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In his 1976 campaign, President Gerald Ford employed a “Rose Garden” strategy, hiding behind the power of the presidency rather than duking it out with Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter on the campaign trail.
In 2020, as the pandemic raged, “Joe Biden spent months of his presidential campaign safely ensconced in his basement, communicating to the country via a television camera,” wrote the Washington Post’s Matt Viser.
Next year, though, the presidential campaign could look unlike any other in US history. Former President Donald Trump will need a “courthouse strategy” as the quadruple-indicted frontrunner for the GOP nomination attempts to run a campaign while juggling the dictates of four different judges assigned to preside over his trials.
One of Trump’s rivals, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, predicted as much Thursday, after she gave a winning performance in the Trump-less Republican presidential debate the previous day. “I was proud to serve in his administration and agree with most of his policies,” Haley said in a Fox News interview, “but we have to be honest. He will spend more time in a courtroom than he will spend on the campaign trail.”
Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, wants the trial of Trump and his 18 co-defendants to start October 23. Special counsel Jack Smith wants Trump’s election-related trial to begin in January 2024, and the New York criminal case against the former president is scheduled to begin in March 2024. The federal trial over the handling of classified documents is set to begin in May of next year. Of course, there will almost certainly be some delays.
To say the least, this is uncharted territory. No one knows how Trump’s encounters with the legal system will affect his campaign but Thursday’s events in Atlanta gave us a clue of how he will try to turn his prosecution into a claim of persecution.
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Booked at the Fulton County jail, Trump stared intently into the camera for the first-ever presidential mug shot — the polar opposite of the smile he flashed in his official presidential portrait.
He shared the image on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter (now X) in his first post since January 2021 and linked to his website, which featured an appeal for campaign donations.
“In any other moment in American history,” wrote Julian Zelizer, “the news of a former US president being booked in a jail while trying to win back the White House would be absolutely shocking. The landmark moment would end any candidacy and assure its place in future history textbooks…”
In the New Yorker, Susan B. Glasser observed, “For now, Trump sees only political gain — and, quite possibly, the spectre of a historic self-pardon — in that snarly snapshot from the Fulton County Jail. And why, after all, shouldn’t he? The four indictments this year have been good for his poll numbers with the Republican base, good for his fund-raising, and good for his favored political move of presenting himself as a perpetual victim who must seek vengeance against his persecutors.”
Courage
Trump’s indictments and his continual refusal to accept his 2020 election loss aren’t deterring the majority of Republicans and most of his rival candidates from saying they would back him if he wins the nomination.
But as SE Cupp said, “When Trump rushed to Truth Social to protest his innocence after the Georgia indictment,” the state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp stated “plainly what many running against Trump won’t say.”
“‘The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen,” Kemp wrote on Twitter. ‘For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward — under oath — and prove anything in a court of law…’
“Gov. Kemp has somehow found the courage to criticize a guy wholly deserving of criticism, and still get re-elected,” Cupp noted. “I know that’s not the case for most Republicans, but if more would try it instead of cowering and kowtowing to Trump supporters, maybe it wouldn’t feel so extraordinary.”
Law professors David Orentlicher and Eve Hanan think “it is essential to bring Trump to justice for his assaults on the electoral process.” But they strongly disagree with the way Georgia prosecutors are proceeding.
“Prosecutors should not stretch criminal laws in ways that would be unfair to Trump and that would open the door to unwarranted prosecutions of others. Yet that’s what Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is doing in Georgia, particularly with her indictment of the former president under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).”
The RICO laws were intended as a tough tool to lock up members of organized crime groups, Orentlicher and Hanan pointed out. “A statute directed against organized crime does not clearly speak to efforts to overturn an election. While Willis and other prosecutors have stretched RICO far beyond its intended role before, this is the first time RICO charges have been brought against a former president, and their use here demonstrates their seemingly limitless bounds.”
“When RICO is brought into the picture, the claim of a broad criminal enterprise can turn more people into potential defendants — even if they might have done nothing wrong… Prosecutors can hold the former president responsible for any serious misconduct without invoking RICO and compromising the principle of fairness that protects us all.”
Rudy Giuliani, a former US Attorney and New York mayor, was also booked in Georgia; he faces a 13-count indictment related to the attempt to overturn the 2020 results. Both he and Trump deny any wrongdoing.
“The same traits that once made Giuliani so successful — his love of power and his yearning for the spotlight — now fuel his breakneck spiral downward,” wrote John Philp. “It’s an ironic turn straight out of a Greek drama. It was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, after all, who observed that ‘a man’s character is his fate.’”
Biden’s recent campaign ad stresses how “America fought back” from “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” By contrast, wrote Dean Obeidallah, a recent Trump ad “begins with the nonsense that Biden is somehow orchestrating investigations by special counsel Jack Smith, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis…”
Trump’s “isn’t a message of someone running to be president of all Americans. It’s one of an angry and bitter person who is demanding vengeance if he wins in 2024.”
First debate
Going into the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 cycle, the question many observers had was whether Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — once seen as Trump’s most formidable rival — could reverse the downward slide of his campaign.
On the surface, he did not. “Time and again, DeSantis was outshined and overshadowed by politicians on the stage with more charisma and stronger debating skills,” wrote Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist. “DeSantis even failed the most basic debate strategy for a candidate: flashing a genuine smile. At one point, he looked as though he was in physical pain as he attempted a strained smile while saying, ‘I will not let you down.’”
Coming out of the encounter in Milwaukee, several commentators saw a surprise winner: Nikki Haley.
“On abortion, an issue that’s very important to millennials and Gen Z voters, she defended her pro-life personal position but also admitted what many Republicans won’t — that the math simply isn’t there to ban the procedure on a federal level,” wrote SE Cupp.
“She called for something that’s become a dirty word in the new Republican Party of Trump — consensus — and wondered why we couldn’t agree to ban late-term abortions, to ensure that contraception is available, to refrain from jailing or killing women who get abortions. Her calls for humanizing the issue were a far cry from the more punitive, regressive and draconian policies other Republicans around the country are pushing…”
“Additionally, she had some terrific clap-backs at the overly angry Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the overly annoying Vivek Ramaswamy, proving she may be older than both but is also more experienced.”
Debate coach Todd Graham gave Haley an “A” and former Vice President Mike Pence a “B,” the only candidates to score above a “C.” His lowest grade, a “D,” was reserved for Vivek Ramaswamy, a crowd favorite who has energized younger audiences and took potshots at his fellow debaters. Graham called him “an internet troll come to life. Worse for Ramaswamy, (Chris) Christie, Haley and Pence came out on top in most of those exchanges.”
“Ramaswamy had fun saying outrageous things like, ‘I’m the only person on the stage who isn’t bought and paid for,’ ‘climate change is a hoax…more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change,’ and ‘Do you want a patriot who speaks the truth…I want a revolution.’ These lines play better online than in a presidential debate. Unfortunately, Ramaswamy gave me the impression that he’s an unserious person seeking the most serious job in the world.”
Prigozhin’s ‘difficult fate’
In the two months following his short-lived mutiny in Russia, Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was a man without a country. A Wall Street Journal piece chronicled his travels to Africa, as he sought to demonstrate that he could continue his lucrative business of supplying mercenaries to various regimes, while Russia’s military establishment moved to elbow him aside.
“I need more gold,” the Journal quoted him as saying to Sudanese forces who were already paying him with crates of the precious metal.
On Wednesday, Prigozhin’s Embraer business jet was heading to St. Petersburg when it plunged from an altitude of 28,000 feet and crashed in Russia’s Tver region, northwest of Moscow.
In his public remarks about the crash, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his former ally was “a man of difficult fate” who had “made serious mistakes in life.” He said the cause of the crash was under investigation, and the Kremlin denied any responsibility for it.
Ever since the mutiny, Prigozhin, Russia scholar Daniel Treisman observed, “seemed to be living on borrowed time.”
“Within the span of a few hours, Russian President Vladimir Putin switched from accusing Prigozhin of ‘treason,’ and labeling his mutiny ‘a stab in the back of our troops and the people,’ to allowing Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko to promise Prigozhin amnesty and a base for his fighters. To those familiar with Putin’s vindictive streak, something did not add up. (Others who challenged Putin have wound up poisoned, imprisoned or falling out of windows).”
In the days immediately following the coup attempt, “the effort to discredit Prigozhin got off to a colorful start with pictures of Prigozhin’s opulent St Petersburg mansion broadcast on state TV. Besides gold bars and millions of dollars worth of cash, the photographs showed a bizarre collection of wigs and other disguises that seemed better fitted to a ‘two-bit criminal’ than to a selfless patriot.” But then there seemed to be little follow-through, Treisman added.
“If the goal was to destroy Prigozhin systematically while taking over his assets, the results look mixed at best. It would not be surprising if many in the Kremlin felt frustrated at the mercenary leader’s seeming ability to wriggle free from any constraint. That was the context in which he apparently took his last flight on Wednesday.”
For more:
Frida Ghitis: Russia’s neighbors have a message for Putin
Jade McGlynn: What Russians think of the drone attacks on their country
‘India is on the moon’
Only days after Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed near the moon’s south pole, India succeeded in soft-landing a probe in the same region Wednesday. “India is on the moon,” said the exultant chairman of the nation’s space agency.
“The milestone marks a huge accomplishment for its nascent space program,” wrote former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao. “I expect future success to follow: Delhi has shown it is committed to making significant investments in space exploration efforts.”
He added, “Russia’s bedraggled space program mirrors the state of the nation itself, including the surprisingly poor performance of the Russian military in its war on Ukraine. Instead of making his nation a ‘great power’ again, Putin has shown the world just how badly Russia is in decline.”
Get ready for a race to the moon. An analyst told the Financial Times that there are more than 400 missions planned, either by governments or private companies, for the next 10 years.
A committed ally
It wasn’t the first time someone objected to the Pride flag that Laura Ann “Lauri” Carleton flew outside her clothing boutique in Cedar Glen, California. When the flag was torn down, she would replace it with a bigger one, her daughter Ari Carleton told Anderson Cooper on CNN.
But on August 18, a 27-year old man tore the flag down and yelled “homophobic slurs” at Carleton, shooting the 66-year-old woman dead when she confronted him. The gunman fled, and was shot to death by police after he opened fire on them. “According to tributes being paid by family and friends, Carleton was a committed ally to the LGTBQ, an average citizen supporting her community and neighbors and friends,” wrote Allison Hope. “And she paid the ultimate price, one a person should never have to pay for merely displaying a symbol of acceptance and inclusion.”
“It feels as if America has emerged from a viral medical pandemic only to be consumed by a moral pandemic, fueled by hate that is poisoning our hearts and minds. It is making people hate and turn against one another, to fear and punish that which makes us different rather than embracing what makes us unique and our common humanity.”
Scrambled college conferences
The idea of teams competing in regional conferences “is as baked into college football as the 50-yard-line,” wrote Will Leitch. “The Big Ten represented the Midwest, the SEC the South, the Pac-8 the West, so on. This arrangement was logical, even obvious, in a pre-television world, stirring intense local rivalries and, of course, cutting travel costs.”
As the college football season begins this weekend, forget all about that “logical” arrangement.
With the NCAA abdicating “any responsibility as the governing power of the game,” Leitch observed, the college football world has “gone mad.”
“Oklahoma’s now in the SEC, Arizona is in the Big 12, Washington’s now in the Big Ten and the Pac-12 is dead. Every college football decision has been made with solely short-term interests — rather than what’s good for the sport, and higher education in general — in mind. No one’s minding the store. So everyone’s pulling up and selling anything not nailed down.” Among the victims are college teams in less popular sports, like volleyball, soccer and swimming, which will struggle to pay for cross-country travel.
The unwanted kiss
Spain had just won the World Cup when Royal Spanish Football Federation President Luis Rubiales “gripped Spanish football player Jennifer Hermoso’s head during the team’s trophy ceremony and planted a kiss on her lips,” wrote Jill Filipovic.
“In case there is any doubt: Most women, like most people, do not enjoy having a kiss forced on their mouths. Most women, like most people, enjoy kissing romantic partners and sometimes children or other loved ones, but do not appreciate an unwanted head centimeters from theirs, unwanted breath hot on their face, unwanted lips smashing into theirs. It’s a violation. It’s gross. It’s appalling whether it happens in private, or in full view of TV cameras.”
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AND…
‘I have a dream’
Monday marks 60 years since Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech on the National Mall.
“The March On Washington,” historian Peniel E. Joseph wrote, “was the capstone of a tumultuous, triumphant and tragic year filled with civil rights demonstrations, protests that cast a bright light on the violence of a system of racial segregation, the brutality of police such as Birmingham public safety commissioner Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor and the cruelty of Southern politicians, most notably Alabama Gov. George Wallace. … The forces that fueled segregation and racial hierarchy in America — and the forces that galvanized the political resistance to both — sped up that year.”
At 92, Clarence B. Jones is the last person alive who was closely involved in the origin of the speech. A former aide to King, Jones told John Avlon how it came about.
King had little time to prepare and often struggled with how best to open his talks. So Jones prepared what he called an “insurance policy” draft of the speech. He didn’t expect King to use much of the text, but was surprised to hear his own words when the speech began.
Later, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, urged King, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin.”
“He took the written text … and shoved it to the side of the podium,” Jones recalled. “Now I’m standing behind him, and I noticed that when he pushed the text to the side, he took his right foot and started rubbing it up and down the back of his left leg, up to the bottom of his knee.’”
“To Jones, this was ‘a telltale sign’ that he’d seen Baptist preachers make, coaxing themselves to new heights of inspiration.”
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today…”
