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Item one: Why it’s good if Trump is on trial come Election Day

I’ve had a few conversations with fellow liberals over the last two days that went something like this: I can’t believe the Supreme Court did that. Although I guess, you know, of course they did. But I still can’t quite believe it. I just didn’t think they’d be quite this corrupt about Donald Trump returning to the White House.

If nothing else, the court’s announcement Wednesday that it will hear the Trump immunity case seven weeks from now should tell us once and for all—yep, don’t put anything past these people. Anything. They are as capital-P Political and Partisan as we suspect at our most cynical. More so. 

Now, the quickly formed conventional wisdom after the announcement is that while the court’s six conservatives are obviously trying to help Donald Trump by slow-walking the process here, surely they won’t all accept the facially absurd and unconstitutional arguments of Trump’s attorneys. I tend to go along with this. It’s hard to imagine judges of any sort ruling that our laws don’t apply to an ex-president.

And yet … I opened this piece saying that they keep surprising us. They keep Lucying the ideological football on us, and we keep falling for it. So what if—nah, it can’t be. No way five justices could really grant Trump immunity. Right?

Well, two probably will, and we know which two. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are totally ready for authoritarian America. And from there, who knows? I mean, I’d like to have a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone say, Ah, they’d never stop a state recount. Oh, come on, are you kidding? They’ll never completely overturn Roe.

So count me unconvinced. I guess with a gun to my head I’d say it’s 60–40 they’ll reject Trump’s claims. But 40 is damn high.

Now. A late-June decision by the court against Trump would mean a late-September trial date in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s courtroom. She gave Trump’s lawyers 88 days to prepare for trial, and that clock starts ticking when the Supreme Court rules, so a June 30 decision, say, would mean (I think) a September 26 trial date. Here, the liberal impulse will be the fretful one: Oh no! That’s too close to the election! We can’t do that! It wouldn’t be fair!

Pardon me, but: bullshit. 

First of all: If you’re thinking—worrying—that this is in Merrick Garland’s hands, exhale. It apparently is not. Yes, the Justice Department has a rule about not interfering in the political process in the fall of an election year. But that has only to do with charging people with crimes. It stems from Reagan-era Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh’s decision to charge former Reagan official Caspar Weinberger four days before the 1992 election. It was after that that the department agreed upon an unwritten rule about not bringing those kinds of charges within roughly 60 days of a general election.

So that rule is only about charging. It’s not about when trials should be held. Here’s a good primer on the whole matter, debunking a recent Trump lie about it. 

Also, Garland was asked this very question in January by CNN’s Evan Perez:

PEREZ: The department has policies about steering clear of elections. Is there a date in your mind where it might be too late to bring these trials to fruition? Again, to stay out of the way of the elections as the department policies?

GARLAND: Well, I just say what I said, which is that the cases were brought last year. [The] prosecutor has urged speedy trials, with which I agree. And it’s now in the hands of the judicial system, not in our hands.

So the feckless Garland, who has striven so hard to be apolitical that he’s actually become political in the other (pro-Trump) direction, has nothing to do with this. 

With that out of the way, are there other objections to a late-September trial? Trump and MAGA world will howl. I’ve been told that we can expect this trial to last six to 10 weeks. That would mean that it won’t be over before Election Day.

Is there a political risk there? That Trump’s base will be ultra-energized? Sure. But why shouldn’t it also ultra-energize the pro-democracy base? It certainly should. 

And more than that: It will make the election about Trump, not Joe Biden. If Trump is literally sitting in a courtroom on Election Day—or even if he’s not sitting there but, say, Cassidy Hutchinson is on the stand describing that steering wheel incident, or Mark Meadows is on the stand squirming and sweating—the election is about him, the insurrection, the future of democracy. Your typical swing voter in Oakland County, Michigan, is going to be walking into the voting booth thinking about that, not Biden’s age or gait. 

That’s what liberals should want the election to be about. There are two warring explanations afoot in our land about Trump’s legal trials. One, his own, is that all these indictments constitute election interference—the deep state trying to stop him from rightfully recapturing that which was stolen from him in 2020. The other, the planet Earth explanation, is that he’s a uniquely corrupt sociopath who thinks the law doesn’t apply to him and wants to get back into the White House for two simple reasons: to absolve himself of all crimes and to illiberalize our institutions and wreck the democracy to the point that he can do anything he wants—including, probably, be president for life.

If that’s the debate the nation is having on election eve, if that’s what neighbors are discussing across the fence post as they prepare to go vote—I’m good with that, and you should be too. And if those corrupt bastards on the Supreme Court inadvertently helped make that happen, so much the better. 

Item two: The Hunter Chronicles

I see that even anchors on Fox News and Newsmax are starting to ask House Republicans whether it may not be time to wrap this fantastical "Biden crime family" investigation up. That should tell you something. 

Apparently, in his six-hour, behind-closed-doors drilling from House Republicans on Thursday, Hunter Biden stood his ground. His dad was never involved in his business dealings. "The pattern I see is that you literally have no evidence whatsoever of any corruption on the part of my father," he told his Javerts. "And therefore, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to make every single thing in business that I was ever involved in somehow corrupt." Sounds about right to me.

Should Hunter have shown better judgment? Obviously. But this investigation is turning up bupkes for a very good and simple reason: There’s nothing there. As is always the case with fascists, they are doing exactly the thing they accuse their opponents of doing. It’s Little Joe (and I don’t mean Cartwright) 101. This investigation is attempted election interference. They essentially said as much shortly after they won enough seats to retake the House in the 2022 election. James Comer and Jim Jordan held a press conference on November 17, 2022, to make crystal clear what the new House’s priority would be. "The president’s participation in enriching his family is, in a word, abuse of the highest order," Comer said. "I want to be clear: This is an investigation of Joe Biden, and that’s where our focus will be next Congress."

In the transcript of Thursday’s testimony, said Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman, there’s almost nothing about Joe Biden. "This is being done purely to provide election fodder for Donald Trump," Goldman said on Morning Joe. 

Again, let’s think of this from the point of view of those swing voters in Oakland County. Do Comer and Jordan really think this impresses them? That’s what Newt Gingrich thought in 1998. It cost him his job. 

If we must have fascists in this country, at least we’re lucky enough to have dumb ones. 

Join TNR at these upcoming events:

Item three: A peek-in on the U.K. situation

I hereby remind you that a general election is approaching in the U.K., perhaps soon—it has to be called by next January, but of course the ruling party (the Tories) can call it whenever they think it will be advantageous to do so. It’s worth having the occasional look-in, especially if the election ends up happening before ours. Remember how the Brexit vote was such a grim augury of Trump’s victory back in 2016.

At the moment, Labour leader Keir Starmer is pretty unpopular. Fortunately, Tory leader and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is considerably more unpopular. The Guardian has Labour at (or "on," as they say over there) 44 right now, and the Conservatives at 25. If this holds, it would give Labour a hefty majority in the House of Commons and mean a pickup of nearly 250 seats after the historic 2019 thrashing under the bumbling Jeremy Corbyn (who, by the way, was barred from standing for reelection last year because of the many allegations of antisemitism against him). 

Britons watch the by-elections very closely, just as we do midterms and specials, and so far those bode mostly well for Labour. Just two weeks ago Labour won two key seats, both with big vote swings. This followed similarly impressive wins last fall.

In time, we’ll dig into Starmer’s platform a bit more. There are those who say he doesn’t stand for much, and perhaps he is overcorrecting a bit after Corbyn’s radical platform produced Labour’s biggest drubbing since the 1930s. But I’m pretty sympathetic to the argument that, to use a Britishism, you’re doing fuck-all for your people if you don’t win.

Quiz time!

Last week’s quiz: Ebony and ivory: a brief history of the keyboard 

1. Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, dissatisfied with the lack of volume control the player had over the harpsichord, invented the hammering mechanism that characterizes the modern piano and produced his first instrument using it in what year?

A. 1588

B. 1616

C. 1670

D. 1700

Answer: D, 1700. Later than I’d have thought, but I guess it tracks with the various epochs of classical music. Apparently, it looked like this. 

2. What does the word piano mean, anyway?

A. Pretty

B. Soft

C. Loud

D. Lush

Answer: B, soft. The full, original name of the piano is the pianoforte; the soft-loud, because, thanks to Cristofori’s hammer, the player could modulate the volume.

3. Most people know that a piano has 88 keys. Oddly, 88 keys do not make up a round number of octaves. How many keys are in an octave?

A. Eight

B. 10

C. 11

D. 12

Answer: D, 12. That’s every key, black and white, from C up to B. There are seven octaves, and then for some reason four extra keys: a very high C up top and three keys below the lowest C.

4. It’s the most famous organ in popular music history, heard for example on "Green Onions," "Whiter Shade of Pale," and countless other hits; a vintage one today can go for more than $20,000.

A. Yamaha 360

B. Moog 200X

C. Hammond B-3

D. Roland Persephone 

Answer: C, the Hammond B-3. Here’s an eBay page of some for sale.

5. Match the keyboard player to the artist or band he is most associated with.

Answer: Easy. Johnson, Chuck Berry; Wakeman, Yes; McJohn, Steppenwolf; Manzarek, The Doors.

6. According to Pianote.com, what is the most difficult piano piece of all time?

A. Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 3

B. Ravel, "Gaspard de la nuit"

C. Scriabin, Sonata No. 5

D. John Coltrane, "Giant Steps"

Answer: A, Rachmaninoff. Here’s the Top 10 list.

This week’s quiz: You scream, I scream: In honor of Biden’s recent 30 Rock press conference with Seth Meyers, a brief history of ice cream. I can testify as to the president’s passion on this front. I visited the campaign headquarters in Philly in 2020, and all the interior conference rooms had names like Rocky Road and Pistachio Mint.

1. It may be apocryphal, but it has long been said that this explorer discovered an early version of ice cream in his travels and brought it to Europe.

A. Ferdinand Magellan

B. Samuel de Champlain

C. Sir Francis Drake

D. Marco Polo

2. Several American Founders were fond of ice cream, but one Founder is most closely associated with it; he wrote down recipes (18 steps!) and served it frequently to dinner guests.

A. Thomas Jefferson

B. George Washington

C. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney

D. Elbridge Gerry

3. Something resembling ice cream cones existed among the ancients, and a version of a cone was made in England in the 1880s. But in what American city was the cone truly popularized for the first time in the early 1900s?

A. Chicago

B. St. Louis

C. Brooklyn (Coney Island)

D. Miami

4. Which famous American chain introduced soft-serve ice cream in Kankakee, Illinois, in 1938?

A. Tastee-Freez

B. Carvel

C. Dairy Queen

D. Howard Johnson’s

5. Match the designer ice cream to its home base.

6. In 2006, ice cream scientists (yep!) discovered that an item found in nature helped improve the flavor of low-fat ice cream because it prevented the formation of ice crystals. What was this substance?

A. A protein found in the blood of the ocean pout (fish)

B. A particular type of sugar compound found in maple tree sap

C. An acid found in the stomach linings of sheep

D. A liquid secreted by certain beetles

I actually know the answer to 6. Just happened to read about it at the time, when I was eating a lot of low-fat ice cream, which I don’t eat much these days. We all need to indulge here and there, and I’ve settled on fatty proteins over carbs and sugar.  Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com.

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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