During an interview on a podcast, Trump let slip that he lost the 2020 election. He claimed he lost the election “by a whisker.” In fact, he lost the popular election by 7 million votes. Perhaps he was thinking of the electoral vote, which he might have won if a few thousand votes in battleground states like Georgia had gone his way.
Nonetheless, he has falsely claimed for almost four years that he won in 2020 but the Democrats stole the election. Logic suggests that the party in power has the means to “rig” an election. He was in power. Republicans controlled Georgia, and Trump lost there.
He lost. He admitted it. Maybe it just slipped out. But he told the truth. For once.
Senator John McCain’s son Jimmy was so disgusted by Trump’s actions at Arlington National Cemetery that he announced that he will vote for Kamala Harris. Jimmy McCain had ample reason to despise Trump for the way he insulted his father.
Jimmy McCain is a career military man.
CNN reported:
When former President Donald Trump held a campaign event at Arlington National Cemetery last week, 1st Lt. Jimmy McCain says he viewed it as a “violation.”
The youngest son of the late Sen. John McCain had already been moving away from the Republican Party — just weeks ago, he changed his voter registration to Democrat and plans to vote for Kamala Harris in November, he told CNN in an exclusive interview this week.
But he is speaking out now for the first time about Trump because of the former president’s conduct at the hallowed ground where several generations of McCain’s family, including his grandfather and great grandfather, are buried.
“It just blows me away,” McCain, who has served in the military for 17 years, told CNN. “These men and women that are laying in the ground there have no choice” of whether to be a backdrop for a political campaign, he said.
“I just think that for anyone who’s done a lot of time in their uniform, they just understand that inherently — that it’s not about you there. It’s about these people who gave the ultimate sacrifice in the name of their country.”
McCain’s decision to speak out now is part of his broader shift away from the Republican Party and his family’s famously conservative roots. After years as a registered independent, he says he registered as a Democrat several weeks ago and plans to vote for Kamala Harris in November, adding that he “would get involved in any way I could” to help her campaign.
It’s a significant move for the son of a former GOP presidential candidate and Arizona senator. While other members of the McCain family have distanced themselves from Trump — including Jimmy McCain’s mother Cindy, who endorsed then-candidate Joe Biden in 2020, and his sister Meghan — none except Jimmy have publicly abandoned the Republican Party.
Despite her harsh criticisms of Trump, Meghan McCain indicated last week that she would still not endorse Harris. “I’m a lifelong, generational conservative,” she tweeted.
Jimmy McCain, who enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 17 and now serves as an intelligence officer in the 158th Infantry Regiment, had until now deliberately sought to avoid entering the political fray. Trump’s attacks on his father — that he was “not a war hero” because he was captured in Vietnam, and his reported description of the elder McCain as a “loser” — were deeply hurtful on a personal level, but not out of bounds politically, Jimmy McCain believes.
“One thing about John McCain is that he chose a public life,” McCain said. “So to attack him is really not out of the realm of his job description.”
For the younger McCain, though, the Arlington episode and how the campaign has reacted to it represents a whole new level of what he perceives as Trump’s disrespect for the fallen. And he believes it stems from Trump’s own insecurities about not having served.
“Many of these men and women, who served their country, chose to do something greater than themselves,” McCain said. “They woke up one morning, they signed on the dotted line, they put their right hand up, and they chose to serve their country. And that’s an experience that Donald Trump has not had. And I think that might be something that he thinks about a lot.”
McCain emphasized that he is speaking on his own behalf and his views do not represent those of the US Army. McCain received his commission and became an officer in US Army intelligence in 2022.
The New York Times ran a fine specimen of unintentional comedy this week: an essay by conservative writer Rich Lowry titled “Trump Can Win on Character.”
The only thing that could have made it better was if it had been under the byline of Stormy Daniels.
Lowry’s argument itself wasn’t quite as absurd as the headline. He was only suggesting that Trump repeatedly call Vice President Kamala Harris “weak,” which Trump probably won’t do, because he’s too busy calling her a communist, a copycat, stupid, a recent conversion to being Black or someone with a crazy laugh who is not as good looking as he is.
Trump could win on various things: inflation, immigration, isolationism. But the notion that a felon and adjudicated sexual abuser who shouts barnyard obscenities and vulgar epithets at his rallies would return to the White House on the strength of his upstanding character? Well, let’s just say there are very fine people on both sides who would have trouble making that argument. As though in answer to the suggestion that he can “win on character,” Trump responded over the next couple of days by:
• Holding a campaign event in front of graves at Arlington National Cemetery, where his staff reportedly pushed aside a cemetery official trying to enforce rules against politicizing the sacred ground. Trump posed graveside with a big grin and a thumbs-up, and his campaign set the Republican nominee’s cemetery visit to music and posted it as a TikTok video. When a Harris spokesman commented on the “sad” event, Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, declared that Harris herself “can go to hell.” (Vance, after a cool reception last week at a doughnut shop in Georgia, got booed by firefighters this week in Boston.)
• Announcing that two of the nation’s most prominent conspiracy theorists — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard — would be co-chairs of his presidential transition if he wins the election, with influence over key appointments and policies. Gabbard’s trumpeting of Russian propaganda has been labeled “treasonous” by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), and Kennedy’s long-shot presidential campaign somehow fizzled after he acknowledged, among other things, having a brain worm and leaving a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park.
• Rolling out his latest attempt to cajole his supporters to line his own pockets. This time, he offered another round of “digital trading cards” featuring a Trump superhero. Supporters who parted with $1,485 or more in this Trump-enrichment scam would be sent a piece of the fabric cut from the “knockout suit” he wore during his June debate with President Joe Biden.
• Proclaiming that it was “Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault” that he was the victim of a failed assassination attempt, asserting without evidence that they prevented the Secret Service from protecting him and that he might have been shot “because of their rhetoric.” The FBI reported that the shooter, a Republican, had searched online for both Biden and Trump events and settled on the Trump rally as a “target of opportunity.”
• Sharing another fusillade of posts on social media that cited QAnon slogans, called for the imprisonment of his opponents, and suggested that Harris used sex to advance her career. On Thursday, Trump was in Michigan and as coarse as ever — referring twice to Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, as “Tampon Tim”; preposterously claiming that in Democratic states “you’re allowed to kill the baby after the baby is born”; and saying of Harris: “Nobody knows who the hell she is. She does not give a damn about you.” While complaining that the Army had said he used the Arlington National Cemetery visit “to politic,” he went right on “politicking” about it. Referring to the families of the fallen he met with, Trump said Biden and Harris “killed their children as though they had a gun in their hand.”
Trump can win on character!
Trump isn’t a fan of military cemeteries, wherein rest those who died for their country and who Trump regards as “suckers” and “losers.” (Trump denies voicing those sentiments, which his former chief of staff, retired four-star Marine Gen. John Kelly, attributes to him.) Trump canceled a visit to an American military cemetery in France in 2018, citing rain, and he skipped the presidential visit to Arlington on Veterans Day that same year. Just two weeks ago, he said the civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom is “much better” than the Medal of Honor for military valor because those receiving the latter “have been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.”
So why did he visit Arlington this week? There was something in it for him. He would use the fallen as a backdrop for a political attack against the Biden administration — specifically, attacking Biden for his handling of the Afghanistan pullout three years ago.
Army National Military Cemeteries cannot be used for political activities, but when a cemetery official tried to “ensure adherence to these rules” she was “abruptly pushed aside,” an Army spokesman said. Trump’s campaign accused the official of “suffering from a mental health episode” and Chris LaCivita, who is co-managing Trump’s campaign, called her a “despicable” person who shouldn’t represent the “hollowed grounds” of Arlington.
LaCivita knows something about making the hallowed hollow. He led the “swiftboating” of John Kerry 20 years ago and is now attempting to do the same to Harris’s running mate by disparaging Walz’s honorable service. And here was the Trump campaign desecrating Arlington’s Section 60, where Iraq and Afghanistan war dead lie, and posting photos and video of it across social media, with a voice-over by Trump attacking his political opponents.
Of course, Trump is the one who set the Afghanistan withdrawal in motion. Now, he’s setting another calamity in motion, by getting ready to force Ukraine to give up its fight against Russia’s invasion. “Look at what’s going on right now with Ukraine surging into Russia,” he complained this week, objecting to Ukraine’s recent success. “You’re going to end up in World War III and it’s going to be a bad one.”
Openly condemning an American ally’s success? Vladimir Putin couldn’t have said it better…
Kennedy’s crackpot ideas go well beyond covid to the debunked claim that childhood vaccines cause autism, that WiFi causes “leaky brain,” that chemicals in the water supply might turn children transgender, that AIDS might not be caused by HIV, that Republicans stole the 2004 election and that 5G networks are used for mass surveillance. And that was before the world learned about his brain worm and the bear cub. Trump this week said Kennedy has “got some very good ideas” that “turned out to be right.” And he says he’d rely on the judgment of both Kennedy and Gabbard to staff up his administration.
Trump can win on character!
Hello, everyone. This is your favorite president, Donald J. Trump, with some very exciting news. By popular demand, I am doing a new series of Trump digital trading cards!
So begins the infomercial Trump posted on social media this week. For just $99 apiece, Trump supporters can pay with credit card or crypto to own digital cards showing a young and muscular Trump on a motorcycle, holding a lightning bolt, and praying. (This third offering of cards, the America First Collection, follows the Mugshot Edition.) Those who cough up $24,750 or more will get two tickets to “a gala dinner at my beautiful country club in Jupiter, Florida” — and a “bigger” piece of his debate suit.
Proceeds go not to Trump’s campaign but to a company he created for the racket. Don’t care for the cards? “I have a FANTASTIC new Book coming out in two weeks, ‘SAVE AMERICA,’” Trump also posted this week. “I hand-selected every Photo.” This one is $99, or $499 signed; proceeds go to a company founded by Donald Trump Jr.
These follow other grifting ventures by Trump: sneakers, bibles — you name it. But his biggest scheme by far has been convincing supporters to buy stock in Trump Media, the parent of Truth Social. Investors who bought at the peak have now lost about 75 percent of their money, as the market adjusts to the realization that the business is fundamentally worthless. (It loses millions of dollars and produces scant revenue.) But Trump’s 59 percent stake in the company is still valued at about $2.2 billion — and he can start dumping his shares on Sept. 20. Company executives have already begun cashing out. Loyal Trump supporters who bought in on his assurance that Trump Media is a “highly successful” company are left holding the bag.
Trump can win on character!
The former president is befuddled. “Kamala and her ‘handlers’ are trying to make it sound like I am the Incumbent President,” he protested on X. (His return to the platform is another acknowledgment of Truth Social’s failure.) This is true: He’s no longer running against an incumbent president, and Harris has been skillful in making the campaign about Trump’s record. Trump keeps pining for Biden’s candidacy. At a stop in Detroit, he admitted that people are advising him “don’t waste your time” on Biden — even as he mentioned his former opponent five times.
In his disorientation, Trump retreats to his instincts.
He makes up stuff. He claims that the Biden administration is to blame for the assassination attempt, that the U.S. military has “no ammunition,” that his “administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” He is outrageous. This week, he shared QAnon slogans online (“nothing can stop what is coming,” “where we go one we go all”); doctored images of Biden, Harris, Hillary Clinton, “crazy” Nancy Pelosi and others in orange jumpsuits; and proposals to indict members of the House select Jan. 6 committee for “sedition” and to prosecute Barack Obama in a “public military tribunal.” His country club in Bedminster, N.J., will host a fundraiser next week for participants in the 2021 attack on the Capitol.
And he’s obscene. This former president of the United States shared a photo of Harris and Clinton as part of a post associating both women with oral sex. This came as Fox News prime-time host Jesse Watters, a Trump ally, fantasized on air about Harris “paralyzed in the Situation Room while the generals have their way with her.” (Watters says he “wasn’t suggesting anything of a sexual nature.”) Also, former Trump official (and Republican convention speaker) Peter Navarro responded on X to special counsel Jack Smith’s revised indictment of Trump to conform to a recent Supreme Court ruling: “What the f— is this Jacko? YOU are going to prison for election interference. You can have Merrick [Garland] as your bunkie.” (Navarro is just out of prison himself.)
“I always look for good words, highly sophisticated — I’m highly educated, I like sophisticated words,” Trump said in Detroit this week. But for his opponents, he went on, “there’s only one word I get. That’s stupid — they’re stupid people.”
In his reflexive name-calling, he confirms that there really is one word that describes him better than any other. Vulgar.
Margaret Sullivan was the ombudsman (public editor) for the New York Times. She writes a blog called American Crisis. There are so many amazing blogs these days that it’s hard to keep track. This one appeared in my email today, and it speaks to a debate among readers on this blog about whether the media, and most especially The New York Times, normalizes Trump’s behavior and ideas in an effort to be “fair.” I’m subscribing.
She writes:
I once asked Jill Abramson, the former top editor of the New York Times, to name the best reporters she had ever encountered. I recall she mentioned her friend and co-author Jane Mayer — definitely on my list, too — and a few others. Mayer’s book, “Dark Money,” about the Koch Brothers, is a classic of investigative reporting.
Another one was James Risen, the renowned investigative reporter formerly of the New York Times, and later at the Intercept. I agreed again, particularly because of an investigation that Risen did during the George W. Bush administration about the government surveillance of American citizens through warrantless wiretapping. (There’s quite a backstory there, but suffice it to say that Times editors held back the investigation for many months after the administration claimed that publishing would threaten national security; Risen eventually forced the hand of his editors, resulting in the publication of the blockbuster co-authored with Eric Lichtblau — and it won a Pulitzer Prize.)
I heard from Risen a few days ago, as I do from time to time; I got to know him while I was the Times public editor or ombudswoman. He wrote to express his outrage at his former employer for a recent story. I pay particular attention to him as a former Timesman himself and a journalist of integrity.
“At first, I thought this was a parody,” Risen told me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Even more unfortunately, the lack of judgment it displays is all too common in the Times and throughout Big Journalism as mainstream media covers Donald Trump’s campaign for president.
“Harris and Trump Have Housing Ideas. Economists Have Doubts,” is the headline of the story he was angered by. If you pay attention to epidemic of “false equivalence” in the media — equalizing the unequal for the sake of looking fair — you might have had a sense of what was coming.
The story takes seriously Trump’s plan for the mass deportation of immigrants as part of his supposed “affordable housing” agenda. Here’s some both-sidesing for you, as the paper of record describes Harris’s tax cuts to spur construction and grants to first-time home buyers, and Trump’s deportation scheme. “Their two visions of how to solve America’s affordable housing shortage have little in common …But they do share one quality: Both have drawn skepticism from outside economists.” The story notes that experts are particularly skeptical about Trump’s idea, but the story’s framing and its headline certainly equate the two.
There’s only one reason I disagree with Risen’s reaction. He wrote: “This story is unbelievable.”
I wish.
Stories like this run rampant in the Times, and far beyond. It matters more in the Times because — even in this supposed “post-media era” — the country’s biggest newspaper still sets the tone and wields tremendous influence. And, of course, the Times has tremendous resources, a huge newsroom and the ability to hire the best in the business. Undeniably, it does a lot of excellent work.
But its politics coverage often seems broken and clueless — or even blatantly pro-Trump. There’s so much of this false-balance nonsense in the Times that there’s a Twitter (X) account devoted to mocking it, called New York Times Pitchbot.
Sometimes, sadly, it’s hard to tell the difference between the satire and the reality. Hence, Risen’s parody line.
At the same time, when Trump does something even more outrageous than usual, the mainstream press can’t seem to give it the right emphasis. Last week, NPR broke the news that Trump and his campaign staff apparently violated federal law — and every norm of decency — by trying to film a campaign video at Arlington National Cemetery and getting into a scuffle with a dutiful cemetery employee.
Of course, the story got picked up elsewhere and got significant attention. But did it get the huge and sustained treatment that — let’s just say — Hillary Clinton’s email practices did in 2016? Definitely not, as a former Marine, Ben Kesling, wrote in Columbia Journalism Review:
“Lumped together, the reporting this week left readers and listeners, especially with no knowledge of the military, at a loss to understand what actually happened — and crucially, why it mattered so much. The Trump campaign had successfully muddied the waters by alleging that the photographer had been invited to the event by family members of soldiers buried there.”
It came off, he wrote, “like a bureaucratic mix-up or some tedious violation of protocol,” not a deeply disrespectful moral failure, which it surely was. “The sacred had been profaned.”
The political cartoonist Darrin Bell, however, certainly got the point across in a time-lapse video cartoon. Check it out here. (Open the link to see this).
Why does this keep happening, not just in the Times but far beyond?
And what’s more — what’s worse — they don’t seem to want to change. Editors and reporters, with a few exceptions, really don’t see the problem as they normalize Trump. Nor do they appear to listen to valid criticism. They may not even be aware of it, or may think, “well, when both sides are mad at us, we must be doing it right.” Maybe they simply fear being labeled liberal.
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All of this matters immensely as the extraordinarily important campaign for president heads into its last couple of months. I’ll be continuing to monitor coverage here, and trying to find ways to improve it.
Please note: President Biden is old and he shows it, but he is mentally sharp and animated.
The clips are contained in a post called “The Meidas Touch.” The speeches by Biden and Harris are the second of three videos. The third video is Governor Tim Walz in Wisconsin, speaking to union workers.
Sixty-six days until Election Day. Early voting starts in a couple of weeks. Will the nation build for the future or go back to the past?
Jennifer Rubin was a solid conservative journalist and lawyer who was hired by the Washington Post to express the conservative view on politics in a column called “Right Turn.” After Trump’s election, she became increasingly critical of him and eventually reversed her ideology. She is today one of the most incisive critics of the MAGA movement. In this column, she chastises Prominent Republicans for remaining silent in this election.
She writes:
One of the most uplifting parts of last week’s Democratic convention was the presence of so many Republicans, such as former Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger and former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan. Both decided to put country over party and self.
“I know Kamala Harris shares my allegiance to the rule of law, the Constitution and democracy, and she is dedicated to upholding all three in service to our country,” Kinzinger said. “Whatever policies we disagree on pale in comparison with those fundamental matters of principle, of decency and of fidelity to this nation.” Likewise, Duncan said, “Let me be clear to my Republican friends at home watching: If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, you’re not a Democrat. You’re a patriot.”
The day after the convention, a dozen former lawyers from the three Republican administrations before Donald Trump’s published aletter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. They wrote, “Trump’s attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after losing the election proved beyond any reasonable doubt his willingness to place his personal interests above the law and values of our constitutional democracy.” They argued that returning Trump to office “would threaten American democracy and undermine the rule of law in our country.” Then, a four-star general who served under President George W. Bush and hundreds of former Republican staffers endorsed Harris.
So, the question remains: Where are the rest of the Republicans who understand Trump is an existential threat to democracy? Most of the big names still refuse to follow Kinzinger and Duncan’s lead.
Former president George W. Bush must be in a witness protection program; he has virtually disappeared. Former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney courageously stood up to Trump when he tried to stage a coup. But, sorry — if you pledge to do everything possible to prevent Trump’s return to power, you have an obligation to endorse Harris, the only person who can beat him.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who shredded Trump in the primaries, previously objected to endorsing President Joe Biden because of Biden’s age. (“President Biden, in my view, is past the sell-by date.”) What is his excuse now for refusing to endorse the new, 59-year-old Democratic nominee?
Paul Ryan, a Fox board member and former speaker of the House, was quoted in May as saying, “Character is too important for me. … [The presidency] is a job that requires the kind of character [Trump] doesn’t have.” But Ryan too lacks the nerve to support the only viable alternative. When he rationalizes his refusal to endorse a Democrat on the grounds that he differs on “policy,” he is telling us that preserving democracy is not a high policy priority for him.
The list goes on: H.R. McMaster (actually commending Trump’s foreign policy in the Atlantic!), Jim Mattis, Condoleezza Rice. Moral cowardice, or craving for access in future Republican administrations, seems to have silenced even those most vocal on America’s defense of Ukraine and other allies. History will not treat them kindly.
Certainly, getting some Republicans to refrain from voting for Trump is helpful. But if they are as devoted to democracy and as committed to the international world order as they say, there is no moral argument for refraining from going the rest of the way to endorse Harris, especially after such a robust affirmation of her foreign policy views.
Biden gave up the presidency for the sake of our democracy. Can’t these Republicans give Harris their votes?
Mary Trump, Donald’s estranged niece, asks an important question: Why did the U.S. Army decide not to bring charges against Donald Trump for law-breaking? He knew that it was illegal to bring cameras into Arlington National Cemetery; he knew it was illegal to stage a campaign event there. When the aide on duty reminded his crew not to break the law, they shoved her aside and ridiculed her. I assume the Department of the Army is acting out of self-interest. Those who made the decision know that if Trump is re-elected, he will wreak vengeance on them.
Donald Trump and his minions were warned against politicizing a visit to Arlington National Cemetery. They did it anyway, violating self-evident norms and the law: military cemeteries cannot be used to stage partisan political events. When it became clear that Donald’s staff was going to ignore this prohibition, an employee at the cemetery sought to restrict photography in accordance with federal regulations.
Arlington is “the final resting place of more than 400,000 U.S. troops, veterans and family members. Donald was there to mark the third anniversary of a suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. troops during the evacuation of Afghanistan,” an anniversary he did not see fit to commemorate in 2023 or 2022.
Cemetery staff had made it clear ahead of time that official photography was not allowed in Section 60, where veterans of recent wars are buried. When the employee sought to reinforce the guidelines, she was, according to a report released by the Army, “abruptly pushed aside” by people in Donald’s entourage. The last part should surprise no one. Donald is a foppish, chubby overlord who relies on the unquestioning thuggery of the conscienceless jackals who comprise his inner circle and staff who exist to make him look tough. For him, “toughness” means being an unrepentant asshole; people in his orbit simply follow his lead.
Arlington National Cemetery is run by the Army. The woman who tried to make sure the guidelines, and the law, were followed by Donald’s team, is employed by the Army. After the altercation with members of Donald’s staff, she filed a report. It’s understandable that she does not want to press charges—after all, she remains unidentified because of concerns for her safety—but why won’t the Army? What exactly is gained by allowing this act of desecration to go unpunished? And, by the way, engaging in the kind of behavior Donald and his campaign staff engaged in isn’t simply indecent, it’s illegal. So why is the convicted felon allowed to commit more crimes with impunity?
But let’s summon the will to be shocked, shall we? Let’s be shocked that the former Commander-in Chief is such a despicable narcissist that every interaction he has with service members is simply a means simultaneously to steal their honor while denigrating them.
Is this the worst thing Donald’s ever done? Not by a long-shot. But the combination of selfishness, thuggery, menace, and his willingness to bring the entire weight of his power to bear on a private American citizen is a pretty good encapsulation of everything that is wrong with and disqualifying about him.
It’s time for corporate media to catch up and refuse to let this one go.
After Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency in 1974, his successor Gerald Ford pardoned him to unite the country and end “the nation’s long national nightmare.”
Just a few weeks ago, the question seemed almost preposterous: What should happen to the federal prosecutions of Donald Trump if he is defeated in November? Today, it might be premature to imagine a President Kamala Harris grappling with whether to allow the cases against Trump to go forward or whether, before or after any convictions, to grant him a pardon. But this is a discussion worth launching now, in part because, as the prospect of a Harris victory comes into focus, there could be a “long national nightmare” impulse to put all things Trump in the rearview mirror. Under more ordinary circumstances, in more ordinary times, my sympathies would tend toward such calls for national reconciliation, the sentiments that animated Gerald Ford, 50 years ago next month, to pardon Richard M. Nixon.
In pardoning Nixon, Ford invoked the continued suffering of Nixon and his family, along with Nixon’s years of public service, but said his decision was driven by the need for national healing.
In retrospect, that decision looks wise and selfless. But it’s not the right template for thinking about Trump. Harris should allow special counsel Jack Smith to proceed with his prosecutions against the former president, or what’s left of them after the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity. If Trump is convicted and the conviction is upheld, Harris should not use her power to pardon Trump or commute his sentence.
Why? What’s the difference between Ford and Nixon then and Harris and Trump in a not-so-theoretical future?
First is the matter of consequences for bad acts, something that Trump has magically managed to avoid for most of his 78 years. Short-circuiting his prosecutions or upending his convictions would be the maddening capstone to a life of evading responsibility for wrongdoing.
A sitting president can’t be prosecuted, under long-standing Justice Department policy, so the findings by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III that Trump might have committed 10 acts of obstruction of justice went nowhere. The House of Representatives voted twice to impeach Trump, but the Senate failed to convict — the second time largely because Republican senators (and Trump’s own lawyers) pointed to the prospect of criminal prosecution for efforts to interfere with the election results. Then the Supreme Court carved out a broad sphere of immunity for Trump, jeopardizing at least part of Smith’s prosecution.
When it comes to Trump, accountability is a can endlessly kicked down the road. That’s not in the interest of justice — and it sets a bad precedent for future presidents. We can hope that it doesn’t take the threat of criminal consequences to dissuade presidents from wrongdoing, but rules and laws without consequences are meaningless. And the charges against Trump — that he plotted to overturn election results and obstructed justice to improperly retain classified documents — involve serious misconduct that calls out for enforcement.
Second, Trump is no Nixon, and I don’t mean this in a good way. Nixon’s wrongdoing was egregious, and criminal. But he did not pose a threat to democracy on the same level as Trump, with his incessant claims of a system rigged against him, of elections stolen and politically motivated prosecutions. Nixon left office under political pressure, but, still, he left office.
Nixon cannot accurately be called repentant, but in accepting the pardon he acknowledged “my own mistakes and misjudgments,” adding, “No words can describe the depths of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency — a nation I so deeply love and an institution I so greatly respect.” It is impossible to imagine anything approaching this degree of contrition from Trump. Those who accept no responsibility deserve no mercy. Those who continually incite discord should not receive a pass in the name of calming the turmoil.
Third, about that turmoil: Times have changed since Ford pardoned Nixon. The country has grown angrier and more divided. Ford openly worried about this in his day, warning that if he allowed a criminal case to proceed, “ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.”
Back then, for all the fury generated by the pardon, it was a reasonable judgment that it would calm the waters overall. Today, I wonder whether that would happen. If Harris were to order the prosecutions dropped or grant a pardon, would that have the same salutary effect as Ford envisioned in 1974? Polarization has edged into antipathy, not mere disagreement but vehement disdain for the other side. Political tribalism reigns; it takes precedence over the national interest. It is hard to imagine an act by Harris toward Trump that would magically alter this ugly reality.
So, my advice for former prosecutor and possible president Harris is to let Smith do his job and the criminal justice system work its will. She can decide down the road about a pardon, but she should be wary of taking the lessons of a half-century ago as a road map for what is best for the nation today.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson weaves together the events of the past few days and demonstrates the submission of the Republican Party to one angry man. At the Republican National Convention, the party’s elders were notably absent. No Bush or Cheney; no Romney. Trump put his daughter-in-law, Lara, in charge of the Republican National Committee. It’s the Trump party now, and he controls all its levers of power. Note below that he hasn’t stopped hawking merchandise, even in the middle of his campaign. If you can open a tweet, this is an example of Trump turning his campaign into a money-maker for himself.
She writes:
…Trump began the day by posting an advertisement for the fourth “series of Trump digital trading cards,” or NFTs (which are unique digital tokens) featuring heroic images of Trump. People who buy 15 or more of them—at $99 apiece—get a physical trading card as well. Trump said that the physical card has a piece of the suit he wore at the presidential debate, and Trump promises to sign five of them, randomly. Up to 25 people who buy $25,750 worth of the cards with cryptocurrency will be invited to a gala next month at his Jupiter, Florida, golf club.
In the ad, Trump made it a point to emphasize his enthusiasm for cryptocurrency, an emphasis that dovetails with Trump’s recent promotion of an “official” cryptocurrency project. He linked to a Telegram channel run by his sons Don Jr. and Eric that, at the time, was called “The DeFiant Ones” but has been renamed “World Liberty Financial.” While there is little public information about the project, the channel has almost 50,000 subscribers.
Hawking merchandise was an odd move for a presidential candidate, and it suggested his focus is elsewhere than on the election. Also today, Trump announced that he plans to make former Democrats Robert Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, both of whom have endorsed him, honorary members of his transition team. Kennedy told right-wing personality Tucker Carlson that he would “help pick the people who will be running the government…”
And then, this evening, Quil Lawrence and Tom Bowman of NPR explained the story behind the surprising photos of Trump on Monday giving a thumbs-up over a grave in Arlington National Cemetery. The reporters wrote that “[t]wo members of Donald Trump’s campaign staff had a verbal and physical altercation Monday with an official” at the cemetery, where “[f]ederal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities.” When a cemetery official tried to prevent Trump campaign staff from entering the section where the grave was located, “campaign staff verbally abused and pushed the official aside.” A Trump campaign spokesperson said the official who tried to prevent the staff from holding a political event in the cemetery was “clearly suffering from a mental health episode.”
The elephant in the room these days is that most Republicans, along with many pundits, are pretending that Trump is a normal presidential candidate. They are ignoring his mental lapses, calls for authoritarianism, grifting, lack of grasp on any sort of policy, and criminality, even as he has hollowed out the once grand Republican Party and threatens American democracy itself.
It’s hard to look away from the reality that the Republican senators could have stopped this catastrophe at many points in Trump’s term, at the very least by voting to convict Trump at his first impeachment trial. At the time, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said, “Out of one hundred senators, you have zero who believe you that there was no quid pro quo. None. There’s not a single one.” Republican senators nonetheless stood behind Trump. “This is not about this president. It’s not about anything he’s been accused of doing,” then–majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told his colleagues. “It has always been about November 3, 2020. It’s about flipping the Senate.”
When the Framers wrote the Constitution, they did not foresee senators abandoning the principles of the country in order to support a president they thought would enhance their own careers. Assuming that lawmakers would jealously guard their own power, the Framers gave to the members of the House of Representatives the power to impeach a president. To the members of the Senate they gave the sole power to try impeachments. They assumed that lawmakers, who had just fought a war to break free of a monarch, would understand that their own interests would always require stopping the rise of an authoritarian leader.
But the Framers did not foresee the rise of political partisanship.
In the modern era, extreme partisanship has led to voter suppression to keep Republicans in power, the weaponization of the filibuster to stop Democratic legislation, and gerrymandering to enable Republicans to take far more legislative seats than they have earned. The demands of this extreme partisanship also mean that members of one of the nation’s major political parties have lined up behind a man whom, were he running this sort of a campaign even ten years ago, they would have dismissed with derision.
Finally, devastatingly, the partisanship that made senators keep Trump in office enabled him to name to the Supreme Court three justices. Those three justices were key to making up the majority that overturned the nation’s fundamental principle that all people must be equal before the law. In July 2024 they ruled that unlike anyone else, a president is above it.
In May 2016, South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham famously observed: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.”
Much has been written about Trump’s controversial visit to the graves of American soldiers killed by a suicide bomber at the airport in Afghanistan as thousands of people were struggling to leave. The death of these brave soldiers was terrible and tragic. Trump decided to blame their deaths on Kamala Harris. He made common cause with some of the families and paid tribute to fallen soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. That military cemetery has a special area, Section 60, where neither cameras nor campaign events are allowed. Both are strictly prohibited to show respect for the dead.
Trump arrived with his entourage. A young military woman, left to confront the visitors, informed them of the rules. She tried to stop them, and they pushed her aside. There was some sort of physical confrontation, and one of Trump’s group said later that the woman had “some kind of mental health episode.” Each side reported the other, and the military brass decided “case closed.” They knew that if Trump is re-elected, he would be vengeful. Trump went to the gravesites, where his photo was taken with family members. One bizarre photo showed him standing over a grave, grinning broadly and giving a thumbs-up sign, along with some family members.
Did he break the rules? Yes. He has always acted on the belief that the rules don’t apply to him. He is always immune from responsibility, accountability, or prosecution.
The fascist overtones from the Arlington National Cemetery incident are unmistakeable: a presidential campaign run like a gang, with enforcers shoving aside a public servant enforcing the rules and a mob of millions of supporters with a track record of doxxing, harassing, intimidating, and threatening anyone who gets in their candidate’s way, all the while being egged on by the candidate himself.
You can’t blame the cemetery official for declining to press charges rather than put herself in the line of fire for continued and unending abuse. She didn’t sign up for that. She’s already been baselessly accused by the Trump campaign of having a “mental health episode,” being “despicable” and a “disgrace,” and not deserving to have her job. That all happened within the first 48 hours of the apparent confrontation at the national shrine to fallen service members.
But what about the Army? It oversees Arlington National Cemetery and is a victim of Trump’s bullying, too, so I hesitate to blame it for its predicament. But some of the reporting suggests the staffer on the ground was effectively if inadvertently set up by higher-ups who themselves wanted to avoid a confrontation with Trump. According to the WaPo:
Pentagon officials were deeply concerned about the former president turning the visit into a campaign stop, but they also didn’t want to block him from coming, according to Defense Department officials and internal messages reviewed by The Washington Post.
Officials said they wanted to respect the wishes of grieving family members who wanted Trump there, but at the same time were wary of Trump’s record of politicizing the military. So they laid out ground rules they hoped would wall off politics from the final resting place of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their nation.
Rather than mount a full-throated defense and take any kind of remedial action, the Army has closed the matter after the cemetery official declined to press charges. But the fecklessness doesn’t end there. This paragraph in the NYT is an all-timer for weak-kneed kowtowing to a bully:
Several Army officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential aspects of the matter, on Wednesday sought to keep the politically charged issue from escalating. But at the same time, they defended the cemetery official and pushed back on attacks from the Trump campaign, with one official saying that the woman at the cemetery was just trying to do her job.
Officials purporting to defend their person on the ground by offering some “push back” on the Trump campaign attack, but doing so anonymously while trying to keep it from “escalating.” Escalating into what? You’ve already been run over, so that leaves the only obvious conclusion: The Army itself is trying to avoid being the target of MAGA attacks. This is untenable acquiescence to bullying.
Is that really going to be the end of the story? No consequences, no new measures to enjoin Trump from doing the same thing again at Arlington or another military cemetery, no price to pay for his thuggery. It’s a familiar pattern.
The erosion of any kind of strong, unified, national, countervailing force to Trump’s public bullying and nastiness only enables and emboldens the thuggery that is central to his appeal and that he has already notoriously used on Jan. 6 to try to retain power.
If you don’t think a Trump win in November will unleash a reign of thuggery against anyone who stands in his way – not just political foes but innocent bystanders and regular folks just doing their jobs – then I don’t know what else to tell you. He’s doing it right now, he’s promised to do it if he wins, and his minions are poised and eager to follow through.
He’s not a schoolyard bully. He’s a public menace, and if he wins back the White House, he will be a public menace with vast official powers and Supreme Court-sanctioned immunity.
Donald Trump has shown the nation, once again, that he has no shame.
You knew that, of course. But hauling a camera crew to Arlington National Cemetery and exploiting the fresh graves of heroes — using them as props in his presidential campaign — was more than a violation of the cemetery’s rules; it was more, even, than a violation of federal law. It was a deeply dishonorable act by a shockingly dishonorable man.
Just because we are accustomed to this kind of behavior from Trump does not mean we should accept it. Just because he has no sense of honor or appreciation of sacrifice does not mean we have to pretend honor and sacrifice no longer exist. Just because “Trump is an awful person” is an old story does not mean we should yawn at this latest demonstration and quickly move on.
Section 60 at Arlington Cemetery is the resting place of the men and women who most recently gave what Abraham Lincoln called “the last full measure of devotion” to their country. Monday was the third anniversary of the suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. troops during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. There is nothing wrong with a former president visiting those graves to commemorate that terrible day.
There is everything wrong, though, with that former president using the occasion to generate visual fodder for his bid to return to the White House. Trump brought along a photographer and videographer from his campaign to capture images of the visit — which his campaign team knew, and he surely knew, was forbidden.
And, of course, there is everything wrong with physically shoving aside a worker at the cemetery who was doing her job and trying to enforce the rules.
“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” Arlington Cemetery officials said this week in a statement. This was made clear to Trump’s team as the visit was being planned, officials said — including the strict enforcement of the rule at Section 60, where grief and loss are still raw.
“What was abundantly clear-cut was: Section 60, no photos and no video,” a defense official told The Post.
Despite that warning, though, the Trump team brought its cameras into Section 60. When a cemetery employee tried to stop them, according to The Post, “a larger male campaign aide insisted the camera was allowed and pushed past the cemetery employee, leaving her shocked.”
No one can dismiss the incident as a misunderstanding by Trump and his aides, since their official position is that Trump is infallible. The campaign’s response, as usual, was a lie — a false and gratuitously cruel statement from spokesman Steven Cheung to NPR, which first reported the cemetery clash: “The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony.”
The campaign promised to release footage to corroborate its version of the encounter. That turned out to be a TikTok post — a political ad — with video of Trump in Section 60. And the campaign released an image of Trump standing with family members of the fallen amid the still-fresh graves. He is shown flashing a broad smile and giving a thumbs-up.
Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), tried to chime in MAGA-style by attacking Vice President Kamala Harris — the surging Democratic Party presidential nominee — for any role she might have played in the Afghanistan withdrawal. “She wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up?” Vance said at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. “She can go to hell.”
For the record, at that point Harris had not yelled, or said anything at all, about the cemetery incident.
Also for the record, it was Trump who negotiated the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and forced the Afghan government to release thousands of jailed Taliban fighters in a prisoner swap. Those decisions helped make possible the Taliban’s swift return to power.
And a point of personal privilege: The ashes of my father-in-law and mother-in-law, Edward Rhodes Collins and Annie Ruth Collins, are interred at Arlington. He was a Navy veteran who came under fire in the South Pacific during World War II and later in Korea.
Arlington National Cemetery is a place of honor. Donald Trump thinks honor is for suckers and losers — and values sacrifice only if it might help him win an election. Do not become numb to his nature.
For more about Trump’s disregard for our troops, read this.
The United States Army released a statement yesterday:
“Arlington National Cemetery routinely hosts public wreath laying ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for individuals and groups who submit requests in advance. ANC conducts nearly 3,000 such public ceremonies a year without incident. Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations, and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside. Consistent with the decorum expected at ANC, this employee acted with professionalism and avoided further disruption. The incident was reported to the JBM-HH police department, but the employee subsequently decided not to press charges. Therefore, the Army considers this matter closed. This incident was unfortunate, and it is also unfortunate that the ANC employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the Armed Forces, and its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and respect the nation’s fallen deserve.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 