There's a famous, old adage by Carl Sandburg -- 

“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”

Republican officials have begun pounding the table and yelling like hell.

​Not unexpectedly, those who have enabled Trump for the past six years are now beating their breasts in faux-outrage about what is expected to be a coming indictment of Trump this week by the Manhattan D.A.

It starts with many such officials. among them Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) insisting that an indictment would guarantee Trump would "win even bigger" and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), waiting to see if he himself will be indicted in Georgia, saying that Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg has "done more" to get Trump elected than anyone -- assessments which, if true, you'd think would have Republicans dancing in joy over the pending indictment (and all other possible coming indictments), and even pressing for it.  Now, to be clear, an indictment certainly might help Trump within the Republican Party, since it's become fascist and the majority of the GOP still believes Trump won the 2020 election against all evidence and reality, and much of the Republican base believes the dead JFK Jr. is coming back to life to run with Trump.  However, even that doesn't explain why Trump then isn't begging for an indictment.  In fact, the only thing that can be said with 100% certainty is that an indictment means Trump will begin grifting and raising money off it.

(Republican non-official and ace prognosticator Elon Musk -- who said all indicators are that COVID deaths would be zero at the end of April, though he said this three years ago and meant April, 2020 -- goes even further than most and predicted an indictment means Trump would win a "landslide victory."  Indeed, by Musk Standards, if Trump gets lucky and is also indicted in all four of the currently-active investigations of him elsewhere, that could fill the national bingo card, and we might have the first-ever unanimous presidential election result.)

Then there was the halting, breathless, pseudo-dramatic statement made by Mike Pence -- hot off his statement condemning Trump for responsibility of the January 6 Insurrection -- saying, "This is not...what...Americans want...to see."  An observation still unclear where he got that statistic from, since it came in the midst of many of those very same Americans organizing Indictment Parties.
 
One of the more notable and borderline-amusing is from James Comer (R-KY) who is chair of the adorably misnamed House “Oversight” Committee.  He raised the theory that an arrest of Trump Arrest is just an “effort To distract” from Hunter Biden.
 
What’s become noticeable since being named chair of the committee is that the phrase "James Comer says..." have come to mean something disingenuous and hypocritical is about the follow.  He’s been impressively consistent about this.
 
In this specific instance, what Mr. Comer wants people to ignore is that Trump has long already been the unnamed “Individual #1” when Michael Cohen was indicted and then plead guilty 2-1/2 years ago.  So, it’s not like this is anything sudden.  Moreover, there is no current federal or state investigation of Hunter Biden, so there’s nothing to distract from.
 
And it seems weird even by James Comer criteria to bring up the concept of “distracting” from bad news when it’s become clear that the historic Trump Standard Operating Procedure is to distract.
 
That said, given that there are four other active, major investigations of Trump -- so far -- we should all be prepared to hear the words "Effort to distract" from Republicans a lot.
 
But the most egregious mournful cry came from emasculated House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
 
For those unaware of McCarthy, he’s the Republican Leader who both publicly and privately (on tape) condemned Trump for causing the January 6 Insurrection – and then days later was called down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump and returned with his tail noticeably dragging between his legs, and has been sucking up to Trump’s rear-end ever since.
 
He sent out a statement –
 
“Here we go again — an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump.
 
“I’m directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.”
 
There’s so much to unpack here.  But let’s start with the most basic.  McCarthy’s statement is right out of the playbook for fascism – trying to undermine the court system and rule of law. To be clear, Michael Cohen went to prison for doing Trump's bidding on this very same crime Trump is being indicted for, paying $130,000 hush money from Trump.  And make no mistake:  it is a crime because, well, y’know, a guilty plea and prison time was involved.  But Kevin McCarthy wants everyone to think it’s “outrageous abuse of power” for the Manhattan D.A. to pursue a crime.
 
And it is a crime to continue pursuing, since McCarthy also leaves out the additional pesky point that when Cohen plead guilty for the crime he went to prison over, Trump himself was the unindicted co-conspirator, "Individual #1"!!!  Indeed, the only reason he wasn’t indicted at the time is because he was the sitting president, and the DOJ has a policy not to indict a president when in office.
 
Trump is no longer in office.
 
Further, and importantly, speaking of the DOJ, also unmentioned by lapdog McCarthy is that when Michael Cohen went to prison and Trump was named the unindicted co-conspirator, "Individual #1" – it was all done under Trump’s own Justice Department.
 
So, spare us the weeping cries of "political vengeance."  To repeat: Trump was named in Michael Cohen’s indictment by the Justice Department when Trump himself was in office.

If Kevin McCarthy wants to bring up "abuse of power" in the case, the only place he has to look is when the federal court overturned actual abuse of power against the DOJ when it tried to prohibit Cohen from writing a book about his experience.
 
And we haven’t even gotten to McCarthy saying he will direct a House committee to investigate if federal funds have been used to “subvert democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.”
 
First, reading a sentence for a Republican supposedly “outraged” about anyone trying to “subvert democracy by interfering in elections” and not be talking about the January 6 Insurrection has defined the word “projecting.”
 
Second, as noted, the concept of “politically motivated” flew out the window long ago when Cohen and Trump were both named in the crime by Trump’s own Department of Justice.
 
And third, the level of headline-grabbing pure posturing about “federal funds” being used is made evident that this coming indictment is from the Borough of Manhattan.  Something which even Kevin McCarthy knows has absolutely nothing to do with federal funds.
 
On the other hand, what all McCarthy’s saber-ratting is more likely to be seen as is arguably obstruction of justice and witness tampering, trying to scare off any other prosecutions and intimidate anyone who might be called to testify.  (And now, the eternally "outraged" Jim Jordan [R-OH], of course, is calling for Manhattan D.A. Bragg to come before the House Judiciary Committee.)
 
In the end, if Kevin McCarthy really wanted to respond to word of an impending indictment (which Trump himself leaked, most probably to call enough mob to riot) and do so in a way that supports democracy, what he, as an elected official and Speaker of the House, third in line of succession for the presidency, could have done under his sworn duty to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution is a) waited for an actual indictment, and then b) put out as a statement that would have been –
 
"We are disappointed that an indictment has been made, but look forward to the judicial process taking place, because in in the United States were are a nation of laws -- and when the court system has run its course, we are fully confident that the evidence will show Donald Trump is not guilty."
 
In fairness, the emasculated McCarthy perhaps didn’t feel comfortable saying this because he’s not fully confident Trump will be found not guilty.  Though lying about what he truly believes (even when said in public and caught on tape in private) has never stopped him before.
 
But ultimately, alas, fascism and posturing to create discord really doesn’t work in such a pro-democracy way.  So, McCarthy, Comer and other Republican officials are just doing what comes naturally.

There's another old quote that is a fitting way to end this.  It hasn't reached "adage status" like Carl Sandburg's, but is as appropriate when it comes to having no facts or law to rely on, and only being able to pound on the table and yell like hell. 

When the plain-speaking Harry Truman was president, he was known as "Give 'em hell, Harry."  But one day during a speech, when someone in the crowd yelled that out to him, he responded by saying --

“I don't give them hell.  I just tell the truth about them, and they think it's hell.”

That was the Republican Party in the 1940s.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Welcome to today's GOP.

​The guest on this week’s Al Franken podcast is New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters, who has been covering the Dominion lawsuit against Fox “News.”  That’s what he and Al talk about today, and as Al writes, it “Looks bad for FOX.”

Yesterday, there were two notable stories about Trump World.  The first got a fair amount of attention.  It was big article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution interviewing members of the Special Grand Jury.  Not only does it turn out that there were three phone calls Trump made to state officials there, but one was to the Republican Speaker of the legislature asking him to call a special session and overturn the election.  The Speaker shut him down. 

But awful as that is (not just what Trump said, but also finding out that three calls were recorded) that's not the bad news, since it already adds on to the terrible news about the first phone call committing election fraud that we already knew.  The bad news is that one of the jurors said (and I'm paraphrasing, but I'm close) that “When the full story comes out, and it will, it’s going to be massive.  Massive.”

Given what we actually know, which is terrible and criminal, the concept of the full story being "massive" does send the imagination to new heights.  Or lows, depending on your perspective of such things.
 
The second story concerns Trump’s Truth Social, which hasn't yet gotten all that much coverage. 

Because Digital World is currently under investigation by the SEC, its proposed merger with Truth Social is being examined.  It seems Truth Social may possibly have been kept solvent by two payments of $8 million of laundered Russian money connected to Putin.

It's not certain if all these connection are valid, but enough appears so on the surface which is why they are being looked into.

What is certain is why Trump went on a massive ALL CAPS RANT last week about how wrong it was to have investigations.  In fairness, if I committed what appears to be as many crimes as Trump has, and on such a huge scale, I would be against investigations, too.

By the way, it's worth noting that the first of these two payments from Russia came before the National Archives had court-approved agents go to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve classified material.

If one wants to read a more-detailed article, you can check it out here.

Sometimes, stories don't need a lot of commentary to add context.  The stories themselves are able to speak loudly and clearly on their own.

It would seem that if Fox is suggesting (as they are...) that Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro et al are only "opinion hosts" and therefore not held to journalism standards, then Fox can't claim this is an attack on journalism 1st Amendment rights.

The problem is that if Fox does want to have those journalism rights, they must then be held to its standards, which they're trying to avoid.
Rock meet hard place.

There’s been a lot of discussion whether or not Ron DeSantis is going to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination as president.  Does he think he can win?  Is he concerned with being humiliated by TrumpAttacks that will undermine his political future?  Does he think he has a better chance in 2028?
 
All reasonable questions.  But I think there’s another issue at play why he hasn’t announced yet.  I don’t necessarily think it’s the main reason – but it’s close.  And it’s not one that most media has even mentioned.
 
It’s that Florida has a law that says “any officer who qualifies for federal public office must resign from the office he or she presently holds if the terms, or any part thereof, run concurrently with each other.”
 
In other words, if Ron DeSantis runs for president next year, he has to resign as governor!
 
That seems to be like a pretty strong deterrent from running in 2024 against a brutal candidate who is still the party’s leading choice.
 
There are a few oddities at play here – which being Florida shouldn’t shock anyone.
 
Most notable is that the law was only passed four years ago – and (get this…), the Florida legislature is thinking of already changing it.  To benefit DeSantis, of course.
 
There are also some legislature who want to twist the law into a pretzel as they try to interpretate in ways that don’t appear to exist.
 
One convoluted interpretation of the law being jury-rigged, the Tamp Bay Times writes, is that “a candidate running for federal office doesn’t have to resign as long as they’re not also trying to be reelected to their state post.”  And since DeSantis is term-limited, he couldn’t be a candidate for the same office.
 
Mind you, there doesn’t seem to be anything in the law stated above that says anything about trying to get re-elected.  Just that if you’re presently in office, and your term would overlap the federal office, you can’t run.  That seems pretty clear.  (In fairness, the law might be much longer and say what some are trying to interpret.  Though if that was the case, it would then be totally clear, and nothing would need to be “interpreted.”
 
Additionally, the word “qualify” isn’t completely clear, according to John Mills, who is a constitutional law professor at the University of Florida.  I think it’s clear to most people, though not if you’re the governor of the state where legislators want you to run.
 
My favorite attempt to “Er, yeah, but…” the law comes from Sen. Travis Hutson (R-Palm Coast) who actually sponsored the bill in 2018.  According to the Tampa Bay Times, Hutson said “he believes the legislation allows for DeSantis to run without having to resign. He said the intent of his legislation was to stop people from ‘window shopping’ or using their current seat to springboard to another, which he said DeSantis is not doing.”
 
One big problem with that is that it doesn’t appear to be anywhere in the law, nor does it seem to even be suggested by what’s in the law.  “It’s okay to run for a federal office if you’re governor as long as you don’t want to run for anything else” just doesn’t appear to have even the remotest connection to the law, nor that anyone would even think of writing a law that way, even the person who actually wrote the law.
 
In the end, I have two suppositions.
 
The first is that a really big reason Ron DeSantis hasn’t announced his candidacy yet, or come close to, is because this Florida law is a huge hurdle for him, especially if he thinks he might not win this year, but will want to run in 2028.
 
And the second is – this is the Florida legislature.  They will figure out a way to change the law or re-interpret the law (no matter how convoluted the effort) in order solely to let their Gov. DeSantis run.
 

The guest on this week’s Al Franken podcast is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse who talks with Al about on the Right’s 50-Year scheme to capture SCOTUS.  As Al notes, “Hint: It involves a lot of dark money.