I’m Fine With Letting Alvin Bragg Go First

Let people adapt slowly to the idea that an ex-president is going to jail.

As we wait around for twice-impeached, disgraced ex-president Donald Trump to be arrested, some people are concerned about the sequencing. Maybe it’s not the best idea to start out the accountability project with a false business records charge. Maybe Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should wait his turn.

The House Republicans are preoccupied with Trump during their “ideas retreat” in Orlando, and for the most part they’re eager to attack Bragg as a partisan tool of George Soros who is blowing off the statute of limitations in a fascist attempt to hurt Trump’s 2024 presidential candidacy. Perhaps they wouldn’t be so willing to have Trump’s back if his arrest for seditious conspiracy and mishandling highly classified material was first in the queue. It might be harder to hold the line if Trump was about to be fingerprinted for a racketeering case in Fulton County, Georgia.

But I prefer things this way. Anyone lacking the foresight to see that defending Trump will only get more politically perilous deserves to be sucked into the vortex now when he has plausible gripes. This first case is just to get people’s feet wet. Even if found guilty, Trump doesn’t face much prospect of prison time in the Stormy Daniels case. His former lawyer went to prison on charges related to the case, it’s true, but mainly because he lied about it.

Where Trump’s real vulnerability lies is with the federal case looking into January 6 and documents, and the Fulton County case looking into his effort to steal Georgia’s Electoral College votes. Guilty verdicts on those charges could land him in prison for the rest of his life. That’s the kind of thing that might seriously concern his political supporters.

Rather than beginning with the highest stakes, why not start with the lowest so that people can calmly get acclimatized to a new reality where a former president is going to fucking jail. Boil Pepe the Frog slowly and the blowback will be less intense.

And, yet, at the same time, the consequences will be all the greater because more people will be sullied with having defended him on the record. Because, in the end, having been on Trump’s side will be a lot like having been an advocate for the war in Iraq. Literally no one gets credit for that today, even if the opposite was true for nearly a decade after the invasion. What seemed politically necessary in Republican circles can change. And it will change in Trump’s case.

But first he has to be convicted of the more serious charges. Once that happens, the page gets turned. Ten years after Nixon resigned, the only supporters he had were named Pat Buchanan, Roger Stone and G. Gordon Liddy. Ten years from now, Trump’s list of supporters will be no more robust and probably even less credible.

Author: BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

6 thoughts on “I’m Fine With Letting Alvin Bragg Go First”

  1. It is really crazy to think that since the 1950s, there is only one republican president remembered with any fondness or respect at all. Nobody even remembers Gerald Ford. I don’t have super warm feelings about Bill Clinton, but I don’t feel I have to damn his memory. Very few republican presidents are in a similar position.

  2. I just had to shake my head last night as I listened to Mona Charen on Chris Hayes’ show saying Bragg just needs to “stand down” and allow one of the more serious cases go first. According to Charen, Bragg’s effort will just suck all the air out of the rest of the very serious legal balloons that are likely going to pop for Donald Trump. If this is the first charge then it will just seem like such a petty and uncontentious thing that it will automatically and permanently dilute the seriousness of all the efforts in Georgia and by the DOJ!!!!

    Sighhh…….

    I guess I understand why networks like MSNBC feel the need to have people such as Charen weigh in on things like this. After all, she is known in the beltway as a “reasonable Republican”. One who got booed at CPAC, and has done her rounds at all the “respectable” conservative places like The National Review, and has worked for people like Reagan and Kemp. What bigger bonafides can there be for someone who they want to tout as a D.C. moderate? And now I see MSNBC has added John Kasich to their stable, and on his first appearance, which was on Ari Melber’s show, he proceeded to make a straight faced claim that “both parties have been taken over by the their extremists” and Americans are truly longing for some “real moderates” to run the show. And his comments were allowed to stand without pushback or question.

    Lord save us from the pundits.

    1. I wish MSNBC had not hired Kasich, I don’t think he adds anything to Ari or anyone else. That said I don’t have him in the same bucket as Trump and MTG et.al. So I suppose I will tolerate him, I’m hopes he actually says something I like. As I am writing this Kasich is on now with Ali. Now bad but I’d rather not.

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