P.M. Carpenter

Trump's "perfect" nastiness, courtesy Newt Gingrich

Speaking Saturday night in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump called President Biden "a dumb son of a bitch." (Donald, did you really mean to underscore that you somehow managed to lose the 2020 presidential election to the cretinous offspring of a shrew? And by no less than seven million votes?)     

Trump also thought it a good self-promotional idea to remind everyone about his (first) impeachment for extorting Ukraine based on the nonexistent crimes of Joe Biden. This time around, however, his crimes must to be invented not by Ukraine, but by U.S. government agencies: 

"The Biden’s got millions of dollars from Ukraine. Now, Ukraine gets billions and billions of dollars from the American taxpayer. Joe Biden is compromised. He’s dragging us into a global conflict on behalf of the very same country, Ukraine, that apparently paid his family all of these millions of dollars.

"In light of this information, the U.S. Congress should refuse to authorize a single additional shipment of our depleted weapons stockpiles … to Ukraine until the FBI, DOJ, and IRS hand over every scrap of evidence they have on the Biden crime family’s corrupt business dealings."

Trump also stated, as fact, that "We're sending our troops over to Europe to fight." The assumption here was that President Biden is keen on a third world war. See above. 

His pettiness, crazed hyperbole, vapidity and bullshit will never stop, of course. But while it's true that bullshit in politics is time-honored, that vapidity has defined many campaigns, that hyperbole is often the only way to get utterly oblivious voters' attention, and that pettiness is in the eye of the beholder, the fresh new hell of Trumpism is that damn near half of the American electorate believes these political attributes to be the most essential foundations to prop a presidential candidate.

Whence this bizarre, sick turn of voter sentiment? I have routinely argued that Sen. Joe McCarthy is the runner-up behind our too-collective malignity. But Newt Gingrich I shall always regard as the primordial Beelzebub of modern American politics.

Prior to his era, which compelled the New Right and coincided with the rise of low-brow populist Republicanism, no president or ex-president would ever stand before a crowd, friendly or not, and declare even his worst enemy to be a dumb son of a bitch.

Or explicitly claim he was deliberately dragging us into WW III. Or publicly call for the IRS to investigate his enemy's finances. Or make such a daily habit of shitting all over the truth. But Gingrich introduced these and other consummate insults to civic republicanism as the warp and woof of everyday Republicanism.

By now, it's tradition — and laughably, absurdly called conservatism. It should be called Gingrichism 2.0., courtesy Trump.

The latest A+ polling on Trump/DeSantis/AlmostAnonymous

Dang it. Every time I nearly convince myself and attempt to persuade you that Republicans will spoil our 2024 fun by depriving us of Trump the Nominee, which I did again just yesterday, along comes more news of him irreversibly "crushing" the competition.

Such as today's Siena College poll, commissioned by The NY Times.   

The Times uses words like "landslide" to describe Trump's lead over Ron DeSantis. The other 13 points combined are inconsiderable, given that Trump would still leave DeSantis in the dust, detritus and rubble were the latter to inherit them all.

On the other hand, the Trump-in-decline poll I addressed yesterday differed little in overall percentages from Siena's. Where it did differ, rather poignantly, was in noting that "Republicans who persist in defending Trump as guiltless has fallen by 9 points (50% to 41%) since June," while stressing, unlike the Times' reporting, that almost four in 10 Republicans now say they'll back a non-Trump candidate; again, a worse case for Trump since only last month.

From the Siena survey we can deduce one incontestable fact: Trump is winning not because DeSantis is stinking up the campaign trail (although he is); he's winning because Republicans simply adore the blackguard. Said one 58-year-old male infatuant: "DeSantis, I have high hopes. But as long as Trump’s there, Trump’s the man."

Or, there's the 69-year-old retail manager who has some serious clinical issues: "[Trump] might say mean things and make all the men cry because all the men are wearing your wife’s underpants and you can’t be a man anymore. You got to be a little sissy and cry about everything. But at the end of the day, you want results. Donald Trump’s my guy." According to this proudly unwoke jackass who fancies himself a real man's man, it's the anti-Trumpers who "cry about everything." Stunning.

Will DeSantis buy some cologne? Another Times story suggests he already has. At least a small bottle. With a more pointed reference to Trump's criminal indictment, he recently said that if Trump had "drained the swamp like he promised," he probably "wouldn’t be in the mess that he’s in right now." Still somewhat weak-sisterish, but Ron is working out. And in New Hampshire yesterday he said that Trump's use of "juvenile insults" was "why there are so many millions of voters who will never vote for him." 

Some will find my obsession with polling misguided, naïve, or myopic. Perhaps it's all three. But I would argue that reputable polling — I usually ignore the trashy ones, such as American Greatness and Rasmussen — provides a running and solid base of instability, by which I mean minor and possibly indicative shifts in electoral opinion. Naturally a poll today says little about preferences in October 2024. Yet retrospectively one can often see November results in markedly prevenient polling. 

Besides, where else can one learn that Republicans, by a "crushing" margin of 38 points, say that Trump is more "fun" than DeSantis? Which is how I began this post, and for good reason. What other party could conceivably nominate for the United States presidency a twice-impeached, multi-indicted, serial-rapist scumbug, geezer swindler and indiscriminate scam artist? What, indeed, could be more fun?  

A day in Ukraine's counteroffensive: "It was like 'Mission Impossible'" (Ask the West why.)

A Sunday NY Times headline described Ukraine's counteroffensive as a "deadly slog," but also noted a recent "glimmer of success." Though welcome, the second description was disconcerting as well, considering the story's totality. In its glacial southern advance through the province of Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine is taking an almost unbearable beating.     

The one noted success came on Thursday after a 10-day battle for the strategic village of Staromaiorske, where, reports the Times, the Russians staged "a ferocious defense." Contrary to stories of its wretched morale, ferocious has increasingly characterized the Russian army. Ukrainian troops have called fresh Russian units "formidable" and "professional." 

In the two-month span of Ukraine's counteroffensive, its troops "have advanced less than 10 miles at any point along the south’s 100-mile front," writes the Times. It's easy to see why. The Russians have more weapons and they've developed new tactics, such as attack drones and remote-detonated mines.

In Staromaiorske, the Russians had buried mines beneath houses. Upon the Ukrainian troops' occupation of a house, the Russians exploded the mines remotely. Trenches were also mined and detonated from a distance. Said one assault commander, "Our guys started jumping in the trenches and blowing up."

Kamikaze drones attacked the Ukrainians who avoided the trenches. "It seemed like they had a drone for each person," said the commander. In another village, Russian artillery strikes destroyed most of the Ukrainians' armored vehicles on the first day of battle. "The amount of equipment the Russians have ... it was like 'Mission Impossible,'" said a Ukrainian officer.

That, by now, is an old story — a twofold story. The Russians seem to possess a nearly limitless supply of weapons, while the Ukrainians face an unrelenting shortage. The new 23rd brigade was Western-trained and Western-equipped for the counterattack, nevertheless one of its soldiers portrayed it as lacking "sufficient artillery support." Russian firepower — artillery and tanks — was too much for them, he said.  

In another battle a Ukrainian soldier reported that of his unit's 10 American-made MaxxPro armored vehicles deployed in attack, "only one came back." The soldier added that within one month his battalion — typically around 400 troops — had only 10 men remaining.  

Another soldier related that his unit took heavy losses from Russian artillery fire and aerial bombs. "We were shot like on a shooting range," he said. "A drone was flying above us and correcting the artillery fire." The Russians had them "hemmed in by minefields" and "were able to keep them pinned down and under constant drone surveillance." 

Then back to the old story. The soldier said "at first we had artillery support, and then we ran out," adding, "We need more weapons." 

That has been the story of the Russia-Ukraine war. In its first year, Russia suffered international sanctions, a precarious economy, musical-chair military commands, poor morale, early strategic blunders and profoundly dubious tactics. Against Russia's F.U.B.A.R., Ukraine almost certainly could have triumphed — if it had had sufficient weapons.

Its supplier, the West, expends well more than a trillion dollars a year on military means and boasts of the world's largest arsenal, hands down, no contest. Compared to its firepower, Russia plays with pop guns. And yet the Western alliance has been either unable or unwilling to properly provision Ukraine.  

The far more worrisome premise is that of an unwilling alliance. The Russia-Ukraine war is, for now, 1939 in microcosm. Should Russia triumph, the micro will morph into macro and the outcome will be a permanent 1941-42. China will make its move on Taiwan; Iran will become emboldened. The West will face a remodeled and more powerful Triple Axis — and it will have brought the concert of evil on itself.

To invite a New World Order of murderous authoritarianism and merciless terror is madness. Thus to withhold from Ukraine every available means of military might is both pathological and self-destructive. How in God's name could the West be thinking otherwise?                

Another indication of Trump-slippage

From PBS NewsHour:

"According to the latest [A-rated] PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, Republican faith in Trump’s faultlessness has dwindled this summer."

I shall refrain from running you through all many percentages on this and that — my usual routine — and offer instead this nifty little chart.

Percentage- and time-wise I will note that Republicans who persist in defending Trump as guiltless has fallen by 9 points (50% to 41%) since June — nearly double digits in one month; a significant drop in Republicans' blinkered condition.

More to the point — i.e., the chart — almost four in 10 Republicans now say they'll support some other pseudoconservative crackpot. Again since last month, that's a 6-point drop for Trump.     

Other than the natural phenomenon of most Republican primary voters grazing on stupid in their feral habitat, one factor that keeps Trump going as strongly as he does is the seeming immutability of so many political reporters' assessments of Trump's strength. This report is representaitve: CNN's Stephen Collinson writes that "Donald Trump only needed 10 minutes to show why his growing pile of criminal charges is not yet loosening his grip on the Republican presidential race."

Yet outside of that conventionally bubbled view is the Marist chart's finding of Trump's rather prodigious loosening of a grip. 

NBC News' Alex Seitz-Wald notes what I will classify as the secondary cause of Trump's (relative) durability: "Most of the 2024 candidate field has spent the past two and half years validating or turning a blind eye to Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election, priming the Republican base to believe that Trump is a proven winner against President Joe Biden."

Even now, as Seitz-Wald adds, Trump's competitors, if they can be called that, are steadfastly reluctant to point out that the leading Republican candidate is a general election catastrophe in the waiting. To make the argument with any credibility, they must also explain why this is the case: Trump is a crook who is about to be grimly hammered by Special Counsel Jack Smith and District Attorneys Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg.

If Ron DeSantis et al. were to grow a pair and thus begin telling the whole truth, and if political reporters were to remove their Trump-tinted glasses, the leading candidate's primary standings would commence a self-sustaining avalanche rather than mere downward shifts. In fact that may occur anyway, notwithstanding the aforementioned drags on reality. Given today's relentless indictment headlines, Trump's fall may ensue organically.      

Dean Phillips and the art of indirect hypocrisy

Rep. Dean Phillips is a Minnesota Democrat "who has for months been saying in public what many in his party only whisper in private — that the 80-year-old President Biden should not seek re-election because of his age," reports The NY Times.

It seems that primally because of this belief, Phillips is "considering challenging Mr. Biden in next year’s primary." The Times adds that Phillips is also an "heir to a Minnesota liquor fortune." 

Indeed, in 2021 Insider reported that Phillips is worth about $25 million, placing him among the "25 wealthiest members of Congress." And he never had to work for it.  

I'm sure the Minnesota Democrat will be vastly relieved to read that I have no real problem with his running against Biden per se. His devotion to ageism may be blind, stupid and regrettable, but being all three is an American right.

Still, I would have no problem whatsoever with Phillips' challenge to Biden if he were to announce that congressional multimillionaires of the fortunate sperm club should always, that is repeatedly, make it clear to voters that they almost certainly would be out of public life had it not been for one circumstance entirely beyond their control: Daddy's money.

Biden cannot help being 80; Phillips cannot help his lucky birth. One is natural; the other is unharmoniously insidious to any society opposed to wealth inequality. One cannot be helped; the other could be — should be — taxed out of existence. 

A 39-sec dive into frightening Trumpism

In writing the Constitution, the Founders got many things right — checks on power, a bicameral legislature, the supremacy clause, the arduousness of the amendment process, the Bill of Rights — and at least two things tragically wrong —chiefly slavery, also the Electoral College. But outside of the Constitution itself, though integral to it, there reigned among the Founders an observational sentiment concertedly sublime, forbidding, and prescient: A liberal democracy requires as a matter of certitude that the electorate be informed; for without a knowledgeable, intelligent body politic, demagogues appealing to its baser instincts would reign in the place of republican ideals.     

Today we can see just how prescient the Founders were: how well-grounded was their fear of demagoguery, how susceptible to it are alarmingly large swaths of the electorate, how easily an ignorant blowhard can capture the hearts and diseased minds of the body politic. Here Ron Filipkowski, a former federal prosecutor and erstwhile Republican, gives you a laughably horrifying 39 seconds of a Trump rally: 

Trump Rally:

Q - What are you hoping to hear today?
A - That he’s gonna make America great again and end China.

Q - What’s the #1 issue you care about?
A - I want Trump back in office.

Q - And you sir?
A - Um, yeah. Voter .. get .. he belongs back there. And the voter fraud. pic.twitter.com/nSEYLWUOmt

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 30, 2023

"The mess we're in" — or, two recent Wall Street Journal headlines: "U.S. Economic Growth Accelerates, Defying Slowdown Expectations" and "Inflation Eased to 3% in June, Slowest Pace in More Than Two Years." The shallowest allegiance to a mere slogan: "Make America Great Again." The blowhard will single-handedly "end" a more than 4,000-year-old civilization, though why anyone would wish to is a mystery. Another allegiance to empty sloganeering: "voter fraud," although the concerned voter can't quite seem to recall why it's supremely important.    

Granted, this televised canvassing addressed only two of Trump's tens of millions of emotional captives. However these are the voters that Real America's Voice, a fanatically pro-Tump outlet, chose to air. Hence the producers at RAV either thought these two voters were the cream of the crap or their particular stupidity would best connect with the average Trump voter.    

This "movement" is, of course, scarcely the first instance in 236 years of a broad-based demagogic pathology. Yet unquestionably it is, to date, the broadest of bases suffering from what the Founders feared most, and could conceivably kill American liberal democracy.         

A Reynolds rap

"At the exact moment Trump stepped onto the stage, members of the audience could hear the lyric, One could end up going to prison, one just might be president," reports Mediaite in the most knee-slapping story since Gov. DeSantis explained American history.  

Team Trump is furious at host IA Governor Kim Reynolds after Trump’s intro song last night started out with the lyrics, “One could end up going to prison.” pic.twitter.com/UuFdpoenmw

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 29, 2023

Seriously? — "It is unclear whether the song and its timing were intentional or were merely a coincidence," adds Mediaite. Gov. Reynolds hates Trump.  

But her hopes of denying him the nomination are in real danger, as Andy Borowitz reports.

Dear Will Rogers: Meet some men you couldn't like

When Congress is in recess the country is safest, for when it's in session, it's like a baby holding a hammer, observed Will Rogers. In agreement is a Republican House member: "Most of what we do up here is bad anyway," said Bob Good (Va.) this week, so why "fear a government shutdown"? 

Despite their agreement, there lies a wide vocational chasm between the two gentlemen. While Rogers was a humorist, the House Republican is a clown. In fact, Mr. Good is a center-ring clown, part of the now-traveling circus known as the Freedom Caucus. This is an oddly placed group: though they sit in a chamber of national governance, they mostly seek freedom from governing.  

And they're often successful. The 45 Freedom Caucusers represent only 10% of the nation's population, but they can and commonly do bring all governing to a halt. Indeed they were particularly, even spectacularly successful this week at what they don't do, forcing the House to break early for a six-week getaway.  

The lower chamber will reconvene in September, when its members will have all of 12 work days to fund virtually the entire federal government before the drop-dead line of the 30th. Remember the recent spat betwixt President Biden and the Republican House over the debt ceiling and a budget? Both were resolved and nearly everyone cheered, but the agreed-upon budget is now being mutilated by the Freedom Caucus.

Hence the extended recess. The clowns' budget mutilations took giddy precedence over floor votes yesterday, so the House's "leadership" said fuck it — let's everybody go home and do some politicking instead, which, other than blowtorching governance, is the one thing we do really well.

To giving up, to throwing in the circus towel, to fleeing town and their fiscal responsibilities, His Imaginary Speakership said "We’re making great progress." 

True to their named identity, the House's far-right caucus wants to free 5.3 million kids and their pregnant, postpartum or breastfeeding mothers from the tyranny of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC. "Republican lawmakers are literally trying to take food away from disadvantaged new moms and their children," writes an exasperated Catherine Rampell. 

The Freedomites also want to kill a Biden administration rule permitting the abortion pill mifepristone to be sold in pharmacies or sent by mail. "Moderate" Republicans are balking at that, since their suburban seats depend on at least some level of sanity. But mostly the right's hardliners just want to cut cut cut spending; to hell with the earlier budget deal. 

There are 12 appropriations bills to be passed before the government goes belly up on 1 October. The House has passed one on partisan lines: funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Yesterday's clown show screwed appropriations for the Ag Department and FDA. Ten other opportunities for Banana Republicanism await.   

Once the House successfully botches all the bills, they'll land D.O.A. in the conscientious Democratic Senate. Then before 1 October, two options: a short-term funding measure or ... Rep. Bob Good's government shutdown. 

Will Rogers used to joke about the 1930s Congress, the greatest in American history. Today he'd be appalled — and the clowns, unliked.

A late-night infomercial for for-profit DeSantis Polytechnic (federal student loan money available)

TIRED: Trump University
WIRED: Ron DeSantis’ Slave Trade Trade School pic.twitter.com/2W6bkOBOGy

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 27, 2023

"This totally wins my [conviction]" - Trump, on second thought

Forty. That's the number of counts against Trump in Special Counsel Jack Smith's classified documents case, up from 31, as of yesterday. The indictment's 30% fattening comes about, in part, because of Trump's earlier, fatheaded boast, "This totally wins my case."

He was of course lying then and he's still lying about not having shown top secret docs to two security-uncleared ghostwriters of bullshit for his former White House lackey, Mark Meadows. The new, ever-swelling indictment charges that his purse-proud show and tell of sensitive intelligence about "military activity in a foreign country" was, in a word, illegal — a word that shall forever stick to this smallest of men.

Little DOJ and FBI snooping was required to bring about this happy turn of events; that is, a superseding indictment. Trump's crime is on tape. It fittingly took place in "Soprano" country, where he said "As president I could have declassified it.... Now I can’t, you know, but this is still secret." With the tape comes more proof and another count in the indictment against Trump, one which destroys his lying contention of pre-declassification. 

With every "Morning in America" there also comes another obstruction of justice charge against Trump. Says the fresh indictment: "[He] and two aides ... requested that another Trump employee 'delete security camera footage at the Mar-a-Lago Club to prevent the footage from being provided to a federal grand jury.'"

And that is the very definition of obstruction. "Demanding that evidence be destroyed is the most basic form of obstruction and is easy for a jury to understand," says Andrew Goldstein, a defense attorney and former lead investigator for Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who also found multiple instances of Trumpian obstruction. "It is more straightforwardly criminal than the obstructive acts we detailed in the Mueller report," says Goldstein.

But speaking of happiness, Trump had previously and publicly argued that he was happy to hand the footage over — the footage he wanted destroyed. This morning he added more comedy in a right-wing radio show, saying he wasn't legally obligated to release it — in response to a grand jury subpoena. "These were security tapes. We handed them over to them....  I'm not even sure what they're saying," he blubbered. It just never ends. 

Former Trump-White House lawyer Ty Cobb is sure. "This is such a tight case, the evidence is so overwhelming," said Cobb to The Guardian.    

If federal Judge Aileen Cannon can figure a way to sabotage Smith's case against Trump, I shall nominate her for the Roy Cohn Legal Merit of the Year Award. Because real jurisprudential genius would be required to blow up this case. It gets uglier yet salubriously fatter by the day.   

They've reason to be proud

GOP election slogans through the decades.

"Let us have peace." - Grant 1868.

"A square deal for all." - Roosevelt 1904.

"I like Ike." - Eisenhower 1952.

"It's morning in America." - Reagan 1984.

"If I'm not elected, I'm going to prison!" -Trump 2024.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) July 28, 2023

h/t, The Bulwark

The hard life of a Russian oligarch in Londongrad

In Britain, you as a "pro-Kremlin oligarch" (your government designation) must be mighty careful about your ill-gotten gains. Life there can be brutal, what with Western sanctions and all.

So brutal, the British government often limits the spending of Putin's former homeboys to private chefs, chauffeurs, housekeepers, handymen and security services, even though their bank accounts are technically frozen. "In some cases, oligarchs were allowed more than $1 million a year in living expenses," reports the NY Times. 

This as the man under whom they amassed their fortunes brutalizes Ukrainian soldiers with minefields, tank traps, machine-gun sprays, "withering air assaults and artillery bombardments." But who ever foolishly ventured that wartime life is fair?

One such pro-Kremlin, pro-Putin oligarch, banking tycoon Mikhail Fridman, was allowed to shell out 300,000 pounds, or nearly $400,000, over a 10-month period in the war's first year. He was also granted a £7,000 monthly allowance for what the British government calls "basic needs" — a bureaucratic concept obviously rooted in Einstein's relativity theory.

And it pays to be a Fridman associate, for one of them, former business partner Petr Aven, reaped an allowance of £60,000 each month. Where did it all go? Well, most of it went to a security company owned by an Aven associate — it's turtles, all the way down — who allegedly, as they say, is helping Aven evade sanctions. 

No doubt it has already occurred to you why the British government would issue free-spending "licenses" to at least 82 Russian oligarchs  — many more licenses are pending — so that they can continue living like royalty.

Even maggoted money is good for the economy.

"Among the considerations, according to interviews with lawyers and former [British] Treasury officials, is whether a license will keep money flowing into the economy," writes the Times. "Law firms, accountants, real estate agents, art dealers and many others have benefited as Russian money flowed through a capital that has been derisively nicknamed Londongrad."

Says William Browder, who once invested in Russia but now leads a human rights campaign against its malignant autocrat: "It’s an indication of why this country has been so bad at curbing dirty Russian money. There seem to be loopholes everywhere you look and here is the government giving oligarchs its full support to get around its own sanctions."

War is hell, it is said. But like "basic needs," that phrase, too, is a relative concept. 

The press is misreading 'The McConnell Feeze"

This was nothing physical. No, what happened here is that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was suddenly and solemnly struck with the awful historical remembrance that in President Obama's final year he, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, brutally and viciously denied the president his Constitutional right to appoint a new member of the Supreme Court, arguing that no such appointments should be confirmed or even entertained while a presidential election is upon us. Yet four years later, McConnell hastily jammed through Trump's Supreme Court nominee in the final weeks of his criminal administration. Call the below a forced emotional response to his ugly remembrance. In recalling his unprecedented depravity, he stunned even himself.    

My admiration, by the way, goes to Sen. Thune for so casually assuming the podium and seamlessly behaving as though nothing at all just happened — another instance of Republicans' dedication to ignoring reality.  

Why are pro-gun Republicans so anti-Hunter about the gun charge?

What I don't understand about Hunter Biden, his .38 Special criminal charge and Republicans' outrage that he'll not spend the remainder of his life in prison for possessing said handgun is this:

Hunter was a "known" drug user at the time (2018), thus the charge. He fibbed. But why would Republicans care? It's Hunter's God-given and Constitutional right to pack heat under any circumstances, as they so often inform us.

Hell, as far as they're concerned, known terrorists should be legally able to purchase a firearm in the United States, home of trigger-happiness and A-15 assault derangement. Compared to that, what's a little snow up the nose?   

But more important, Republicans, conservatives, wackos everywhere fervidly believe that every man, woman and child in America, no matter how meshuga or vile or very potentially violent, should have free and legal access to lethal arms. It's their one abiding "principle."

So why are they not outraged instead that federal prosecutors brought an unconstitutional  gun charge against Hunter? For once, they could have been consistent.

Okay, now I get it.    

Are Trump voters beginning to crack?

At some time in the past I may have posted a title strikingly similar to the one above. I can't recall. If Trump is losing voters, the process is slow, arduous, and a singular sign of sanity among the base. Every so often, however, a poll comes along that suggests just such a voter-siphoning process. Like this one, from Bright Line Watch, a group of scholars who track "democratic practices, their resilience, and potential threats."  

In October 2022 — two months after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago but before the documents indictment —BLW asked more than 2,700 Americans, "In thinking about former President Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving the White House, do you think he committed a crime, or not?" An amusing 9% of Republicans believed he had committed a crime.  

In BLW's latest poll, taken June 29 to July 11, more than 2,700 Americans were again asked the same question. The 9% of Republicans who believed Trump was a criminal jumped to 25%. (Among independents, now the largest voting bloc, the percentage grew from 34% to 46%.)

(More amusement. Indictment photographs showed that Trump had "stored classified documents in unsecured locations, including a ballroom and a bathroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort." But less than half, only 44%, of Republicans agreed.

The indictment also included an audio recording of Trump, in "his own words, show[ing] a classified plan for attacking Iran to a book writer and a publisher." Even fewer Republicans, 38%, agreed that he had done so. How does one "debate" the 62%? One doesn't. One sighs and laughs.)     

Jonathan Last and Will Saletan of The Bulwark write: "If you’re looking to rescue the GOP from its devotion to Trump, sorry. His grip remains strong. But if you’re just looking to beat him in 2024, the numbers offer some hope." 

I, for one, am not looking to rescue the GOP from its devotion to Trump. Like St. Augustine (of whom I surely remind you), not yet, anyway. The GOP needs Trump in 2024. America need Trump in 2024. Only by aggressively destroying Trump on Election Day can the party's cesspool and electorate at large be free of this ghastly homunculus.

Losing the White House again and all the raggedy downballot coattailers would at last force the Republican Party to rethink and regroup. Should a Trump-lite be nominated instead, the Trumpers will say their downfall lay only in not being Trumpist enough.      

I'm also unsure of Last & Saletan's conclusion: that Trump's numbers are slipping but in the long run, not far enough — not enough, that is, to cost him the nomination. As noted, that would be a shame. But it's still early; Iowa is six months away. And yet, already, Trump has increased his base-voter loss by 16 points, according to Bright Line Watch.

Hence I do see the danger of a no-Trump nomination.   

Give me Trump or give me breath! I'll need the latter if we miss this suspenseful, life-giving chance to kick him and his ism to hell.