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The Funeral Dirge of Trump’s Opponents

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Ted Rall

           “Trump always gets all the coverage,” an adviser to one of Trump’s opponents tells Politico. “This is what it’s like to run against Trump.”

            Poor babies! If only Trump’s rivals could do something to get attention.

            Trump gets more media attention because he’s unpredictable and therefore interesting. “Listen, because you never knew what he would say, there was an attraction to put those [Trump rallies] on the air,” CNN President Jeff Zucker explained in an effort to defend the fact that his network covered more of Trump’s live appearances than Hillary Clinton’s. Ratings drive revenue. Why air Clinton’s cut-and-paste stump speeches—a campaign staple that should have remained in the 19th century—when you know bored viewers will tune away?

            Memo to Hillary: you could have played the same game. If you had, you might have won.

            Trump’s secret sauce is out there in plain sight. If one of his viewers wants to mount a serious challenge to the former president’s current lead, they ought to try out his formula for attracting free media: ditch the boring scripted speeches, speak extemporaneously, identify voter concerns that politicians have never addressed before, defy party orthodoxy, avoid jargon, make fun of other candidates, use straightforward, simple language.

In a political world of bores and prigs, Donald Trump is entertaining. Hey Republicans! You can do it too!

During his first campaign Trump hammered away at deindustrialization. “George,” he said on ABC’s “This Week,” I’ve gone all over this country over the last three—really, more the eight weeks than ever before. And I’ve gone over and I’ve seen factories that are just empty, beautiful factories, although now they’re not so beautiful, because they’re starting to crumble. But I’ve seen buildings that used to house thousands and thousands of people and they’re just empty. You can buy them for $2. And I stayed in New York…Pennsylvania…Carrier, Ford…I want them to come back.” No American politician had ever spoken to the hollowing out of the Rust Belt before, much less promised to reform trade agreements to protect U.S. manufacturing jobs. It won him the Midwest and the election.

Who would have thought that so many Republicans agreed with him that Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a mistake? He understood something other Republicans didn’t: it was always Pat Buchanan’s party.

Trump takes chances. He’s bold and brash. He doesn’t give a F. Which is why his supporters love him.

            Wanna win? Embrace the risky lifestyle, anti-Trump Republicans! You have nothing to lose but the Republican nomination—which you’ll lose otherwise.

            N.B.: This advice is not for all of Trump’s rivals. Nikki Haley, the Republicans’ Kamala Harris, sits in low single digits. Like the Clive Owen character in the movie “Inside Man,” however, she’s exactly where she wants to be. She’s running for vice president; she needs to be noticed without exuding the Bernie Sanders-level charisma that intimidates a presidential nominee. Chris Christie is a Fury out to hound Trump just because. Asa Hutchinson wants people to know he’s alive. (It’s not working.) No one, including Mike Pence, knows why Mike Pence is in the race.

“[Trump] has a wide lead because he dominates the conversation,” Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, another challenger, said on Fox News. “And I think the press—and you know I don’t want to fault the press—but that’s all they want to talk about. If we keep talking about the former president, frankly, I’m sure he’s sitting at home in Mar-a-Lago smiling and laughing because they’re giving him the nomination.”

Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott and Doug Burgum are classic attentistes. If and when something happens to Lord Trump, God of the RealClearPolitics National Average, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Shamed, running 51 to 53% in the polls and rising—if and when he chokes on a taco bowl, goes to prison, is eaten by vengeful orcas, whatever, please, God, they pray nightly, do something—the attentistes will vie for the title of heir apparent to the throne of Maga-stan. Until that time, soon may it come, the Great Orange One reigns supreme and the attentistes defend him against persecuting prosecutorial Democrat infidels, vowing fealty and obeisance as they bide their time.

Waiting around like a toad hoping that Trump will die or go to prison before next summer’s Republican National Convention is not a serious strategy. True, Trump is old and fat and never exercises; he is under indictment on serious criminal charges. Still, odds are he’ll survive and remain free on appeal for at least a year. The fact that DeSantis has raised hundreds of millions of dollars speaks to how easily donors can be persuaded to waste cash on a high-risk investment.

DeSantis et al. face a choice. They can keep on keeping on, waiting to fight for Trump’s spot if and when he drops out, wallowing in wonkdom (c.f., DeSantis’ “medical authoritarianism” and “cultural Marxism”) as the electorate and TV producers fight their collective urge to fall asleep.

            Or they can become interesting.

            (Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

 

DMZ America Podcast #105: Hunter Biden Skates, Donald Trump Going to Trial, Teenage Depression

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Ted Rall

The DMZ America podcast features two political cartoonists who happened to be best friends. Ted Rall (Andrews McMeel Syndication, Wall Street Journal, WhoWhatWhy) comes from the Left; Scott Stantis (Andrews McMeel Syndication, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News) comes from the Right.

Hunter Biden once again assumes his role as America’s Prince Andrew: safe, protected, facing minimal charges. In this case, it’s two years probation for evading the payment of $100,000 in taxes and for a gun charge. Republicans are going crazy. Maybe they have a point.

Former President Donald Trump has a trial date in his federal criminal case related to improper handling of classified documents: August 14. Scott and Ted examine the shocking political and legal repercussions of this completely unprecedented case, and what it means for the future of the country and democracy as we head into a presidential election.

Teenage depression hits new lows as more young people than ever before tell psychologists, that they feel worthless and without hope for the future. The cause: social media and digital devices. We don’t let a 12-year-old drive a car. Should we be allowing a six-year-old on Instagram?

Watch the Video Version of the DMZ America Podcast:

DMZ America Podcast Ep 105 Sec 1: Hunter Biden Skates

DMZ America Podcast Ep 105 Sec 2: Donald Trump Going to Trial

DMZ America Podcast Ep 105 Sec 3: Teenage Depression at New Lows

Pick One Box

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Ted Rall

Facing multiple criminal indictments, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump might be in prison by election day 2024. Joe Biden, the Democratic incumbent and party frontrunner, is currently older than 96% of all Americans, a number that will only become bleaker by next year. It’s hard to argue that American democracy is alive and well. Which box will you choose?

20 Years to Life—in the White House

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Ted Rall

Donald Trump’s poll numbers increased after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg indicted him for business fraud. Now it looks like he’ll be arrested again, this time for mishandling classified documents. Republicans will circle the wagons around him again, of course.

For God’s Sake, Give Trump a Plea Deal

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Ted Rall

No one is above the law. But indicting the frontrunner for a major political party’s presidential nomination, a former president to boot, on charges with a maximum sentence of 400 years in federal prison sets the stage for a full-blown constitutional crisis. Is there some way to hold Donald Trump accountable for playing fast and loose with state and federal law, without forcing him to campaign while on trial or asking voters to head to the polls while the de facto leader of the Republican Party rots behind bars?

Consider how crazy this could get. Would Club Fed pipe in wifi for the debates? Can an inaugural ceremony be held in the visiting room? Who takes that 3 a.m. crisis phone call when the felon-in-chief is sitting in stir?

Biden and the Democrats fantasize about putting Trump in prison. If they calm down and think about it even for a moment, however, they should be able to see how badly doing this now, during an election, would inflame our highly combustible politics. Three prosecutors, all Democrats, all working for Democratic administrations with the support of Democratic-leaning corporate media organizations, are seen as waging nuclear lawfare to deny 70 million-plus Republican voters the right to support the presidential candidate and party of their choice.

I don’t know how this ends. Civil war? Random political violence? Polarization like you’ve never even dreamed of? Whatever happens, I guarantee it won’t be good.           

There is a way out.

Offer Trump a plea deal.

At this writing, here is the legal lay of the land. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records, some related to paying hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Legal experts think Bragg has a better-than-even chance to nail Trump in court, despite the novel construction of his case. Now Trump faces 37 counts for mishandling classified documents in federal court in Miami; his odds of walking away free are still worse there. Soon, in early August, Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis may join Indictment-a-palooza with her own set of felony charges, that Trump tried to interfere with the 2020 election.

Trump is famous for ignoring his lawyers’ advice. But he’s never before faced odds this long or downsides this steep. If a plea deal is offered, his legal team will be screaming at him to take it.

Assuming the former president is wise enough to listen—or listen to his second and third set of attorneys after he fires his first ones, for they too will be shouting at him to make a deal—the terms of a plea arrangement will have to satisfy the courts (i.e., Democrats) without enraging Team MAGA.

Charging parties in Georgia, New York and the Department of Justice would need to agree on a set of conditions that would ensure Trump was covered by any and all claims likely to be filed before the November 2024 election.

Now for the terms:

No prison.

By all means, disrespect Trump the man. Trump the former president and Trump the major-party candidate, however, represent the aspirations of tens of millions of Americans who felt unheard and unseen before he rode down the Trump Tower elevator in 2015. If you humiliate this man—trials, convictions, handcuffs, chains, jumpsuit—his supporters will feel his shame as their own. Furthermore, it would be impossible to overstate the international scorn and disdain that would be heaped upon the U.S. after a sordid spectacle better suited to an s-hole country in the developing world. We have a two-party system. If you hobble one candidate, tie him up in court and/or jail him, you no longer have the pretense of a democracy—you’ve created a one-party system. Biden will become America’s Saddam.

Who would ever listen to another pompous declamation about American exceptionalism?

For decades I was angry at Gerald Ford for pardoning Nixon because it sent the message that presidents are above the law. I was wrong. I have since come to appreciate Ford’s calm, common-sense Midwestern wisdom. Ford understood that America needed to move on, that to do otherwise would have meant we would have been talking about Nixon for the rest of the 1970s and beyond—the way we can’t stop obsessing over Trump now. Hard as it is to accept that Trump should walk free on so many charges, charges that his own administration pursued against far nobler people who went to prison as a result, if you want to salvage the republic Trump must be spared prison.          

Federal prosecutors sometimes require that a politician drop out of politics as part of a plea deal. In 1982, for example, a Congressman from New York agreed to resign his seat in Congress, stay out of politics and to plead guilty to federal tax, narcotics and conflict-of-interest. Plea bargains filed by state DAs forced out the governors of Alabama in 2017 and Missouri in 2018.

Trump’s ability to campaign and potentially regain the presidency in a fair election is essential to assure Republicans that they have not been victimized by a weaponized government. Democrats and Never Trump Republicans will find this tough to digest. Surely a man who incited the January 6th Capitol riot doesn’t deserve to be president. But democracy requires at least two candidates, neither behind bars or banned from participating.

If not prison or proscription, what?

Fines. Big fines.

Forbes estimates Trump’s net worth at $2.5 billion. Let the two states and the federal government split $2 billion, payable within a year of settlement. If he defaults, clap him in cuffs and frog-march him out of his hidey-hole, whether it’s Mar-a-Lago or the White House.

For a man who values money more than anything else, taking a financial haircut would represent real accountability. His agreement to pay a significant public settlement would serve as tacit acknowledgement of his guilt. No amount of grandstanding at his rallies would convince anyone of his innocence.

For God’s sake, offer Trump a deal before it’s too late.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

 

That’s Democracy

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Ted Rall

As we head into a Trump versus Biden rematch nobody really wants, it’s hard to argue that the American electoral system is really a democracy.

Still Trumped by Trump

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Ted Rall

            The problem is not that the electorate is polarized, siloed into self-reinforcing media echo chambers and mutually contemptuous — that’s the cause. The problem is that neither the partisans of the left nor those of the right can imagine themselves, for even a second, on the other side of the ideological divide.

            This phenomenon is perfectly illustrated by the spectacular rise of Donald Trump’s Republican primary poll numbers, first following his indictment for business fraud by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, and then after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced his run. According to conventional (liberal) wisdom, both these events should have hurt Trump politically. What the heck, Democrats wondered, is going on with those wacky GOP voters?

            Donald Trump thinks, at least he claims he does, that the deep state and the media are out to get him. Judging the long list of congressional investigations, Justice Department inquiries (which were subsequently determined to have been unjustified), multiple impeachments and criminal charges that have targeted him, the former president’s paranoia appears to be grounded in reality.

Trump brilliantly projects his personal and political travails upon his supporters. “In reality they’re not after me, they’re after you,” he tweeted in 2019. “I’m just in the way.” After The Donald, in other words, would come a deluge of liberal statism gone wild: more taxes, fewer guns, migrants stealing your job, cities awash in bums and criminal gangs, transwomen raping your daughter in the ladies room.

You can’t defeat Trump unless you undermine his relationship with his supporters, who view him as a guardian and an unrepentant advocate for their values and concerns, and love the fact that he drives liberals crazy. Want to get under Trump’s skin? Get zen, stop reacting and call him out for the promises he broke to right-leaning voters.

Democrats, however, can’t begin to understand conservatives’ concerns or the mindset of voters who share them. Stuck in their New York Times/NPR/MSNBC bubble, in which everyone who votes Republican (especially for Trump) are inbred, uneducated, racist hicks too stupid not to impale their brains when they pick their noses, they attack Trump for the things they dislike about him—which, to his supporters, are features rather than bugs. They deploy tactics that would diminish a politician in their eyes, only to elevate him among MAGA types. Rather than separating Trump from his voters, everything Democrats do is pushing them closer together.

Detach yourself emotionally from your visceral dislike of the short-fingered vulgarian and it’s easy to see why a party whose base sees itself as beleaguered and aggrieved rallied around Trump after a liberal Democratic DA arrested him in order to fulfill a political campaign promise. Yet Democrats still believe that more of the same will yield different results.

Filing criminal charges against Trump over the classified records found in Trump’s office at Mar-e-Lago “suggests a fateful new reckoning is looming over Trump,” CNN mused on May 18th. Wait, there’s more! If could be that Trump’s Biggest Legal Danger Comes From Georgia as New York magazine said, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has signaled that indictments over election interference might be filed against Trump this summer.

            Precedent and common sense indicate that any criminal indictment by a Democratic prosecutor will be viewed by Republican voters as more political grandstanding over offenses that are trivial, ginned up, or both. Democrats are blind to this reality. Republicans aren’t different than you and me; if a passel of Republican DAs were to go after Joe Biden at the same scale over analogous offenses, they too would close ranks around the president.

            Well-funded, popular in his home state and articulate, DeSantis poses the only substantial (albeit long-shot) threat to Trump’s bid for the GOP nomination.

As a populist culture-warrior who has carefully studied Trump’s appeal, DeSantis knows he has to attack Trump from the right, on issues like the COVID-19 lockdown, abortion, spending and crime, marketing his administrative experience. Having established his bona fides on illegal immigration, the Florida governor might jab Trump for completing less than 400 miles of his promised “border wall” along the nearly-2,000-mile border with Mexico, which, Trump’s promises aside, Mexico did not pay for. “Donald likes to talk,” I’d say if I were him, “but that’s all he’s got—lots of loud words, no action.”

            At this point, however, DeSantis’ culture-war red-meat is like a restaurant with great desserts and boring entrees—he’s got tasty extras but where are the basic policy items? So it remains Trump’s nomination to lose. As for the general election? There’s no indication that the Democrats have learned anything about Trump’s vulnerabilities since they underestimated him in 2016.

            (Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

Maybe DeSantis Can Torture His Way to the White House

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Ted Rall

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will tout his military experience in his race for President. But his experience at Guantanamo torture camp includes highly credible allegations that he volunteered to watch brutal torture and approved of what he saw.

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