The Trump Legal team filed more documents today in the appellate court. I tweeted a bit about how silly they were (let me know if you all want me to march through them). Then this happened:
Trump giving the go-ahead for the transition to get underway was (I believe) the closest he will get to conceding the election. Two amusing things happened. First, Trump tweeted this about 10 minutes after Emily Murphy submitted a letter saying she would move forward, and that she has made her decisions solely on her own and not at anyone’s direction. Looks like Trump wanted people to think that she was, in fact, acting at his direction.
The other amusing part was that Trump’s lawyer spun this certification of elections as a “procedural step.” I suppose that when Biden is inaugurated, that, too, will be a “procedural step.”
I think lawyers are the ones who tended to believe we’d get through this. Interesting because I only represented indigents (I’ve never represented anyone who could afford to pay), so I’ve seen the dark side of the legal system. I never thought I’d be on Team Optimism.
But it’s been the courts that have held out. I think Trump genuinely thought “conservative” judges would just hand him the election. And it is totally unnerving that he asked the courts to do that.
I went back and forth. Was it a fundraising or media stunt? Or did Trump really think it would work? It was that press conference with Giuliani’s hair dye dripping that persuaded me. Trump thought he’d win it.
This not going to make Trump happy:
I see 2 possibilities after January.
- The Trump-FOX-GOP remains united and we have deeper divisions between those who embrace truth and those who embrace lies
- When the GOP tries to move on and looks to a 2024 candidate not named Trump, the Trumps attack them and the GOP splits.
Possibility #1 is more likely–and also more destructive.
The question for the GOP is who controls the voters. A few decades ago, the GOP made the mistake of outsourcing voter mobilization. They teamed up with FOX and the NRA, who got the voters to the polls. So FOX and the NRA control the voters, which gives them power over the voters. (That insight on GOP voter mobilization is from Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker and Berkeley political scientist Paul Pierson.) This gives FOX power over candidates, which has forced candidates to adopt more extreme positions.
Right now, Trump is trying to wrest that control from FOX, which would give him power over GOP candidates.
This depends on what you mean by the Trumps “going down.” Criminal convictions won’t cause the Trumps to lose their power over the right-wing. The right-wing celebrates lawbreaking. Convictions become a badge of honor. Look at Flynn and Rittenhouse.
What can possibly cause the Trumps to “go down” is for them to be perceived as losers and weak. That can do it. The idea that a criminal conviction will take away Trump’s power among the QAnon or Oann people is held by those who don’t understand the fascist mind.
The kind of prosecutions that I believe can bring down the Trumps are prosecutions that show they are actually flat broke, that they really weren’t that good at cheating and lying and they’re worth nothing. This is why Trump can’t admit he lost. He can’t be a “loser.”
White supremacy is victimhood: “others are taking what rightfully belongs to us and we have to stop them.” Hierarchical people think that those trying to achieve “equality” are really trying to take their place at the top.
This is a good question and gets to the truth about “law and order,” which was never really about law and order, and always about keeping Black people in their place. I recently wrote a book about Thurgood Marshall. Southern police were the worst.
Several of you asked about punishment and what comes next for Trump.
I’ll try to get to that question and others that you’ve sent me very soon. I intended to do it today, but the news (more ridiculous legal papers filed followed by a sort of ‘concession’) was just too riveting.
As a teaser, there’s this:
