BREAKING
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ESSENTIAL READING
1. Ross Douthat’s warning to Merrick Garland.
Come for: The history lesson on Donald Trump and the Deep State.
Stay for: The closing paragraphs:
The lesson to be drawn is emphatically not that Trump needs to be given permanent immunity because of a “don’t arrest ex-presidents” rule or out of fears that his supporters will take to the streets or launch lone-wolf attacks on the F.B.I.
The lesson, rather, is that if the agents of the state come after Trump, and especially now when they come as representatives of an administration that might face him in the next election, they can’t afford to miss.
Not only in the jury box but also in the court of public opinion, it needs to be clear, crystal clear, what separates any crimes he might be charged with from — for example — the perjury and obstruction of justice that didn’t send Bill Clinton to prison or the breach of intelligence protocols that Hillary Clinton wasn’t charged with. You don’t just need a plausible legal case that tests interesting questions about presidential declassification powers; you need an easy-to-explain slam-dunk.
So if you have Trump taking design documents for nuclear weapons and shopping them to his pals in Saudi Arabia, congratulations — you got him; lock him up. If you have him taking boxes of notes from foreign leaders because he’s a childish egomaniac who thinks that he’s earned his White House souvenirs, well, then take the documents back, declare victory for the public interest and stop there. And if he took documents about the Russia investigation itself, of the sort that he wanted declassified during his presidency, well, tread carefully, lest you trap us all in an awful time loop where it’s forever 2017.
It seems like a reasonable presumption that the documents in question are more serious than just some notes to Kim Jong-un but that the potential incrimination falls short of Trump literally selling secrets. But that’s a presumption, not a prediction. I’ve learned to be unsurprised by Trump’s folly and venality but also by his capacity to induce self-defeating blunders among people and institutions I would have considered relatively sensible before his ascent.
So no predictions, just the warning: Don’t miss.
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2. Some of the latest postings on Donald Trump’s Truth Social account:
Come for: The FBI one.
Stay for: The McConnell one.
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3. The Washington Post’s profile of FBI honcho Christopher Wray.
Come for: The Wray bio and quotes.
Stay for: The Trump paragraphs (natch…):
Trump has told advisers that in the nearly two years since leaving office, no issue had better galvanized Republican voters around him than the “raid” of his Florida home. He has taken note of how many Republican politicians issued statements criticizing the FBI, even from some he did not expect.
“Everyone is on our side,” Trump told one adviser two days after the search. In another rant several days after the search, he described the FBI in profane terms, calling them “f--kers” who were out “to get him,” according to a person who heard his comments. The former president has grown somewhat paranoid since FBI agents were on his property, positing they might have left behind recording devices, a person who spoke to him said….
In recent days, Trump and his team have weighed releasing security-camera footage of FBI agents searching Mar-a-Lago, believing it would further anger his supporters.
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4. Eve Fairbanks’ Washington Post op-ed piece, which argues that not all Trump supporters are tied to him forever.
Come for: The case being made regarding what I have consistently argued is our current greatest national challenge.
Stay for: The disappointment over Fairbanks failure to really prove her case.
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5. David Ignatius’ column on the role national securityist Kash Patel plays in the life of Donald Trump.
Come for: The rich history.
Stay for: The final three paragraphs, including a Patel spokesperson’s trashing of Ignatius and the metaphors. OH, the dueling/dualing metaphors!
Patel didn’t comment on the details in this article, but he criticized the author. He said Thursday through a spokeswoman that rather than “question authority” in the Justice Department’s investigation of Trump, I was “acting as an unthinking, loyal mouthpiece for deep-state goons and the Democratic Party.”
Patel now is a media brand of his own. He has a website, selling hoodies, tank tops and other gear with his logo, “K$H,” with the proceeds going to charity, according to the website and Patel’s spokeswoman. And he’s written a children’s book, “The Plot Against the King,” in which the evil Hillary Queenton tries to spread lies against King Donald claiming that he’s working with the Russionians — until a knight called Kash exposes the plot.
I fear that a sequel is coming, where Kash and King Donald’s other knights will joust with what they claim are government gangsters — and this won’t be a children’s book.
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6. The Wall Street Journal’s look at the Nevada Senate race through the prism of the Democratic incumbent’s efforts to make abortion rights a defining issue.
Come for: The qualitative voices of voters on all sides of the issue, richly defining the contours of the debate.
Stay for: The lack of quantitative data and the realization that the combined thinking of the top 100 political strategists and analysts in America can’t tell us how abortion is going to impact the midterms – and we might not be able to divine its true influence EVEN AFTER THE ELECTION RESULTS ARE KNOWN.
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7. The New York Post mocks Dr. Oz for, yes, poop-related tweets somehow migrating from his old Twitter account to his Senate campaign account.
Come for: The fecal puns.
Stay for: The realization that the mocking of All Things Oz is no longer the exclusive province of the left, as Fox News and Matt Drudge get in on the act, along with Murdoch’s Post – which must have the DSCC war room laughing and laughing and laughing.
Stay for II: The tender mercies of Matt Drudge that won’t allow him to publish the word sh*t.
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8. Dan Balz’s look at the Colorado Senate contest between Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet and Republican Joe O’Dea.
Come for: The best sense you will have so far of why some national Republicans think this is a winnable race.
Stay for: The fruits of Balz doing the actual work reporters are supposed to do in covering campaigns – getting on a plane to Colorado and actually arranging to talk face to face with both candidates! The benefits of that “approach” are manifested here.