I’ve just returned from one of the worst meals of my life. A bit of background: I meet virtually every week with two couples — one liberal, one conservative, with me as the swing vote — for dinner at a local restaurant. Indeed, we used to all eat at separate tables until a waitress put us together — an arrangement that has proved mostly harmonious. Mostly.
Tonight things got a bit acrimonious as the conversation turned to former President-turned-writer-and-editor Donald J. Trump. I was accused of hitting the subject hard by the conservative bloc. But I think that’s because I insisted on delivering a message that they and other conservatives and Republicans don’t want to hear: You’re screwed.
With the New York grand jury returning an indictment of Trump in the case of an alleged hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, the Republicans have no choice but to defend the leader of their party, even though they have been eager to get into bed with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has misstepped in recent days. (First there was the “territorial dispute” assessment of the horrific war in Ukraine, an unforced error DeSantis had to walk back, making it clear he’s not ready for foreign policy prime time. And then there was news that Disney, the mouse that roared, had outplayed him in their ongoing culture war.)
Still, DeSantis is the Republicans’ and Fox’s guy and I still think he’ll get the nomination. But Trump is not going to go gentle into that good night. First, I think it’s unlikely he’ll be convicted and, even if he is, he won’t serve jail time. (If he were smart, he would just plead this out.) What is Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg going to do — put him and his Secret Service agents in a country-club jail? The whole thing is preposterous, though it would make a funny TV series. )
Second, Trump’s indictment just plays into the self-pitying side of his narcissistic personality and that of his MAGA base. They’re always terribly put-upon. Now the MAGA messiah has a real crucible to wail about. It may give him a bump in the polls, though he’s losing support among swing voters.
Nonetheless, he’s leading in a pack that’s going nowhere. Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson: These people, the two percenters, are never going to be president of the United States. If they’re playing for No. 2 or a cabinet position, fine, but as anyone in sports will tell you, you play to win.
So, the Republicans are in a bit of a pickle, aren’t they? They’ve lost seven of the last eight elections. They’ve been moving into “anyone but Trump” territory. But the time to make that move was after Jan. 6, when they could’ve told him that he could go away quietly or risk contempt of Congress. They, however, lacked the tiny weather balloons to do it. Instead they doubled down in the person of craven House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Now they’re like the woman in the horror movie who lets the vampire in and is then surprised to find he’s draining all her blood.
Of course, my conservative friends wanted to talk about how corrupt President Joe Biden is and let’s not forget the ne’er-do-well Hunter Biden and whatever was or wasn’t on his laptop. The real reasons they hate Biden is they can’t stand Vice President Kamala Harris, admittedly a bad manager, or the Biden Administration’s tough stance on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s muscling of his country’s judicial system. That isn’t corrupt, right? Nice deflection, but no, just a hard no.
As for the Trump indictment itself, part of me wishes we could just have avoided this moment. But the better part of me understands that you don’t shrink from your personal Calvary. You embrace it. If the grand jury believed it had the evidence to indict, so be it. We must now follow where the truth leads and let the chips fall where they may.
In a sense, however, the indictment has brought us full circle. For four years, Trump gave us the “American carnage” he spoke about in his weird inaugural address — banned Muslims, border babies in cages, Charlottesville, Covid and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. We walked away from the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal. As Trump played up to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un, we lost prestige on the world stage — influence that we’ve had to claw back as China has ascended in the eyes of developing nations.
Oh, but Trump gave us the vaccines, my conservative friends said. Yes, and then he denigrated them and instead offered Lysol and lights up your butt. Why? Because he was afraid of losing his MAGA supporters. A leader who is led by the mob is no leader.
Trump thought he was above the law. Today he was reminded that no one is. And the Republicans? Perhaps they have come to realize at last that they can’t win with Trump.
And he’ll never let them win without him.