With the first GOP presidential primary debate on Monday and the former president’s fourth arrest of the year on Tuesday, it’s clear that the next several months will be filled with much more of this distinctly American and continually incredible political spectacle.
You won’t be able to take your eyes off of it.
Distracting atmosphere.
Trump’s arrest on Thursday at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta had a reality TV theatricality to it, from the stone-faced mug shot to the filmed motorcade of his arrival to court. They also made it clear that Trump, like every American, must submit to the law; in this case, the allegations against him stemming from his attempts to reverse the 2020 election.
His brazen act of posting the mugshot on social media platform X (previously Twitter) shows he is recovering the weapons of misinformation he used in his last unsuccessful campaign, which ended in defeat but fueled an uprising.
As a reminder, there have been questions raised about whether or not his weight was falsified on booking records (215 pounds for his 6-foot-3-inch frame).
The challengers are unable to get traction.
Trump’s new party remains under his firm grip.
Keep in mind that the Republican discussion that could have produced a credible GOP adversary to Trump may instead have elevated Vivek Ramaswamy, the outsider and upstart who is modelling himself as Trump’s political heir, if you’re sceptical that 2024 will end replay Trump with President Joe Biden.
Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and the other debate standout, is still polling in the single digits. Don’t miss out on who, if anyone, becomes the face of the anti-Trump movement.
Relatedly, AWN’s John King is shadowing Iowa’s Republican voters. See what impact the argument had on their vote choice in his report.
The more fundamental inquiries
Trump is going to be tried for four different things all along the East Coast, and this mug shot will serve as the cover art for those trials.
The hush money conspiracy that got him elected in 2016 (charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney).
How he handled a case involving sensitive data (in Florida) that could compromise national security.
Both in Georgia (Fulton County DA Fani Willis's case) and in Washington (Smith's case), the primary question is whether or not the defendant attempted to undermine the very democracy he swore to uphold.While unattractive, the alternative is even more so.
Trump’s impending trials and the upcoming American election are the two most exciting stories of the week, but if the globe is actually involved in a war between democracies and autocracies, as Biden often says, it is hard not to compare them.
The former US president and world leader turned himself in to a county prosecutor in the United States to face charges that he plotted to steal the 2020 presidential election.
A former Russian mutineer who had opposed the country's strongman leader perished in a horrific crash.In the United States, juries will decide the fate of Trump and his alleged conspirators, in contrast to Russia, where political opponents of President Vladimir Putin are frequently deprived of their rights and deported to prison camps.
It’s going to be a lot of work going forward.
Subplots and mini-dramas will abound in the weeks and months ahead.
Whether Trump’s Georgia case should be transferred to federal court or separated from his accused co-conspirators, and how quickly any of these trials should begin, are all questions that are sure to be at the centre of media attention.
But in the end, Trump will have to accept that juries of his peers, ordinary American citizens, will determine these trials of the century, just as he had to accept a mug shot.
As usual, Trump will claim he is being persecuted.
He is also within his rights to maintain his long-standing claim that this is a “witch hunt.”
If he can keep Republican voters energised with his campaign of vengeance and maintain his lead in the GOP to become the party’s presidential nominee for the third time in a row, then the entire voting population of the United States will serve as a kind of jury and decide whether or not his allegation is true.
And that brings up another, maybe more encouraging perspective of this very unusual week: a democratic system that has endured and evolved for 200 years or more is going to stand up for itself.
The rhetoric has reached a new low.
Is civil war what you desire for us? Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin predicted as much during an interview with Newsmax on Thursday.
This is not a widely held opinion, and despite Trump’s repeated arrests, there has been little in the way of widespread demonstrations. However, there is undeniably a newfound willingness on the right to use the vocabulary of war in discussing “taking the country back.”
To tell the truth, none of these things are guaranteed.
Till he is proven guilty, Trump is presumed innocent. There are four trials in which he is a defendant, and he may be found not guilty in any or all of them.
It’s possible that Republican voters will go for an alternative. The majority of Republicans who would prefer someone other than Trump as their nominee may have identified an alternative by the time the primaries begin early next year.
In a debate with Biden, he holds his own. Current polling predicts the next presidential election will be as close as the last, despite the fact that many Republicans worry Trump would be easier for Biden to overcome than a candidate without Trump’s baggage.