Donald Trump’s Troubles Could Still Backfire on His Critics, While Joe Biden Briefly Breaks Through
Image Source: The Times
The former president continues to dominate coverage over the current administration
Is the news truly all bad for Donald Trump?
Mostly, that is. However, there are two important factors that could help him politically as a result of the Mar-a-Lago controversy.
The bad news first. The former president has moved from claiming he was working with investigators to admitting he didn’t return all the documents that were demanded; from calling the Washington Post report that nuclear secrets were involved a fake to admitting it to implying Barack Obama did something similar (which the National Archives knocked down since it controls all presidential records).
There is a lot of backtracking going on when you consider Trump’s claims that he declassified any documents he brought to Florida (John Bolton and others claim they have never heard of such a process) and that the FBI “stole” his passports (which the government has denied). The transition from “never happened” to “so what” happened pretty quickly.
And Rudy Giuliani, a prominent ally of Trump’s, was been informed that he is a target in the Georgia criminal investigation. The former US attorney, who is testifying today, knows he’s in trouble.
As per Foxnews, we are aware that not everyone understands the complex facts, and that Trump’s political and media foes have traveled this path before, hoping for one particular development or witness to lead to Trump’s imprisonment. For instance, Allen Weisselberg, the former CFO of the Trump Organization, was prepared to turn on his former employer, but he chose not to do so, and media reports indicate that he will enter a guilty plea but refuse to assist the Trump probe.
Regarding the search’s potential advantages, the first is that Merrick Garland’s silence for four days fueled the backlash that turned Trump into a martyr.
With the Republican base angry about the tactic, the 45th president seems more of a shoo-in for the GOP nomination, as he continues to describe the “raid” and “break-in” which was actually legal under the court-approved warrant.
According to media sources, Garland agonized for weeks before authorizing the search. The attorney general, unlike Trump, is not a street fighter, therefore he should have realized that by remaining silent, he allowed his opponent to control the narrative.
The second reason is the distinct possibility that Garland will not amass sufficient proof to file a criminal complaint. He cannot file an indictment just on the basis of record-keeping; it must also relate to either compromised nuclear secrets or January 6. We have no way of knowing, but if no charges are filed, Trump will brand the whole thing just another hoax.
Now here’s a final twist. The former president told Fox News Digital the other day that America’s temperature “has to be brought down…
“The country is in a very dangerous position. There is tremendous anger like I’ve never seen before… If there is anything we can do to help, I, and my people, would certainly be willing to do that.”
Here, two possibilities can be seen. One is that Trump’s advisors persuaded him that he should say something due to the increasing number of threats and violent incidents, including the slaying of an armed assailant at the FBI’s Cincinnati office and a man who killed himself after slamming into a barrier at the Capitol.
If so, Trump is likely to act similarly to how he did after Charlottesville, when the president rapidly switched back to his “very fine people” stance after delivering a statement that was toned down at the advice of his aides.
Even as he resumes his heightened rhetoric about being persecuted as if this were a Third World country, it’s also possible that Trump is worried about being held responsible if additional violence breaks out and wants to be able to point to this comment.
One thing is certain: the media are ecstatic about the world’s return to Trump dominance.
When President Biden signed significant legislation last week, the cable news networks switched almost immediately to breaking news about “Donald Trump pleads the Fifth.”
When the president yesterday signed the party-line climate/health care/corporate taxes bill, MSNBC and Fox actually did additional segments on the law, each with administration guests, but CNN quickly pivoted to the Trump melodrama. And while Fox stuck with the impact of the reconciliation law, MSNBC, within 20 minutes, went “back to our regularly scheduled programming”: Trump.
