MONDAY, AUGUST 21, 2023
Comfort food is Us: If Donald J. Trump goes on trial next spring, will he be convicted?
A second question is this:
If he isn't convicted in his first trial, how might that event play out as the November election draws near?
Concerning next November's election, we can only offer you this: You'll rarely hear this on blue tribe cable, but current polling, such as it is, has the race quite close.
According to FiveThirtyEight.com, the most recent Emerson College poll has Trump ahead by one point. The most recent Economist/YouGov poll had Biden up by one.
Late in July, the New York Times/Siena College poll had Biden and Trump deadlocked at 43 points apiece. Consternation swept the ranks, if only briefly, when that finding was published.
From the blue tribe perspective, these are puzzling, worrisome poll results. Perhaps for that reason, we rarely see these surveys mentioned when on our tribe's prime time "cable news" programs.
It's also true that it's much too early to be polling next November's election. That said, President Biden seems to be a highly vulnerable candidate—and even as his likely opponent piles up his current string of indictments, nobody seems to have a poll in which that likely opponent is going away.
Within that context, we restate our initial question. If Donald J. Trump goes on trial next spring, could he escape conviction?
It seems to us that he plainly could, especially if the trial in question involves his conduct with respect to the 2020 election. We think Trump could escape conviction.
This is why we say that:
We find it hard to believe that Trump could ever be acquitted in either one of those possible trials. (The same is true of a potential trial concerning his retention of top-secret government documents.)
We find it hard to believe that a unanimous jury will ever find Trump not guilty in one of those possible trials. But it only takes one holdout juror to eliminate conviction, and a hung jury would instantly be bruited, across the land, as the equivalent of an acquittal.
A hung jury wouldn't be the equivalent of an acquittal, of course. That would be especially true if ten or eleven jurors, out of twelve, had voted for conviction.
Still, it's hard to estimate the possible effect of any such failure to convict. And, for reasons we'll explore this week, we know of no reason to assume that either of these possible trials would have to end in conviction.
Tens of millions of neighbors and friends—tens of millions of fellow citizens—will be eager to vote for Candidate Trump if he's nominated next year. For ourselves, we disagree with the judgment of those neighbors and friends concerning that possible vote for Trump—but then, they disagree with us!
In our view, the possible election of Trump is a matter of significant concern. But in the face of that possible election, we see a high-profile "journalistic" world which principally exists to serve tribe members large doses of blue tribe happy talk and blue tribe comfort food.
Have the guardians of our blue tribe perhaps abandoned theirs posts? Instead of offering good, sound advice, are they offering happy talk and comfort food instead?
We were especially struck by that possibility as we watched Lawrence O'Donnell last Thursday night. In our view, Lawrence offered a heaping platter of blue tribe comfort food all through his hour-long program.
We can't link you to a transcript of that evening's Last Word program. As you know, MSNBC has stopped publishing transcripts of its shows, we assume for the obvious reasons.
We can't link you to a transcript of the revelry and the gloating. That said, you can watch the entire hour thanks to this posting by the invaluable Internet Archive site.
We can't show you a transcript! But to our ear, Lawrence was still gloating, as he'd done all week, about the manifest greatness of the Fani Willis indictment in Georgia.
The schadenfreude was general over our tribe's cable news that night—for example, when Lawrence said this to defense attorney Amy Lee Copeland midway through the program:
O'DONNELL (8/17/23): Amy Copeland, one struggles to imagine what anyone could seriously say in Donald Trump's defense at [Trump's newly canceled] Monday event, which is why I read just that one page of the [Fani Willis] indictment, which contains thirteen lies told in the famous phone call to Brad Raffensberger, lies that usually get ignored by us in our coverage of the phone call because we're just stuck on the solicitation part of it, which is the "Get me the 11,000 votes."
But if you are defending Donald Trump against this accusation of this being a criminal enterprise, you have to take on each one of those grotesque lies in those thirteen lies in that phone call. I just don't see where the Trump defense begins on material like that.
Copeland replied with a snarky but pleasing quip. The other panelists shared a laugh. Meanwhile, though, Lawrence had made a type of admission:
Possibly blinded by his own tribal messaging, he had offered a stark admission. He can't even see where a defense of Trump might start with respect to those "thirteen lies."
He can't see where Trump's defense might start! Thus spake our tribal thought leader.
Alas! Our tribunes have behaved this way dating all the way back to their endless claims about the way Robert Mueller was going to dismantle Trump. (Surely, Mueller already had the complete tax records, we were told again and again.)
Also, dating back to their clueless judgments in July 2015. At that time, they were sure, completely sure, that Candidate Trump's snarky comment about POW John McCain was going to end his campaign right there!
Alas! Our blue tribe tribunes have been remarkably clueless every step of the way as Trump has risen to political power and to cultural dominance. Last Thursday night, Lawrence was boasting about his cluelessness—about the fact that he can't even imagine how a defense night work.
Copeland replied with a bit of snark, and the whole panel chuckled. Moments later, Andrew Weissmann did a great deal better.
But all in all, last Thursday's hour was a sponge bath of tribal comfort food as we and our tribunes convinced ourselves that this latest long national nightmare would turn out well for our side.
Tomorrow, we'll show you what Weissmann said to Lawrence that night and then we'll continue from there. All in all, we'll be suggesting this:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but our blue tribe's corporate tribunes have rarely been especially helpful over the past eight years.
Good grief! As Lawrence puzzled and Copeland quipped, Trump was running even with Biden—and given the way our electoral college tips at present, a tie goes to the Republican.
Could Donald J. Trump get elected next year? There's no way to know what's going to happen, but we'd have to say that he certainly could.
Also, concerning those upcoming trials, we'd like to remind you of this:
It isn't solely a question of how Trump's defense might seem to a bunch of people like us. How might a Trump defense seem to those one or two jurors—to the one or two jurors which could stop a conviction? How does all this happy talk sound to friends and neighbors like them?
How might the Fani Willis indictment seem to fellow citizens like them? On blue tribe cable, the question is rarely asked.
We just keep wolfing our comfort food. We'll consider this problem all week.
Tomorrow: For starters, what Weissmann said
"It's also true that it's much too early to be polling next November's election. That said, President Biden seems to be a highly vulnerable candidate—and even as his likely opponent piles up his current string of indictments, nobody seems to have a poll in which that likely opponent is going away."
ReplyDeleteNo More Mister Nice Blog analyzes what experts are saying about recent Trump polling and the impact of his indictments on public opinion:
"EXPERTS SAY THAT TRUMP'S INDICTMENT-DRIVEN POLL BUMP IS TOTALLY NOT AN INDICTMENT-DRIVEN POLL BUMP"
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2023/08/experts-say-that-trumps-indictment.html
Steve M. says:
"Berman writes:
To his critics, the emerging conventional wisdom that the indictments have benefited Trump politically is a dispiriting and even dangerous notion, one that could embolden politicians of any ideological stripe to disregard the law.
Well, of course it's dispiriting. I don't know how dangerous it is -- it won't "embolden politicians of any ideological stripe" to be lawless because it wouldn't apply to a Democrat. But yes, it's dispiriting to be reminded that the majority of Republican voters will choose a nominee -- and possibly elect a president -- next year based on their desire to engage vicariously in a years-long act of oppositional defiant disorder."
Personally, I agree with Somerby that it is way too early to be concluding that Trump will run close to Biden in 2024. More than that, I don't think that polling Republicans is the way to figure out who will win in 2024 either. When a polling company conducts a poll, unless they weight their samples to approximate the actual numbers of Republicans in the voting population, their results are going to be misleading. As it stands, there are fewer MAGA Republicans than Democrats, so Trump needs to attract Independents to win, and they are abandoning him. If Democrats can get out their voters in 2024, Trump has no chance of beating Biden on the numbers.
But to answer Somerby's question about the impact of Fani Willis on polling, yes, blue cable has been asking the question, and Trump is being hurt about 1.6% by the latest indictment.
"We just keep wolfing our comfort food. "
ReplyDeleteIs that like Trump, with his cheeseburgers and diet cokes, or is blue tribe comfort food kale and gluten-free muffins?
We deserve a little pleasure in our lives after the steady stream of awfulness coming from the right.
ReplyDeleteTrump is a criminal who has hurt many people. Why should there not be some pleasure when he gets taken down? Even if it is mirrored by Lawrence O'Donnell?
"Ding dong the witch is dead" will be my favorite song if Trump gets what he has coming to him for his crimes.
I'm looking forward to singing along with The Kinks "Death of a Clown".
Delete"So you met someone who
DeleteSet you back on your heels
Goody goody!
So you met someone and
Now you know how it feels
Goody goody!"
...
"So you lie awake
Just singing the blues all night
Goody goody!
So you think that [trial]'s a
Barrel of dynamite
Hurray and hallelujah!
You had it coming to ya
Goody goody for him
Goody goody for me
And I hope you're satisfied
You rascal you... hey!"
Thank you Frankie Lymon
Can't wait to sing "He only had himself to blame..."
DeleteAnd remember, Bob NEVER gloats when one goes the Republican way…😊
DeleteJust as there are some people who dislike Trump personally but will vote for him anyway, there are others who like Trump personally (and always will, no matter what he does) but who will not vote for him for president again. So, the wording of poll questions matters. But what matters even more is how people vote in 2024 and that is too far in the future to be worrying about this way.
ReplyDeleteIf Trump is so sanguine about the outcome of the 2024 election and confident he will beat the rap in each of his trials, why does he eat so god damned much comfort food?
ReplyDelete"given the way our electoral college tips at present, a tie goes to the Republican"
ReplyDeleteA tie in the polls is not a tie in the electoral college and definitely not a tie in the popular vote. Here is an analysis of what actually happened in 2020, as opposed to polling:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/
Two groups that are not well sampled in polls are young voters and women. Old people are over-sampled and they tend to skew conservative. Women and young people are appalled by the attacks on reproductive rights and the culture war nonsense from the right. They are going heavily for the Democrats. Independents are fed up with Trump and also shifting to Democrats. Republicans are doing nothing to stop that trend.
It can be expected that the stream of new information about Trump's mistakes will exert an ongoing pressure on Republicans to break away from Trump. This is going to get worse, not better, as the election approaches and Chris Christie gets louder.
Trump has lost the election. All that remains is to count the votes in 2024. Somerby's drumbeat of "Trump will win" is sounding more shrill, desperate, every time he repeats it, pretending to be a pundit instead of a shill.
Somerby thinks Trump will have one or two favorable jury members and be acquitted. They said that about the E. Jean Carroll case too. The grand juries that weighed the indictments could have been stopped by Trump supporters too, but they weren't. Even the death threats are not deterring witnesses and jurors in Trump's cases.
ReplyDeleteEven Trump appointed Judges, with a few exceptions, have refused to go full crook as Trump and Bob would prefer. Insurrection was almost impossible to prove, we were also told.
Delete"Insurrection was almost impossible to prove, we were also told."
DeleteNo charges of insurrection have been filed. So you've been told the truth.
@10:33 is talking about the seditious conspiracy charges brought against the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys (who were convicted), not Trump.
DeleteYeah, nice try 11:32.
DeleteTrump’s conviction in DC is a sure thing, just based on the jury pool.
DeleteDoes anyone know a single Dem or “blue tribe” member who thinks it’s IMPOSSIBLE Trump could escape all responsibility for what he has been charged with? Many of them, in my experience, have been left quite cynical over the MAGA rape of the Capitol, etc. Optimism is a Country that fell to Trump does not come easy. We have people like Bob who went to one of most prestigious colleges yet clearly has nothing but contempt for the Judicial Branch, who seems to think it’s there to keep liberals and poor people in line.
ReplyDeleteBob doesn’t either. But putting aside this straw man, many Americans, unlike Somerby and Trump, don’t believe wealth and a hatred of liberals should be a lifetime get out of jail free card ( at least Bob spares us his ludicrous defenses of Trump today).
Guess what Bob, they don’t just disagree with ME, I disagree with THEM, and that’s why we are going to Court. Could a few nitwit juniors
make it all for naught? Of course, though insisting that will come out as a good thing for Republicans is highly dubious.
From Political Wire:
ReplyDelete"The latest CBS News/YouGov poll finds that Donald Trump’s supporters trust him more than religious leaders, more than conservative media figures and even more than their own friends and families.
The question wasn’t about a specific issue or event. It wasn’t about Trump’s legal problems.
It was simply about whether they believed Trump told the truth."
We already know that Trump supporters have a fanatical, unreasoning, cult-like devotion to Trump. What else is new? Using the responses of such people to forecast an election result in which many people besides Trump supporters will be voting, strikes me as moronic.
Trump supporters sacrifice family relatonships for Trump. They go to jail for him. They have too much invested in their belief in Trump to switch now because of grand jury indictments that they may not even understand. Discussing Trump with them is like trying to talk an evangelical out of belief in God. But fortunately, the majority in our country has better sense and Trump will not win in 2024 just as he didn't win in 2020, when Somerby said he would.
Right wingers are now viewing Jesus as a wuss bleeding heart liberal; they have no principles, just an undying need to own the libs.
DeleteSpeaking of comfort food, George Conway advises Trump:
ReplyDelete"Hope you've been staying off the hamberders for the big mug shot and weigh-in!!"
Nothing wrong with happy talk. It is how people stay hopeful in the face of discouraging news.
ReplyDeleteNeither happy talk nor sad talk is going to change the outcome in 2024. Why not choose happy?
Thanks for nothing Peale
DeleteHere are some facts that may bear on the upcoming Trump trials.
ReplyDelete47% of voters nationally chose Trump in 2020 despite well-known evidence of his criminality and incompetence. Evidence is not a primary deciding factor for many people.
Trump got only 5.4% of the vote in 2020 in Washington DC, which means (if the vote is representative of potential jury members) that there is about an even chance of having no Trump supporters on a 12-person jury. Success in the prosecution of the January 6 insurgents is probably not representative of what would happen to Trump in some other places. In Georgia and Florida there would almost certainly be Trump voters on the jury and they might be in the majority in Florida.
Trump got 14.5% of the vote in Manhattan, NYC, where the E. Jean Carroll trial was held. That was a civil trial, for which a unanimous vote may not have been required and for which rules for conviction may be different.
So unless we assume that jurors would be completely objective - which would be absurd - on the numbers it is very likely that a conviction would be blocked in at least some of the places where Trump will be tried. Conviction looks more likely for a trial in Washington DC.
The situation for jurors is different than that for a person in their living room watching TV. For one thing, the judge makes them take an oath. For another, if they lie during voir dire, they can be prosecuted for perjury. They must tell the judge that they can be objective despite their preferences. That act of swearing places a burden on them to listen to the evidence. During jury deliberations jurors confront each other with evidence and question intransigence unwillingness to engage in arguments. If the prosecution does a good job, any holdout on the jury will be held to account for their decision. It is unlikely there would be a majority for Trump, so holdouts will result in a hung jury and mistrial, not an acquittal. That means a retrial is possible. Obviously biased jury members can be reported to the judge and removed/replaced by an alternate.
Delete11:44,
Deletethank you for a much-needed dose of reality.
There was a Trump supporter on the Manafort jury who was interviewed. She said that though she was sympathetic to the defendant, the facts led her to vote to convict.
DeleteAside from the insulting notion that some/all Trump supporting juror(s) would simply vote to acquit regardless of the facts, the result of a single holdout would result in a hung jury, not an acquittal. After a mistrial due to a hung jury, the prosecution is generally allowed to retry the case.
Mh, there was probably another Trump voter on the Manafort jury, who may have saved the accused on some counts, which he was pretty obviously guilty of to. I agree, however, with your basic point.
DeleteWhat concerns me is the welfare of all Americans and all human beings. The focus on Trump is a distraction from issues that really matter -- such as war and peace, economic conditions, freedom, etc.
ReplyDeleteI’m sure the Republican Party will concern itself with those things as soon as they are done raging about Bud Light being advertised by a transgender person, Target selling gay pride clothing, Disney objecting to a DeSantis policy, and drag queens existing.
DeleteThat’s exactly what Al Capone argued.
DeleteThis from a guy who spent the better part of a quarter century looking up Hillary's skirt searching vainly for any excuse to put her in prison.
DeleteI guess we didn’t understand that you thought, as a Trump voter, that every manner of bullying, lying, and violent intimidation was good for people.
DeleteRegardless of how you feel about DeSantis's war with Disney, DeSantis's policies have been very good for Florida residents. Florida is now one of the most popular states in the country, based on the number of people moving there.
DeleteBy comparison, the Democratic state of California has been very bad for its residents, based on the number of people moving out. And, consider how bad Democratic policies have been for city after city: San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, etc.
BTW snark is also a kind of comfort food.
1:10 pm - your criteria is flawed. No sarcasm.
DeleteRepeating what you heard on right wing radio the day before is a kind of comfort food too.
DeleteI hear San Francisco is so bad, you can buy a house there for $80K.
DeleteWhat war with Disney, David? Are you referring to the fascist's attack on the free speech of Disney?
DeleteWhen Republicans round your people up and put them in prison, I'll remind you they aren't Nazis, because this isn't Germany in the 1930s and 40s.
DeleteI’m concerned about you David, because you constantly lie about who your family members are, you are ignorant about Florida and California, and you are unaware that fascists are right wingers that primarily oppress leftists, not Jews - leftists were the first to be sent to concentration camps.
DeleteAt 2:26 you give a fairly accurate representation of the current state of Israel.
David, I recommend you read The Jewish Question by Abram Leon, a Jew killed at Auschwitz, to better understand how ignorant, irrelevant, and nonsensical your views and values are.
I'm sorry you feel that way, David. Can you answer the question now, what "war" is the fascist governor fighting with Disney?
Delete@3:19 You can read all about the battle between Disney and DeBlasio at these links https://duckduckgo.com/?=disney+govdnon+deblasio&ia=web
Delete@3:05 - There is a bit of truth in your comment: Nazis did indeed strongly oppose Socialism. However, Mussolini was popular with leftists. Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism" has a bunch of quotes that surprised me and would surprise you. It was only after the rise of Hitler that leftists strongly opposed Italy's versioh of fascism.
DeleteI know that leftists characterize Nazism as "right-wing", but I don't think that Nazi's resemble today's right-wing Americans very well. Here are some differences that come to mind
-- Right wing Americans believe in smaller, less powerful, government. Nazis believed in all-powerful government.
-- Right wing Americans support Israel, even more strongly than left wing American. Obviously Nazis opposed a Jewish homeland.
-- Right wing American are strong supporters of religion. Nazis considered religion less important than Nazism.
In all fairness, left wing American also are unlike Nazism. Nazism was uniquely evil.
No, it wasn’t uniquely evil. For example, what about Stalin?
DeleteNot surprising that David has no clue what made Nazis evil.
DeleteDavid, it’s interesting how embarrassingly wrong you are, yet blithely carry on.
DeleteJonah Goldberg is a smug right wing know-nothing, sublimely confident of the truth of his ill-informed prejudices.
Jonah is a nepo baby, his mother was a famous right wing dirty trickster that pushed the Vince Foster murder conspiracy theory, and then pushed Linda Tripp to illegally record Monica Lewinsky. (He’s grown up to be a bit of a whale, of course it’s not nice to mock somebody being fat, but there you go.)
His book was an ahistorical mess, and was ruthlessly panned. Jonah hilariously rages that “liberal” policies are in reality fascist, such as the New Deal, and later, extending Medicare to cover drug prescriptions; Jonah rants on that being a vegetarian, and the sexual revolution, were all fascism. Jonah Goldberg is a joke, he doesn’t even understand the difference between a leftist and a liberal.
No, leftists did not support fascism nor Mussolini. It’s a well worn technique of right wingers to appropriate the aesthetics of leftists initially as a propaganda tool, and later as a way to say “what me?” as they force their right wing oppression onto citizens, often with violence. Crack a real book someday, David, not your right wing cartoons.
- Right wing Americans say they want smaller government but this is demonstrably false, as they increase the size of government whenever they gain power. A telling case study is abortion, which right wingers supported before it was weaponized in the late 70s to combat desegregation.
- Nazis did not oppose a Jewish homeland, in fact they were trying to find one, but could not find an area that would take them, and thus came up with their “final solution”. Right wing Americans support Israel, even while they are anti semitic, because Israel is a right wing country that plays an important role in their fantasy about End Times.
- Nazis were religious and despised atheists, but they were weary of religious institutional power that was separate from the government. This is pretty much in line with how right wing Americans are, with their support for Christian nationalism while entertaining a strange disdain for Jesus’ preaching of social justice and providing for the needy.
David, the left/right divide has been going on for about 10k years, it started when we modern humans moved away from immediate-return egalitarian societies, to societies based on surplus and commodification of natural resources.
The left/right divide is egalitarianism and equality versus hierarchy and dominance.
Jonah wants to muddy these notions, but is too lazy to make a coherent argument. Here are some details on what an ignorant and irrelevant loser Jonah Goldberg is:
https://www.salon.com/2012/05/10/jonah_goldbergs_desperation/
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra
DeleteSitting members of Congress aiding and abetting a plot to overthrow the government. Insurrectionists criminally charged with plotting to end American democracy for good. Justice Department prosecutors under crushing political pressure. Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra is the all-but-forgotten true story of good, old-fashioned American extremism getting supercharged by proximity to power. When extremist elected officials get caught plotting against America with the violent ultra right, this is the story of the lengths they will go to… to cover their tracks.
Why don't you give it a listen, David. Real history, instead of the fractured fairy tales you get from Jonah Goldberg and Dinesh Desouza.
Take a guess, David. Who in this country were supportive of the Nazi? The Left? Or the Right?
Any case could theoretically go against the prosecution. That would suggest that the prosecutor make sure she has a strong case.
ReplyDeleteWhat is Somerby suggesting with this kind of speculation? That the case shouldn’t be brought? That it’s a weak case? That Trump supporting jurors don’t give a damn about the facts of a case? That conviction isn’t a 100% sure thing? Aside from the fact that no one is arguing that it’s a sure thing, the merits of a case ought to be the deciding factor in bringing it, not whether some theoretical asshole juror will torpedo it for grins.
This column is centered on the claim by O'Donnell that the working defense is unimaginable. Is it that you don't know how to read or you just don't like to read? And you like to make comments based on what you think is written instead of taking the time to read what it's written? What exactly explains why you would ask a question that is answered by the premise of the entire article?
DeleteWhat?
Delete10:36: O’Donnell didn’t say that Trump’s conviction was 100% certain. He thinks the case is so strong that he can’t see any possible defense that Trump’s lawyers could mount. Especially since Trump isn’t likely to testify. None of this precludes some rogue Trump supporting juror from disregarding the facts. These are two separate things and Somerby has you confused. Somerby’s hypothetical does not address the strength of the case, which was O’Donnell’s point. Has Somerby offered his opinion as to where a defense of Trump would start? He thinks Trump is insane, but Trump isn’t going to plead that. What else? A rogue juror? That’s no defense of Trump either.
DeleteLOL
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ReplyDelete