Media have collectively decided that Ron DeSantis is boring. Also not up to the job. They’ve decided Donald Trump is much more interesting (and better for business). In wrestling terms, he’s an apex heel (see below). God help us all.
There are some green shoots here (New York Times):
Trump Puts His Legal Peril at Center of First Big Rally for 2024
Facing a potential indictment, the former president devoted much of his speech in Waco, Texas, to criticizing the justice system, though his attacks were less personal and caustic than in recent days.
The speech underscored how Mr. Trump tends to frame the nation’s broader political stakes heavily around whatever issues personally affect him the most. Last year, he sought to make his lies about fraud in his 2020 election defeat the most pressing issue of the midterms. On Saturday, he called the “weaponization of our justice system” the “central issue of our time.”
The collective coverage is still too credulous. For example:
Axios:
Trump suggests DA "dropped" Stormy case
Former President Trump, who said last week he would be arrested in a probe into alleged hush money he paid to a porn star, now suggests the case might be dropped by Manhattan's district attorney.
- "I think they've already dropped the case," Trump told reporters aboard his plane after appearing at a campaign rally in Waco, Texas. "It's a fake case. Some fake cases, they have absolutely nothing."
Why it matters: The possibility Trump could be indicted in New York led him to call for protests last week and has raised the possibility of him being the first presidential candidate to face criminal charges.
And this otherwise pretty balanced AP piece:
Trump, facing potential indictment, holds defiant Waco rally
Trump’s eyebrow-raising choice of venue in Waco for his first rally came amid the 30th anniversary of a 51-day standoff and deadly siege between U.S. law enforcement and the Branch Davidians that resulted in the deaths of more than 80 members of the religious cult and four federal agents and has become a touchstone for far-right extremists and militia groups.
Trump’s campaign insisted the location and timing of the event had nothing to do with the Waco siege or anniversary. A spokesperson said the site, 17 miles from the Branch Davidian compound, was chosen because it was conveniently situated near four of the state’s biggest metropolitan areas — Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio — and has the infrastructure to handle a sizable crowd.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said before Trump’s arrival that he was the one who had suggested Waco as the venue. Any suggestion Trump had picked the city because of the anniversary was “fake news. I picked Waco!” he told the crowd.
We know why he picked Waco (I bolded it) and these excuses aren’t it.
Here’s a surprisingly insightful article on Trump, Ron DeSantis, wrestling and politics, from Politico, a really good read:
How Pro Wrestling Explains Today’s GOP
The battle between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump could split the party with surprising results, argues the author of a new book on Vince McMahon.
“Wrestling,” writes [author Josie] Riesman, “has metastasized into the broader world, especially since the inauguration of the 45th president. There’s little difference between Trumpism and Vince’s neokayfabe, each with their infinite and indistinguishable layers of irony and sincerity. Each philosophy approaches life with one goal: to remake reality in such a way as to defeat one’s enemies and sate one’s insecurities.”
Perhaps even more apropos, Riesman offers a fresh way to consider current dramas, especially within the Republican Party, including the most compelling conflict — Trump versus Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Many observers of politics tend to think about candidates who are at odds in terms of lanes, but at this point it might be more useful, Riesman suggests, to think in terms of roles: heroes and villains — in industry lingo, faces and heels — and the fluidity of such positioning within the twists and turns of storylines that can see similar combatants giving rise to new contestants and surprising results….
Kruse: It pays to be the heel just as much or maybe even more than it pays to be “the face.”
Riesman: Oh, I would say much more. Being the face [the good guy] doesn’t pay because you’re always going to have another side that reflexively hates you. You’re not going to win over the other side. Whereas if you’re a heel, you have one side loving you, and the other side you’re profiting off their hatred. It’s the only way to actually make it now.
Another key difference is that Trump is shameless, and doesn't mind destroying his opponents and discarding them forever, whereas at some level DeSantis and others only apply that to libs. It helps in the GOP to be a sociopath when your opposition is not. They become afraid. Oh, and by the way, DeSantis isn’ t the heel (wrestling bad guy) Trump is.
Translation: The Philharmonic Orchestra went out to protest against the coup d'état.
Robert P. Jones/Religion News Service:
Why a Trump indictment will matter so little to most of his Christian supporters
Consider just a few of the public revelations and remarks by Trump since 2016 and how little they affected white evangelicals' loyalty to him.
As we anticipate the potential indictment of a former president, the data suggests that even such an unprecedented event would have little impact on the support for Trump by white evangelical Protestants and other conservative white Christians.
Again, they love the heel.
Meanwhile in the news…
House Oversight Chair Laments That Joe Biden’s Dead Son Was Never Prosecuted
Jennifer Rubin/Washington Post:
Comer’s ‘oversight’ is focused on phony scandals
Put in charge of a committee that Republicans have historically used to fan conspiracies and put their opponents on defense, Comer has gotten flak from his own side for failing to come up with much useful to his party. Voters are unimpressed and want the committee to get back to real issues. And Democrats have mocked his loony claims on everything from the Chinese balloon to the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Outside right-wing media, these “scandals” don’t have much (such as facts) to recommend them. But a good deal of the problem lies with Comer.
Ukraine says Bakhmut situation is stabilising, Putin plays down tank shortage:
This is unsurprising for those reading the news here, from Philips P. OBrien:
Weekend Update #21: A Defense of the Ukrainian Defense of Bakhmut
The line hardly moves--a Culmination?
Well, here we are back for another discussion of what is happening in Bakhmut. I hope this will be the last for a while, but considering the fascinating change in tone over the last week about what is/has happening/happened there, I thought it would be worth returning again to why I have always given the Ukrainian government/military the benefit of the doubt with their Bakhmut strategy, and why I believe that had they listened to those who were saying it was now a bad place to fight and should pull out, it would most likely have been extremely counterproductive.
An Interview With the School Board Chair Who Forced Out a Principal After Michelangelo’s David Was Shown in Class
Alexxa Gotthardt/Artsy.net:
Why Fig Leaves Cover the Private Parts of Classical Sculptures
Consider the fig leaf: a little piece of foliage that’s shielded the genitals of famous biblical figures and nude sculptures for centuries. It’s a plant that’s become synonymous with sin, sex, and censorship. And in large part, we have art history—and the artists determined to portray nudity even when it was considered taboo—to thank for that.
Take Michelangelo’s famous sculpture David (1501–04), a muscular, starkly naked depiction of its namesake biblical hero. The work scandalized the artist’s fellow Florentines and the Catholic clergy when unveiled in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria in 1504. Soon after, the figure’s sculpted phallus was girdled with a garland of bronze fig leaves by authorities.
60 years later, just months before Michelangelo’s death, the Catholic Church issued an edict demanding that “figures shall not be painted or adorned with a beauty exciting…lust.” The clergy began a crusade to camouflage the pensises and pubic hair visible in artworks across Italy. Their coverups of choice? Loincloths, foliage, and—most often—fig leaves. It has became known as the “Fig Leaf Campaign,” one of history’s most significant acts of art censorship.
