A Brazen Move in[DEED]...

[Michael Grove]

After his arraignment in New York, a weary Donald Trump returned to Mar-a-Lago, where he made a rambling and disjointed statement. (To call it a “speech” would be too generous.) There was almost nothing notable in it, with one dangerous exception: Trump’s obvious attempt to intimidate the judge presiding over his criminal trial.

Lawyers are already arguing about the now-unsealed indictment in the Manhattan case against Donald Trump.   As a layman, I thought the indictment documents laid out a clear story about Trump’s behavior. But there’s a long way to go before a judge or a jury resolves any of it. Trump, for his part, didn’t dwell on the case when he returned to his safe space in Florida. He spoke for only about 25 minutes, which is usually just the amount of time it takes him to clear his throat. But in that short time, he talked about everything—and I mean everything.

There were the usual cries of “Russia Russia Russia” and “Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine,” which Trump now tends to repeat as a kind of ritual invocation without context. He went off about the Georgia investigation involving his call to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger looking for more votes in the 2020 election, referring to that call as “even more perfect” than the call to Ukraine that helped get him impeached. He railed against the “lunatic” Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the probes into Trump’s handling of classified documents and his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, and called the former investigation the “boxes hoax.” He even went after the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, which he called “a radical-left troublemaking organization.” If you’ve ever wondered why America is in trouble, you need look no further, apparently, than those unruly Trotskyite archivists.

TOM NICHOLS- The Atlantic.

[Michael Grove]

Donald Trump and his circle believe he got everything that he wanted from the controversial town hall hosted by CNN, even as it prompted a wave of outrage and embarrassed the network, including many of its own staff who were upset that it gave Trump a platform to lie to a large audience.

The former president was interested in doing a town hall mainly because it would give the campaign material to clip for social media. He was interested in doing it on CNN because the campaign reached an understanding – which a spokesperson denied – that it would book more Trump surrogates.