Pity the voters of Georgia. From Stacey Abrams’s theatrics and red-on-red civil war to Donald Trump’s vote-stealing schemes and seemingly endless runoff races upon which, they are told, the future of the Republic depends, Peach State residents have found themselves close to the eye of the political storm of late.
The newest drama with which they must reckon is, of course, the RICO case brought against Donald Trump and eighteen of his allies over their efforts to overturn the election in the state in 2020. (For more on that indictment, read former US attorney Rachel Paulose’s piece for our site.) If any state’s voters have good reason to feel fatigued by the never-ending Trump psychodrama, it’s Georgia’s.
How will Trump’s latest tangle with the law impact his standing in a state where the party has fared badly during the Trump era, with the notable exception of prominent Trump enemy Governor Brian Kemp? Will Republicans in the Peach State buck the trend elsewhere that has seen Trump’s popularity rise among the party faithful as his legal woes mount?
These aren’t easy questions to answer. Especially because so-called “Trump fatigue” doesn’t necessarily translate into opposition to the former president. For example, if you’re a Georgia Republican tired of the focus on 2020 and the endless drama surrounding the former president, you might be as exasperated with the prosecutors bringing a case against Trump as you are with Trump himself. You might be tired of the drama, but you don’t blame Trump alone for that drama.
When it comes to Trump fatigue, Georgians are only a few steps ahead of the whole country, of course, who must now settle in for a presidential election that, assuming Trump is the nominee, will be defined by the fact that one of the candidates is also a criminal defendant in multiple cases. In other words, we’re all Georgians now. Or we will soon be. And if that’s the case, victory in the general election becomes a tall order for Trump.
A new Associated Press-NORC poll demonstrates the central challenge the Trump campaign must face: the fact that 53 percent of Americans say they would definitely not support him next November if he is the nominee. The same number for Joe Biden is 43 percent. The last two elections have been won by the candidate who persuaded more wavering and unenthusiastic independents over to their side. For all Biden’s shortcomings, it’s easier to see how he will manage to do that than Trump. And here, Georgia is the canary in the coal mine: Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to lose there in almost thirty years.
On our radar
BIDEN TO VISIT MAUI NEXT WEEK Joe and Jill Biden will survey damage from the wildfires and meet local leaders in Hawaii on Monday. Earlier this week, when asked about visiting Maui, Biden responded “no comment.”
DID SBF STEAL TO DONATE TO POLITICIANS? That’s the charge made by federal prosecutors this week. They allege that Bankman-Fried took more than $100 million from his customers to contribute to political campaigns.
MTG dares to dream
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is considering taking Donald Trump’s advice that she run for the Senate (he said he’d “fight like hell” for her), but she’s also thinking about whether she’d be asked to join Trump’s cabinet — and maybe even be his vice president — should he win the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination.
When the Atlanta Journal-Constitutionasked her if she’d be running for Senate, MTG said she has “a lot of things to think about,” including a potential cabinet position. If Trump asked her to be his running mate, MTG said she’d consider it “very, very heavily.”
Cockburn thinks hedging her bets with Team Trump is a wise move for the firebrand Republican who was recently kicked out of the House Freedom Caucus for yelling at Representative Lauren Boebert. Despite the media’s less-than-flattering portrayal of her, MTG seems unfazed personally and unharmed politically by her reputation for confrontation. Like Trump, MTG’s stock seems only to rise with each headline-grabbing antic.
Still, it appears Greene is also sitting pretty in her home Georgia district. Politico reports that “over the past several weeks, Greene no longer looks endangered. No substantive primary challenge has materialized. And the backlash to her ties to McCarthy hasn’t led to any clear vulnerabilities in her deep-red district.” She saw off a challenge from Democrat Marcus Flowers in 2022, beating him by over thirty points.
It’s fun to conjecture, though, and in considering what cabinet position would be suitable for MTG, Cockburn’s come up with a few appropriate options: the Department of Agriculture, for instance, from which she can direct the “Gazpacho Police.” Or Health and Human Services, with her background as a gym owner and Crossfitter. Perhaps the best fit, though, is Agriculture: if she had oversight of the US Forest Service, she could tackle head on all those wildfires started by Jewish space lasers…
–Cockburn
North Korea weaponizes the culture wars
North Korean media has reported that Travis King, the US Army member who deserted to North Korea last month, did so because “he harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the US Army.” The statement marks the first occasion in which the Kim regime has acknowledged publicly that it is holding King. The Wall Street Journal reports that a Pentagon official said, “We can’t verify these alleged comments. We remain focused on his [King’s] safe return.”
Whatever the veracity of the report, it is not unusual for Washington’s adversaries to take advantage of America’s domestic political divisions for their own geopolitical gain. Alleging that King ran into North Korea due to racism touches a raw nerve in the United States. China took a similar approach when Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi highlighted America’s recent race controversies during a summit with Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan back in 2021. Yang then added that, “We hope that [the] United States will do better on human rights. The fact is that there are many problems within the United States regarding human rights.” North Korea, China, Russia, Iran and their autocratic allies will do whatever they can to hide their own human rights abuses and make the US look bad on the world stage.
Given the state of US-North Korea relations at the moment, it is unlikely that King will be released anytime soon. Kim Jong-un recently hosted both Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Chinese first vice chairman of the standing committee of the National People’s Congress Li Hongzhong for a military parade. It is no secret that these countries are all on the same page in terms of their goal: dismantling the post-World War Two US-led global system.
Let us hope King will get lucky and some deal will be worked out to bring him home to his family. But at the moment, that seems a long way off.
–John Pietro
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Poll watch
PRESIDENT BIDEN JOB APPROVAL
Approve 40.8% | Disapprove 54.2% | Net Approval -13.4
(RCP average)
WHAT DO US GUN OWNERS SAY IS A MAJOR REASON WHY THEY OWN A GUN?
For protection 72% | For hunting 32% | For sport shooting 30%
As part of a gun collection 7% | For their job 7%
(Pew)
Best of the rest
Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times: It’s not your father’s Democratic Party. But whose party is it?
Jordan Weissmann, Semafor: How the Inflation Reduction Act was really born
Jacob Gallagher, Wall Street Journal: This politician just won Argentina’s primary. His hair is baffling the world
Ruy Teixeira, the Liberal Patriot: Brahmin left v. populist right
Noah Rothman, National Review: It’s time for Republicans to come to terms with Trump’s legal peril
Greg Craig, Washington Post: The most difficult assignment for Trump’s Jan 6 legal team just got easier
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