are more like him, but he is the worst.

I do think that there will be violence. This Gotterdammerung is what Trump has been trying to cause, with his comments about the final battle, and of course his blatant racism and anti-semitism. “George Soros” is not the bogeyman they have essentially invented, for no reason. He is Jewish, and they are doing what Hitler and Goebbels did when they blamed the loss of World War I on “Jews stabbing Germany in the back.” There will be blood, I am afraid. There already has been, when that man read such things about this inane “replacement theory,” incidentally espoused by Carlson, and went into a synagogue and killed Jewish people.

We can only hope that law enforcement is on our side, that they will fight against these insurrectionists, and stop them. People like Carlson, Greene, Gaetz, and all those insurrectionists in and out of jail, want a civil war, which they think they will win. I do hope that Austin, Wray, and others, are ready for this. There was not enough readiness on January 6, 2021.

The MAGAS, most of them, will not just go away, defeated. Trump has manipulated them to where they think that anything that happens to him, is something that they must fight against. They are determined to win something, and it is gong to take a determined and unyielding effort to stop them.

Finally, as much as I admire the intelligence and legal acumen of Neal Katyal, his comment the other night that “no one should gloat over this,” and that he “hopes that Trump gets the best defense attorney and the best defense,” remind me of 1974, and how Republicans, with the media’s help, managed to convince so many people that the pardoning of Nixon by Ford was a good thing. “The American nightmare is over.”

But it was far from over, and the country never got the catharsis and cleansing which an impeachment and conviction, or a criminal trial of Nixon, would have given us. So Roger Stone spent the rest of his life trying to engineer a fascist takeover of the country; and Republicans for 50 years mocked the whole thing by appending “gate” to every issue, as if Watergate was a trivial and partisan thing. It was far from that.

And then 46 years later,Trump pardoned Stone and Manafort, people who were trying to overthrow the government. And if Trump is not stopped here; and more than that, if he is not completely disgraced and discredited. the next Republican president will pardon him, and all the insurrectionists; and we will have no justice system at all. So let us hope that we do have one, still, and that it works.

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