Monthly Archives: March 2022

Carey Dunne, center, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance's general counsel, leaves federal court in Manhattan, July 1, 2021. (Jefferson Siegel/The New York Times)

NEW YORK On a late January afternoon, two senior prosecutors stood before the new Manhattan district attorney, hoping to persuade him to criminally charge the former president of the United States.

The prosecutors, Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, detailed their strategy for proving that Donald Trump knew his annual financial statements were works of fiction. Time was running out: The grand jury hearing evidence against Trump was set to expire in the spring. They needed the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, to decide whether to seek charges.

But Bragg and his senior aides, masked and gathered around a conference table on the eighth floor of the district attorneys office in lower Manhattan, had serious doubts. They hammered Pomerantz and Dunne about whether they could show that Trump had intended to break the law by inflating the value of his assets in the annual statements, a necessary element to prove the case.

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The questioning was so intense that as the meeting ended, Dunne, exasperated, used a lawyerly expression that normally refers to a judges fiery questioning:

Wow, this was a really hot bench, Dunne said, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. What Im hearing is you have great concerns.

The meeting, on Jan. 24, started a series of events that brought the investigation of Trump to a sudden halt, and late last month prompted Pomerantz and Dunne to resign. It also represented a drastic shift: Braggs predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., had deliberated for months before deciding to move toward an indictment of Trump. Bragg, not two months into his tenure, reversed that decision.

Bragg has maintained that the three-year inquiry is continuing. But the reversal, for now, has eliminated one of the gravest legal threats facing the former president.

This account of the investigations unraveling, drawn from interviews with more than a dozen people knowledgeable about the events, pulls back a curtain on one of the most consequential prosecutorial decisions in U.S. history. Had the district attorneys office secured an indictment, Trump would have been the first current or former president to be criminally charged.

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Bragg was not the only one to question the strength of the case, the interviews show. Late last year, three career prosecutors in the district attorneys office opted to leave the investigation, uncomfortable with the speed at which it was proceeding and with what they maintained were gaps in the evidence.

Bragg, whose office is conducting the investigation along with lawyers working for New York Attorney General Letitia James, had not taken issue with Dunne and Pomerantz presenting evidence to the grand jury in his first days as district attorney. But as the weeks passed, he developed concerns about the challenge of showing Trumps intent a requirement for proving that he criminally falsified his business records and about the risks of relying on the former presidents onetime fixer, Michael Cohen, as a key witness.

Cohens testimony, the prosecutors leading the investigation argued, could help to establish that Trump was intentionally misleading when he exaggerated the value of his properties. The financial statements Trump submitted to banks to secure loans documents that say Donald J. Trump is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of the valuations could also support a case.

Bragg was not persuaded. Once he told Pomerantz and Dunne that he was not prepared to authorize charges, they resigned. Explaining the resignation to his team of prosecutors in a meeting a day later, Dunne said he felt he needed to disassociate myself with this decision because I think it was on the wrong side of history.

Bragg has told aides that the inquiry could move forward if a new piece of evidence is unearthed, or if a Trump Organization insider decides to turn on Trump. Other prosecutors in the office saw that as fanciful.

Trump has long denied wrongdoing and has accused Bragg and James, both of whom are Democrats and Black, of carrying out a politically motivated witch hunt and being racists.

Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for Bragg, said the investigation into Trump was continuing under new leadership.

Pomerantz and Dunne declined to comment.

The Brain Trust

Vance and his top deputies were riding high last summer.

They had just announced criminal tax charges against Trumps family business and his longtime finance chief, Allen Weisselberg. The next step for Dunne, Pomerantz and their team was to build a case against Trump himself.

By the fall, a number of the prosecutors assigned to the investigation thought it was likely that Trump had broken the law. Proving it would be another matter.

Concern among the offices career prosecutors about the investigation into the former president came to a head in September at a meeting they sought with Dunne. Dunne offered to have them work only on the pending trial of Weisselberg or leave the Trump team altogether.

Two prosecutors eventually took him up on the latter.

Vance pressed on, and in early November, convened a new special grand jury to start hearing evidence against the former president. Still, he had yet to decide whether to direct the prosecutors to begin a formal grand jury presentation with the goal of seeking charges. As his tenure drew to a close in December, he consulted a group of prominent outside lawyers to help inform what would be his final decision.

The group was referred to internally as the brain trust a handful of former prosecutors that included two senior members of Robert Muellers special counsel inquiry into Trumps 2016 campaign.

Before they all convened for a meeting on Dec. 9, Dunne and Pomerantz circulated hypothetical opening arguments in advance: one for the prosecution, another for the defense.

The deliberations led prosecutors to simplify the charges they planned to seek to make it easier to win a conviction, and Vance was soon persuaded. Three days later, Dunne sent the team an email announcing that they would proceed. The plan, he said, was to seek charges from the panel in the spring.

Most of the remaining career prosecutors were on board. But that week, a third prosecutor left the investigation into Trump.

Time Is of the Essence

With Vance about to leave office, the investigators attention turned to their future boss.

Bragg first got involved in the district attorneys criminal investigation in the final days of last year. He and his top deputies met with Pomerantz and Dunne over the holidays, appearing eager to get up to speed.

Braggs first priority upon taking office was adopting a new set of policies that essentially reduced the list of crimes for which he would seek jail time. The decision, announced internally in a Jan. 3 memo, prompted a fierce backlash from law enforcement, elected officials and some members of the public.

Dunne emailed Bragg and his team that day, emphasizing the need to make a decision about the Trump case within two weeks. Time is of the essence, Dunne wrote.

Bragg signaled a strong interest in the investigation and committed to adding two prosecutors to the team.

When they met again Jan. 11 to focus on Trumps financial statements, Braggs team asked a number of questions and offered suggestions for how to present a case against Trump to a jury.

Dunne and Pomerantz then resumed their grand jury presentation, questioning Trumps longtime accountant from Mazars USA on Jan. 19 and a real estate valuation expert the next day.

Around that time, Weisselbergs lawyers filed legal papers seeking to dismiss the earlier indictment, a routine filing that nevertheless appeared to raise alarms for Bragg and his team about using Cohen to prosecute Trump. The papers took aim at Cohen, claiming that he was pursuing a vendetta against Weisselberg as revenge for the accountants having testified against him before a federal grand jury in the hush-money case.

It was the next day, Jan. 24, that Pomerantz and Dunne faced the hot bench.

There, Bragg expressed concern about calling Cohen as a witness. He and his aides also emphasized the potential difficulty of proving that Trump had intended to break the law.

Braggs aides agreed that it was wise to stand down.

One Decision, Two Resignations

Pomerantz did not take kindly to the setback. In an email soon after the Jan. 24 meeting, he threatened to resign if Bragg did not make a final decision about the future of the investigation.

He also offered to make a series of presentations about crucial issues in the case in an effort to speed up Braggs decision. Bragg agreed, and Pomerantz and Dunne delivered three presentations beginning early last month. After some of the meetings, Braggs team met behind closed doors without the two prosecutors.

Pomerantz and Dunne had one final chance to sway Bragg in a meeting on Valentines Day. The topic: Which laws had Trump broken?

On the morning of Feb. 22, Bragg notified them of his decision: He did not want to continue the grand jury presentation.

Pomerantz resigned the next day. Bragg asked Dunne to stay, but within hours, he joined Pomerantz in leaving.

Dunne, however, left the door open to a possible return. If Bragg reconsidered his decision, Dunne told colleagues, he would gladly come back.

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How the Manhattan DA's Investigation Into Donald Trump ...

Proclaiming whats going to happen is a popular way to shrug off taking responsibility for helping to determine whats going to happen. And its something weve seen a lot with doomspreading prophecies that Donald Trump is going to run for president or even win in 2024.

One of the assumptions is that Trump will still be alive and competent to run, but the health of this sedentary shouter in his mid-70s, including the after-effects of the Covid-19 he was hospitalised for in 2020, could change.

Look to external issues too, for whatever the condition of his own health, his financial health is under attack, with businesses losing money and some banks refusing to lend to him after the storming of the Capitol.

Its also worth remembering that he lost the popular vote by millions in 2016 and by more millions in 2020; he never had a mandate. The Republicans are clearly gearing up to try to steal an election again, but their chances of winning one with Trump as candidate seem slim. Currently, he is creating conflict within the Republican party with his insistence on controlling it for his own agenda and punishing dissenters.

Another assumption we make when we assess Trumps prospects is that he wont be locked up in 2024, or that his reputation, such as it is, wont be severely damaged even in the eyes of some who voted for him before. Even in the past couple of weeks his standing has shifted significantly. Former attorney general Bill Barr is now speaking up to promote his book about how Trump was clearly advised that his claims of election theft had no basis and that his strategies to overturn the results were illegal. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has woken up people around the world (or at least those who were dozing) to Vladimir Putins malevolence and reminded Americans of how eagerly Trump allied himself with the Russian dictator, personally and politically. Suddenly a lot of Republicans are trying to scurry away from their own pro-Putin record, which may mean distancing themselves from Trump as well. His 2019 withholding of military aid to Ukraine to try to pressure Ukrainian president Zelenskiy into supporting his lies is also being re-examined under the harsh light of this war.

Additionally, Trump is facing many criminal charges, from allegations of financial dirty dealing by the Trump Organization in New York (Trump has called the various probes into the business politically motivated), to an investigation into whether Trump and his allies subverted election results in Georgia, where Trump claims election fraud took place. Just last week, the January 6 committee laid out a series of potential charges against the ex-president, including conspiracy to defraud the American people and obstructing an official proceeding of Congress. Trumps domestic status seems to be shifting rapidly. He is also facing so many lawsuits that both CNN and NBC published indexes of the cases. Last month news broke that Trump had left the White House with classified documents, which he claimed he had a right to take to his home. That could be a felony, though how much appetite the Biden administration has for jailing a former president remains to be seen.

Among the large array of civil charges Trump faces are E Jean Carrolls allegations of defamation over his insult-laden denial that he raped her (he has responded that he was simply responding in the line of official duties) and former consigliere Michael Cohens case that his return to prison was triggered by Trump after Cohen released a revealing memoir. There are also suits holding Trump responsible for the January 6 insurrection both from members of Congress, and two policemen injured in the mayhem. In February the courts ruled that these civil suits can go forward, and Trump lacks the immunity that would protect him from them. Trump has initiated lawsuits of his own, but a great many have been dismissed, although he is still suing his niece, Mary Trump, for disclosing tax information about him. She in turn is suing him and two of his siblings, alleging that they defrauded her out of much of her inheritance (which they deny).

Though the 14th amendment of the US constitution should ban all insurrectionists from running for elected office, it seems unlikely to be applied to 21st-century candidates the way it was to former Confederates. But still, the Georgia and New York charges are serious. All of which is to say that the road from early 2022 to late 2024 is bumpy for Trump. Popular opinion is fickle; George W Bush is Trumps age and clearly a permanent has-been. Even Barack Obama, at 60, has strolled offstage.

But even if Trump is not indisputably in the running, Trumpism is running rampant, and its a force to contend with in political races across the US. Trump was a super-spreader of his brand of amoral self-interest that tramples fact, truth, law and rights. The man himself is sulking in his private club in Florida enduring effectual exile from New York, Washington and Twitter but to a degree, his work is done. He has got an already corrupt political party to embrace his tactics and values. The brazen lies of prominent figures in the party show that theyve abandoned all ethics and standards, and will happily violate the oaths they took to uphold the constitution. Viral Trumpism has already merged with conspiracy theories such as QAnon, with anti-vaccine cults, with white supremacists and neo-fascists, and with the gun-fetishising groups that continue to have an ominous presence in public life.

I sometimes think of the American right as a pot on the boil; whats inside is concentrating as it shrinks. The Republican party has been losing membership for years: a Gallup poll earlier this month reports that 24% of eligible voters are registered Republican, a steady decline over the past 15 years.Thats a reminder that news stories revealing that a majority of Republicans believe something could actually mean that only a small minority of Americans do.

There have been high-profile defections and general atrophy in the age of Trump. Thats the shrinking. But then theres the concentration that renders those who remain more furious, more closed-minded, more ready to jump on any bandwagon that looks as if it leads to power, and even more rigidly committed to an increasingly rightwing agenda, even though or maybe because that means minority rule.

For progressives, Republican desperation is a good sign, in its way. A popular party doesnt have to suppress votes and steal elections. A party aligned with the will of the people doesnt need to lie and cheat. Trumpism seems like a last gasp, a desperate last chance to hang on to whats slipping away. The old Soviet-satellite aphorism You can cut down the flowers but you cant stop the spring applies nicely.

The future of this country is white-minority. Yet the Republican party has done its best to alienate everybody else, while the rising majority of Americans support reproductive rights, climate action and many economic justice measures. The long-term progressive future of the United States seems almost inevitable. But with Trumpism still a force, the short-term future is alarming and unpredictable, and the damage may be lasting; whether its the prevention of climate action or the infliction of literal and financial violence on poor and marginalised people.

Enemies of authoritarianism and white supremacy have their work cut out, but the task is clear and straightforward: to protect the democratic process, upholding voting rights and free and fair elections, to try to win those elections for progressive candidates, and to articulate and defend the values behind those objectives.

Trump is treading water, but this is how resistance to Trumpism works, and how it can prevail if enough people work at it hard enough.

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Donald Trumps power is fading: Trumpism is the clear and present danger now - The Guardian

When former President Donald Trump summoned then U.S. Attorney General William Barr in early December, he says he knew it wasn't going to be a pleasant meeting and thought Trump was going to fire him.

"I told my assistant as I left the office she may have to pack up for me because often he would tell you not to come back," Barr told "CBS Mornings."

When he entered the Oval Office, Barr said the conversation quickly turned into a back and forth between Barr and Trump about the former president's allegations of widespread fraud.

During that conversation, Barr said Trump got "madder and madder" so Barr said that he could resign if Trump was not happy about his work.

"I said, 'look, Mr. President, I know you're unhappy with me. I'm happy to tender my resignation.' Boom, he hit the desk, and said, accepted," Barr recalled. "As I was pulling out of the White House, two of his lawyers came and pounded on the window, government lawyers, and said, 'The president doesn't want you to leave.'"

This is just one of several events that Barr details in his new book, "One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General," which went on sale on Tuesday.

Barr said after that encounter, he reluctantly stayed although he knew his relationship with Trump had deteriorated.

"I didn't leave then because I wanted to see how this was playing out and I thought I could continue to look at these claims and make sure that people understood that most of, well, what was being presented simply wasn't true," he said.

When asked if he would vote for Trump if runs for office in 2024, Barr said he would support the Republican candidate even if it is Trump.

"I would not work with him, if I was faced with that choice," he said. "I hope I'm not faced with that choice. I don't think the party will go back in that direction."

Barr's resignation was official in December 2020. He has not spoken to Trump since then and said he wouldn't particularly want to have another conversation.

"You don't have a conversation [with him]. You mostly listen," he said.

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Former Attorney General William Barr says Trump got "madder and madder" when challenged on unfounded allegations of election fraud - CBS...

Former President Donald Trump suggested again this weekend that he was likely to make another White House run in 2024, according to a speech to Republican donors obtained by The Washington Post.

I wonder who that might be, he quipped Saturday about the next potential GOP presidential nominee, with the Post reporting that the crowd responded by chanting his name.

Trump spoke at length in the New Orleans Four Seasons hotel, reiterating false claims that he won in 2020. Bipartisan local, state and federal officials, even Trump-appointed judges and Trumps own attorney general and Department of Homeland Security leaders, say there was no widespread fraud or irregularities impacting the race won by President Joe Biden.

Weve already won two presidential elections, Trump claimed without presenting evidence of a second victory. And now I feel obligated that we have to really look strongly at doing it again. We are looking at it very, very strongly. We have to do it. We have to do it.

Trumps comments mirrored those from his speech a few weeks ago at the the Conservative Political Action Conference.

On November 2024, they will find out like never before, Trump told the Orlando crowd last month. We did it twice and well do it again, were going to be doing it again a third time.

Biden has faced dwindled approval ratings since taking office in 2021, with the COVID-19 pandemic, Afghanistan withdrawal and rising inflation often cited by pollsters as leading concerns among voters.

The White House points to millions of jobs gained over the last year and Bidens signature of a bipartisan infrastructure package, a bill that should see at least $9 billion go toward Massachusetts infrastructure projects.

Bidens approval rating may have seen a bounce since his State of the Union address last week, with NPR reporting that a strong majority of Americans, including Republicans, support his tough sanctions on Russia over President Vladimir Putins unprovoked attack on Ukraine.

Amid the run up to the 2022 midterms, Trump on Saturday continued his practice of roasting several establishment Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, whom he painted as insufficiently loyal to him.

Were doing great as a party, he argued. The Republican Party is now a fighting party. We are now a winning party. We are never going back to what it was before. It was heading in the wrong direction.

The former president also weighed in on Russias attack on Ukraine, a former Soviet republic thats been independent since 1991.

According to the Post, Trump joked that the U.S. should place Chinese flags on its F-22 planes and bomb the s*** out of Russia.

And then we say, China did it, we didnt do it, China did it, and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch, he added.

The crowd of about 250 donors laughed, the Post reported.

Trump, who in 2007 wrote to Putin to congratulate him for being named TIME Magazines Man of the Year I am a big fan of yours! Trump wrote claimed the Kremlin leader would not have invaded his sovereign neighbor if he still sat in the White House.

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We have to do it, former President Donald Trump says of potential 2024 White House run - MassLive.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Do you want to know more about your parents or grandparents? Or perhaps a few new tidbits about the well-known born during the 1940s like Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay), Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden?

Beginning in April, you will be able to delve into a slice of United States history and learn more about how much the country has changed - or not changed - since the war years and the onset of the baby boom.

On April 1, the U.S. Census Bureau will release the 1950 census records from the National Archives and Records Administration.

This is the raw stuff with names, addresses, family ties, and more attached, not the normal trove of numbers the Census Bureau rolls out. Seventy-two years after each census, this information becomes public. The latest batch, for the first time, will include people born between Census Day in April 1940 and Census Day in 1950.

For Cleveland, the largest swath of the citys history will finally be available, painting a picture of the town at its population peak, 914,808 citizens, making it the nations seventh-largest city at the time.

We compiled a list of famous people born in the 1940s appearing in the census for the first time, including four presidents, Ohioans such as actor Ed ONeil and author R.L. Stein, and a litany of musicians, actors, athletes, and public figures.

Note: Some mobile users may need to use this link instead to view the least of famous people born during the 1940s.

Records will be made available on a new NARA website. Stay tuned for more details. But officials promise a name search function powered by an artificial intelligence/machine learning and optical character recognition technology tool, which helps translate handwritten names into the system. Bulk download capabilities of the records are also planned to be available once the site launches.

The 1950 census also marks the first time Americans abroad were enumerated, including members of the military and government employees living in another country. Additionally, the first non-military computer helped tabulate some of the statistics for the 1954 economic census.

Past census information is kept from the public for a 72-year waiting period meant to protect peoples privacy, back then considered the approximate lifetime of a person. NARA began releasing census data in this manner in 1942.

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From Bruce Springsteen & Diana Ross to Joe Biden & Donald Trump, April 1 release of 1950 census forms will in - cleveland.com

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 26. Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 26.

A "perfect" call, it was not.

Then-President Donald Trump was withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for Ukraine's defense as he was asking its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to investigate Trump's potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden.

That 2019 call got Trump impeached. But the Senate acquitted him, and he dismissed the controversy as a politically motivated hit job and his base went along.

Now, with Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine and Zelenskyy being hailed around the world as a hero for his resolve, that call is put into a very different light.

"There's just a lot of evidence that Trump was wrong on this issue [Ukraine] and that in many ways, we undermined the NATO alliance and we undermined Zelenskyy's position in the eyes of Russia and Putin," said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist and former senior adviser on Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign.

Trump has shifted his positions on the war in Ukraine. Shortly before Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion, Trump called Putin "smart" and "savvy" because Putin had declared portions of Ukraine "independent," something Putin had no right to do.

After the invasion began, Trump defended saying that Putin was "smart," then called President Biden "weak" and described NATO countries as "not so smart."

"The problem is not that Putin is smart which of course he is smart," Trump told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "But the real problem is that our leaders are dumb. Dumb. So dumb."

As scenes of war and death in Ukraine at the hands of Russia have played out for the world to see on television screens all day for days on end, Trump has changed his tune.

In recent days, he called what's happening there a "holocaust"; said many times over that the war would never have happened if he were still president; and even called for the U.S. to attack Russia but make it look like it was actually China by flying American planes with a Chinese flag on the side.

"And then we say, 'China did it,' " Trump told Republican donors Saturday in New Orleans, according to a recording obtained by The Washington Post. " 'We didn't do it China did it,' and then they start fighting with each other and we sit back and watch."

It's the kind of simple-sounding amateur solution that Trump has floated throughout his political life, one that is impracticable in a complicated world.

A pro-Ukraine protester demonstrates outside the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Monday. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images hide caption

"Trump is on the wrong side of the issue, I think it's fair to say," said Stephen Hayes, editor at the conservative outlet The Dispatch. "I don't think he's likely to bring a lot of people back to a pro-Putin stance. If anything, we're likely to see the hostility towards Putin and toward this brutal invasion increase, I think, in pretty significant ways, as it becomes clearer and clearer what Putin is actually doing."

Unlike other issues, from Medicare to trade, in which Trump has brought Republicans to his view, he has struggled to lead on his position on Putin and Ukraine.

"I do think this is a situation where it's going to be harder for Trump to bring that base along," Hayes said. "And maybe that's one of the reasons that we're starting to see him soften that position."

Whether it will matter for Republican voters, as Trump continues to strongly tease a 2024 presidential run, is tougher to say.

"I think it is a risk," Madden said. "But if the question is, how motivated are our base Republican voters on issues of national security and foreign policy or the threat of Russia? It's not as big an issue as some of these other cultural issues, where there is much closer alignment with Trump."

The culture wars, tax cuts and wanting government to do less really appear to be the unifying axis right now for the Republican Party. But if Ukraine continues to get the kind of attention it's getting, that could change things, Hayes said.

"The reality ultimately does matter, right?" he said. "If we just see this kind of destruction that continues to get the kind of media attention it deserves, it changes things. It'll end up changing things in our country. And I think people won't stand for that. I really do."

Few Republicans, however, have called Trump out for his coziness toward Russia and his initial softer stance toward Putin. Instead, they are speaking more clearly in their denunciation of Putin but charging that Biden has botched the response.

Trump's former vice president, Mike Pence, reportedly took an oblique shot at Trump in a speech before GOP donors Friday.

"There is no room in this party for apologists for Putin," Pence said. "There is only room for champions of freedom."

He also praised NATO, which Trump has continuously criticized.

"Where would our friends in Eastern Europe be today if they were not in NATO?" Pence said. "Where would Russian tanks be today if NATO had not expanded the borders of freedom?"

The problem, Madden says, is that this kind of message isn't being delivered repeatedly across the Republican Party and done so explicitly.

"That's one of the things about any sort of counterpoints for Trump within the Republican Party right now is those efforts have never really been broad," Madden said. "They've never really been sustained. They've never been methodical. They've always just been glancing blows. And that's why he still has such a strong command over the party apparatus."

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Trump shifts on Russia, Ukraine to catch up to other Republicans - NPR

Floundering in his attempts to wield political power while lacking a political office, Donald Trump looks increasingly like a stray orange hair to be flicked off the nations sleeve. His residual power, which he must use or lose, is to influence his partys selection of candidates for state and federal offices. This is, however, perilous because he has the power of influence only if he is perceived to have it. That perception will dissipate if his interventions in Republican primaries continue to be unimpressive.

So, Trump must try to emulate the protagonist of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court. In Mark Twains novel, a 19th-century American is transported back in time to Britain in the year 528. He gets in trouble, is condemned to death, but remembers that a solar eclipse occurred on the date of his scheduled execution. He saves himself by vowing to extinguish the sun but promising to let it shine again if his demands are met.

Trump is faltering at the business of commanding outcomes that are, like Twains eclipse, independent of his interventions. Consider the dilemma of David Perdue.

He is a former Republican senator because Trump, harping on the cosmic injustice of his November loss in 2020, confused and demoralized Georgia Republicans enough to cause Perdues defeat by 1.2 percentage points in the January 2021 runoff. Nevertheless, Trump talked Perdue into running in this years gubernatorial primary against Georgias Republican incumbent, Brian Kemp, whom Trump loathes because Kemp spurned Trumps demand that Georgias presidential vote be delegitimized. In a February poll, Kemp led Perdue by 10 points.

Trump failed in his attempt to boost his preferred Senate candidate in North Carolina, Rep. Ted Budd, by pressuring a rival out of the race. As of mid-January, Budd was trailing in the polls. Trump reportedly might endorse a second Senate candidate in Alabama, his first endorsement, of Rep. Mo Brooks, having been less than earthshaking. Trump has endorsed Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin in the gubernatorial primary against Gov. Brad Little. A poll published in January: Little 59%, McGeachin 18%. During Trumps presidency, a majority of Republicans said they were more supporters of Trump than of the GOP. That has now reversed.

Trump is an open book who has been reading himself to the nation for 40 years. In that time, he has changed just one important word in his torrent of talk: He has replaced Japan with China in assigning blame for our nations supposed anemia. He is an entertainer whose repertoire is stale.

A European war is unhelpful for Trump because it reminds voters that Longfellow was right: Life is real, life is earnest. Trumps strut through presidential politics was made possible by an American reverie; war in Europe has reminded people that politics is serious.

From Capitol Hill to city halls, Democrats have presided over surges of debt, inflation, crime, pandemic authoritarianism and educational intolerance. Public schools, a point of friction between citizens and government, are hostages of Democratic-aligned teachers unions that have positioned K-12 education in an increasingly adversarial relationship with parents. The most lethal threat to Democrats, however, is the message Americans are hearing from the partys media-magnified progressive minority: You should be ashamed of your country.

Trumps message is similar. He says this country is saturated with corruption, from the top, where dimwits represent the evidently dimwitted voters who elected them, down to municipalities that conduct rigged elections. Progressives say the nations past is squalid and not really past; Trump says the nations present is a disgrace.

Speaking of embarrassments: We are the sum of our choices, and Vladimir Putin has provoked some Trump poodles to make illuminating ones. Their limitless capacity for canine loyalty now encompasses the Kremlin war criminal. (The first count against Nazi defendants at Nuremberg: Planning, preparation, initiation and waging of wars of aggression.) For example, the vaudevillian-as-journalist Tucker Carlson, who never lapses into logic, speaks like an arrested-development adolescent: Putin has never called me a racist, so there.

J.D. Vance, groveling for Trumps benediction (Vance covets Ohios Republican Senate nomination), two weeks ago said: I dont really care what happens to Ukraine. Apparently upon discovering that Ohio has 43,000 Ukrainian Americans, Vance underwent a conviction transplant, saying, Russias assault on Ukraine is unquestionably a tragedy, and emitting clouds of idolatry for Trumps supposedly Metternichian diplomacy regarding Putin.

For Trump, the suppurating wound on American life, and for those who share his curdled venom, war is a hellacious distraction from their self-absorption. Fortunately, their ability to be major distractions is waning.

George Wills email address is georgewill@washpost.com.

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Donald Trump looks increasingly like a stray orange hair to be flicked off the nation's sleeve - Cumberland Times-News

On Saturday, while speaking with Republican donors in New Orleans, former President Donald Trump made a strange comment regarding how he might handle the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. In audio obtained by The Washington Post, Trump told the crowd that he would paint Chinese flags on American F-22 planes and bomb Russia, thus making it appear as though China had instigated the attack against Russia. According to Trump, the American people would "sit back and watch" as the two countries fought one another.It's still unclear whether Trump was joking or not.

During this same meeting, Trump seemed to also make it clear that he disagreed with NATO's actions since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and that, perhaps, if he had won the 2020 presidential election, Trump would have already gotten American troops more actively involved in stopping the conflict. "Are all of these nations going to stand by and watch perhaps millions of people be slaughtered as the onslaught continues?" Trump said at the meeting (viaCBS News)."At what point do countries say, 'No, we can't take this massive crime against humanity?' We can't let it happen. We can't let it continue to happen."

Given his prior relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and leniency on the actions of Russia, it's unclear if Trump would actually get involved in stopping the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

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Donald Trump Reveals The Unusual Way He Would Handle The War In Ukraine - The List

Get ready! Your favorite president will see you soon!

That's the only post that former President Donald Trump has left on his "conservative friendly"alternative to Twitter (NYSE: TWTR), Truth Social.

Axios reports that Trump is blowing the launch of the new social media companyvia a series of unforced errors.

What Happened? Released on Feb. 21, Truth Social quickly rose to No. 1 on the App Store,with the waitlist swelling to over 1 million users before falling to No. 57.Axios reporting shows it is just behind Tinderand Planet Fitness Workouts.

Trump Media and Technology Group merged with the special purpose acquisition companyDigital World Acquisition Corp (NASDAQ: DWAC), making DWAC responsible for the launch of the social media platform.

Shares of the SPAC have moved 860% highersince the Oct. 21 announcement.

Why It Matters: A niche group of investors have discovered companies with lower floats that have some kind of connection to Trump. When Digital World stock moves, these stocks follow in tandem.

Phunware Inc (NASDAQ: PHUN) Phunware is a mobile development and blockchain company whose connection with Digital World relies purely on sympathy. Phunware helped develop the official Donald Trump app during his 2020 campaign.

CF Acquisition Corp VI (NASDAQ: CFVI) Cantor Fitzgerald's SPACrecently merged with Canadian video-sharing service Rumble. Rumble is known for its ties to controversial, and often conservative, political figures. Most noteworthy of this group is Trump. CEO Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg that he could confirm that The Trump Media Group and Digital World were utilizing Rumble for its distribution services.

SilverBox Engaged Merger Corp. (NYSE: BRCC) SilverBox recently completed its acquisition of Black Rifle Coffee, a conservative and veteran-owned coffee company that has been known to be a predominately pro-Trump brandandalso touts partnerships with the likes of Joe Rogan.

2022 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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4 Stocks To Watch With Connections To Donald Trump - Benzinga