Time is Biden’s friend and Trump's enemy.

January 22, 2024

Trump's inexorable descent into incoherence and chaos continued apace over the weekend. Any moment now, it will become impossible for the media to ignore the spectacle. With Trump's rivals in both the primary and general elections highlighting Trump's inability to distinguish between his GOP primary opponent (Nikki Haley) and the former Democratic Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi), responsible media should be headlining the story.

They are not. Instead, it was up to Trump's political rivals to alert the American people to Trump's deteriorating condition.

What happened?

Over the weekend, Trump insisted that Nikki Haley was in charge of security at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Haley was not at the Capitol on January 6 and, as a private citizen at the time, had no role in providing security for the Capitol. (Trump has previously falsely claimed that former Speaker Nancy Pelosi oversaw security at the Capitol on January 6.)

Nikki Haley went on the offensive on the Sunday talk shows, saying

 “I don’t know if he was confused, I don’t know what happened, but it’s enough to send us a warning sign.”

“[I]f you have someone that is 80 in office, their mental stability is going to continue to decline. That’s just human nature.”

[Trump is now] just not at the same level he was at 2016. I think we're seeing some of that decline.

The Biden campaign also went on the offensive, producing an ad that collected a dozen Trump nonsense statements, highlighting the most recent mental lapse. Biden released the ad on his Twitter account, saying “I don’t agree with Nikki Haley on everything, but we agree on this much: She is not Nancy Pelosi.”

The video is here: “We agree on this much: Nikki Haley is not Nancy Pelosi.” It is worth your time to watch—and is (hopefully) a harbinger of a tougher tone from the Biden campaign.

Although major media covered Trump's most recent mental lapse, they took the opportunity to repeat Trump's baseless claims against Biden. The NYTimes described Trump's mental lapse, and then pivoted to Biden:

“Nikki Haley was in charge of security [at the Capitol on January 6],” he said. (She was not.) “We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that.”

Mr. Trump, 77, often attacks President Biden, 81, over his age and suggests that Mr. Biden is mentally unfit for office. “He can’t put two sentences together,” Mr. Trump said on Friday. “Can’t put two sentences together. He needs a teleprompter.”

Gosh! It’s almost as if the NYTimes is running interference for Trump's deterioration. A similar lapse by Biden likely would have resulted in somber reporting based on speculation by unnamed “inside sources” about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president due to incapacity.

While the continued bias against Biden is maddening, time is Biden’s friend and Trump's enemy. The more Trump talks, the more obvious it becomes he is unfit for the presidency. His vocabulary is shrinking, his off-script remarks are descending into a stew of right-wing code words, and people are walking out of his rallies.

Here is a small sample from a speech on January 17 in New Hampshire:

We’re . . . going to place strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to debank you from your—you know, your political beliefs, what they do. They want to debank you, and we’re going to debank—think of this. They want to take away your rights. They want to take away your country. The things they’re doing. All electric cars.

On Sunday evening, Trump even mispronounced the name of his likely vice-presidential pick as “Elise Step-a-nack” (referring to GOP. Rep. Elise Stefanik). Again, the Biden-Harris campaign quickly released a video-clip of Trump mispronouncing Stefanik’s name.

Trump claims he will take the witness stand on Monday morning in the second defamation trial E. Jean Carroll. (The trial is about the amount of damages only.) It would be insane for Trump to take the stand. Judge Kaplan is a sharp, no-nonsense judge who will not allow Trump to ramble incoherently.

If Trump takes the stand, I predict he will storm out of the courtroom (from the stand) or be ejected by Judge Kaplan. Moreover, if Trump takes the stand, E. Jean Carroll will be able to introduce rebuttal evidence that she has chosen not to offer in her case in chief.

But Monday’s court proceeding is only the first of dozens of opportunities for Trump to self-immolate in the upcoming legal proceedings. And given that the Biden administration has finally taken the gloves off, the American people will get a clearer view of Trump's rapidly deteriorating mental state.

And there is widespread discussion on social media of other physical infirmities and ailments that are afflicting Trump. The major media has yet to report on those issues, so I will refrain from doing so until the rumors pass the fact-checking process in a major newsroom.

What’s next?

Democrats are understandably anxious about the attacks on Biden’s age. But he has risen to every occasion and passed every test. And he is a normal, decent, regular person. If you haven’t watched his recent interview with Conan O’Brien about Biden’s 1960s classic Corvette, you owe it to yourself to do so. Trump, on the other hand, is a narcissistic, hateful bully who views people as disposable objects to advance his interests.

In this campaign, time is on our side. Things are getting worse for Trump—and will continue to do so. Meanwhile, the economy continues to improve under Biden’s stewardship. So, let’s hunker down for the long fight ahead and recognize that we have the momentum, the better candidate, and the truth on our side.

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DeSantis drops out of GOP primary campaign.

Ron DeSantis nearly destroyed Florida in his attempt to prove that he is meaner and more extreme than Trump without the craziness of Trump. It didn’t work, as an editorial in the Miami Herald noted on Sunday evening: DeSantis was supposed to save the GOP from Trump, not endorse him

Per the Herald,

It’s not just that he was steamrolled by Donald Trump. DeSantis never appeared to want to save the GOP. He was more interested in making it a more ravenous, angrier and intolerant party. That worked for Trump, but didn’t work for the governor with all the charisma of burned toast.

So now DeSantis’ presidential campaign has ended. But the damage of the laws he has pushed through in Florida, as he landed more appearances on Fox News, will live on. Without his political ambitions, there likely wouldn’t be “Don’t say gay,” woke wars and the waste of state resources to fight meaningless battles against drag queen bars.

DeSantis has fallen in line behind other Republicans to “kiss the ring” of Trump—even though DeSantis railed against Trump sycophants only a week ago. DeSantis said,

You can be the most worthless Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring he'll say your wonderful.

Six days later, DeSantis “kissed Trump's ring” by endorsing Trump in the same announcement in which DeSantis suspended his campaign. And, on cue, Trump responded by saying “Ron” (rather than “DeSanctimonious”) was a “gracious” candidate who ran a good campaign.

There will undoubtedly be a lot of good analyses about the reasons for Ron DeSantis’s failure, and I look forward to sharing them with you. Tonight, I want to add what I see as a glimmer of hope in DeSantis’s political demise.

To begin, DeSantis was a miserable candidate because people understood he was disingenuous, cruel, and angry. Let’s agree on that fact and move on.

DeSantis fashioned himself as “Trump but competent.” Accepting that premise, the rejection of DeSantis shows that the support for Trump isn’t really about his policies (or his competency). It is about personal support for Trump. That’s good! Why? It suggests that if we can get past the latest (and last) effort by Trump to take the presidency, running on his policies is not enough to garner more than a few thousand votes in Iowa. (No disrespect to Iowa.)

This theory is discussed by Zack Beauchamp in Vox, Ron DeSantis got the Republican Party wrong. Beauchamp writes,

DeSantis was betting that Trumpism could be separated from Trump: that enough of the GOP’s radical factions wanted the right-wing populism without the chaos of the man who brought it to dominance in the party.

When Trump is finally gone, we will see a raft of Trump wannabes in the style of Ron DeSantis come to the fore—Don Jr., Mike Flynn, Matt Gaetz, etc. They will run on Trump's policies, but that won’t be enough. They are not Trump.

All of this suggests that there may be the remnant of a political movement that can rise from the ashes of the GOP to form a different, new party that sheds itself of MAGA extremism as it leaves Trump in the rear-view mirror.

The above is a bit fuzzy and inchoate, but the failure of DeSantis should be reassuring. If DeSantis gained traction and appeared as a serious contender for election in 2024, we could have been looking at another eight years of MAGA extremism in the presidency.

If we beat Trump in 2024—and we can—the Trump wannabes don’t appear to have the toxic brew that runs through Trump's veins. This is why we should do everything possible to defeat Trump at the ballot box in 2024. Doing so may foreclose the last chance for a MAGA extremist to gain the presidency.

To be sure, MAGA extremism will endure in the states and in Congress, but we will have avoided the threat to democracy of Trump (or an imitator) as president. That matters a lot.

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More on D.A. Fani Willis.

A defendant in the Georgia RICO case alleging election interference filed a motion to disqualify Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis over an alleged romantic affair with one of the special prosecutors she hired to prosecute the case. The allegations raise several issues, including (a) whether Willis should be disqualified, (b) whether she should voluntarily recuse herself, (c) whether the special prosecutor should voluntarily recuse himself, and (d) whether she violated any ethical duties or statutory obligations.

Norman L. Eisen, Joyce Vance and Richard Painter have addressed the question of disqualification in their article in Just Security, Why Fani Willis Is Not Disqualified Under Georgia Law. It would be difficult to find a more qualified group of authors, so their views should be given great weight. Beyond that, their analysis is superb. I highly recommend the article.

Among other excellent points, they note the following:

The [motion to disqualify] cites no authority supporting its request for dismissal, and there is no basis in Georgia law for that relief even if a court finds a prosecutor is disqualified due to a conflict of interest. [Citation omitted.] (“[I]n the event that the elected district attorney is wholly disqualified, the statutes contemplate” transfer of the case to another prosecutor) (citing OGCA § 15-18-5(a)).

They conclude:

We might question Willis’s judgment in hiring Wade and the pair’s other alleged conduct, but under Georgia law that relationship and their alleged behavior do not impact her or his ability to continue on the case.

I received pushback from a few readers who told me to stop making “excuses” for Fani Willis. To be clear, I have said that if she violated an ethical duty or a statutory obligation, she should be disciplined or charged, as appropriate. But given that male politicians remain in office despite far more serious allegations of ethical and legal violations, demanding that Willis adhere to a different standard is not warranted.

It is not enough to say that it is a distraction from the prosecution; Trump was lobbing ugly racist and misogynistic slurs before the alleged relationship was disclosed. Do I wish the allegations were not made or had no basis? Sure! But Willis is legally entitled to continue with the prosecution—and she should.

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Opportunity for reader engagement.

George Santos was expelled from New York’s Third Congressional District. Democrat Tom Suozzi is on the ballot for the special election on February 13, 2024 to fill the vacancy created by Santos’s expulsion.

Many grassroots groups are pulling out all the stops to help elect Tom Suozzi—and retake a seat that Republicans flipped in 2022. The following link includes scheduled events for post carding, phone banking, and canvassing over the next 23 days to elect Suozzi: Unite with Us Thru Action.

The election of Tom Suozzi could be critical to regaining Democratic control of the House in 2024. If you can spare even a few hours, it could make a huge difference. Given the timing and short notice of the special election, turnout is expected to be low (sadly). Every vote will count—as will every postcard, text, phone call, and door knock. Please help if you can! 

You can also check out Tom Suozzi’s campaign website here if you want to help him out with a donation: Suozzi for Congress - Let's Fix This!

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Concluding Thoughts.

I spoke on Sunday evening at a postcarding event for Tom Suozzi that was sponsored by Markers for Democracy. As is always the case, I came away more confident than ever that we will prevail in 2024 and beyond.

Let’s start with the fact that Tom Suozzi is incredibly well qualified to serve in Congress (having already done so before). He has had a successful career as an accountant and attorney at global accounting and law firms. He has served as a county executive and city mayor. He joined the Zoom call and proved to be a charismatic but earnest candidate who would be a credit to Congress.

But just as importantly, I was overwhelmed at seeing hundreds of concerned citizens gathering on a Sunday evening (the third such Sunday session) to help take back a seat in Congress. The stakes are enormous—reproductive liberty, foreign policy, immigration, healthcare, voting rights, LGBTQ dignity and liberties, gun safety, environmental protection, and more.

Groups like Markers for Democracy have been meeting weekly (sometimes more) to help defend democracy since 2017. Add to that list other groups such as Indivisible, Swing Left, Sister District, Field Team Six, PostCardsToVoters, Focus for Democracy, Movement Voter Project, The Civics Center, VoteRiders, Giving Circles, The States Project, Civic Influencers, Airlift, League of Women Voters. . . . and many more.

There are thousands of grassroots chapters and groups across America that include hundreds of thousands of volunteers doing the hard work of preserving democracy for the next generation. The value and importance of their work cannot be overstated. And yet, they frequently work below the radar with little recognition or appreciation—even though they are making a difference in close races by getting out the vote.

Grassroots volunteers are not donating their time because they are looking for thanks or recognition. They are civic-minded Americans trying to deliver the promise of the Constitution to everyone. But . . . they deserve our thanks and gratitude nonetheless.

So, on behalf of the hundreds of millions of Americans who are in your debt (but may not know it), “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” You are truly heroes of democracy! When historians write about this period in our nation’s history, they will recognize that grassroots volunteers played a critical role in preserving the Constitution during dark and challenging times.

I look forward to continuing the struggle by your side. It is an honor and a privilege.

Talk to you tomorrow!