Month: May 2024

How to organize my thoughts? I waited and waited, and waited some more for Donald Trump to be convicted of felonies in a court of law. On Thursday, it finally happened with a jury of 12 ordinary New Yorkers determining that the ex-president is guilty on 34 counts of filing false business records in furtherance of a second crime. It’s an outcome I desperately needed for psychological reasons, and I have to say that I was optimistic that a hung jury and mistrial would not happen.

Trump won’t be sentenced until July 11, mere days before the Republican National Convention begins in Milwaukee where the new convict is scheduled to accept the GOP’s presidential nomination. It’s unimaginable that the party’s delegates will renege on their pledge to support Trump, even though that’s clearly what they ought to do. The truth is, Trump was never more prescient than when he said he could commit a murder on 5th Avenue and not lose support from the Republican base. Some people argue that the Stormy Daniels election interference case was the wrong trial, but first of all it was the only one Trump hasn’t been able to delay and, secondly, do you really imagine things would be meaningfully different if he’d just been convicted on the federal January 6 or classified materials charges? Do you think the Republicans would, in those cases, call for Trump not to be nominated at the convention?

Axios reports, “A profound sense of rage — and an insatiable thirst for revenge — is permeating virtually every corner of the Republican Party in the wake of former President Trump’s historic conviction.” The Manhattan jury’s decision is not being accepted by Republican congressional leaders Mitch McConnell and Mike Johnson. House Republicans are now summoning District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. and his deputy, Matthew Colangelo to testify before their Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on June 13th. Sen. Marco Rubio, who clearly is auditioning to be Trump’s 2024 running mate, told Republicans, “Don’t just get angry about this travesty, get even!”

And this is the mild stuff.

So it goes.

Writing for The New Republic, Greg Sargent argues that the verdict has “shattered Trump’s aura of invincibility.” That might turn out to be true, but there are precious few signs of it right now. Historian Tim Naftali, who once directed the Nixon presidential library, seems more on point when he writes, “Donald Trump will now force every GOP candidate to trash our judicial system. There will be a chorus of poison likely worse than what we heard before Jan. 6th.”

That’s both accurate and a new expression of Trump’s magic deflector shield. His malignancy is not curable through known political science. I’ve often argued that the biggest crime John McCain committed was forcing the GOP to defend the qualifications and credentials of Sarah Palin to be president if need be because it compelled the entire right-wing of the country to jettison minimum standards for the office. In my mind, there is a straight line between that and accepting Trump as a nominee eight years later. But the malign influence of Trump on the right’s standards is many orders of magnitude more dangerous, as can be seen now in the reaction to him becoming a convicted felon.

For those who might be worried that the Stormy Daniels verdict will unleash “an insatiable thirst for revenge,” it really clarified and distilled the organizing emotion behind the MAGA movement for the beginning. Remember that Trump rose to prominence on the right by vocally trolling President Barack Obama about his place of birth. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true that Obama was born in Kenya. What made Trump popular was his willingness to sling mud at a black president. Trump was saying Obama didn’t belong in the White House because of who he was, and that’s how many racists in the country felt but didn’t feel they could vocalize. A black president was a shattering event for these people and Trump became their primary vehicle for revenge.

That the right stuck with Trump after January 6, 2021 and is hellbent on him being their nominee in 2024 shows you that this thirst for revenge has only strengthened. This is what drives them, and the 34 felony convictions don’t change that in any material way. Their willingness to shrug off a jury’s ruling and characterize it as illegitimate isn’t a new demonstration of the right’s disregard for the rule of law. We’ve already seen this disregard in two impeachment trials, and in their response to January 6. Driven by racial animus and religious bigotry, the MAGA movement is a full-blown fascist enterprise, and the response we’re seeing to Trump’s conviction just brings this more out in the open. Nowhere is it clearer than in Trump’s ability, as Naftali says, to “force every GOP candidate to trash our judicial system.”

Is this a good thing?

That’s the wrong question. Nothing about Trump is good in any way. But it makes the stakes in the election harder to miss. People have reasons, some of them real and principled, to oppose the reelection of Joe Biden, but those considerations pale in comparison to the consequences of empowering a white nationalist and Christian nationalist populist fascist movement and its revenge-minded leader.

In that sense, both Trump’s conviction and the troubling response from the right are beneficial because they help people who aren’t motivated by hatred and revenge have less reason to flirt with the Republican Party’s alternative to Biden.

It would be better if Trump were convicted of attempting a coup and mishandling the country’s most sensitive documents. But if we can’t have that, at least we got something. Is it dangerous? Hell, yes, but it didn’t increase the danger. The danger was already at the highest level.

Hi photo lovers.

Our rose bushes have been very productive this year. There is the one that came with the house when we moved in 12 years ago, and two new ones one of my daughters planted last spring. The rose you are viewing is one I photographed a few days ago, and comes from one of the bushes planted last year. I liked how this photo turned out. I hope you enjoy it too.

I am still using my same equipment, and am no professional. If you are an avid photographer, regardless of your skills and professional experience, you are in good company here. Booman Tribune was blessed with very talented photographers in the past. At Progress Pond, we seem to have a few talented photographers now, a few of whom seem to be lurking I suppose. The distant hills in the background are in Crawford County, just a ways south of the Ozark Pleateau, which starts maybe a good half hour or so north of where I was standing. Across the river to my west is some unincorporated land in Oklahoma. I’m on the Arkansas side. It’s good to see that any remaining damage from the flood of 2019 has been repaired. I am grateful for some lovely scenery that is a very convenient drive from where I work and live.

I have been using an LG v40 ThinQ for roughly five and a half years. My original LG v40 ThinQ is gone. The back of the phone came off. Apparently the battery began to burst. My initial replacement had a similar fate. I bought yet another version of the same phone about a year ago for hardly anything, as I simply didn’t have the time to really research a good permanent replacement. We will see how long this one lasts. I need more time to research smart phones, especially at the high end. I prefer to get a device and keep it for four or five years. Most of my family seems to be gravitating toward iPhones, but I am determined to avoid going that route. The newer Samsung phones look really promising. Given the times we live in, my default is to delay any major purchases as long as possible. So, unless something really goes wrong with my current phone, I’ll stick to the status quo for as long as possible. Keep in mind that my last Samsung kept going for over four years (although the last year was a bit touch and go). Once I do have to make a new smart phone purchase, the camera feature is the one I consider most important. So any advice on such matters is always appreciated. Occasionally I get to use my old 35 mm, but one of my daughters commandeered it. Presumably she’ll return it before she moves out. So it goes.

This series of posts is in honor of a number of our ancestors. At one point, there were some seriously great photographers who graced Booman Tribune with their work. They are all now long gone. I am the one who carries the torch. I keep this going because I know that one day I too will be gone, and I really want the work that was started long ago to continue, rather than fade away with me. If I see that I am able to incite a few others to fill posts like these with photos, then I will be truly grateful. In the meantime, enjoy the photos, and I am sure between Booman and myself we can pass along quite a bit of knowledge about the photo flog series from its inception back during the Booman Tribune days.

Since this post usually runs only a day, I will likely keep it up for a while. Please share your work. I am convinced that us amateurs are extremely talented. You will get nothing but love and support here. I mean that. Also, when I say that you don’t have to be a photography pro, I mean that as well. I am an amateur. This is my hobby. This is my passion. I keep these posts going only because they are a passion. If they were not, I would have given up a long time ago. My preference is to never give up.

Bill Pruitt was one of four producers who worked on the first two seasons of The Apprentice but for 20 years he was subject to a nondisclosure agreement and could not talk about his experience. Now he’s coming out in an article for Slate, and I have to say I’m pretty disappointed in the result. My problem is mainly with the editing of the piece, which I consider criminally negligent. It’s still worth reading and sharing with your MAGA Uncle Jerry, but it could have been so much better.

Pruitt was the last producer hired for the new reality program and he describes his interview for the job. He reveals that the show, as originally conceived, would have a different billionaire host each season, and also that Donald Trump was not the first choice but the only one who accepted. The article is primarily about the sleight of hand that goes into creating any reality show, which Pruitt likens to a magician who specializes as a pickpocket. That’s the first problem with the editing, because it takes an eon to get to any of Pruitt’s direct interactions with Trump, and his experiences with Trump are the main selling point of the piece.

The opening of the article isn’t without value, however, as Pruitt talks about the many hoops they had to go through to present Trump as a successful and competent businessman. There’s the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City that Trump no longer actually owns which is presented as glamorous even though the sign’s lights are burned out and the carpet stinks. There’s the boardroom they built in the unoccupied mezzanine of Trump Tower which is completely unlike the Trump Organization’s actual boardroom which has chipped furniture. There’s the scenes of Trump flying in a helicopter that’s up for sale because he can’t afford it. And there’s plenty about Trump not being able to remember his lines or the names of the contestants.

There are only three real revelations in the piece, two of which won’t surprise anyone. The first is that Trump bragged that Melania, who was then his fiancee,  knew nothing about one of his hideaway residences at the Briarcliff Manor golf course. The implication being that he used it as a love bungalow. The second is that the architect of the clubhouse at Briarcliff Manor was stiffed on the bill and could do nothing because suing would cost more than he was owed.

But the real newsworthy revelation is only revealed a few dozen paragraphs into the piece, and it involves how the winner of the first season was selected. It’s important to understand that what Pruitt describes was captured on film, and also why it was captured on film. The Apprentice was both a reality show and a game show with a prize. In Season One, the winner was given a choice of overseeing the building of Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, managing a new Trump National Golf Course or managing a resort in Los Angeles.

Because the program awarded a prize, it was subject to government oversight arising from the fixing of winners on several 1950’s game shows. Therefore, as a legal precaution, all production meetings related to the “firing” of contestants were filmed and recorded.

The set-up of the first season had George Ross and Carolyn Kepcher, executive vice presidents for the Trump Organization, advising Trump on which contestant deserved to be eliminated at the end of each episode, and this was first discussed off-film in these recorded production meetings. Here’s Pruitt’s account of what happened in the production meeting for the final episode, beginning with a description of the two finalists and the performance of their tasks.

Trump goes about knocking off every one of the contestants in the boardroom until only two remain. The finalists are Kwame Jackson, a Black broker from Goldman Sachs, and Bill Rancic, a white entrepreneur from Chicago who runs his own cigar business. Trump assigns them each a task devoted to one of his crown-jewel properties. Jackson will oversee a Jessica Simpson benefit concert at Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, while Rancic will oversee a celebrity golf tournament at Trump National Golf Club in Briarcliff Manor, New York.

…Both Rancic and Jackson do a round-robin recruitment of former contestants, and Jackson makes the fateful decision to team up with the notorious Omarosa, among others, to help him carry out his final challenge.

With her tenure on the series nearly over, Omarosa launches several simultaneous attacks on her fellow teammates in support of her “brother” Kwame. For the fame-seeking beauty queen, it is a do-or-die play for some much-coveted screen time. As on previous tasks, Ross and Kepcher will observe both events.

The key here is that the winner must be decided in some kind of fair process. In fact, each prior episode, which only produced a loser, required a producer “to equitably share with Trump the virtues and deficiencies of each member of the losing team” in order to render “a balanced depiction of how and why they lost.” Likewise, for the decision on who should be declared the season’s winner, a process was set up for deliberation. Here’s how that looked:

When the tasks are over, we are back in the boardroom, having our conference with Trump about how the two finalists compare—a conversation that I know to be recorded. We huddle around him and set up the last moments of the candidates, Jackson and Rancic.

Trump will make his decision live on camera months later, so what we are about to film is the setup to that reveal. The race between Jackson and Rancic should seem close, and that’s how we’ll edit the footage. Since we don’t know who’ll be chosen, it must appear close, even if it’s not.

We lay out the virtues and deficiencies of each finalist to Trump in a fair and balanced way, but sensing the moment at hand, Kepcher sort of comes out of herself. She expresses how she observed Jackson at the casino overcoming more obstacles than Rancic, particularly with the way he managed the troublesome Omarosa. Jackson, Kepcher maintains, handled the calamity with grace.

“I think Kwame would be a great addition to the organization,” Kepcher says to Trump, who winces while his head bobs around in reaction to what he is hearing and clearly resisting.

And here’s the big reveal of the article:

“Why didn’t he just fire her?” Trump asks, referring to Omarosa. It’s a reasonable question. Given that this the first time we’ve ever been in this situation, none of this is something we expected.

“That’s not his job,” [showrunner Jay] Bienstock says to Trump. “That’s yours.” Trump’s head continues to bob.

“I don’t think he knew he had the ability to do that,” Kepcher says. Trump winces again.

“Yeah,” he says to no one in particular, “but, I mean, would America buy a n— winning?”

And there you have it. One the first season of The Apprentice, Trump decided to make the white contestant the winner irrespective of any objective or fair process that was in place to guide his decision. And he made that decision because he didn’t think America would like it if the black contestant won.

Pruitt ruefully describes the non-reaction in the room.

Bienstock does a half cough, half laugh, and swiftly changes the topic or throws to Ross for his assessment. What happens next I don’t entirely recall. I am still processing what I have just heard. We all are. Only Bienstock knows well enough to keep the train moving. None of us thinks to walk out the door and never return. I still wish I had. (Bienstock and Kepcher didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

Afterward, we film the final meeting in the boardroom, where Jackson and Rancic are scrutinized by Trump, who, we already know, favors Rancic. Then we wrap production, pack up, and head home. There is no discussion about what Trump said in the boardroom, about how the damning evidence was caught on tape. Nothing happens.

I am not a lawyer, but I assume that Kwame Jackson, the black Goldman Sachs broker who was the runner-up, could have successfully sued everyone involved in producing Season One of The Apprentice. Also, since amendments in 1960 to the Communications Act of 1934 “prohibited the presentation of scripted game shows under the guise of a legitimate contest,” I believe Trump exposed the producers, including himself, to criminal prosecution.

Yet, Trump’s casual racism, coming as it did at the very end of the process, was overlooked and covered up, all in the interest of saving the project. Pruitt doesn’t believe the video evidence will ever be revealed, and perhaps he’s correct about that, although a law suit could produce it through discovery requirements.

When you think about the impact the Access Hollywood “Grab ‘Em By the Pussy” audio tape had on the 2016 election, it’s easy to envision how a video tape of Trump using the word “nigger” in an Apprentice board room might reverberate in 2024. Hell, Trump might even assign a fixer to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Absent the video emerging, the best we’ll get is this account from Pruitt, and that gets to my overall dissatisfaction with the piece. It’s not just that the lede was buried, but Pruitt comes off as a run-of-the-mill critic of Trump rather than as a serious person hoping to share vital and important information with the voting public. Pruitt reveals the existence, at least at one period of time, of indisputable evidence of Trump’s exceptional racial animus against blacks. But it’s almost hidden among a more general tirade against Trump’s character and a kind of confession that The Apprentice was responsible for electing Trump by presenting a totally misleading and favorable impression of him and his capabilities.

These are two different, though related, issues. A better editor would have recognized that one is opinion and one is reporting. One is available from countless other sources who’ve had firsthand behind the scenes experience with Trump’s boorish stupidity, and the other is the existence of something potentially determinative of the winner of the November presidential election.

To me, the story is “There’s a video tape of Trump using the n-word, how can we get it?”

There’s another story about how The Apprentice shaped public perceptions of Trump and made him a viable presidential candidate. That story is worth telling too, but we shouldn’t expect it to matter too much in the big picture. Maybe Pruitt will find a better editor or a media advisor to better guide him to having the impact he clearly wants to have. I can tell he wants redemption for not speaking up in that production meeting and for his role in deceiving the public about Trump. He won’t get it from this poorly edited article, but he can keep trying.

As for Kwame Jackson, the ball is in his court. I think he should go to court and try to get that tape.

I’ve been revisiting the past a lot in recent months. I finally got a Spotify account, and instead of creating playlists like a typical user would do, I’ve added albums to my library, and listen to them as I would have back in the day. This track is from one of the first LPs I bought way back in the day. I’d already heard enough Police on the radio to know that I’d like them. Zenyatta Mondatta was a solid album all the way through.

The lyric itself is fairly basic, with a hint of wistfulness. The music is the real centerpiece here. The band was truly in sync, and it really gives the members some space to show us what they could do – especially Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland.

One thing to note: I will be out of town at a worksite and do not know if I will have time to post. I honestly have barely had time when I am not on the go. It’s been one of those years. As always the bar is fully stocked and the jukebox is limited only by your imagination. Cheers!

At 11:28am on Wednesday, May 29th, 2024, Judge Merchan completed his instructions to the Manhattan jury in the Stormy Daniels hush money case and sent it off to deliberate on whether or not to convict Donald Trump of committing up to 34 felony counts. Trump left the courtroom, although he’s not allowed to leave the courthouse, and immediately claimed that even Mother Theresa couldn’t beat the case the prosecutors assembled against him considering how Merchon instructed the jurors. It’s not clear what in particular he was referring to, as many of Merchan’s directions were favorable to the defense. But, then, Trump is full of bluster and also kind of an idiot. On Monday, he complained that the prosecutors would go last in closing statements, as if this were some novel concept in American criminal procedure: “WHY IS THE CORRUPT GOVERNMENT ALLOWED TO MAKE THE FINAL ARGUMENT IN THE CASE AGAINST ME? WHY CAN’T THE DEFENSE GO LAST? BIG ADVANTAGE, VERY UNFAIR. WITCH HUNT,” he posted on Truth Social.

He seems pessimistic and somewhat dejected that he may soon “become a common criminal.” But he has a puncher’s chance of beating the rap. An outright acquittal seems very unlikely, primarily because his lawyers did not do a good job. I don’t think they really pursued a strategy for acquittal. Their actions only make sense as a kind of hybrid of being hamstrung by a difficult client and a feeling that a hung jury was a more realistic outcome. The case is really about business records, but they spent most of their effort trying to dirty up Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen. That might help a sympathetic juror find reason and courage to hold out against the others who want to convict, but it did little to provide an innocent explanation for the hard evidence in the case, including Trump’s signatures on the checks made out to Cohen.

It’s simply impossible to believe that Trump paid Cohen nearly half a million dollars without understanding the purpose. Nor is it credible that he would gross up Cohen’s payment to compensate him for income tax he’d have to pay on a reimbursement disguised as legal fees without having an intent to conceal and deceive.

A  second element of the case was proving that the purpose was to protect his campaign. The defense called no witnesses to offer an alternative purpose such as to avoid embarrassment or marital strife.

A lot of the defense was simply laughable. For example, they insisted that Trump never had a tryst with Daniels, which was needlessly damaging to their credibility. And they argued in closing that the Access Hollywood “Grab ’em by the pussy” audiotape was really not a big deal despite overwhelming evidence that it hit his campaign like a meteorite.

These were own goals that a smarter client or better lawyers would have avoided. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be one or more holdouts who refuse to convict. Cohen is a very problematic witness and because he’s an accessory to the charged crimes, per the judge’s instructions, the jury can’t accept his testimony if it lacks corroboration. The prosecution was able to corroborate almost all of Cohen’s testimony but there are a couple of areas where it’s simply his word against Trump’s. Of course, Trump wisely didn’t testify in his own defense, so…

It’s also possible that the jury will convict on some charges and hang or even acquit on others. There are two checks to Cohen that Trump didn’t sign because they weren’t drawn on his personal account. Perhaps the jury could treat the counts on those two checks differently from the others. A third of the charges relate to filing Cohen’s fraudulent invoices, and maybe the jury will find it hard to say Trump “caused” those to be filed as false business records since they originated with Cohen. The strongest charges involve the 10 checks Trump did sign and the ones related to entries in the Trump Corporation’s general ledger. I can’t see any realistic circumstance where a strong majority of the jury won’t be inclined to convict on those indictments.

But there can also be a holdout or two who never were going to convict Trump no matter what the evidence. In that circumstance, the case was doomed before it began. As you can see, there are some complications to consider for the jury even if they’re convinced of Trump’s guilt in a general sense. So, it may take some time to move through each category of charges and decide if a conviction is merited on each and all of them. I can foresee a scenario where a compromise is reached with a skeptical juror to convict on most charges but acquit on some.

Pundits have been all over the place on predicting how long the jury will be out, with some saying a verdict could come as quickly as Wednesday night or Thursday, and others saying they’ll want to be done by the end of the day on Friday so they won’t have to come back next week. Still others say it could drag out for a week or more. In my opinion, it really shouldn’t take too long to review the evidence, so if a verdict takes longer than a day and a half I am going to assume there’s a serious likelihood of a hung jury and a mistrial.

That would be a terrible outcome. That would be a devastating outcome. No matter how long or quick the process is, every moment is going to be a misery knowing that if Trump escapes justice here, he has a very good chance of being reelected. In that case, the world for us and our children won’t be worth living in.

 

You can listen to Episode 11 of the Progress Pondcast on Apple or Spotify. I’m pretty pleased with it. We talk about a lot of subjects including the dangers of skydiving. We discuss crap jazz critics, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, James Brown, Pat Metheny and Kenny G. There’s a lot about the Stormy Daniels trial and our impressions of testimony by Daniels, Michael Cohen and Robert Costello as well as what we guess the jurors are thinking over the long break before closing arguments. We also have fun with Rudy Giuliani’s surprise birthday party and new coffee venture. We even find time to key in on John Wilkes Booth.

It’s pretty lighthearted, which I think is appropriate for a holiday weekend, so please give it a listen and like and subscribe!

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Flagstaff, Arizona scene. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 6×6 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have now started to adjust those silly shrubs. More next week.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.000550–>

As we wait through the Memorial Day Weekend for closing arguments in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, there’s a sports game-like quality to predictions about the outcome. CBS News has surveyed the nation to measure expectations. Will the prosecutors win? Will Trump pull off an upset? What are the ratings for the trial?

They find three-quarters of Americans are paying some attention, and 56 percent think Trump committed crimes. Fifty-two percent of respondents predict Trump will be found guilty. Forty-eight percent predict he’ll be found not guilty. The survey did not offer the option to predict a hung jury, which seems odd to me. I’ve followed the trial as closely as I can considering it is not televised. Trump’s defense lawyers have had a moment or two, but overall they’ve done too little damage to the state’s case to cause an outright acquittal. A hung jury, however, has always been a strong possibility simply because the case involves the Republican Party’s nominee for president of the United States in the upcoming November election.

In the CBS News poll, only 8 percent of Republicans say Trump is definitely guilty, and only 3 percent of Republicans say he will definitely be convicted. If there are Republicans on the jury, it’s easy to see how difficult it may be for them to buck their party, their family and their friends and render a guilty verdict. And this was always true, irrespective of anything that might happen in the trial. In fairness, the opposite is nearly as true. Ninety-three percent of Democrats say Trump is probably or definitely guilty, and 66 percent of Democrats predict that the jury will find him guilty.

I can’t say that these survey results are obvious. Trump has relentlessly attacked the judge and jury, prepping Republicans not to accept the validity of a conviction. Yet, Republicans seem confident that Trump will be found not guilty. Now, part of this is merely a reflection of the lack of a hung jury option. If you think the case will end in a mistrial, your only option is to answer that he’ll be found not guilty, and those are very different results with very different odds. But, still, 59 percent of Republicans predict Trump will avoid a conviction, which compares to 48 percent of independents and 34 percent of Democrats.

My take is that the trial has gone very well for the prosecution and that the chances of an outright acquittal are close to zero. There are two lawyers on the jury, and if one or both of them are Trump sympathizers, they might be persuasive enough to turn the whole jury toward an acquittal, but I just see this as extremely unlikely. Far more probable is that there is at least one jury who will refuse to convict no matter how long the judge forces deliberations. In that case, there will eventually be a mistrial that Trump will treat as if it were a not guilty verdict. The odds on this happening are impossible to predict, but if such a juror exists they are unlikely to be persuaded by anything that happens in closing arguments. In other words, a mistrial may have been baked in the cake as soon a jury selection was completed.

There’s another possibility, though. There could be a juror who is initially hellbent on acquitting Trump who can be brought around to convict by the unanimous opposition of their colleagues. In that case, it actually can matter how well the two sides do in closing arguments.

It’s my understanding that the defense is precluded from arguing that Trump is a victim of selective prosecution or otherwise asking the jury to nullify the case. They can’t even argue that Trump’s indictments are “novel, unusual, or unprecedented.” They pretty much have to stick to saying Trump did not authorize Michael Cohen to pay Stormy Daniels and that he made the repayments to Cohen but did not cause the coverup of those payments through the production of false business records. Additionally, they can argue that the motivation for the hush money payments was to avoid marital and family problems and personal embarrassment rather than an effort to influence the election.

One problem is that they did next to nothing to advance these arguments when they produced the defense’s case. They called only one substantial witness, Robert Costello, who testified that Cohen told him when he was considering hiring Costello as his attorney that Trump knew nothing about the hush money payment. But it was also revealed that Costello was secretly acting as an agent of then President Trump who was desperate that Cohen not flip on him. Cohen’s testimony that he lied to Costello because he didn’t trust him not to report back to Trump was vindicated, and Costello’s testimony probably did more harm than good to the defense. I just don’t think they produced a reasonable doubt through Costello’s testimony.

As for the argument that Trump was only worried about his wife finding out, his lawyers denied in their opening statement that the tryst ever took place, so what was there to hide? Other than eliciting a statement from Hope Hicks on cross-examination that Trump was worried about what Melania would think, the defense produced nothing to offset voluminous evidence that he and his campaign were worried about how the Daniels allegations would affect the election.

And on the falsification of business records, the defense has to deal with the fact that Trump’s signature is on the checks to Cohen. Those checks totaled up to $420,000 in 12 installments of $35,000. The prosecution meticulously documented that Trump watches spending like a hawk and is extremely stingy. Asking the jury to believe that Trump did not know the purpose of giving his fixer nearly half a million dollars is going to be a hard sell. He would have known that the money was doubled to compensate Cohen for taxation on what was falsely being reported as income instead of repayments.

So, the reason Trump is at high risk of conviction is that his defense was not convincing. They were successful in demonstrating that both Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels have a strong antipathy for Trump and want to see him convicted, and of course Cohen is a convicted perjurer and overall scumbag whose testimony can be doubted. But this is not enough to raise a reasonable doubt in an objective juror given the overall corroborating strength of the state’s case.

My prediction is that there will be no acquittal. A mistrial is possible only because the outcome of the trial has implications for the presidential election which may affect one or more Republican-leaning jurors’ willingness to convict. As a result, I doubt closing arguments can or will make any material difference in the outcome.

 

After the 9/11 attacks, when I considered how America should respond, I instantly recognized that it was important to remove American soldiers from Saudi Arabia. It’s one reason why I actually did see Iraq as part of the problem, because enforcement of our sanctions and no-fly zone against Baghdad were a big part of the reason we needed such a strong presence in the Persian Gulf. With the international consensus on Iraq sanctions falling apart, it really was a priority to find a way out. The situation presented a conundrum because of the strong desire not to reward the 9/11 attackers in any way.

In short, we needed to recognize that our own policies and actions had inspired a huge backlash and that the status quo was unacceptable and also unsustainable. But for political reasons and as a matter of principle, our response couldn’t be to accede to al-Qaeda’s demands. Using trumped up charges about weapons of mass destruction to topple Saddam Hussein was the Bush administration’s solution to this problem. It allowed us to end the unpopular sanctions regime and relocate our troops out of the Saudi kingdom without looking like we were making those concessions. But it predictably made matters worse.

Israel is in a similar position in that the October 7 attacks proved that the status quo with Gaza and the Palestinians was a massive failure that created an unacceptable national security risk, but there’s an overwhelming desire not to take any actions that would be perceived as a reward for Hamas. There’s a massive consensus about this with the Israeli public, and it’s one reason why support for a two-state solution is at the lowest level.

It’s important to understand Israeli public opinion on this because it’s tempting to think the problem lies solely with Benjamin Netanyahu. Writing for the New York Times, Roger Cohen suggests that it is only Netanyahu who stands in the way of America’s solution involving  normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia in exchange for a solid roadmap to an independent Palestinian state:

Mr. Netanyahu’s life’s work has been largely built around the avoidance of a two-state agreement, even to the point of past support for Hamas intended to obstruct such an outcome. That seems unlikely to change, unless the United States can somehow triangulate Saudi normalization of relations with Israel, a vague Israeli verbal commitment to a process ending in two states and the end of the war in Gaza.

“To any prime minister but Netanyahu, the U.S. offer is very attractive,” said Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, who noted that an end to the Gaza war would inevitably bring an official inquiry into responsibility for the Oct. 7 disaster and confront Mr. Netanyahu with the fraud and corruption charges against him. “But for his own personal reasons, he balks at any postwar significant Palestinian role in governing Gaza.”

It’s simply not true that there are alternative prime ministers who would leap at the chance to initiate a two-state solution. And, even if there were, their parties would never come close to forming a majority coalition in the Knesset. Much of Israel is presently uninhabitable because of security threats, including both the areas that were attacked on October 7 and the northern border areas with Lebanon that have been evacuated. The population is deeply traumatized and incredibly angry, and it’s simply impossible to think that now is that time to ask them to believe a future Palestinian state won’t present an even worse defensive situation. It also feels like it would vindicate Hamas’s decision to attack and thereby dishonor those they killed, kidnapped and tortured.

Destroying nearly every building and institution in Gaza is making matters worse, just as invading and occupying Iraq made matters worse. And Israel has to recognize that there’s no going back to the status quo ante. What they’ve done in flattening Gaza is create an even worse conundrum. Who will rebuild the place? Who will govern it? They can’t do it on their own even if they wanted to, and they can’t get any help unless they accede to a two-state solution.  But no leader can form a majority on that premise.

Insofar as there’s a growing internal threat to Netanyahu’s leadership, it’s coming from those who recognize that there needs to be a plan for Gaza. Primary among these critics are members of the military and the intelligence community who know they can’t occupy an utterly destroyed Gaza in perpetuity. Yet even these critics engage in fantasies about Arab nations taking responsibility for Gaza without concessions on a two-state solution. That simply will not happen.

To even begin to get Israeli public opinion to consider a two-state solution, there needs to be at least a perception that Hamas has been utterly destroyed, and that’s why there’s so much consensus about going into Rafah despite intense international pressure, including from the Biden administration, not to do so. You can consider it a fig leaf to paper over the need to make concessions to the Palestinians.

So much focus is on Israel’s actions in Gaza, which has led the International Criminal Court to seek the arrest of Netanyahu and his defense minister. What’s not getting enough attention is that all this violence has not created a sense of safety or normalcy in Israel. Asking the public there or their leaders to make concessions that seem even riskier and also feel like rewards to their tormentors is not likely to succeed.

The idea seems to be that normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia could change this, but Hamas and Hezbollah don’t answer to the Saudis. They can’t stop rockets from falling on Israeli towns nor assure there won’t be future cross-border invasions from Gaza.

A final point that needs to be made is that Arab nations also feel like Israel shouldn’t be rewarded for its destruction of Gaza because it would in some way justify what they’ve done and dishonor the innocents they’ve killed.

Under the circumstances, any solution has to have a way for both sides to save face even if there are strong arguments that they don’t deserve it. One sacrifice Israel can make, and I don’t consider it much of a sacrifice, is that Netanyahu loses power and faces justice in the Israeli judicial system rather than international courts. That way, Arabs can negotiate with someone who isn’t the architect of the Gaza War.

But to get Israel to make concessions on a Palestinian state and the future governance of Gaza, they need tangible improvements in their day-to-day security situation, and that very much includes the threat in the north from Hezbollah. Since that problem can only be immediately addressed by Iran, I cannot see a way forward.

This week, Spain, Norway and Ireland unilaterally recognized an independent Palestinian state which caused Israel to withdrawal their ambassadors. It’s a further sign that the status quo, as bad as it is, will not hold for Israel. But symbolic moves like this which alarm the Israeli public can be counterproductive. People seem not to understand that Israel just learned they’re not safe from even an embargoed Gaza. How much less safe would they be from a Gaza that can freely import whatever it wants? They cannot secure their border with Lebanon and people have been forced to abandon their towns. That’s every day life in Israel, and while it’s a picnic compared to life in the West Bank and especially Gaza, it’s does not inspire trust in the enemy.

The one thing everyone should be able to agree on is that Netanyahu will not and cannot be part of the solution here. Until his government falls, there is no possibility that anything will get on track for a path to peace.

Hi everyone. We are halfway through the week.

Here’s another blast from the past:

They just don’t write songs like that anymore, it seems. See you next week.

Cheers.