Some Republicans who supported Nikki Haley are still refusing to back Donald Trump

Associated Press

Some Republicans who supported Nikki Haley are still refusing to back Donald Trump

Meg Kinnard and Thomas Beaumont – March 25, 2024

FILE - Republican presidential candidate former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks at a campaign event, Jan. 14, 2024, in Adel, Iowa. Haley's base of voters and donors was never big enough to seriously challenge Donald Trump. But her supporters are still splintered weeks after she dropped out of the GOP primary. If that holds, it could hurt Trump's general election chances. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr, File)
 Republican presidential candidate former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks at a campaign event, Jan. 14, 2024, in Adel, Iowa. Haley’s base of voters and donors was never big enough to seriously challenge Donald Trump. But her supporters are still splintered weeks after she dropped out of the GOP primary. If that holds, it could hurt Trump’s general election chances. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks at a caucus night party in West Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 15, 2024. Haley's base of voters and donors was never big enough to seriously challenge Donald Trump. But her supporters are still splintered weeks after she dropped out of the GOP primary. If that holds, it could hurt Trump's general election chances.(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
Republican presidential candidate former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks at a caucus night party in West Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 15, 2024. Haley’s base of voters and donors was never big enough to seriously challenge Donald Trump. But her supporters are still splintered weeks after she dropped out of the GOP primary. If that holds, it could hurt Trump’s general election chances.(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Now that Nikki Haley has shuttered her presidential campaign, one person who voted for her refuses to back former President Donald Trump and plans to reluctantly vote for President Joe Biden.

Another Haley primary supporter acknowledges that he was probably always a “closet Trump fan” and will vote for the former president again in November.

The former U.N. ambassador’s base was never big enough to seriously challenge Trump before he clinched a third straight Republican nomination. But in what’s shaping up to be a tight rematch between Trump and Biden, the apparent splintering of Haley’s voters and donors could hurt Trump’s general election chances, particularly in battleground states full of suburban voters who remain dubious of a Trump return to the White House.

For now, interviews with Haley’s supporters suggest they could go in a variety of directions — some backing Trump, some going to Biden and others seeking third-party options or avoiding making a decision about the presidential race yet.

Haley has not spoken publicly since leaving the race and urging Trump to reach out to all Republicans. She has not endorsed Trump and suggested she may not at all.

“She said it’s up to him to earn the support of those who supported her, and he’s got to earn it,” said Eric Tanenblatt, a longtime GOP donor who was Haley’s Georgia campaign’s co-chairman. “Right now, I’m definitely not there. It tells me there are things that are still up in the air among other key Haley donors waiting for a sign.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

A reluctant return to Trump for some voters

Glenn Swanson caucused for Haley after seeing her campaign in his hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa. At the time, the retired architect said he was open to a Trump alternative. Now, he’s coming back to the candidate he supported in both 2016 and 2020, despite his concerns about the four felony indictments and other civil cases facing Trump.

“For sure I’m going to vote for Trump,” Swanson said in an interview. “In a sense I was kind of a closet Trump fan all along, but I really wanted to see if somebody else would emerge to get away from some of the drama.”

John Wynstra, a database administrator who attended that same event, had been deciding between Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis before choosing to caucus for her. Wynstra said he’s strategically supporting Trump and the party’s platform — as a stance primarily against Biden — although he seemingly left the door open to possibly supporting a third-party candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“I will vote against Joe Biden and the Democrats,” Wynstra said this week. “If Kennedy were viable and if his positions were palatable, I would consider him.”

In Haley’s home state of South Carolina, high school teacher Michael Burgess said that save an unlikely independent run by Haley or a moderate like former Rep. Liz Cheney, he would be supporting Biden and criticized Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

“I will reluctantly vote Biden,” Burgess said. “We can survive bad policy, but we cannot survive the destruction of the Constitution at the hands of a morally bankrupt dictator lover in Trump who, supported by his congressional MAGA minions, would do just that.”

Her donors say they haven’t heard from Trump camp

Like many who were drawn to Haley, Tanenblatt, who was her Georgia campaign’s co-chairman, became disenchanted with Trump for what he called “inflammatory rhetoric,” chiefly in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his supporters on the Capitol.

But he also says Trump’s opposition to military aid to Ukraine is a fundamental policy difference. Tanenblatt has talked individually with former Haley supporters weighing a role with No Labels, the third-party group that is moving forward with attempting a unity ticket of opposing party presidential and vice-presidential nominees.

By and large, Haley’s donors have paused, with key bundlers noting they have not heard from Trump’s team as well as their reluctance to make any decisions.

“I really think there’s a period of recalibrating for a number of us who were very involved in Nikki’s campaign. This was a calling, something bigger than any one of us,” said Simone Levinson, a Florida-based Haley fundraiser who hosted events for her in New York and Florida.

Those donors could be helpful to Trump were they to come to the former president’s side.

For now, Trump and national Republicans are lagging far behind Biden and national Democrats in fundraising, with Trump’s campaign and allied groups holding $37 million cash on hand at the end of February compared to the $155 million in Democratic coffers.

In one sign of her influence going forward, Haley ended last month with $11.5 million, just days before she suspended her campaign. That’s slightly more than the Republican National Committee at $11.3 million.

Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

Trump pushed away his closest allies – he’s finally paying the price

The Telegraph – Opinion

Trump pushed away his closest allies – he’s finally paying the price

David Kaufman – March 25, 2024

Trump's bad behaviour is coming back to bite him
Trump’s bad behaviour is coming back to bite him – Seth Wenig /AP

When it comes to his personal life, former president Donald Trump is far from wholesome: from the legendary Aspen face-off between his first and second wives in 1989, to the public humiliation Melania endured at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, the women in Trump’s life haven’t always had an easy time.

Although Trump paid millions to divorce Ivana and Maples, those sums are nothing compared to the hundreds of millions owed as a result of the myriad civil and criminal trials currently facing the former president. True, the most spectacular of those settlements – the $454 million Trump must begin paying today as part of a fraud settlement in New York – is not directly tied to Trump’s unseemly bad-boy behavior. But like the tens of millions more that are, today’s massive bill, and the possibility that his assets will be seized to cover it, suggest Trump can no longer hide from his history.

Beyond his actual wives, there are ladies like Stormy Daniels and E. Jean Carroll, the former a prostitute reportedly paid $130,000 back in 2016 to keep silent about her alleged relationship with Trump. Nearly eight years later, Daniels is still in the headlines as Trump seeks to have their case delayed or dismissed as his legal team continues to pour over thousands of pages of potential new evidence.

Carroll, meanwhile, was awarded some $83.3 million by a New York jury back in January who found Trump guilty of both disparaging her and denying her allegations of rape nearly two decades earlier. This was on top of the $5 million Carroll was awarded the previous year in a similar proceeding. Trump, of course, has appealed the latter Carroll decision via a $91 million bond earlier this month. The strain of that nearly nine-figure penalty is part of the reason Trump is now scrambling to come up with the far larger half-billion bond he must post later today. The chickens, it seems, are coming home to roost – and Trump is running out of coops to house them.

The financial crises Trump now faces reflect his clear indifference for even the most basic standards of decency. How else to explain Trump’s behavior during Campaign 2016, which kicked off with his derision of Sen. John McCain’s years of brutal captivity during the Vietnam War, continued with his mocking of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski – who suffers from a serious joint condition – and concluded with the release of that now infamous “grab ‘em by the pussy” tape weeks before election day in 2016.

The latter example, delivered in raucous ribald tones, is typical of Trump’s self-aggrandising and entitlement. This attitude may well explain the reluctance of his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, both billionaires in their own rights, to bail out Trump with a “very small loan” of $500 million dollars.

The former president needs all the allies he can get in the long, tough battle to November. Even so, he seems determined to push people away, launching barbs at everyone from his niece Mary – whose 2020 family tell-all resulted in him branding her “a mess” on Twitter – to even perhaps his own kids. At an Iowa rally in 2022, Trump bizarrely told the crowd that “some of us have horrible children,” as he spoke about inheritance taxes.

Donald Trump is hardly the only former president with a paper trail of bad behavior behind closed doors – Clinton, Kennedy and the elder Bush also come to mind. But no commander in chief has been so reckless with their disdain for the conventions of domesticity quite like the Donald. It’s not that being a good father and husband are the most important requirements when running a nation, but they’re certainly a solid start.

NBC News in revolt over Ronna McDaniel hiring. Will the network reverse course?

Los Angeles Times

NBC News in revolt over Ronna McDaniel hiring. Will the network reverse course?

Stephen Battaglio – March 25, 2024

FILE - Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel speaks before a Republican presidential primary debate hosted by NBC News, Nov. 8, 2023, at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County in Miami. Facing a cash crunch and harsh criticism from a faction of far-right conservatives, McDaniel, on Friday, Feb. 2, 2024, called for the party to unite behind the goal of defeating President Joe Biden. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
Then-Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel speaks before a GOP presidential primary debate hosted by NBC News. (Rebecca Blackwell / Associated Press)

The hosts at NBC News’ cable outlet MSNBC continued to pound away at their parent organization’s decision to hire former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as an on-air analyst.

The blowback unfolded throughout the day on the progressive cable news network, presenting a highly unusual situation in which well-known TV personalities went directly to viewers to challenge a decision made by their top managers.

The open rebellion could make it difficult for Comcast-owned NBC News to move forward with any plans to use McDaniel, who resigned from the RNC last month. A representative for NBC News said Monday there was no change in her status. But people familiar with the situation who are not authorized to comment publicly said McDaniel will probably be out before she even begins.

Chuck Todd, the ex-“Meet the Press” moderator, opened the door to the criticism when he appeared on his former program Sunday and blasted the network’s decision to make McDaniel a paid contributor, citing her record of supporting former President Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

MSNBC hosts weighed in on Monday, starting with “Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski saying McDaniel will not be welcome on their daily program, a favorite of politicians and opinion leaders in Washington, D.C., and New York.

“We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring, but, if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons.” Scarborough said.

Brzezinski said she hoped NBC News management will reconsider its decision to bring McDaniel aboard.

“Deadline: Washington” anchor Nicolle Wallace praised Todd for his Sunday remarks. “He did something really brave,” Wallace told her viewers. “I talked to him yesterday. I said I’m knitting you a cape.”

Wallace, a former George W. Bush White House communications director who has long been anti-Trump, and Joy Reid both devoted lengthy segments critical of the McDaniel hiring. Reid described McDaniel as “a major peddler of the big lie,” referring to the Trump’s election falsehoods. Reid cited how McDaniel was on Trump’s phone calls to GOP officials in Michigan, urging them not to certify the state’s 2020 election results.

MSNBC host Jen Psaki cited a Liz Cheney tweet that noted how McDaniel once described the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol as “legitimate political discourse.”

“This is about truth versus lies,” Psaki, formerly the Biden White House press secretary, said.

Read more: Nicolle Wallace won’t just be a never-Trumper as her role expands at MSNBC

Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s biggest star, also asked NBC News management to reverse the decision.

“The fact that McDaniel is on the payroll at NBC News — to me that is inexplicable,” Maddow said on her program. “You wouldn’t hire a wise guy, you wouldn’t hire a made man, like a mobster to work in a D.A.’s office.”

Former NBC News executives took to social media to chastise the move as well. Cheryl Gould, a producer and executive at the division for 37 years, wrote an open letter on her Facebook page to Carrie Budoff Brown, the senior vice president of politics for NBC News who was involved in McDaniel’s hiring.

“We all make mistakes,” Gould wrote. “This happens to be a colossal one that unfortunately makes the network, your bosses and yourself look misguided at best, craven at worst.”

NBC has a long history of hiring former government and political officials as contributors to its news operation. Such deals are done to get exclusive access to insider knowledge — and to keep prominent talking heads from appearing on the competition.

In 1977, the network gave Gerald Ford a $1-million deal — brokered by William Morris Agency — to be a commentator and contributor to a series of specials about his presidency.

In the same year the network signed a similar deal to former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger. The move prompted a top news executive at the network, Richard Wald, to leave the company in protest, as he believed the deal siphoned resources from journalism projects. Wald also believed Kissinger owed it to the country to appear on NBC for free.

Political figures have segued into TV news commentary and lucrative TV anchor roles ever since.

NBC already has another former RNC chair on its payroll in Michael Steele, a co-host on the MSNBC program “The Weekend.” Psaki headed to MSNBC immediately after her departure from the Biden White House. Wallace worked on John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign after her time in the George W. Bush administration.

All TV news organizations stock up on paid contributors during election season.

But the internal hostility toward McDaniel is linked to her support of Trump’s denial of the 2020 voting results, disqualifying her as a credible source to many inside the news organization. Before her appearance Sunday on “Meet the Press,” she had never acknowledged that President Biden won the election fairly.

McDaniel attributed her previous defense of Trump’s claims to her role in the RNC and said she can be “a little bit more of myself” now that she is no longer a party official. But she continues to say there were problems with the 2020 vote due to the dependence on mail-in ballots.

In a memo sent Friday to NBC News staff that was provided to the Times, Brown said McDaniel would provide a valuable perspective to the division’s coverage of the 2024 election with Trump as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

“It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team,” Brown said. “As we gear up for the longest general election season in recent memory, she will support our leading coverage by providing an insider’s perspective on national politics and on the future of the Republican Party — which she led through some of the most turbulent and challenging moments in political history.”

Our criminal justice system is broken. But Donald Trump isn’t a victim.

USA Today – Opinion

Our criminal justice system is broken. But Donald Trump isn’t a victim.

Bill Proctor – March 23, 2024

No one is above the rule of law.

That’s the promise of the American justice system – a promise that is tested by former President Donald Trump.

Trump is facing dozens of criminal charges related to election interference and business dealings.

Like clockwork, what follows Trump news is Trump noise. He hurls insults at judges, prosecutors, investigators and their agencies as he pushes back in an ugly, unprecedented fashion to pump up his already angry-at-America base of supporters.

If we faced criminal charges, we know it would not help our defense if we insulted or threatened that very same criminal justice system.

Former President Donald Trump arrives at the criminal court in New York City on Feb. 15, 2024.
Former President Donald Trump arrives at the criminal court in New York City on Feb. 15, 2024.
Trump isn’t entirely wrong

Yet Trump says that he is the victim of a witch hunt by Democrats and his enemies, that he is suffering like Alexei Navalny, just like Jesus, just like Black people.

It’s a ludicrous assertion.

But he’s not entirely wrong. The legal system is sometimes unfair, but not in the ways Trump suggests – and not to Trump and people like him.

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Consider that Trump has bought and will continue to buy the best available defense – with $50 million in legal fees – and what that says about the stark contrast between Trump and those who are struggling and must accept whatever the justice system throws at them.

With money and influence, the usual lawful process can be delayed, compromised or crushed along the way.

Without money and influence, Americans facing criminal charges crimes often lose the game they are forced to play. They’re walking into a meat grinder, almost always represented by struggling, inexperienced court-appointed lawyers without the finances to support a good defense.

There is plenty of evidence that more often than we’d like to think, the truly innocent have gone to prison for crimes they didn’t commit, and not because of politics.

Since 1989, nearly 3,500 Americans have been exonerated, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, after serving more than 31,000 years for crimes they did not commit. Those numbers clearly indicate, and I think most of us would agree, that we have a broken criminal justice system in need of reform.

To understand true legal persecution, look no further than less-privileged Michigan citizens like Temujin Kensu, formerly known as Fredrick Freeman, and Detroit native Ray Gray.

Estimated 25,000 to 30,000 people wrongfully imprisoned

Kensu and Gray are among the estimated 25,000 to 30,000 people condemned to lengthy U.S. prison sentences for crimes there is ample reason to believe they did not commit. The Innocence Project says at least 4% to 6% of the nation’s prison population is factually innocent.

Kensu was convicted in 1987 of murder in Port Huron for the broad-daylight shotgun slaying of 20-year-old Scott Macklem, cut down as he walked away from a classroom building on the campus of St. Clair County Community College.

In this Oct. 14, 2018, photo provided by the Michigan Department of Corrections is Temujin Kensu, also known as Fred Freeman.
In this Oct. 14, 2018, photo provided by the Michigan Department of Corrections is Temujin Kensu, also known as Fred Freeman.

Several witnesses testified that on the morning of the murder, Kensu was hundreds of miles away. But he was convicted by a jury when the prosecutor, Robert Cleland, presented without any proof a theory that the man with no money, a pregnant girlfriend, no job and living on food stamps chartered a plane to travel 450 miles to commit the murder and return undetected.

When Kensu convinced the federal court that mistakes and harmful acts by the prosecutor, his drug-addicted lawyer and corrupt cops meant he should be released or be granted a new trial, an appeals court decided federal Judge Denise Page Hood’s ruling didn’t count. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 time-limited his innocence claim.

At age 60, Kensu remains in prison, very ill and unable to get the governor to commute his sentence.

Criminal justice: Laken Riley’s death made the news, but here’s the real story on undocumented migrants

Released after 48 years in state prison

Raymond Gray spent more than 48 years in state prison in the robbery and murder of a drug dealer, convicted in a bench trial of the 1973 crime based on witness testimony – even though his family and one of the robbery suspects testified that Gray was at home when the crime was committed, styling the hair of one of his barber customers.

Despite police reports of two male perpetrators, one armed with a pistol at the time of the robbery, only Gray was charged and convicted when a judge chose not to believe the testimony of Gray’s relatives.

The Wayne County prosecutor’s office agreed to release Gray only if he pleaded to some element of the crime.

In this photo provided by Bill Proctor, Ray Gray and his wife Barb Gray pose for a photo after he was released from a state prison in Muskegon, Mich., on Tuesday, May 25, 2021. Gray was in prison for 48 years for the fatal shooting of a man in Detroit in 1973. He has long maintained his innocence and provided new evidence in March, 2021. Gray was not exonerated, but prosecutors agreed to drop the conviction in exchange for a no-contest plea to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to time served.
In this photo provided by Bill Proctor, Ray Gray and his wife Barb Gray pose for a photo after he was released from a state prison in Muskegon, Mich., on Tuesday, May 25, 2021. Gray was in prison for 48 years for the fatal shooting of a man in Detroit in 1973. He has long maintained his innocence and provided new evidence in March, 2021. Gray was not exonerated, but prosecutors agreed to drop the conviction in exchange for a no-contest plea to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to time served.More
Wrongfully convicted deserve protection and help

The wrongfully convicted and their families have been awarded billions in compensation for their suffering through judgments or state-mandated payouts. Imagine what the cost to communities would be if the nation recognized and paid damages to all the known victims of the justice system’s shortcomings.

Unjust actions in the criminal justice system have left many wondering why the Constitution didn’t fulfill its promise to them.

Last year, the right-wing majority of Trump’s Supreme Court, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, stacked with a right-wing majority, again slammed the door on innocence claims. Trump is counting on this same Supreme Court to save him from criminal prosecution.

The rule of law claims to grant equal rights and protections to everyone. It’s up to us to make that promise a reality.

Maybe now, as we face the madness of Trump’s bogus claim of unfair treatment, we should consider the real unfairness in our criminal justice system – and enact long-needed reforms and improvements to better protect those of us who aren’t rich and famous from punishment we truly don’t deserve.

Bill Proctor is a private investigator specializing in investigating wrongful convictions with his own firm, which he started after a four-decade career in broadcasting including 33 years as a reporter, producer and anchor in metro Detroit. This column first published in the Detroit Free Press.

Lisa Murkowski, done with Donald Trump, won’t rule out leaving GOP

CNN

Lisa Murkowski, done with Donald Trump, won’t rule out leaving GOP

Manu Raju, CNN – March 24, 2024

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, aghast at Donald Trump’s candidacy and the direction of her party, won’t rule out bolting from the GOP.

The veteran Alaska Republican, one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial amid the aftermath of January 6, 2021, is done with the former president and said she “absolutely” would not vote for him.

“I wish that as Republicans, we had … a nominee that I could get behind,” Murkowski told CNN. “I certainly can’t get behind Donald Trump.”

The party’s shift toward Trump has caused Murkowski to consider her future within the GOP. In the interview, she would not say if she would remain a Republican.

Asked if she would become an independent, Murkowski said: “Oh, I think I’m very independent minded.” And she added: “I just regret that our party is seemingly becoming a party of Donald Trump.”

Pressed on if that meant she might become an independent, Murkowski said: “I am navigating my way through some very interesting political times. Let’s just leave it at that.”

Murkowski hasn’t always been on the outs within her party. Appointed in 2002 by her father, Gov. Frank Murkowski, the senator’s politics were in line with the president at the time – George W. Bush – as she maintained a tight relationship with the senior GOP senator from her state, Ted Stevens, who helped build Alaska through federal dollars he funneled back home.

She later found herself at odds with Sen. John McCain’s running mate, the then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who had been sharply critical of her father. As the tea party rose in 2010, Murkowski was at sharp odds with the insurgent right-wing of her party. She lost a primary in 2010 to Republican Joe Miller, only to later hold on to her seat after she became the second candidate ever to win a write-in campaign for Senate in the general election.

Murkowski skated to reelection in her next two elections, even after voting to convict Trump in 2021, voting against Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court in 2018 and supporting Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2022. She had been targeted by Trump and his allies in 2022 but was backed by Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and his high-spending outside group.

In the 2024 cycle, Murkowski – along with Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine – offered a late endorsement of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, just days before she dropped out of the race.

Now, Murkowski is clear she’s ready to move past Trump. Asked about Trump’s recent comments that Jewish people who vote for Democrats must “hate” their religion, Murkowski said it was an “incredibly wrong and an awful statement.”

And Murkowski pushed back when asked last week about Trump’s other controversial rhetoric, namely that he views January 6 prisoners as “hostages” and “patriots” who should be pardoned.

“I don’t think that it can be defended,” Murkowski said. “What happened on January 6 was … an effort by people who stormed the building in an effort to stop an election certification of an election. It can’t be defended.”

Trump stares down first derailment of his campaign-to-courthouse strategy

CNN

Trump stares down first derailment of his campaign-to-courthouse strategy

Phil Mattingly and Andrew Seger – March 23, 2024

For days, Donald Trump’s fury over the requirement to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in bond money by Monday has been bubbling behind the scenes and through a steady stream of social media posts.

Friday’s public barrage on his Truth Social platform, which included multiple all-caps posts, highlighted his persistent anger with the judge who handed down the $464 million judgment, the New York attorney general who brought the civil fraud case and Trump’s insistence that it’s all designed to derail his presidential campaign.

The posts, including one sent just before 2 a.m. Friday, contained a mix of invective and claims devoid of fact or evidence. (There is no evidence that the White House has played any role in the case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, let alone ordered her to pursue her effort. Nor is there any evidence that Trump, as he claimed, has plans to use any of his own money for his presidential campaign.)

But also embedded in the posts was a reality that has pushed Trump’s company and personal finances to the brink with just two days remaining to land a solution.

Trump, as he himself noted, does have a significant amount of cash, according to a review of his most recent candidate financial disclosure and personal financial statements.

It’s a point he made repeatedly in his deposition and testimony during the New York fraud trial though that diverged from his latest social media claim of having “almost five hundred million dollars in cash.” He consistently pegged the number during legal proceedings at $400 million and, barring any recent and unreported cash infusion, a person familiar with his finances confirmed that remains roughly where his cash holdings stand.

Yet even if the higher-end estimate is accurate, as Trump’s lawyers have made clear in sober, detailed filings, it wouldn’t be enough.

The $464 million decision levied in the verdict, and the bond Trump is scrambling to secure to forestall potential seizure of his properties, would require cash or cash equivalent of roughly $557 million based on industry practice.

And at least some of the money Trump does have is tied up in loan agreements that include terms requiring him to have tens of millions of dollars in cash on hand.

In other words, as the clock ticks toward the Monday deadline, securing a bond of the scale required remains – to quote Trump’s own lawyers – a “practical impossibility.”

A deft strategy

Trump’s deft navigation of – and ability to leverage – his unprecedented collision of the campaign and courthouse has defined the path he bulldozed to once again become the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

But it was a filing by New York state lawyers at a county clerk’s office 25 miles north of Trump Tower that demonstrated how perilously close the former president is to a dramatic derailment of that strategy.

The move by James’ office to enter judgments in Westchester County marked a first step toward seizing Trump’s assets should he fail to secure a bond.

Westchester County is home to Trump’s golf course and private estate known as Seven Springs.

The initial action, which state lawyers already took in Manhattan, is just the start to what would be a complex and lengthy process.

It also came as Trump’s lawyers have continued to press to reduce or waive the bond requirement, calling it “patently unreasonable, unjust and unconstitutional,” in a Wednesday filing.

But for Trump, a man who has made his brand and his buildings his central animating feature, the filing that put a target on one of his properties crystalized a moment unlike any other he’s faced in his White House comeback bid.

“I think the whole thing is bullsh*t,” one House Republican, who communicates with Trump’s team said of the order to secure the $464 million bond while waiting for a decision on his appeal. “But it had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing will ever stick to him, so this has been different.”

In other words, there may be actual consequences.

Enduring GOP support

Over nearly a year, as four indictments and 88 charges piled on, Trump’s poll numbers in the GOP primary tracked a steady climb.

Days when Trump faced charges, or showed up at court to face those charges, consistently ranked among his best fundraising days on the campaign.

That money, in part, has covered Trump’s legal bills so he wouldn’t have to on his own.

The lawyers that money financed have been both unequivocal about their pursuit of dilatory strategies – and have repeatedly succeeded in those efforts.

If, as countless former campaign officials say, presidential candidates’ most valuable asset is their time, Trump’s decision to repeatedly attend court hearings when his presence wasn’t required made clear his view of the incentives. So did the voters.

Trump successfully cut down – with relative ease – the best financed and most politically gifted of his primary challengers. He all but locked up the GOP nomination after just two primary contests as the party largely fell in line behind a candidate under whose tenure it lost the House, the Senate and the White House.

Trump was also the same candidate whom some publicly – and many more privately – had hoped would simply disappear after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and the steady stream of revelations that he and his advisers had sought to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.

People around Trump say they’ve seen no sign of any political damage from his latest legal stress test. National polls continue to show a margin-of-error contest with Biden, and more importantly, surveys in the critical swing states haven’t revealed a tangible shift. New CNN polling conducted by SSRS in two battleground states showed Trump tied with Biden in Pennsylvania at 46% each, and ahead in Michigan, 50% to 42%.

Biden flipped both states from Trump’s column in 2020.

Trump’s campaign apparatus trails Biden’s team significantly in fundraising, but those around Trump are confident that the gap will be closed. The former president, these people say, has been privately working the party’s biggest donors in a way they haven’t seen before.

“The money will be there,” one person told CNN. “He’s never been more focused or effective on that front than he is right now.”

One adviser mused that any pursuit of Trump’s properties would only serve to help the campaign politically, pointing to email and text donation appeals with lines like “Keep your filthy hands off Trump Tower!” as evidence to that effect.

A cash dilemma

Still, the threat Trump currently faces cuts equally to his political and personal core. It’s also one that carries a level of irony.

In a career, and now verdict, beset by a steady stream of questions about his net worth and the value of his substantial real estate assets, Trump does have a significant amount of cash – and a valuable portfolio of properties, which could more than cover the bond amount.

But insurers rarely take real estate as collateral, fearing a complex process and skewed market where any bids on that property would come from entities well aware of the need to sell, Trump’s lawyers said.

One insurer, Chubb, underwrote a $91.63 million bond just two weeks ago in another Trump legal loss – E. Jean Carroll’s defamation case.

Trump’s team had been in discussions with Chubb over a second bond for the fraud case that included a mix of liquid assets and property. In the past week, the insurer informed Trump’s team it could not accept property as collateral.

In total, 30 insurers contacted by Trump’s team declined to pursue the effort to secure a bond. Trump, in a Truth Social posting, alluded to that fact when he noted that it “is not possible for bonding companies to do in such a high amount, before I can even Appeal. That is CRAZY! If I sold assets, and then won the Appeal, the assets would be forever gone.”

There has been a steady stream of rumors about some of Trump’s richest backers stepping in to put up the cash.

But so far there has been no confirmation of concrete requests, let alone movement toward any agreement.

Another potential pathway that Trump allies have discussed opened up Friday when investors approved a merger that made the former president’s media enterprise, Trump Media and Technology Group, a public company. Trump’s holdings in the new company would, on their face, net him billions in stock.

But the availability of that cash from the parent company of Truth Social would be subject to a six month “lockup” period that would hamstring Trump’s ability to sell any shares or use them as collateral. The billions Trump stands to gain exist only on paper – and would be subject to the price fluctuations of the stock when it starts to trade.

Any effort by Trump to get around that lockup period in order to monetize his shares would likely have a direct, and negative, effect on the stock’s price.

Watching his image

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the idea of pursuing bankruptcy, which would freeze the proceedings for what would likely be an extended period of time.

The reasons, advisers say, cut across personal and political concerns.

Trump has been publicly vocal about the deep scars he carries from bankruptcies decades ago.

“It was an experience that I don’t think I want to go through it again,” Trump said in a 1992 interview with Charlie Rose. “You’re really in a position where I think that if you had to do it again, I’m not sure you could. I went through a period of two years that was truly tough.”

Trump is also cognizant of the potential threat it could pose to his carefully crafted image that sits at the heart of his political salience: that of a billionaire business tycoon.

“No chance,” one adviser said of Trump pursuing bankruptcy. “He’d rather have Letitia James show up and try and seize his properties.”

Whether that version of the campaign and courthouse convergence plays out will be made clear in the days ahead.

For now, however, it has become clear as the deadline to secure the bond looms ever closer, that the playbook that has driven Trump’s political comeback has run into hurdles in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars.

That’s a problem the only political opponent who has ever defeated Trump is happy to highlight.

“I know not everyone is feeling the enthusiasm,” Biden joked at a Dallas fundraising reception this week. “Just the other day a defeated-looking man came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, I have crushing debt, and I’m completely wiped out.’ And I had to look at him and say, ‘Donald, I’m sorry. I can’t help you.’”

“He’ll never leave”: Why Trump’s dynasty, built on corruption and violence, won’t end with him

Salon

“He’ll never leave”: Why Trump’s dynasty, built on corruption and violence, won’t end with him

Dean Obeidallah – March 22, 2024

Donald Trump Win McNamee/Getty Images
Donald Trump Win McNamee/Getty Images

No, you’re not being hyperbolic if you say MAGA is a fascist movement. You’re just being accurate. That was one of the biggest points made by NYU historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of the book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” during our recent “Salon Talks” conversation.

Ben-Ghiat explained that Donald Trump is leading a “right-wing counterrevolution against the loss of white male privilege,” aimed at taking America back to the time when women, nonwhite people and non-Christians “knew their place.”

But what truly defines MAGA as fascist, Ben-Ghiat said — rather than just right-wing — is its use of violence. “Fascists believe that violence is the way to change history,” she told me. We saw that clearly enough on Jan. 6, 2021, with the attack on the Capitol mean to keep Trump in power despite his loss in the 2020 election.

What is most worrisome going forward, Ben-Ghiat suggested, is Trump’s defense of the Jan. 6 attackers as “hostages” and his promises to pardon them, which seek to change “the perception of violence.” Trump’s message to his loyal followers, she said, is that “violence is sometimes morally necessary and even righteous, and even patriotic.” That, she added, is “what we call sacralizing violence, giving violence a kind of ritual, religious tone.”

Ben-Ghiat sees Trump’s promise to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as intended to inspire his supporters to commit future acts of violence if that can help him win. The implied promise is that if they commit violent acts and Trump regains the White House, he’ll pardon them too. That’s straight out of the autocrat’s playbook, Ben-Ghiat says: “All authoritarians use pardons” and manipulate the justice system to maintain power.

Ben-Ghiat says she’s not trying to scare us, only to prepare us for what we’re likely to see between now and November — and for a good while after that if Trump wins. Too many Americans still don’t believe, Ben-Ghiat warns, that “it can happen here” — “it” being a fascist takeover. History tells us those people are wrong.

Watch my full conversation with Ruth Ben-Ghiat here or read a transcript of our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

You’ve been discussing and studying this issue for years, but it seems even more important than ever to talk about authoritarianism.

It’s incredible that it could be upon us. Here’s Trump saying he’s going to be a “dictator for day one,” but we know that they’re never dictators for day one. They never relinquish their powers, so it’s extremely important to understand what we’re up against.

Despite Trump saying he wants to be a dictator and facing 91 felony counts for his attempted coup, the GOP base and millions of Americans still love him. What do you take from that?

Sadly, in history, when these charismatic demagogues come to power, they use emotions to manipulate people. Trump says, “I love you” to his people. He told them he loved them on Jan. 6. He builds a personality cult so he poses as the victim, which is really important because not only are all his crimes presented as persecutions by the “deep state,” but saying he’s being persecuted makes his followers feel protective of him.

You have quotes from MAGA people saying, “Oh, it’s so distressing. We have to be there for him.” That’s what Jan. 6 was. It was many things. It was a violent coup attempt. But he was a leader in distress and he called on people, he brought them to the rally and they responded. They were trying to rescue him. This happens in history. I have quotes in “Strongmen” with people, actual fascists sitting in jail in 1945, where they’re like, “Oh, I was completely magnetized by Mussolini. I didn’t realize what was going on.” So that’s how I see it.

Is history warning us about the fact that Trump has not been held accountable by the system? There was such a long delay in investigating him. He’s finally charged and now he’s using his lawyers to manipulate the system to keep him on the ballot, and maybe not have any of the serious criminal trials before Election Day.

It’s very disheartening, and no one is going to save the American people. My mantra has always been, “Never underestimate the American people.” We had the Women’s March, we had Black Lives Matter. These were the largest protests in history, and they led to electoral [change] in the midterms in 2018 and 2022.

We’ve got to do it. We can’t depend on our institutions, which is very sad in a democracy. But our democracy has been so damaged, including the Supreme Court with Justice Thomas who wouldn’t recuse himself. There’s a whole attempt to delegitimize democracy, and not just Joe Biden, but the whole system. So we have to do this from the ground up.

From an academic point of view, is MAGA an authoritarian movement? Is it a fascist movement? Where does it fall?

It’s pretty fascist.

Why?

The reason I wrote “Strongmen” was to have this 100-year history of authoritarianism, almost all right-wing, because that’s my specialty. Obviously communists had a higher body count than fascism, so I could have put them in there, but for narrative and other reasons, I focus on the right wing. Fascism was the first stage of authoritarianism, but it continued in different forms, like the Cold War military dictatorships.

Trump is very similar to Mussolini in many ways. It checks all the boxes, where it’s this huge right-wing counterrevolution against the loss of white male privilege, and it’s to save civilization, and the whole “great replacement” theory, which is big in the MAGA base, the idea that nonwhites and non-Christians are having too many babies: We’re going to be extinguished. Mussolini talked about this too. You can track a whole series of checkpoints and talking points, and they’re pretty much the same.

What’s the core of fascism? And why do you, as an academic, look at MAGA and say, “Yep, it’s now fascist”?

Mussolini actually was a great sloganeer. He created fascism and had one very simple definition. He called it “a revolution of reaction.” Both those things are true because it upends everything. It disrupts everything. It uses violence. Fascists believe that violence is the way to change history. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, he came to the Iowa State Fair to help Trump in the summer. People are eating their corn dogs, there’s kids there, and he says, “Only through force will we bring change to corrupt D.C.” This is after the coup that tried to do that. So that’s the revolution part. People are given permission to be their most violent selves, their worst selves. It’s a collapse of morals.

The reaction is what I was saying before, where you want to turn the clock back to “the good old days.” MAGA wants to make the nation “great again” by going back to times when women knew their place, as did nonwhites and non-Christians, so things were as they should be. This is part of authoritarianism, which is also a set of attitudes about child-rearing, about traditions, about male authority. All of that, Trump says, is threatened, and so the MAGA base is responding to that.

As an expert in authoritarianism, when you hear Donald Trump defending the people who attacked the Capitol, calling them “hostages” and saying they’ve been treated unfairly, pledging to pardon them, does that raise red flags for you? And if it does, what does it mean?

Totally. One of the major things that fascists did, and that Trump is doing — he’s been doing this through his rallies with frightening relentlessness — is to change the perception of violence. To get people to see that violence is not negative, including violence against your neighbors, or that you’re going to look the other way when your neighbor’s deported. Violence is sometimes morally necessary and even righteous, and even patriotic. He has used his rallies since 2015, and I wrote about this in my report for the Jan. 6 committee, where he’d say, “Oh, in the old days we used to be able to beat people up and nothing happened.” This is thug talk. This is part of fascism.

So Jan. 6 becomes this righteous “Stop the Steal.” The people who have been arrested become patriots. He almost is doing what we call sacralizing violence, giving violence a kind of ritual, religious tone. In his rallies, he has the Jan. 6 prisoners choir sing. This is totally fascist. Trump has these fascist spectacles.

I wrote an essay for Lucid when he kicked off his campaign at Waco, Texas. What a choice! He had the choir and the spectacle of it reminded me of Hitler’s Nuremberg rally. I think I entitled my essay, for my Substack newsletter, “Triumph of the Will, Waco Version.” He knows exactly what he’s doing because he’s a showman, he’s a man of TV, he’s a man of the camera. It’s really scary and it really works. That’s what all of that is about. The pardons are about encouraging people to do more violence, thinking that they’re not going to pay any consequences. That’s actually the essence of authoritarianism and fascism: You arrange government so that you can be violent and corrupt, and get away with it.

When Trump says “I’m going to pardon you for committing these crimes,” then the message becomes “If you commit crimes for me as we get closer to the election, I will do the same for you.”

That’s right. We also want to talk about not just Trump, but the enablers. So Rep. Paul Gosar, who should not be anywhere near government, in my opinion, who hangs out with Nazis, he was promising people pardons to get all the thugs he knew, all the right-wingers who were violent, to come on Jan. 6 — promising them pardons because Trump had just pardoned all these violent people like Roger Stone and Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon. That’s the environment.

All authoritarians use pardons because why do you want people sitting in jail, the worst people in the world, who are for you the best people, when they could be serving you? So Mussolini, Pinochet, they all use pardons to free up the people they need. It’s really awful, but this is where we are.

The fact that you know all this, does it scare you more?

I do. It’s a little eerie that things are unfolding exactly as they have — well, not exactly as they have in the past because it always looks different, which is why some people don’t see it coming. Because no, we’re not 1930s Germany, even though Trump’s saying, “I hope the economy crashes,” which is the Hitler playbook. But it redoubles my mission to speak out and to warn people. The challenge is to reach more people now, reach the people who usually don’t vote, who have no idea.

There was a poll that was very disturbing that said, I forgot what percent, a lot of Americans have never heard Trump’s authoritarian declarations. They’d never heard any of that, and some of them don’t know about his crimes because they don’t follow the news at all.

As a historian, are you concerned that there are Americans who sincerely believe it can’t happen here? “It” being fascism, authoritarianism and the end to self-determination as a people.

Oh, absolutely. Even when I’m speaking to people, and these are people who have come to hear me, so they know what I’m about, when I say things like, “The GOP is an autocratic entity, or it’s become autocratic” — I don’t use the word fascist often — you can see that they’re kind of, “Well, this is a little exaggerated.” It’s like a mental divide between what we hear about abroad and what we are. In the meantime, they’re going to pick their kid up from school, they’re going to the gym, and they don’t have any conception of how their lives would be affected. So it just seems like some blathering by a professor, and that is frustrating.

Sticking to Trump and what he says, at a rally recently, he mocked President Biden’s stutter. At another rally last year, he made fun of Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s husband, a man in his 80s who was hit in the head with a hammer. Trump doing that is one thing, but what is more bone-chilling to me is when he did that, the crowd cheered and laughed. With Biden’s stutter, the crowd cheered and laughed. What does that indicate to you?

This is part of his re-marketing of violence as positive. That’s the Pelosi part. There’s a reason that threats to members of Congress and their families are up like 400%.

Mocking the speech impediment is about cruelty. To have an autocracy, you need people to be cruel. You need them to think that solidarity and empathy and kindness are for weak people. That’s totally fascist. That’s what fascism is. In fact, Mussolini, who, like Hitler, read Nietzsche, the philosopher of the Übermensch and all that, and took away from it that if somebody is weak and they’re on a cliff, you should just push them because they’re useless to society. That’s the philosophy. Trump also made fun, years ago, of a New York Times reporter with a disability. And the disabled, just to take that theme for a second, have always been persecuted by fascists and others.

When Biden gave the State of the Union address, he raised the alarm about Trump. What more should he be doing, in talking about Trump, to alert our fellow Americans?

I was glad that he was doing that. You have to respond forcefully. This whole thing partly includes Putin’s maneuvers in Ukraine. Biden came to office and in his first press conference said, “We’ve got to prove democracy works.” So from the very beginning, he was going to not only save democracy in our country, but prove it works abroad and stop these people.

He had a summit with Putin in the summer of 2021. They sat there and Putin was placed as an equal visually, and they had the globe between them. It was in Geneva. I looked at Putin — because I live in these people’s heads, unfortunately — and I got a really bad feeling. He was also being grilled by the U.S. press, including by female journalists, and he didn’t like that at all. He was put on the spot by a female American journalist. I thought, “This is bad,” because there was something about him. So that night I wrote for my Lucid newsletter that Putin could become very reckless over the next months because he felt extremely threatened that Biden was there instead of Trump. It was a nightmare for him that Trump didn’t win. He was risking a lot.

Then we know what happened. He went into Ukraine and before that, he and China made a formal alliance. And so all of this, one way to read it is it’s because of Biden’s commitment to democracy. Now, after Jan. 6, he’s there. He almost didn’t make it into office, but now he’s there and we’re at the showdown. I think he needs to be even more forceful, but at least he’s stepped up.

Trump recently invited Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, to Mar-a-Lago. He said, “There’s no one that’s a better or smarter leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic.” What alarm bells go off when you hear that?

Trump has actually been conditioning Americans to see authoritarian leaders like Orbán as positive role models, as well as saying, “I’m going to be a dictator.” One of the interesting things he said after that was that Orbán is a “non-controversial leader because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and everybody accepts it, end of discussion.” So what Trump is saying is that literally being a dictator, dictating what you’re going to do and everybody just submits, shouldn’t be controversial. It’s how it’s going to be.

He’s using these visits not just to curry favor with these autocrats and whatever dirty deals they’re going to have — and it’s all about Putin, because Orbán is a client of Putin — but he’s using these occasions to keep indoctrinating Americans that this is the leadership they’re going to have.

It resonates with some folks in the base. I see interviews where people are like, “Yes, he’ll be a dictator just in the beginning to get everything right.” And you’re like, “You are not upset that he’ll be a dictator because he’ll be your dictator.” That’s the way it is. If Biden said, “I want to be a dictator,” the right would go ballistic, as they should.

They already say he’s a dictator. That’s what I call the upside-down world of authoritarianism. Marjorie Taylor Greene and others talk about the “Biden regime.” Mussolini did this: Liberal democracy is tyranny, fascism is freedom. Then we get all the way to Auschwitz, where the gates of said, “Work will set you free.” That’s the upside-down world of authoritarianism.

We’re seven or eight months out from the election right now. As we get closer, do you have concerns about violence by the MAGA movement? 

I do, because they’re being egged on. There was a news item out of Kansas, where there was a Republican fundraiser and they were using an effigy of Biden and encouraging people to attack it. This kind of violence against anybody who is trying to hold Trump accountable or protect democracy could easily, because of our lax gun laws, happen as the election nears.

If Trump loses in 2024, do you expect a similar scenario as we saw after 2020? Even a call for another Jan. 6-style attack?

I do. Sometimes I’ll have these thoughts and then they come to me and I’m like, “Oh, that’s not good.” It’s very interesting, when a president loses and a new one’s going to come in, there’s a transition team. That transition team is activated after the election is known. Project 2025, which has tens of thousands of people, 70 organizations, it builds itself as a transition team. Probably millions of dollars are being spent with giant staffs to plan a transition as though they think that whatever happens, they’re coming into power. So that is disturbing, and that’s a part of Project 2025 we haven’t thought about. Why are they doing all this if it’s going to be a free and a fair election, and they could lose?

It’s important for President Biden, as a defender of democracy, to adhere to democratic norms. Right now, there’s a debate about whether Biden should give him the standard national intelligence briefing. Do you think that is it in the nation’s best interests for Biden to adhere to this tradition that goes back to the time of Truman or, given the threat that Trump presents — and that he’s actually charged with felonies for mishandling classified documents — should Biden not give him the briefing? 

Somebody who has instigated a violent coup to overthrow the government and kept classified documents in the bathroom of his private residence is not exactly trustworthy. It’s not just Trump, it’s also Jared Kushner. We need to be investigating how he came out of the Trump administration immediately into the hands of the Saudis. It’s a whole flow of illicit money and networks. Absolutely he cannot be briefed. If that happens, that’s actually very naive.

If Trump wins in 2024, do you think he would leave office peacefully in 2028?

No. He’ll never leave, and if he falls ill or something, there’s other Trumpers waiting in the wings. It’s a dynasty. You could even see they’re talking about Jared Kushner as secretary of state, which would be perfect for crime, for corruption. You don’t know what will happen, but they build dynasties, and Trump has always had a family business. His two sons are not exactly equipped to take on high public office, but there are other people around. Lara Trump was just put in charge of the Republican National Committee so that every penny will go to [the Trump campaign]. This is classic corruption. So it could be anyone. It could be Lara Trump, who knows? As long as they keep control.

How’s this going to end if Trump ends up being convicted, he loses the election, he’s convicted and put in prison? With authoritarian movements from the past, do you have any guide? Does that weaken the movement, or no?

Yeah, there are polls showing that if he’s actually convicted and sent to jail, he may become irrelevant. We can contrast what has happened after Jan. 6 here with Brazil, where they had a military coup in 1964. They had over 20 years of horrible dictatorship, with torture and all kinds of things, that only ended in 1985. The political class, the judges, they all know. They were there, or their parents were there.

Brazil had its own insurrection, on Jan. 8 [in 2023], but the former president Jair Bolsonaro has been banned from politics until 2030, so his popularity is going down. Same thing happened in Italy without an insurrection: Silvio Berlusconi had over 20 indictments and 14 major corruption trials. He was finally convicted two years after he left office and banned from politics for five years. That’s when his amazing, formidable personality cult shriveled. Because personality cults, they’re like plants. You’ve got to water them, you got to tend to them, and they need the person to be viable and active. If they’re in jail or they’re banned from politics, that’s what you need to end them. So I hope to goodness that happens.

Going once, going twice: How Trump’s cash and properties would be garnished and auctioned to pay his NY fraud debt

Business Insider

Going once, going twice: How Trump’s cash and properties would be garnished and auctioned to pay his NY fraud debt

Laura Italiano – March 23, 2024

  • AG Letitia James plans to go after Trump’s cash and property if he doesn’t pay his civil fraud debt.
  • Trump’s bank accounts could be garnished and his properties sold at sheriff’s auction.
  • One of New York’s top judgment enforcement attorneys explains how that process would play out.

Don’t expect to see a gold-plated toilet dragged to the curb outside Trump Tower. Nor will there be padlocks summarily clapped on the glass revolving doors of 40 Wall Street or Trump Plaza.

Donald Trump’s March 25 deadline for showing Attorney General Letitia James the money — the now $457 million civil fraud judgment he owes New York — will likely come and go without any outward signs of tumult.

But if Trump doesn’t come up with the cash, bond, bankruptcy, or appellate stay that he needs to stop her, James has promised to immediately begin “enforcement,” a process that includes the potential seizing of his bank balances and the sheriff’s sale of some of his New York City and upstate New York properties.

And the estimated $3 billion he’s expected to reap six months from now, from taking Truth Social public, may come too late to ward off the auctioneers.

Bernard D’Orazio is a veteran Manhattan judgment-enforcement attorney who one city Sheriff’s Office insider calls “the best collection lawyer in New York.”

Here is D’Orazio’s myth-dispelling, step-by-step guide to what likely happens next.

Trump doesn’t have to do a thing

Trump is not legally bound to do anything on March 25, said D’Orazio, principal attorney at Bernard D’Orazio and Associates.

“He’s fully within his legal rights to do nothing, and if he fails to pay, he cannot be put in jail,” D’Orazio said.

“We don’t jail debtors anymore. We only jail them, in rare cases, if they don’t comply with court orders and are found in contempt of court,” he said.

“But the burden to do anything falls squarely on the winner, meaning the judgment creditor, which is what we call whoever won the lawsuit,” he added. “It’s their burden to seek enforcement of the judgment.”

So it’s all up to Letitia James?

It’s up to the attorney general to start enfocement, but she will have lots of help from New York’s Civil Practice Law and Rules and the sheriff’s offices of New York City and Westchester County. That’s where Trump has the bulk of his properties and where D’Orazio expects James would focus her efforts.

“The burden is on Letitia James to find Trump’s assets” and decide what she wants garnished or auctioned, he said.

That’ll be the easy part.

After five years of investigating and suing Trump — and regular updates from a court-ordered fraud monitor who’s been watching Trump Organization’s finances these past 16 months — James knows a lot about the worth and location of the GOP frontrunner’s cash and assets, something D’Orazio said will save her a lot of time.

But regardless of whether she decides to target Trump’s cash, his real estate, or a combination of both, it would be the county sheriffs who would actually garnish Trump’s bank balances and auction his real estate, he said.

Trump at Trump Palace
Trump posed outside the 55-story Trump Palace, at 69th Street, between Second and Third Avenue, in 1990.AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

“It is old school,” said D’Orazio. But we’re not talking about old-timey western movie sheriffs with cowboy hats and stars on their chests, he joked.

“Our legal system comes out of the British system, where ultimately, the enforcement of a civil judgment comes down to the sheriff,” he said.

So what happens first?

D’Orazio predicts James would first target the cash that Trump and the Trump Organization keep in New York-registered bank accounts.

“There may be a quick path forward in seeking to freeze his liquid assets,” he said.

“That can be done by the Attorney General sending a letter to the banks where his accounts are located. That doesn’t put the money in your hand yet,” he explained. “It’s just the first step in the process.”

Once the banks confirm to James that the funds are frozen, she’ll then direct the city sheriff’s office to “garnish” — meaning take — that money, he said.

“The sheriff sends a legal document called a ‘levy’ to the banks, demanding that the bank deliver the money to the sheriff,” he said.

“The sheriff then takes the money and takes his fee. The sheriff by law is entitled to 5%,” he said, money that goes into the city’s general fund.

“It’s called a ‘poundage fee,’ and he’s entitled to that by law,” he said.

Say the sheriff collects $100 million cash from Trump’s bank accounts. He would then remit $95 million to the Attorney General’s Office, and that would go toward paying Trump’s judgment.

The other $5 million would go into the city coffers, D’Orazio said.

But when’s the auction?

James probably wouldn’t drain Trump’s corporate bank accounts entirely, D’Orazio predicted.

“How’s he going to meet payroll?” he said. “I don’t think the Attorney General wants to put all the building porters and doormen out of work or close all these businesses.

Instead, she’d need to go after some of his real estate assets to reach her grand judgment total.

James would start by choosing which assets she wants to be sold. She told ABC last month that she already has her eye on 40 Wall Street, AKA “The Trump Building.” Trump owns a ground lease with a net value of around $80 million to that skyscraper, according to Forbes, which James can literally see from the windows of her financial district offices one block north.

The real estate assets James pursues could be physical properties, like 40 Wall, or Trump’s penthouse apartment in Trump Tower.

They could also be intangible assets, like his 30% stake in 1290 Avenue of the Americas, a skyscraper a block north of Radio City Music Hall. Forbes estimates the net worth of this stake alone at $287 million.

See the Trump properties James could target here.

James would inform the sheriff’s office of her choices. The sheriff’s office would then serve Trump with notice that it will be selling the assets.

“This is the ancient process of an execution of sale, a live auction where third parties would attend and bid on the property to be sold,” D’Orazio said.

Again, the sheriff’s office would collect its 5% poundage fee on any auction sale.

All told, the fee on the sales to cover a $500 million judgment could top $25 million, a boon to city coffers that would come straight out of Trump’s wallet.

Could they sell his Manhattan penthouse?

Trump’s Manhattan triplex penthouse — high atop Trump Tower, his flagship Fifth Avenue skyscraper — would be fair game, said D’Orazio.

Forbes estimates the penthouse is worth $52 million free and clear.

“That unit is owned by Trump personally and is not mortgaged and is not his primary residence,” making it a likely target, D’Orazio explained.

“If it were his primary residence, the Attorney General would need to get a court order in order to sell it,” he said.

“But it’s a secondary residence. So the attorney general could try to go after that asset pretty quickly. But pretty quickly means many months.”

Many months? Like, almost Election Day?

A lot has to happen before an actual sheriff’s sale, and Trump can be counted on to try to throw legal monkey wrenches throughout the process.

“The debtor can slow things down,” D’Orazio said.

Trump is already appealing the judgment to a Manhattan appellate court. He’s asking that the court reduce the judgment or to stay — meaning delay — its enforcement while the appeal progresses.

But there are additional monkey wrenches Trump can fling.

“There’s a safety valve feature in judgment enforcement law,” D’Orazio said.

“You can petition the judge for what’s known as a protective order, designed to prevent unnecessary harassment or abuse by the judgment creditor,” meaning by James, he said.

The civil fraud trial judge, state Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, would likely reject a protective order, but that rejection, too, can be appealed by Trump.

“The appellate court doesn’t hear appeals during the summer,” D’Orazio said. “So unless Trump somehow gets on the June calendar, which may be impossible, the next time the appellate court could hear the case would be September.”

A crowd of New Yorkers walk past the gray facade of 40 Wall Street where "The Trump Building" is spelled out in gold letters
Former president Trump owns the $80 million lease for 40 Wall StreetJeff Greenberg
An auction also takes time

Even without these litigation delays, it still takes three or four months to schedule, advertise and then hold an auction, D’Orazio said.

The sheriff’s office must publish a notice of the auction in a public newspaper four times before it can be held, he said.

Auctions are only held once a month in each of New York City’s five boroughs. James can seek to auction multiple properties at a single auction.

Trump’s Manhattan properties would be auctioned in Manhattan. Anyone could attend, but the logistics could be tricky given that there would be huge media and public interest once word gets out.

Whenever such a sale happens — if it happens — Trump would get to keep any proceeds that rise above what’s needed to satisfy the judgment.

But, as he himself has complained, the forced sale of his properties would be at “fire sale prices,” whether a sheriff does it or if he sells it himself to pay for an appeal bond.

“I would be forced to mortgage or sell Great Assets, perhaps at Fire Sale prices, and if and when I win the Appeal, they would be gone,” Trump said in a Truth Social post this week. “Does that make sense?”

Trump’s dark ‘retribution’ pledge at center of 2024 bid, but can he make it reality?

ABC News

Trump’s dark ‘retribution’ pledge at center of 2024 bid, but can he make it reality?

Alexandra Hutzler – March 23, 2024

Donald Trump, in his third run for the White House, has made “retribution” central to his agenda if elected.

“For hard-working Americans, Nov. 5 will be our new Liberation Day,” Trump said as he headlined this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. “But for the liars, and cheaters, and fraudsters, and censors and imposters who have commandeered our government, it will be their Judgment Day.”

Potential targets include former Rep. Liz Cheney and other individuals critical of his efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat. He recently said Cheney and fellow members of the House committee that investigated him “should go to jail” despite the fact they’ve not been accused of any crimes.

Last year, as he complained of “weaponization” of the Justice Department after being indicted, Trump said he would appoint a special prosecutor to go after President Joe Biden and his family.

MORE: Trump claims Liz Cheney and Jan. 6 committee should be jailed

“Donald Trump’s campaign strategy has been to say that everything is chaotic, that the world is a dangerous place and the nation is falling apart, that Joe Biden is an incompetent leader and the only way to save the nation is to vote for Trump,” said Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of political rhetoric at Texas A&M University. “That’s not unusual for him. He has been saying that since 2016. But the strategy has been darker this time around.”

“He really wants to avenge his loss in 2020,” she added, “and he is very good at using language as a weapon.”

PHOTO: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally, Mar. 9, 2024, in Rome Ga.  (Mike Stewart/AP)
PHOTO: Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally, Mar. 9, 2024, in Rome Ga. (Mike Stewart/AP)

But how far could Trump go, if elected, in carrying out such a vision? Or how much is it just designed to rile up his supporters, many of whom appear eager to embrace his message.

“The answer is, it depends,” said Bruce Green, a Fordham Law ethics expert who examined this exact issue back in 2018.

At the very least, a retribution campaign as Trump has described would require a significant reshaping of the modern-day Justice Department, which has a tradition of independence dating back to the post-Watergate era.

Internal policies enacted at the department after the Richard Nixon Watergate scandal sought to separate politics from law enforcement, and presidents of both parties have since abided by that construct — until Trump, according to Green.

But those policies aren’t codified by law, Green noted, and if Trump were to appoint an attorney general who embraced his theory of sweeping presidential power and discretion, investigations could be launched into perceived enemies.

PHOTO: Supporters of former President Donald Trump stand outside of the Alto Lee Adams Sr. U.S. Courthouse as they await his arrival on Mar. 1, 2024, in Fort Pierce, Fla.  (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
PHOTO: Supporters of former President Donald Trump stand outside of the Alto Lee Adams Sr. U.S. Courthouse as they await his arrival on Mar. 1, 2024, in Fort Pierce, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Even then, there are still backstops in place to deter Trump’s more pointed threats. DOJ officials and prosecutors who are not politically appointed could threaten revolt, as has happened in the past. Evidence of wrongdoing would still need to be presented, and courts could reject politically-motivated cases that lack sufficient proof of a crime.

“So, you’d have whatever the traditional limitations are created by our judicial process, including the Constitution and statutes, but you wouldn’t have the gatekeeping function that we’ve counted on the Justice Department to exercise,” Green said.

MORE: Trump’s ‘retribution’ campaign theme has apparent roots in old Confederate code, new book says

It’s also worth noting Trump tried to target his political foes during his last administration and faced resistance.

He fumed at Jeff Sessions, his first attorney general, when Sessions recused himself from the DOJ’s investigation into Russian meddling into the 2016 election. In various social media posts, he named people Sessions should go after, including then-FBI Director James Comey, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

After firing Sessions, Trump found what many believed to be a friendlier ally in Bill Barr. Barr framed special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report in what many said were more favorable terms for Trump than the findings warranted. He also drew scrutiny for intervening in the government’s case against Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn and for suggesting a lighter sentence for longtime Trump ally Roger Stone. The actions led many Democrats and former DOJ officials to decry the politicization of the department under Barr’s leadership.

PHOTO: President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr step off Air Force One upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, Sept. 1, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
PHOTO: President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr step off Air Force One upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, Sept. 1, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

But when Trump urged Barr and the Department of Justice to push a narrative of election fraud after his loss to Biden in November 2020, the attorney general and others declined to fall in line. Then-Vice President Mike Pence, a loyalist to Trump, also resisted his demands to unilaterally reject the election results during the certification on Jan. 6, 2021.

Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said she believed Trump would be stopped again if he tried to use his office to go after enemies or other acts of retribution.

“The Founding Fathers anticipated a Donald Trump,” Kamarck said. “They built a system of checks and balances, and it’s working so far. If Donald Trump won, what would it take to dismantle that checks and balances? It would take a clean sweep of the Congress — 60 senators in the Senate and an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives — and the courts to start the dismantling. And I don’t see that happening at this time and I don’t see it happening within the four years that he has to do it.”

“In other words,” Kamarck said, “we’re not a banana republic yet even if he’d like to make us one.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung, in response to expert comments that retribution would require never-before-seen politicization of the DOJ, told ABC News, “As President Trump has repeatedly said, the best retribution is the overall success of the American people.”

Lost in the malignant normality of the Trumpocene

Salon – Opinion

Lost in the malignant normality of the Trumpocene

Chauncey DeVega – March 21, 2024

Donald Trump KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Donald Trump KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images

The Trumpocene is not normal. If you accept that it is normal or otherwise become habituated to it, the neofascists and other enemies of democracy have won.

For at least the last eight years I have been writing several times a week about the rise of Trumpism and the deep cultural and societal rot that birthed the monstrosity. I view this work as a type of chronicle, an ongoing account of America’s surreal misadventure. As Hannah Arendt and other truth-tellers have shown, fascism and other forms of authoritarianism are an assault on reality, the facts, and the very idea of the truth. Chronicling and otherwise documenting these events and their meaning is a way of trying to ensure that the facts are preserved, as public memory is under assault and organized forgetting spreads rapidly.

On this, Arendt famously warned, “the ideal subject of a totalitarian state is not the convinced Nazi or Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Chronicling the Trumpocene and America’s democracy crisis and other struggles in this era is also a type of witnessing, which means not just recording the facts but testifying and feeling the pain of others. As psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton teaches, “One bears witness by taking in the situation — in this case, its malignant nature — and then telling one’s story about it, in this case with the help of professional knowledge, so that we add perspective on what’s wrong, rather than being servants of the powers responsible for the malignant normality. We must be people with a conscience in a very fundamental way.”

It is not just those of us with a public platform who should be carefully chronicling and documenting the Trumpocene and these aberrant events. Everyone who claims to care about democracy and a free society should be doing the same thing. Moreover, this should be done not just online or in some other digital form but in print. The digital is so ephemeral and can easily be disappeared or otherwise altered. Paper is much more real and permanent — and thus dangerous. That is why fascists and other enemies of truth and democracy censor and burn books.

When reality and truth are under siege, doing this type of intellectual and spiritual work is a way to remain sane. As I tell many of the people who reach out to me about escaping the Trumpocene nightmare and who feel exhausted and confused, “You are not crazy, the Trumpocene (and late capitalism, the culture of cruelty, pandemic politics and trauma, environmental collapse, and future shock etc. etc.) is just making you feel that way.”

During the Trumpocene there have been many days when I feel like Charleston Heston in “Planet of the Apes” screaming “It’s a Madhouse!” or Peter Finch as Howard Beale in “Network” bellowing, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” And there have also been moments, especially as I watch Trumpism nakedly morph into some version of American Hitlerism where I truly wonder if I am Peter Weller in David Cronenberg’s film “Naked Lunch,” and if I have been exposed to that damn “bug powder.”

I know I am not alone in these feelings.

But I realized some months ago that I had made a fundamental error in my assumptions and method in how I have been chronicling these very bad times. The Trumpocene, like other forms of fascism and such malign forces do not exist in a finite space or in a linear relationship to time; it and they really have no concrete beginning and/or end. Such political formations are a type of force that is like a book or story that continues to have chapters added to it in real time. The challenge then, is how to document and intervene against such a force that is dynamic and not static.

To better orient myself, I have been returning to how the Trumpocene (the Age of Trump, the MAGAverse, TrumpWorld or whatever moniker one applies to these years) as a type of malignant normality. Focusing on that constant wrongness has ironically helped me to keep perspective and reinforced how this state of affairs cannot last forever because such systems almost always collapse inward on themselves. And of course, when the collapse takes place, it will not be without great pain and that euphemism for mass death, “collateral damage.”

In a sharp essay at the Bulwark, Jonathan Last says this about the Trumpocene and malignant normality:

When insanity becomes the norm, it ceases to be insane. As a practical matter, it is impossible for a society to spend a decade listening to an unwell man say crazy, disassociated, garbled words for hours at a time, almost daily, and maintain the position that he is unhinged. At some point, society decides that the man they once regarded as unhinged, simply is. It’s like sitting in a room that stinks of sulfur. At first the smell is intolerable; but after a while you can’t even notice it if you try. This is more than human nature: It’s how our brains are wired to adapt to environmental conditions. That’s one of my big worries about the next eight months: That it will be biologically and psychologically impossible for a crucial percentage of voters to perceive what the Republican candidate for president actually is.

At the New Yorker, Susan Glasser offers this description of Trump’s recent speech in Rome, Georgia, noting how he embodies and projects malignant normality as a type of patient zero and the main character in a twisted politics reality TV show that he is making up as he goes along:

Trump’s appearance in Georgia, by contrast, reflected a man not rooted in any kind of reality, one who struggled to remember his words and who was, by any definition, incoherent, disconnected, and frequently malicious. (This video compilation, circulating on social media, nails it.) In one lengthy detour, he complained about Biden once being photographed on a beach in his bathing suit. Which led him to Cary Grant, which led him to Michael Jackson, which led him back to the point that even Cary Grant wouldn’t have looked good in a bathing suit at age eighty-one. In another aside, he bragged about how much “women love me,” citing as proof the “suburban housewives from North Carolina” who travel to his rallies around the country. He concluded that portion of his speech by saying:

“But it was an amazing phenomenon and I do protect women. Look, they talk about suburban housewives. I believe I’m doing well—you know, the polls are all rigged. Of course lately they haven’t been rigged because I’m winning by so much, so I don’t want to say it. Disregard that statement. I love the polls very much.”

Makes perfect sense, right?

Echoing Glasser’s concerns about Trump and his disconnect from reality, chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, Miles Taylor, who I recently spoke with here at Salon, told MSNBC last Thursday: “The man that I interacted with years ago was very visibly unwell, was observably unstable, and he was the president of the United States then. I can only imagine what’s happened to him since. We’ve witnessed it, we all see it as an American public. But I can’t imagine how unstable he’ll be behind that resolute desk again.”

In another example of how none of this is normal and America’s elites and those so-called guardians of democracy and “the system” have normalized Trump’s deviance and evil, the corrupt ex-president, traitor, Jan. 6 coup attempter, defendant who is facing hundreds of years in prison for serious felonies – which include stealing classified and other top secret documents – will soon be getting intelligence briefings. Why? Because of “tradition” as he is the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. On this perilous absurdity, Tom Nichols warns in the Atlantic:

The decision rests, as always, with the sitting president, and Joe Biden is likely to continue this practice so that he will not be accused of “politicizing” access to intelligence. Such accusations need not be taken seriously; they would only be more meaningless noise from a GOP that has already stumbled in a clumsy attempt to impeach Biden after leveling charges of corruption at both him and his son. And although denying Trump access to classified briefs would produce squawks and yowls from Republicans, it would also serve as a reminder that Trump cannot be trusted with classified information.

The risks of denying Trump these early briefings are negligible. As we learned from his presidency, Trump is fundamentally unbriefable: He doesn’t listen, and he doesn’t understand complicated national-security matters anyway. The problem with giving Trump these briefings, however, isn’t that he’s ignorant. He’s also dangerous, as his record shows.

Indeed, if Trump were a federal employee, he’d have likely already been stripped of his clearances and escorted from the building. I say this from experience: I was granted my first security clearance when I was 25 years old—Ronald Reagan was still president, which tells you how long ago that was—and I held a top-secret clearance when I advised a senior U.S. senator during the Gulf War. I then held a clearance as a Department of Defense employee for more than a quarter century.

Government employees who hold clearances have to attend annual refresher courses about a variety of issues, including some pretty obvious stuff about not writing down passwords or taking money from a friendly Chinese businessman wearing an American baseball cap. (No, really, that’s a scenario in some of the course materials.) But one area of annual training is always about “insider threats,” the people in your own organization who may pose risks to classified information. Federal workers are taken through a list of behaviors and characteristics that should trigger their concern enough to report the person involved, or at least initiate a talk with a supervisor.

Trump checks almost every box on those lists. (You can find examples of insider-threat training here and here, but every agency has particular briefs they give to their organizations.)

Continuing with this betrayal of America’s pluralistic multiracial democracy, Trump recently met with Hungary’s neofascist leader, Viktor Orban. This meeting is part of a much larger pattern where today’s Republican Party and larger “conservative” movement are forging an international alliance with malign actors and other enemies of democracy.

At the Daily Beast, David Rothkopf, sounds this alarm:

Within a 24-hour period, the 2024 presidential campaign kicked off in a way that could not present the choice before the American public more starkly.

Joe Biden stood before the Congress and, in his State of the Union address, made a powerful case that he would fight with every fiber of his being to preserve American democracy and the fundamental freedoms of all Americans.

Then, late Friday, Donald Trump hosted Hungary’s authoritarian ruler, Viktor Orbán, in the kind of pro-Putin, anti-democracy summit that perfectly captured the true nature of today’s MAGA Republican Party. The dinner reception was so important that even Melania Trump made one of her rare appearances at her husband’s side. Trump said, “There’s nobody smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s the boss. He’s a non-controversial figure because he says, ‘This is the way it’s going to be and that’s the end of it.’ He’s the boss. He’s a great leader.”

A day earlier, Orbán—Vladimir Putin’s man in Europe, his acolyte and champion—met behind closed doors with the leaders of the new American right at the Heritage Foundation.

There it is, America. Biden is running to preserve America’s traditional values and institutions. Trump and the GOP have openly embraced autocracy, celebrating the virtues of “strong man” government.

If Donald Trump had actually been put on trial, and properly punished for the crimes of Jan. 6 and his other violations of American democracy, civil society and the law, the Trumpocene and this state of malignant normality would be closer to dissipating. Of course, and in an anti-climax because it confirms what has long been obvious, the Washington Post is reporting that Attorney General Merrick Garland delayed investigating Trump for his obvious crimes of Jan. 6 and the larger coup plot for more than a year. The result of that choice is that Trump will likely not be tried and sentenced before the 2024 Election. If he defeats President Biden, Trump will then ignore the verdicts against him and seek revenge on all people who dared to hold him accountable for his crime spree.

Investigative reporters Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis detail how:

Hours after he was sworn in as attorney general, Merrick Garland and his deputies gathered in a wood-paneled conference room in the Justice Department for a private briefing on the investigation he had promised to make his highest priority: bringing to justice those responsible for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In the two months since the siege, federal agents had conducted 709 searches, charged 278 rioters and identified 885 likely suspects, said Michael R. Sherwin, then-acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, ticking through a slide presentation. Garland and some of his deputies nodded approvingly at the stats, and the new attorney general called the progress “remarkable,” according to people in the room.

Congressional staffers barricade doors while taking cover during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Amanda Voisard for The Washington Post)

Sherwin’s office, with the help of the FBI, was responsible for prosecuting all crimes stemming from the Jan. 6 attack. He had made headlines the day after by refusing to rule out the possibility that President Donald Trump himself could be culpable. “We are looking at all actors, not only the people who went into the building,” Sherwin said in response to a reporter’s question about Trump. “If the evidence fits the elements of a crime, they’re going to be charged.”

But according to a copy of the briefing document, absent from Sherwin’s 11-page presentation to Garland on March 11, 2021, was any reference to Trump or his advisers — those who did not go to the Capitol riot but orchestrated events that led to it.

A Washington Post investigation found that more than a year would pass before prosecutors and FBI agents jointly embarked on a formal probe of actions directed from the White House to try to steal the election. Even then, the FBI stopped short of identifying the former president as a focus of that investigation.

A wariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of Trump and those around him all contributed to the slow pace. Garland and the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, charted a cautious course aimed at restoring public trust in the department while some prosecutors below them chafed, feeling top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by Trump and those close to him, The Post found.

Ultimately, malignant normality through Trumpism, neofascism, white supremac(ies) racism(s) or whatever other type of vessel it uses to inject its poison is a threat to a humane society and a real social democracy. The language and labels we use to describe this reactionary revolutionary project must not distract us from that basic and foundational truth.

As always, Henry Giroux makes an incisive intervention and offers moral clarity. In a new essay at the La Progressive which merits being quoted at length, he offers a warning and a call to action:

The cruel language and practices of human degradation and destructiveness now feed a growing fascist politics in the U.S. Fascist demagogues now boast about their racial fantasies, unchecked adoration of violence, and their aggressive lawlessness. What Ingmar Bergman once called “The Serpent’s Egg,” a metaphor for the birth of fascism, is about to hatch.

In a world shaped increasingly by emerging authoritarianism, it has become increasingly difficult to remember what a purposeful and substantive democracy looks like, or for that matter, what the idea of democracy might suggest. Democracy as an ideal, promise, and working practice is under assault, just as a number of far-right educational, market, military, and religious fundamentalisms are gaining ascendancy in American society. Increasingly, it becomes more challenging to inhabit those public spheres where politics thrives—where thinking, speaking, and acting subjects engage and critically address the major forces and problems bearing down on their lives. In this new moment in history, which too often resembles the nightmares of a fascist past with its banning of books, erasing of history, attack on trans people, and support of white nationalism and supremacy, the question of how society should imagine itself or what its future might hold has become more demanding given the eradication of social formations that place an emphasis on truth, social justice, freedom, equality, and compassion.

Historical and social amnesia have become the organizing principles of U.S. society. Lies morph into the celebration of violence, and language becomes part of the machinery of social death, relegated to the sphere of consumer culture, and devoid of an ethical grammar that is banished to zones of political and social abandonment.

Here, Giroux focuses in on how malignant normality reflects a failure of imagination:

What’s happening in this country is a failure of imagination.

Many of us take our freedoms for granted. We can’t envision a day when our rights would disappear, leaving us at the mercy of a dictatorship that’s accountable to no one.

Human beings are basically optimistic, and many of us haven’t considered the possibility that 248 years of democracy could end on a single election day. But they can, and they might.

Today I’m asking you to be alarmed – to be deeply afraid. But not crippled by that fear. I’m pleading with you to become motivated to avert a national disaster….

That’s right. The Nazi agenda was inconceivable to decent people – and that’s part of the reason it became a reality.

There was a failure of imagination.

But with today’s MAGA fascism, we don’t have to exercise our imagination very much. We just have to fight the temptation to downplay the dangers that Trump and his gang display in public, for all of us to see….

Whatever you do, don’t ignore what’s happening. Be part of the patriotic rescue of your country – something you can take pride in for the rest of your days. Consider it your gift to your children, your grandchildren, and future generations that you’ll never know.

Fight fascism now, while you can. Be a hero to your country.

I often use therapeutic language to describe the Trumpocene because fascism and other such evil forces are not “just” about politics but are an attack on our collective mental, spiritual, and physical – and intellectual – health. Applying that framework, Donald Trump is abusing the American people.

In an abusive relationship, the horrible and wrong becomes normalized and the victim often ends up celebrating those days when there is no abuse. In essence, what should be every day and a baseline becomes something special and “proof” that the relationship can somehow work or is “healthy.” Unfortunately, too many Americans have internalized the abuse, believe they deserve it, and as shown by public opinion polls want Donald Trump back in the White House to punish them (and the people they hate) some more.