Don’t Care
I don’t care if it’s traditional. It’s a “courtesy,” not a law. The fact that a party’s nominees for president have been read in to national security briefings doesn’t mean Trump should be. Not unless he, gods forbid, becomes “president” again,” in which case it won’t matter. It’d be game over for the US and jubilee for Putin, Xi, Kim, Orbán, and MBS. It’d all be for sale. We might never know the price, but by then it’d be moot. We’ve seen the carelessness with which he handles America’s secrets, and not just where he stores them after illegally retaining them. With enemy sources and fans alike, he shared them like a teenager sexting to impress. (Bad analogy, maybe, if what Stormy Daniels described is accurate.) In any case, entrusting Trump with state secrets would hand him trading cards for Putin’s help. Again.
I don’t care what the judge had to say: Fani Willis’ affair with her lead prosecutor should never have led to court hearings, fancy vacations notwithstanding. Where’s the conflict of interest when they’re on the same case, working in the same direction? Granted, it was poor judgment, handled poorly. But in what way was the prosecution compromised? One certain thing, though, given the credible death threats she receives, enough that the FBI initiated extraordinary methods to ensure her safety, is that she’s very brave.
I don’t care if Trump’s hardest core are a small minority of Americans: there’s enough of them that when he predicts a “bloodbath,” it could happen. “Now, if I don’t get elected,” he predicted, “it’s gonna be a bloodbath. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” No matter how MAGAphiles try to spin it (“he was talking about the auto industry”), it was “It’s going to be wild,” to the power of ten. “For the country,” he said. Not “Detroit.” Or “Japan.” The country.
I don’t care what Trump and his MAGAwashed acolytes say: people who’ve been found guilty of crimes, by a jury, in a court of law, following the dictates of American jurisprudence, are not “hostages.” They’re convicted criminals, serving time. When he says otherwise, Trump reaffirms his lifelong rejection of the rule of law, and his willingness to inflame. His all-time lack of patriotism is verified when he calls those insurrectionists “unbelievable patriots.” He wouldn’t recognize patriotism if it bit him on his about-to-be-seized assets.
I do care that, to cheers from rally-reliables, Trump says Liz Cheney and all members of the J6 Committee must be jailed. For the crime of doing their Constitutional duty. It’s a glimpse of another “presidency” for anyone who criticizes him. Including Mike Pence and dozens of other high-level people who worked with him. Those who call liberals communists are fine with Stalinist purges; including replacing RNC leadership with sycophantic election deniers, intent on winning not on thoughtful policy but on Trumpic vengeance and Democratic vote suppression. Conservatives should care. A lot.
I care that Trump is so sure of the mindlessness of his supporters that he places lies at the center of his campaign. “Rampant crime.” “No longer energy independent.” “Wrecked economy.” Obvious to the brain-alive, the truth is the opposite; but he’ll keep saying it and they’ll keep believing it. Lies are all he has, and lies are all they want.
I care that decades of right-wing attacks on education and expertise have been so successful that tens of millions of Americans can’t separate falsehood from truth; have been taught to fear and resent people unlike themselves, and find those feelings compelling enough to accept a self-serving, xenophobic liar as their leader. To believe he cares about them, “loves America,” “never lies,” and would be “better on the economy,” crashed under Trump, revitalized and soaring under President Biden.
If humanity survives long enough, historians will struggle to make sense of it. Likely, they’ll consider the impact of Fox “news,” Trumpists’ main purveyor of disinformation and inventor of prevarication and fakery as business plan. To hear Trumpists interviewed is to hear every Fox talker on loop.
I care that, after wasting time and money on Trump-demanded, up-empty “investigations” of the Biden “crime family,” House Republicans are considering a fact-free “criminal referral” to the DOJ. If the DOJ takes no action, or if it does and, like those “investigations,” finds nothing, Rs can call it proof that the DOJ has been weaponized by criminal mastermind/incompetent Joe Biden. There’s been weaponization, all right. By Jims Comer and Jordan.
And I care that Trump-appointed, inexperienced, unqualified Judge Aileen Cannon is overtly working to kill the stolen secrets case against Trump. By demanding that the jury be allowed to see unredacted documents or charges will be dropped, she’s putting at risk government covert sources and operations, placing the guy who gave her a lifetime job above our country. It’s MAGA, defined and personified.
Hit the mandamus road, Jack.
