Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Trump’s bizarre threat to release Mar-a-Lago footage is revealing
So I checked in with Tim Weiner, the author of a history of the FBI. Weiner points to the absurdity of comparing the Mar-a-Lago search with the bureau’s darkest moments.
“The FBI relentlessly wiretapped Martin Luther King,” Weiner told me. “It tried to destroy the antiwar and civil rights movements in the ’60s and early ’70s.”
“And from his first days as FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover sought to infiltrate and subvert the American Civil Liberties Union,” Weiner continued. “Those were witch hunts. This is an espionage investigation.”
This is all part of Trump’s “I am still in control of this story” performative scrambling. Except, he’s not. Not in control, not winning. Not nobody! Not nohow! to quote a famous philosopher from Oz.
Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:
Congress needs to figure out the deal between Trump, Jared, and the Saudis
The FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago should bring a new sense of urgency to getting to the bottom of corrupt Trump family ties to the Saudis.
It’s a remarkable story that begins inside Trump Tower on Aug. 3, 2016, the day that Donald Trump Jr. met with a longtime emissary for two oil-rich Gulf States — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — and their Israeli security guru as they promised to secretly help his father win that fall’s presidential election against Hillary Clinton.
The tale is far from over, but the richest plot twist may — emphasis on the word may — have occurred just a couple of weeks ago, right after a Saudi-government-backed pro golf tour made a financially rewarding stop at Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, N.J. That’s when a team of FBI agents swooped into the senior Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida, looking for top secret documents and evidence that the 45th president had violated the Espionage Act.
They’re worried.
David Rothkopf/Daily Beast:
Dems Do Big F*cking Deals, the GOP Does Fake Big Dick Energy
Last weekend, the former local television anchor turned cringe Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake praised both former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for their BDE—a reference to the online discourse describing comedian Pete Davidson’s perceived “big dick energy” (as well as a popular 2021 song by the rapper Latto).
Lake said it is what she wants to see in every leader, characterizing it as a reference to “backbone of steel.” It was a special avert-your-eyes moment in GOP politics, which traditionally is something you don’t want your kids to watch because of violence, criminality or stupidity rather than the raunch. But sooner or later when referring to the “grab ‘em by the pussy” president, we were bound to get back to this particular kind of sleaze, and, in a way, we should reluctantly be grateful to Lake for taking us there.
That is because the phrase tellingly captures aspects of how Trump and DeSantis are perceived by their supporters—although almost assuredly those aspects are not what Lake meant to communicate.
Because face it, there are people with the “quiet confidence” of BDE because they know what they have going for them. And then there are people who are just fronting, trying so hard they actually give off what might be called LDE.
Okay, there’s a headline I was not expecting.
Josh Barro:
A Rant: 'Team Normal' Republicans, Stop Whining That Democrats Won't Help You
Your Trump problem is just that: Your problem.
What the “Team Normal” Republicans would like is the arrangement they had before 2015 — they would like Trump to help stir up their own voters and generate “energy,” but they don’t want to have to defend his unpopular actions and characteristics to swing voters who have a negative view of him and they also don’t want to have intraparty fights with the candidates he supports. What they’d like to do is move not against him but past him. They see that Trump is absorbed by his own hobby-horses and searches for vengeance; he does not seem especially animated by the new culture wars of the day; maybe he can just be allowed to fade away, screaming into a void, as the party nominates DeSantis.
When Democrats help prop up candidates who are committed to avenging Trump, they interfere with this project. And if they indict Trump — raising the salience of Trump’s personal grievances and putting Trump’s fixation on his own alleged persecution into more plausible alignment with the locus of Republican primary voter interest in 2024 — they will also interfere with the project.
In the view of the Republicans who cry foul at these actions, it’s the Democrats’ responsibility not to back Trump or oppose him — it’s to ignore him, as they try mightily to do the same, in hopes that it will cause him to disappear in favor of another stronger potential nominee. That is, Democrats are supposed to participate in their strategy to get DeSantis nominated in 2024 — it’s their duty, even if it entails giving Trump a pass on criminal acts, and even though it will make Democrats less likely to win the 2024 election.
Nieman Reports:
One Reason The Jan. 6 Insurrection Failed: The Press Didn’t Play Along
The U.S. should look to Latin America to understand the role the free press plays in stopping a coup
I have been following the hearings on the riot at the Capitol and Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and a recurring thought is wondering how naïve the former president and his minions had to be to think they could succeed in the face of independent, relentless, and uninterrupted coverage by reporters on the ground.
Because a basic condition of any attempt to overthrow a government in recent history is that the plotters must get mass media to either go dark or lie about what is happening and create a narrative saying the attempted coup is legitimate and good for the country.
They need the press to impose a sense of national emergency and that will validate any attempt to overthrow democratic rules. If it was hard in the pre-Internet days, it is nearly impossible today.
It used to be that plotters just needed to take the TV towers and radio antennas or commandeer the printing presses, sometimes even resorting to kidnapping or jailing independent journalists. Now, with so many outlets and a wider flow of information, it is impossible to shut coverage down, and the chances of success decrease.
Sarah Posner/TPM:
The Christian Right Plots How To Avenge The FBI Raid
The anointed one is besieged, and themes of war abound.
On the night of the raid, Tony Perkins, president of the leading Christian right political organization the Family Research Council, tweeted, “Who trusts the FBI to pursue justice? The agency has become so politicized that even if their actions were justified half the nation still would not trust them.” The next day, Franklin Graham, scion of the evangelist Billy Graham, also stoked distrust of the FBI, invoking the 1992 standoff at the Ruby Ridge compound of the anti-government, white supremacist extremist Randy Weaver. “Last night as we watched the events that unfolded at Mar-a-Lago, I couldn’t help but think that the FBI and DOJ are losing credibility and the trust of the American people again,” Graham wrote on Facebook. He then invoked the conspiracy theory, now pervasive in right-wing circles, that new funding in the Inflation Reduction Act to boost collection of taxes owed by the wealthy was “a step in weaponizing the IRS to act against people, organizations, and businesses who have a voice of dissent against government agendas.”
A central theme of the Christian right’s coverage is that the raid was politically motivated to stop Trump from running for president again in 2024, and to dampen his influence in the 2022 midterms. “Was it driven by politics or national security? Why did we not see the same with Hillary Clinton?” asked Perkins on his radio program, Washington Watch, on August 12, the day after Attorney General Merrick Garland publicly explained the legal process by which the search warrant was obtained and executed. Just the fact that Clinton’s home was never the subject of a search warrant — never mind whether there was any basis to seek or obtain one — was evidence enough that Trump had received unequal treatment.
Ron Brownstein/Atlantic:
Liz Cheney Already Has a 2024 Strategy
To save the Republican Party, the defeated Wyoming representative may first have to destroy it.
Yet many of Trump’s remaining Republican critics believe that a Cheney candidacy in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries could help prevent him from capturing the next nomination—or stop him from winning the general election if he does. “Of course she doesn’t win,” Bill Kristol, the longtime strategist who has become one of Trump’s fiercest conservative critics, told me. But, he added, if Cheney “makes the point over and over again” that Trump represents a unique threat to American democracy and “forces the other candidates to come to grips” with that argument, she “could have a pretty significant effect” on Trump’s chances.
In some ways, a Cheney 2024 presidential campaign would be unprecedented: There aren’t any clear examples of a candidate running a true kamikaze campaign.