June 20, 2024
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
The June 27 debate might be the last the American people hear from Trump pending July 11 sentencing in New York
By Robert Romano
If former President Donald Trump is sentenced to jail by New York City judge Juan Merchan on July 11, prior to the Republican National Convention on July 15 to July 18, then Trump’s June 27 debate with President Joe Biden might be the last the American people get to hear from Trump for the rest of the general election.
That’s right. Trump, even as he continues leading national polls on average since Sept. 2023, might not even be able to attend his own nominating convention and deliver his acceptance speech after nearly sweeping the entire primaries, winning 49 out of 50 states, because the conviction by the New York City jury and the decision by Merchan for sentencing on July 11 will predate the Republican Party’s convention on July 15 to July 18.
Meaning, all eyes will be on not only incumbent President Joe Biden’s performance — with continued talk of replacing Biden — in the June 27 debate just a week away, but also Trump’s, who will need to outline his positive agenda for the American people in just 90 minutes — with the chance he will be unable to deliver any further messages directly on the campaign from behind bars.
Not only is potentially imprisoning a former president unprecedented in the nation’s history, so is putting one of the major party’s nominees in jail in an election year. One must look at banana republics overseas or examples in antiquity including the Roman Republic to find such divides resulting in political factions attempting to imprison one another in this manner, which risks civil war and can result in dictatorships being established in their wake by the victorious faction.
In other words, it’s incredibly dangerous for which there are well-known historical examples, with the U.S. recklessly repeating those mistakes.
For Trump, though, the phenomenon is actually nothing new, whose first federal counterintelligence investigation began during the 2016 campaign by the State Department, the Justice Department and the nation’s intelligence agencies. Surveillance was justified to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court not only the basis of false accusations that he was a Russian agent but also on Trump’s opposition to U.S. intervention in Ukraine after former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed, Russia annexed Crimea and the civil war there broke out in 2014.
The investigation carried on through the campaign and continued even after he won, in the presidential transition, and then even after he took office in Jan. 2017. Afterward, when the top-secret investigation was discovered by the Trump administration, he fired the FBI Director leading it, James Comey, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed, only for Mueller to debunk the conspiracy theory in his report: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” and “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference.”
But the attempts to criminalize the Trump presidency would not end there. In 2019, Trump would be impeached and ultimately acquitted as he considered leveraging foreign aid to Ukraine.
For eight years now, the “get Trump” by all means necessary push by Democratic prosecutors has steadily escalated, with the New York City trial now over, and the Washington, D.C., Miami, Fla. and Fulton County, Ga. trial still pending.
At the debate, Trump will attempt to hold Biden accountable for the political prosecutions, while Biden will expectedly note that his own son, Hunter, was just convicted of federal gun charges as well, without the President intervening with a pardon or commutation of his sentence (yet), designed to show that America’s justice system is “even-handed”.
But all it really shows is that targeting the President, his family or a former President with prosecution has become normalized — and the U.S. will never be the same.
Will the debate’s moderators even ask any other questions about the issues of the campaign? Surely, there’s a lot to talk about, whether it be consumer inflation still outpacing personal income since the beginning of 2021, the collapse of the U.S. southern border with millions of illegal immigrants pouring across the border, how to deal with the ongoing wars in Ukraine or Gaza or potential conflict with China over Taiwan, collapsing fertility, the skyrocketing $34.7 trillion national debt and so forth.
The problem with these escalations is that once the political factions are warring with one another, few other issues matter, as the pivotal decisions shift from millions of Americans voting in a normal election to the few who serve as prosecutors, judges and juries who appear intent on seeing the inquisitions to their arbitrary conclusion. Whether Trump could still effectively campaign from prison is important for both he and Republicans to consider, but going into the debate, Trump must assume this could be one of his last chances to communicate directly with the American people.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/06/the-june-27-debate-might-be-the-last-the-american-people-hear-from-trump-pending-july-11-sentencing-in-new-york/
Daniel Henninger: Trump is peeling off layers of a Democratic coalition that lost its common identity
By Daniel Henninger
It was simply realpolitik that required President Biden to leave Vice President Kamala Harris to deal with a summit in Switzerland on ending the Ukraine war, while he flew from the Group of Seven in Europe to a Hollywood fundraiser with George Clooney and Julia Roberts. You do what you gotta do.
The L.A. event pulled in more than $30 million for Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, though it’s unclear from news reports whether the name “Biden” or “Trump” was said more during the evening. A Washington Post article this week identified “a sort of ‘PTSD,’ ” which is a mental-health disorder related to the growing possibility of a Trump win.
The Clooney-Roberts fundraiser also produced the inevitable video of Mr. Biden at less than 100%, with former President Barack Obama leading the president offstage. We’ll give Mr. Biden a pass on this one. Who wouldn’t be zonked after flying across nine time zones, even for $30 million? By now, the cognition issue is baked into the electorate’s decision tree, unless Mr. Biden freezes up or speaks in gobbledygook during the debate next week.
Less easy to duck was the impression of a Democratic Party drowning in Hollywood glitz. The party’s public image is almost wholly defined by celebrities, and that’s not good for winning general elections.
The party’s most famous person beyond Messrs. Biden and Obama is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, known by her social-media “brand,” AOC. The House’s progressive women got their own marketing logo as the Squad. When party conversations turn to a possible Biden successor for November, the first name that comes up is celebrityish California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Vice President Harris is sort of a Chauncey Gardiner celebrity, famous for just being there.
The Democrats’ rejoinder is: Give us a break! Donald Trump is the most unalloyed celebrity ever associated with the presidency, or politics. True, but that isn’t the Democrats’ problem.
The list of celebrities joined to the Democratic hip runs forever. But the Republicans? Once past Mr. Trump, no one associates the GOP with shiny people. In the popular telling among sophisticates, the Republicans—whether their elected politicians or followers—could hardly be more out of it.
George W. Bush, elected twice, was derided as a Republican doofus from Texas. Ronald Reagan? A “minor” actor. The traditional Republican set of beliefs is dismissed as beyond the pale on pretty much everything—the culture, race, social values, fashion, even culinary preferences. Can a foodie be a Republican?
The assaults on Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas may be about legal outcomes, but make no mistake, these attacks originate in the belief that they aren’t our kind of people. Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing made that clear.
The Democratic Party’s celebrity dependency has been background noise for decades and not a problem . . . until now. This presidential election remains closely contested. With the cost of living the No. 1 issue, each swing-state vote deserves attention. In this high-stakes context, the spectacle of the incumbent president jetting from Europe to Hollywood is the kind of look Mr. Biden and his party don’t need. He’s Hollywood Joe.
Days after his $30 million fundraiser, Mr. Biden announced a whopping $50 million ad spend on a commercial depicting Mr. Trump as a “convicted criminal.” Those two words will define Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign. It might work. Polls have suggested some voters would step away from Mr. Trump following a conviction. If so, the much-maligned Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who delivered the felony conviction for the Democrats, will get the last laugh.
But notice that on the day Mr. Biden tapped the Hollywood ATM, Mr. Trump campaigned at a black church in Detroit. It is becoming hard to suppress the reality reported in polls that Mr. Trump, former host of “The Apprentice,” is peeling off layers of the traditional Democratic coalition—blacks, Hispanics, younger Americans and possibly even Jewish voters. The Democratic base once had something resembling a common identity, but not so much anymore. And it’s getting late to fix that.
The Federal Reserve’s projection last week that it will cut interest rates only once this year suggests Mr. Biden is unlikely to get much respite from the elevated price level
Mr. Trump himself could help by running off the rails, but he’s been almost disconcertingly pragmatic recently, shaking hands with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and endorsing former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Trump critic, for the U.S. Senate. However improbable, a Trump turn to self-discipline could dilute the Biden campaign’s decision to run overwhelmingly against Mr. Trump rather than on the Biden record.
With the Democrats’ convention arriving in Chicago in August, the anti-Israel protests have already taken a nastier, antifa-like turn, praising intifada and routinely calling the police “pigs.” Hunter Biden’s felony conviction this month was one more burden for an already shaky presidency to shoulder.
Joe Biden’s candidacy needs a positive jolt. Where he gets it has become difficult to see.
To view online: https://www.wsj.com/articles/hollywood-joe-bidens-celebrity-party-1b272780?mod=opinion_lead_pos9
VIDEO: Trump Gains MASSIVE Support From Unexpected Community
To view online: https://youtu.be/B2d8bomtuJQ