The mugshot seen around the world

Before we get to the main item, a quick bit of housekeeping. Today’s DC Diary will be my last. I’m leaving The Spectator, but am happy to report that the Diary will live on after my departure. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to try and make sense of the often confusing, sometimes maddening news out of Washington over the last few years. I leave you in the more than capable hands of my talented Spectator colleagues.

For a brief time on Wednesday night, America was offered a glimpse of a Republican Party not dominated by Donald Trump. Candidates on…

Before we get to the main item, a quick bit of housekeeping. Today’s DC Diary will be my last. I’m leaving The Spectator, but am happy to report that the Diary will live on after my departure. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to try and make sense of the often confusing, sometimes maddening news out of Washington over the last few years. I leave you in the more than capable hands of my talented Spectator colleagues.

For a brief time on Wednesday night, America was offered a glimpse of a Republican Party not dominated by Donald Trump. Candidates on the debate stage swapped views on important issues. From Ukraine to abortion, the conversation was substantive, occasionally fiery and, I imagine, illuminating for an undecided primary voter who tuned in.

But these exchanges felt more like a break from reality than the conversations that will determine who wins the Republican Party nomination. If it wasn’t already obvious that the debate was a sideshow from the Trump Show, yesterday’s events would make that perfectly clear.

As you doubtless already know, Trump turned himself in at the Fulton County Jail Thursday evening. The world was treated to what may well become the most famous image of the most famous person on the planet: a scowling former president looking perfectly villainous to some and defiantly punk rock to others.

True to his Bravo-sized appetite for drama, that unprecedented shot was the image with which Trump decided to return to Twitter. “MUG SHOT – AUGUST 24, 2023. ELECTION INTERFERENCE. NEVER SURRENDER!” read the accompanying text in his first post since January 2021. It has also found its way onto merch offered by everyone from the #resistance news addicts at the Lincoln Project to the fratty bros at Barstool Sports.

The Trump Show continues to offer its discombobulating mix of darkness and levity: a presidential mugshot is a low moment, but one soon lightened by Trump’s self-reported weight and height. Is Trump a threat to American democracy or the country’s greatest stand-up comic? He may be both.

In part because of this strange mix, a glib mood dominates. A cynical public seems to mostly disapprove of Trump’s conduct but not to be gripped by the battle for the soul of America they have been told is underway.

Trump’s mugshot, not the debate a day earlier, felt like the starting gun to the real 2024 campaign. And it is clear we are on a fraught, dangerous path that will test American justice and American democracy. Even with everyone on their best behavior, this upcoming tangle of court appearances and elections risks leaving America looking more like a banana republic than one would hope. That’d be true even if the protagonists on all sides are on their best behavior. But if you know anything about the Trump Show, you know that won’t happen.

On our radar

NEARLY 400 STILL MISSING IN MAUI Hawaiian officials have published the names of 388 people who remain unaccounted for after the Maui wildfires earlier this month.

DA CALLS FOR EARLIER TRUMP TRIAL Fani Willis, the prosecutor in the Fulton County case against Donald Trump and eighteen co-defendants, has called for an earlier start date for the trial. Having previously suggested March 2024, Willis has now proposed a trial starting as early as October.

Powell holds firm

Jerome Powell delivered a clear message that the fight against inflation is not yet over in his speech at the Fed’s annual economic powwow in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, this morning. “Although inflation has moved down from its peak — a welcome development — it remains too high,” he said. “We are prepared to raise rates further if appropriate, and intend to hold policy at a restrictive level until we are confident that inflation is moving sustainably down toward our objective.” Powell said officials would wait to see further data before deciding whether to hold interest rates or raise them further at upcoming meetings.

–OW

Thrown the Trone bone

David Trone leads an understated life in the House. Yet on Monday twenty-seven of his colleagues endorsed him in his quest to replace Ben Cardin in the US Senate.

The Democratic congressman for Maryland’s 5th congressional district is better known for running booze franchise Total Wine & Liquor and his panicked January 6 selfie than he is for his legislative work — in fact, when Cockburn’s Spectator comrade Matthew Foldi ran in the GOP primary to take Trone’s House seat, Foldi made a point of highlighting just how many of Trone’s regional offices remained closed to the public. There were even rumors that Trone’s constituents had found their needs were better tended to when they contacted the office of neighboring congressman Jamie Raskin.

So why are his DC comrades so eager to see him kicked up to the upper house? The secret could well lie in his previous (some argue current) role heading up Total Wine: Trone is absolutely loaded as a result — and is a top Democratic donor.

Dig into the finances of the twenty-seven members of Congress to endorse the wine merchant, with an assist from OpenSecrets, and you’ll discover that over half — fifteen to be precise — have taken campaign funds from Trone or his wife June. What a coincidence!

–Cockburn