I doubt there's a stopwatch on the market that is mechanically capable of timing the infinitesimally short interim between your public incitement of violence against prosecutors and the prosecutors' issuance of an obstruction of justice charge, or some similar indictment. Unless, of course, you happen to have been the 45th president of the United States, of sorts. In that phantom-of-the-operalike case, have at it.
Which is precisely what Trump did, Saturday, in Texas, although his advisers employed a linguistic trick:
"If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt. They’re trying to put me in jail. These prosecutors are vicious, horrible people. They’re racists and they’re very sick. They’re mentally sick. They’re going after me without any protection of my rights by the Supreme Court or most other courts."
The word "protests," not riots, was meticulously, telepromptly inserted, which is known in politics and organized gangsterism as "plausible deniability" in the exercise of an illegality. Under the "reasonable person" standard of law, however, not a conscientious juror alive would conclude that the speaker meant anything but riots. (He pulled roughly the same trick with his pardoning promise toward treasonous rioters of Jan. 6; those treated "unfairly.")
Which is merely to say: Had you stormed in a speech as Trump stormed over the weekend, this morning you would find yourself — and on this I'd wager any amount – in a prosecutorial cauldron. But not Donald J. Trump. He remains above the law, free to excite, or incite, whichever he chooses.
That much we know. Still hanging undetermined in the court of public opinion, though, is the question of his political sustainability. Since his (also) unindicted acts of Jan. 6, has his base been eroding? There's evidence that the answer is yes.
Forty-four percent of Republicans said in a mid-January, Associated Press survey that they prefer a presidential candidate other than Trump. What's more, a late-January, NBC News poll found that 56 percent of Republicans say they're supportive of their party, rather than identifying as Trump-firsters, who accounted for 36 percent of surveyed Republicans.
The significance of that last statistic — which "spanned every demographic: men and women, moderates and conservatives, people of every age" — is that it's down nearly 20 points since Trump's final months in the White House.
Even worse for Trump are the findings of a Republican pollster: The former president's margin over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is evaporating.
From last October to the present, Trump's lead over DeSantis in presidential preferences has dwindled from 40 to 25 points — and even worse than that, "among Republicans familiar with both men, the gap was just 16 points, and narrower still, only nine points, among those who liked them both."
Which takes us back to Trump-as-scofflaw. For more and more Republican voters, has he been going too far in his outrages? Is, finally, his criminality too conspicuous, too brazen, too — dare I say it? — embarrassing?
Or perhaps they're just tiring of his endless and unchanging grievances. Or maybe it's a combination of both, combined further with DeSantis' equally weird, Trumplike attraction.
Only one thing is certain. Over the next three years, Republican politics are going to become even weirder. And that is saying the nearly unsayable.