A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
A NEWSLETTER FROM DAVID CORN |
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What Trump Indictments Won’t Fix |
By David Corn August 1, 2023 |
A giant photo of Donald Trump stands in front of the “Trump House” set up by a Trump supporter in Youngstown, Pennsylvania. Gene J. Puskar/AP |
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By the time you read this, Donald Trump may have been indicted yet again, this time for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and whip up a baseless crusade that led his shock troops to attack the US Capitol on January 6. Trump’s assault on American democracy and his decision to take no action to halt the insurrectionist riot are his most egregious transgressions. Far more consequential than swiping classified documents or paying hush money to a porn star. Yet it’s likely—maybe a certainty—that official government recognition that the former president might be a criminal (innocent until proven guilty, right?) will do little to cure the sick politics of the United States.
Ever since he glided down that Trump Tower escalator, past people paid to pose as enthusiastic supporters, Trump has depicted himself as a persecuted martyr, willing to take the slings and arrows coming from elites, the establishment, and the supposed Deep State to protect you from these evildoers. He found an eager audience for this blend of self-pity and paranoia. His claim of victimhood was a savvy act of self-inoculation designed to undermine the impact any criticism or controversy would have on him and his political standing. If the media were to expose Trump wrongdoing, he could say to his people, See? I told you they were out to get me. And like any clever autocrat-wannabe or cult leader, he told his followers that the attacks on him were attacks on them. Tens of millions bought this con.
That’s why Trump’s assorted indictments have not sunk his rerun candidacy. His folks still believe Trump’s tale that the world is a conflict between diabolical forces—communists, antifa, Democrats, the media, Black radicals, pedophiles, and others—and the real Americans who are on his side. If you accept this ultra-Manichean narrative, then, just as Trump hopes, you see any indictment as confirmation of this perverse worldview.
The drip, drip, drip of Watergate during Richard Nixon’s presidency eventually eroded his support among Republicans. Trump has ju-jitsued that dynamic. He tells his people a fairy tale in which he is the hero suffering tribulations for them. Once that premise is sold, every new iota of scandal—whether it’s a media report on his sleazy business dealings or an arrest by the feds—is simply another piece of proof. That’s why his camp considers indictments—as inconvenient as they might be—as opportunities for solidifying his support and, naturally, fundraising.
This strategy only works because tens of millions of conservative Americans are detached from reality. They embrace Trump’s bunk—about the 2020 election, the Deep State, and everything else—because they want to believe it. And there is no nice way to say this: Their critical faculties have been short-circuited by grievances, resentments, and whatever.
Some data to consider: According to a recent poll, half of Republicans say that Trump did not keep classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. This is a sign of willful blindness. The sky is not blue; it’s purple. Another survey found that 18 million Americans believe the use of force to restore Trump to the White House would be justified—an uptick of about 50 percent over the past few months. This poll also discovered that nine out of ten of Trump’s most radical supporters see the federal government as run by a “deep state” full of immoral schemers. In fact, 12 percent of Americans agreed with this statement: “A secret group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles is ruling the US government.” (A survey conducted last year found that half of Republicans and more than half of Trump 2020 voters believed prominent Democrats were involved in secret pedophilia rings.) A separate poll tells us that two-thirds of Republicans still believe Trump’s bogus and debunked claim that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election by fraud.
These Americans are unhinged and driven by what I called an “American Psychosis” in the book of the same name that I released last year, which chronicled the long history of the GOP exploiting and encouraging far-right extremism and paranoia. (Shameless plug: the expanded paperback version will hit the shelves on September 12. You can preorder now.) Trump’s political genius was to develop a bond with this slice of America and turn it into a voting bloc—an indictment-proof base. And GOP leaders, such as Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy have calculated that they cannot separate themselves from Trump and get on the wrong side of his loyalists without possibly provoking a civil war within the Republican Party.
The American project is threatened by the existence of this group of deranged citizens. If tens of millions of people are detached from reality, it is hard to confront—let alone solve—the profound problems the nation faces, especially when institutional structures (gerrymandered districts, the two-senators-per-state rule, and the Electoral College) afford this band of Americans disproportionate political power. It is, of course, important to hold Trump accountable for his misdeeds and demonstrate that attempted coups and insurrections are not tolerated. But indictments, arrests, and criminal trials of Trump won’t bring these folks back to their senses. The previous indictments and any future indictments will increase the split-screen nature of politics that cleaves Americans between those who are reality-based and those who live in the dark fantasy world of Trumpism. Whether Trump ends up a felon, the Trump virus will remain an infection whose potency and reach can only be constrained by smart politics, not the actions of grand juries and fierce prosecutors. It will take more than justice to defeat this threat.
Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com. |
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Have you followed the controversy over the origins of Covid-19? Right-wingers have lately gotten themselves into a tizzy pushing the claim that several influential scientists early in the pandemic manipulated a study to throw cold water on the notion that the coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab. The Wall Street Journal a few days ago published a column calling this the “Covid Lab-Leak Deception.”
Why is the right leaning so hard into this? The lab-leak theory serves multiple purposes. It provides ammunition for China-bashers. If the virus did emerge from activity at a Wuhan laboratory, China bears responsibility for the deaths of millions and tremendous economic losses across the globe and has been engaged in a massive cover-up. That’s quite an indictment of the Chinese Communist Party. Also, the lab-leak allegation is an assault on the American media, which largely discounted this notion at the start of the pandemic. It bolsters the agenda of those folks who claim the “liberal” media, in cahoots with the US government, is running a “censorship industrial complex.”
There’s another reason for the right to embrace the unproven lab-leak explanation. It distracts from a fundamental fact of Covid: Donald Trump botched the response to the pandemic and as a result hundreds of thousands of Americans met unnecessary deaths. This basic piece of Trump’s presidency—one of the most important pieces—has been largely lost in all the other Trump craziness. When was the last time you heard a public official criticize Trump for such gross mismanagement of the pandemic that 450,000 or so of our fellow citizens experienced deaths that could have been prevented? Trump’s GOP opponents never mention it. In fact, Ron DeSantis’ team has even attacked Trump for hailing the development of the Covid vaccines.
Focusing on the Chinese removes Trump as a Covid villain. It’s no wonder then that so many Republicans and conservatives have championed this origin story.
But is it true? Much of the recent noise about the lab-leak theory has come in reaction to the disclosure of the Slack messages of those scientists who wrote that early paper downplaying the possibility of a lab leak. The critics claim these messages show that the scientists purposefully dismissed the lab-leak explanation for political purposes, and they charge that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the conservatives’ favorite bad guy, muscled the scientists to do so. House Republicans held a hearing last week to amplify these allegations. Of course, the scientists deny all this as utter rubbish.
Blogger Kevin Drum has done us all a favor by reading the 140-page archive of these Slack messages. He’s produced a useful guide to these communications for anyone who wants to navigate this controversy. The messages, he notes, show that the scientists were dealing with a great deal of uncertainty in those first and harrowing weeks of the pandemic. They discussed among themselves the various possibilities regarding the virus’ origin, and they demonstrated an openness to altering conclusions as new data emerged.
This is Drum’s conclusion:
There's just nothing here. When the researchers were unsure of what happened, they wrote a paper that said so. Later, when new evidence became available, they revised their opinions in favor of a natural virus origin and rewrote their paper to say so.
There is no evidence at all of any of them writing something they didn't privately believe as well. None. There just isn't.
Once more, a right-wing conspiracy theory has no basis. It could well be that the virus came from reckless scientists in China. We still don’t know for certain how it arose. This remains a worthy topic of scientific investigation. But the allegation that there was a nefarious plot among US scientists to hush-up the lab-leak theory is yet another right-wing deflection. Can’t prove the main point that the Chinese bio-engineered Covid-19? Then you gin up a related scandal: Scientists schemed to suppress this idea. That allows you to bash public health experts, slam the media, blame the Chinese, and exculpate Trump. It’s a four-fer—and catnip for conservatives.
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The Watch, Read, and Listen List |
Back on the Road to You, Freedy Johnston. Ever since I heard Freedy Johnston’s second album, Can You Fly, released in 1992, he has been one of my favorite singer-songwriters. That disc, hailed by the New York Times as one of the best records of that year, provided a masterclass in songwriting. He juxtaposed catchy melody lines on vocals and guitar and, with his beautiful reedy voice, served up poignant, sometimes haunting, songs about love and loss and trying to find a path through life. His compositions didn’t waste a word and alternated between sensitive sentiment and Americana-ish rocking. His next album, This Perfect World, prompted Rolling Stone to dub him “songwriter of the year” (1994). You might recall the hit song from that album, “Bad Reputation,” which received heavy rotation on MTV, when that network used to play music videos and set trends for us all. He also did a great cover of “Wichita Lineman,” the Jimmy Webb classic.
It’s damn tough to sustain a career as a smart songwriter. But for the past three decades, Johnston has continued to produce well-crafted songs and records that deserved more attention than they received. Last year, he released an album, Back on the Road to You, which featured all the elements that first put him on the map: clever and heartfelt lyrics, melodic hooks, and vocals that convey yearning and exploration. His protagonists contend with absences of loved ones while still seeking to squeeze fun out of the less-than-ideal situations in which they find themselves. Two are the best tracks, “Darlin’” and “That’s Life,” are each a contemplative duet with, respectively, Aimee Mann and Susanna Hoffs. These numbers are great pairings of talent. (The video of “Darlin’” incorporates drawings by Mann.) And the album’s final cut, “The I Really Miss Ya Blues,” is a heartbreaker about a person gone, due to death or other circumstances, who remains a strong presence for the narrator—for good or bad. It’s hard to tell. This collection is a reminder of Johnston’s ability to achieve the main mission for a singer-songwriter: to be evocative.
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