Trump’s rivals let him off the hook

What does Mike Pence, a family man, a devout Christian, occupant of the top spot on Donald Trump’s enemies list ever since January 6, 2021, and rival of his old boss in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination, think of the fact that the former president has been found by a jury to be “civilly liable” for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll?

Asked by NBC for his reaction, he sidestepped: “I really can’t comment on a judgment in a civil case,” he said. “It’s just one more story focusing on my former running…

What does Mike Pence, a family man, a devout Christian, occupant of the top spot on Donald Trump’s enemies list ever since January 6, 2021, and rival of his old boss in the race for the 2024 Republican nomination, think of the fact that the former president has been found by a jury to be “civilly liable” for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll?

Asked by NBC for his reaction, he sidestepped: “I really can’t comment on a judgment in a civil case,” he said. “It’s just one more story focusing on my former running mate that I know is a great fascination to members of the national media, but I just don’t think it’s where the American people are focused.”

Vivek Ramaswamy cried foul play. Nikki Haley was muted: “I think the focus has to be not to be distracted. That’s why we’ve got to leave the baggage and the negativity behind.”

Politics, I was always told, is a tough game. Presidential politics especially so, with former allies stopping at nothing in the desperate scramble for the top job. The exception, it seems, is the 2024 Republican primary. A jury has just concluded that, albeit on the balance of probabilities, Trump sexually assaulted a woman. The former president, in a publicly available video deposition, was disgracefully arrogant, dismissive and contemptuous of the process, offering a half-hearted defense that hung on “she isn’t my type.”

Offered this lay up, what do Trump’s competitors in a kill-or-be-killed fight for the nomination do? Either say nothing or cobble together words to the effect of “poor Donald.”

The two exceptions so far are Asa Hutchinson, who described Trump’s actions as “indefensible,” and Chris Christie, who said: “It is one person after another, one woman after another. The stories just continue to pile up. And I think we all know he’s not unlucky and that he engaged in this kind of conduct.”

Not exactly A-list candidates, but then I don’t see any of the softly-softly contenders winning more than low-single-digit support in polls at the moment. In other words, you might say that Hutchinson and Christie have nothing to lose. But to do so is to flatter Pence, Haley, et al.

The one candidate polling better than the rest (but still thirty points behind Trump) is Ron DeSantis. He is yet to opine on the Carroll-Trump decision and ducked the question, saying, “I’ve been pretty busy.” He has been all but forced into a more adversarial approach by the behavior of Trump himself, who has identified the Florida governor as his main rival.

As with previous Trump scandals, the verdict in the Carroll case has been met with a nihilistic shrug. I get it. He’s gotten away with it before; why wouldn’t he get away with it again? But realizing that an Aaron Sorkin-scripted Republican repudiation of Trump isn’t about to happen can quickly slip into thinking that Trump is just inevitable, and that nothing he says or does really matters.

Similarly, Republican presidential candidates all seem to have concluded that a “post-Trump” approach will be more successful than an “anti-Trump” approach. But how clear can that distinction really be when Trump is, you know, running to be president again? If you start your sentence “Trump was great…” will voters still be listening once you get past the “but”?

We very obviously aren’t living in a post-Trump world yet. Haley, Pence and the rest of the single-digiters can either wish we were or do something about it.

On our radar

INFLATION EASES Inflation has reached its lowest level in two years, with prices rising 4.9 percent in April compared to the year before. Price rises still remain unusually high, even if they have cooled off from last summer, when inflation reached 9.1 percent.

SANTOS CHARGED Fabulist and congressman George Santos has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges. He has been released on a $500,000 bond and his travel is restricted to New York, Washington and places in between.

FOX’S COUNTER-PROGRAMMING Mike Pence will appear on Fox News in the same time slot as Trump on CNN. David Drucker reports that, according to Team Pence, the scheduling is deliberate.

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It’s Groundhog Day on the debt ceiling

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. Congressional Republicans and a Democratic president are at odds over the nation’s debt ceiling. The GOP is holding out for more spending cuts under a House speaker who has a tenuous grasp on his caucus. The president, meanwhile, wants a clean debt ceiling increase, no questions asked — he’ll deal with the deficit later, which is to say never.

The president reassures the markets that the nation will never default, though financial observers are jittery. Progressive commentators suggest the White House raise the debt ceiling unilaterally and even wonder whether it’s unconstitutional. Washington journalists hang on every move, feeding the drama with colorful language like “fiscal cliff.” Meetings are attended, press conferences are held, but progress seems illusory.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because we saw the exact same thing back in 2011, when John Boehner and Barack Obama clashed over the debt ceiling for the first time. The difference is that today the national debt stands at $31.5 trillion, whereas back in 2011 it was less than half of that. If you want to know why people are so cynical about politics, perhaps one reason is that their government seems trapped in a Groundhog Day forged by its own irresponsibility and dysfunction.

–Matt Purple

Liz Cheney’s anti-Trump ad only helps Trump

There are two categories of people who most desperately want Donald Trump to be the Republican Party’s nominee in 2024: people who love Donald Trump, and people who hate Donald Trump. The people who love Donald Trump are obvious about it. The people who hate him are obvious about it too — but only if you pay attention.

Consider this latest ad from Liz Cheney, targeted to run in New Hampshire, where Trump will be holding a town hall on CNN this evening. It’s not designed to convince anyone to change their minds about Donald Trump. It’s not designed to boost any non-Trump Republican candidates. It’s designed to troll Donald Trump in ways that people who hate him will enjoy — but more importantly, to boost Trump’s chances of becoming the Republican nominee. Make no mistake: this is an ad designed to help Donald Trump by criticizing him.

Why would Liz Cheney want Trump to be the nominee? Because there’s no path back for what she represents or the views she espouses without Trump and his team crashing and burning in an even worse way than in 2020. Cheney needs Trump to lose in a general election to have any path back to relevance for her neoconservative movement. Trumpism has to be thoroughly rejected as emblematic of loserdom, a reckoning that will not come with any other outcome.

Voters should expect this type of ad buy to continue throughout the primary. Instead of spending money on behalf of an opposing candidate, Cheney and the rest of the “hate Trump” movement will do everything they can to ensure he remains the face of the party, thereby ensuring their continued relevance as GOP critics. That’s how much they need him.

–Ben Domenech