The Call is Coming from Inside the House

The new anti-Trumpers

William Barr (L), listens to Trump speak at a briefing at the White House on March 23, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

“[Donald Trump] is a consummate narcissist and he constantly engages in reckless conduct that puts his political followers at risk and the conservative and Republican agenda at risk.

“He will always put his own interests and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s interests….

“He’s like a 9-year-old — a defiant 9-year-old kid who’s always pushing the glass toward the edge of the table, defying his parents to stop him from doing it. It’s a means of self-assertion and exerting his dominance over other people.

“And he’s a very petty individual who will always put his interests ahead of the country’s, “his personal gratification of his ego.”

“But our country can’t be a therapy session for a troubled man like this.”

— William Barr, Donald Trump’s Attorney General

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Happy Monday.

As I’ve warned you before, the new anti-Trump coalition will require a healthy gag reflex because it could include many of Trump’s worst enablers. But we don’t always get to pick the army we go to war with, do we?

In case you missed Bill Barr’s takedown of DJT on Sunday, the former AG has followed up in the Free Press with a scorching critique of the Trumpian defenses, rationalizations, suck-ups, and spin surrounding the indictment.

…[Trump is a deeply flawed, incorrigible man who frequently brings calamity on himself and the country through his dishonesty and self-destructive recklessness. Even his supporters, who can’t help but acknowledge that he is own worst enemy, know it. 

For the sake of the country, our party, and a basic respect for the truth, it is time that Republicans come to grips with the hard truths about President Trump’s conduct and its implications. Chief among them: Trump’s indictment is not the result of unfair government persecution. This is a situation entirely of his own making. The effort to present Trump as a victim in the Mar-a-Lago document affair is cynical political propaganda.

No, argues Barr, Trump is not a victim. The charges are serious, and the case is strong. “All the razzle-dazzle about Trump’s supposed rights under the Presidential Records Act is a sideshow,” Barr writes. “At its core, this is an obstruction case.”

Some have tried to frame this affair as a simple custody dispute over documents. Trump’s apologists have conjured up bizarre arguments that the Presidential Records Act, a statute meant to prohibit former presidents from removing official documents from the White House, should be interpreted as giving Trump carte blanche to remove whatever he wants, even if it is unquestionably an official document. 

These justifications are not only farcical, they are beside the point. They ignore the central reason the former president was indicted: his calculated and deceitful obstruction of a grand jury subpoena. 

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But wait, there’s more.

Via Politico: “Former Trump Defense secretary brands him a security threat.”

Esper, who served in Trump’s Cabinet, said: “People have described him as a hoarder when it comes to these type of documents. But clearly, it was unauthorized, illegal and dangerous.”…

Tapper asked Esper if he thought that Trump, if elected president in 2024, could ever be trusted with the nation’s secrets again.

“Based on his actions, again, if proven true under the indictment by the special counsel, no,” Esper said.

“I mean, it’s just irresponsible action that places our service members at risk, places our nation’s security at risk. You cannot have these documents floating around.”

Mike Pence also carefully and oh-so-tentatively keeps distancing himself from his disgraced, twice-indicted former boss.

"I can't defend what is alleged," Pence, Trump's former vice president, told NBC's Sunday talk show "Meet the Press," alluding to his ex-boss's behavior in the documents affair.

[Asa[ Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, went further, calling the allegations "serious and disqualifying."

"I think that he should drop out" of the 2024 race, Hutchinson told ABC's "This Week."

Trump’s former national advisor John Bolton calls the indictment “devastating.”

“I speak here as an alumnus of the Justice Department myself, because not only is it powerful, it’s very narrowly tailored. They didn’t throw everything up against the wall to see what would stick. This really is a rifle shot. And I think it’s — it should be — the end of Donald Trump’s political career.”

Former Trump secretary of state, Mike Pompeo:

“If the allegations are true, President Trump had classified documents where he shouldn’t have had them, and then when given the opportunity to return them he chose not to do that for whatever reason. … That’s inconsistent with protecting America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. And if allegations are true, some of these were pretty serious, important documents.”

And Chris Christie, who briefly headed up Trump’s 2016 transition team continues to slam his former buddy:

“Donald Trump, if you believe what he said when they left, that means he didn’t pick the very best people and doesn’t know how to pick personnel. If you believe what — about them what he said at the beginning, the great stuff, then this guy is the worst manager in the history of the American presidency,” Christie said of Trump.

“Either way, Republicans should listen to what he says. He’s a petulant child when someone disagrees with him … if you disagree with Donald Trump, the petulant child comes out and he calls you names,” Christie added

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Let’s put this in context, shall we? As I wrote last year, there’s no precedent for a twice impeached, defeated former president seeking to regain power. But this is also unprecedented: No president has earned the open contempt and denunciation of so many of his inner circle. And in Trump’s case the list of those who have broken with him now include:

• Vice President (Mike Pence)

• Attorney General (Bill Barr)

• Two Secretaries of Defense (James Mattis, Mike Esper)

• Two Secretaries of State (Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo)

• Two Chiefs of Staff (John Kelly, Mick Mulvaney)

• Two National Security Advisors (John Bolton, H.R. McMaster)

• Deputy National Security Advisor (Matt Pottinger)

• Secretary of the Navy (Richard Spencer)

• Communications Director (Alyssa Farah Griffin)

• Press Secretary (Stephanie Grisham)

• Cabinet Members (Elaine Chao, etc.)

• Personal lawyers (Michael Cohen… and counting)

Whatever they might have thought about Trump’s election — whatever rationalizations, wishcasting, delusions, personal ambitions, or Faustian bargains that may have lead them to serve him — they now grasp the consequences of a second term.

A caveat: Despite their prominence, it is unlikely that any of these officials have the political juice or media influence to break Trump’s hold on the MAGAverse. Some of them (FFS) refuse to rule out voting for him if he wins the GOP nomination.

But that does not mean that they are irrelevant, because — unlike other critiques from the Resistance or Never Trumpers who have essentially become Democrats — these voices are coming from inside the house. In theory, they could create what we euphemistically call a “permission structure” for other Republicans to say out loud what they claim to be saying in private.

This is what I wrote last year:

All of this raises (once again) the question of what a temporary, conditional, and problematic Never Again Trump Coalition might look like. One formula suggested by a colleague would require defectors to agree to this proposition:

Is America better off with Joe Biden as president than Donald Trump? And, if Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee in 2024, will you vote for him or President Biden?

But, at least for now, that clearly cannot be the standard, because it would arguably exclude even Liz Cheney. Like many of the other defectors, Cheney was not Never Trump, but she is clearly Never Again Trump, and that’s a beginning.

And right now, the binary choice is not Trump vs. Biden: It’s Trump or Never Again Trump.

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A Season of Grifters and Crackpots

On our weekend podcast, Tim and I discuss how Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has found the sweet spot in the horseshoe— between QAnon-ers waiting for JFK, Jr. and the weirdo, anti-vaxxers in the Dems. Plus, grifting tech bros, the likely malice behind No Labels, and Marco’s relief that Trump is (probably) not a spy.

You can listen to the whole thing here.

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Quick Hits

1. It’s Easy to Feel Righteous in the Trump Era. Liberals, Beware

Nicholas Kristof in the NYT:

I fear that liberals react to all this by inflating with self-righteousness. One lesson of history — and of ancient Greek playwrights like Aeschylus — is that it’s dangerous to become too full of yourself. Just ask Oedipus. (But hurry, because there are progressive calls to cancel classics.)

So today, with conservatives shorn of credibility, we need a Greek chorus to hold us accountable and force us to face unpleasant facts.

Consider that three of the four states with the highest rates of unsheltered homelessness — California, Hawaii and Oregon — are all run by Democrats. Look up and down the cities of the West Coast — where liberals reign — and it’s impossible to celebrate a triumph of good governance. We may have great values, but we don’t always have great outcomes.

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2. A Trump Pardon Won’t Save Us

Damon Linker on the push for a get-out-of-jail free card for DJT.

The country is walking a dangerous road, with potentially dire consequences. But as much as we might wish that Joe Biden or a future Republican president could simply use the pardon power to drain the “poison out of the system,” in Lowry’s words, there is no such magic wand. Donald Trump got himself into each of these legal messes, and his fate will now ultimately be decided by judges and juries—just as our collective political fate will be determined to a large extent by how Trump and his most devoted supporters respond to these outcomes.

The only way out is through.

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3. There Is No Substitute for Ukrainian Victory

David Kramer and Eric Edelman in today’s Bulwark:

JUST WHEN UKRAINE MAY BE ON THE MARCH to regain more of its territory currently occupied by Russia, some in the commentariat are ready to come to Russia’s rescue. That, in essence, is the idea put forward by Samuel Charap in Foreign Affairs. The United States and others, he argues, should broker an armistice between Russia and Ukraine. The idea is misguided and dangerous.

Coming on the eve of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which may shift the military balance even more in Ukraine's favor, a push for an armistice would undercut any hopes Ukraine might have of winning the war. Such a deal, Charap acknowledges, would also leave Ukraine “without all its territory,” consigning millions of Ukrainians against their will to live under repressive Russian control.

Combined with the Ukrainians’ tremendous courage and determination to fight—and they would defend their land and freedom even without Western support—Western military aid has helped produce an unmitigated disaster for Russia’s Vladimir Putin and his forces. It also has made possible a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield, a realistic and far better way for this war to end.

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Cheap Shots

Wake up and smell the coffee.