Over at New York, Olivia Nuzzi speculates about why Donald Trump has been so quiet lately. One possibility, of course, is that he literally doesn't know what to do now that he's been kicked off Twitter and Facebook. That seems unlikely, though. Nuzzi suggests that Trump is just angry and dejected and not in the mood to fight, which also strikes me as unlikely. Then there's this:
His avoidance of the press seems like a means of avoiding acknowledging the reality of how this ended. Though, I’m sure, his advisers and his new lawyers (and his old lawyers before that) have made the case that he won’t be helping anything if he rambles for 45 minutes on the air with Maria Bartiromo or whatever low-rent propagandist equivalent they have hosting a show at OANN or Newsmax. All it would do is remind any Republicans on the fence about their votes what a nuisance he is.
Obviously this is just a guess on my part, but in the past there's been only one way of successfully getting Trump to shut his yap: warning him that he might be in legal trouble if he says anything publicly. Trump has a lifelong addiction to the legal process, and advice from lawyers actually seems to get through to him sometimes.
I have a hunch that Trump remains scared of the impeachment trial coming up and is taking his attorney's advice to say nothing until it's over. It's an unusually wise move from a man not noted for his wisdom.
Jamie Raskin just sent him a friendly letter inviting him to provide testimony at the trial. Will he really be able to resist the spotlight? I just hope at least Jonathan Swan will be tapped into whatever discussions take place at Mar-a-Lago about this.
Yeah I was wondering the same. He's always had supreme confidence in his ability to steal the show, and as KD points out, about the only real check on that has been lawyers telling him he's in serious jeopardy. (Or maybe his second team telling him that if he does, they'll walk out too.) Whatever, it must be eating him up...
This is a small part of the larger picture that I still don't understand. Right after the election his team came to him with a plan of very narrowly focused lawsuits that would give him a small but reasonable chance of overturning the election. But instead he chose to send out the clowns and that really finished his chances legally.
At the same time, we now know that the unspoken subtext of the final meetings between the clown posse and the lawyers was essentially whether to coup or not coup. What Trump did was to choose both but participate in neither. Even after Pence refused him, Trump couldn't do the gangster thing and either take family members as hostages or make sure that Pence died.
It seems that what he decided upon was to send the MAGA masses to sack the capital building, possibly execute Pence and Pelosi (and probably the "squad", too). And then take hostages and bargain for something like a rerun of the election or for Trump to be allowed to retain power. But all of this was done in an uncoordinated and clumsy way not just because the MAGA people are mostly idiots but also because the only person who could coordinate things was Trump and he really just cared about being praised and couldn't get it together to coup.
And he seems also to have been a coward. Which is why I'm sure that as much as he'd love to be back in the spotlight, he won't testify and I don't think it because his lawyers have scared him about the consequences.
His MO is always to rile up lackeys to propose the actually shady part, then tacitly agree to it and leave it to them to stick their necks out.
He was hoping the mob would do something he could exploit and then when they did he was thrilled and thought someone else would come up with the really shady part to take advantage of it and when everyone else was actually having the opposite reaction he was mystified.
Causing this massive chaos he could exploit in the moment was his only real plan, but, alas, no one was standing by to hold his bag for him, so he struck out.
One right turn by the Capitol Police Officer, & the hostage situation would have been on.
I agree. That MO works okay for some things but from what I've been reading, Trump really was the indispensable actor for a coup d'état. Whether he lost his nerve or just couldn't grasp that intellectually, I doubt we'll ever know.
There is the very real possibility of being named as a defendant in the new lawsuit filed today...as well as the Dominion suit that is proceeding apace.
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A voting technology company is suing Fox News, three of its top hosts and two former lawyers for former US president Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, for $2.7 billion.
The lawsuit charges that the defendants conspired to spread false claims that the company helped “steal” the US presidential election. This despite officials declaring November’s presidential election, won by Joe Biden, the most secure in US history.
The 285-page complaint filed today in New York state court by Florida-based Smartmatic USA is one of the largest libel suits ever undertaken.
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Best Wishes, Traveller
Yes, one should think that Smartmatic and Dominion filings - with more to come one hears - have a certain effect.
Smartmatic is doing a public service. I hope there are lots of amicus briefs.
Well, if he went on Newmax to claim the election was stolen, they might pull the plug on the interview.
Maybe saving all his juice for the coming clown show - the only real way to avoid everything coming out in a systematic and organized way is to charge in like a bull shopping at the china shop; he's going to try to make the proceedings so insane that nobody will believe it's happening.
The sequel to the Sex Pistols first North American tour (1977-78). Supposedly, High Times publisher Tom Forcade chronicled it for a possible book; will this time John Rotten himself be the one to write the "I was there" road diary?
Yes, there's no way Trump's willingly declining to call it to Bartilomo or some other tool who'll nod their head at every awful thing he says. He's being cowed to do that. Nuzzi gets the source right but the reason wrong when she suggests the lawyers reasoning with him he, "won't be helping anything". Trump doesn't give a shit about that - how many times has he implicated himself with his blabbing and Tweeting?
No, the lawyers have told him if he mutters a peep in public about the subject (at least until the impeachment trial is over), they're going to resign and he's going to prison. Remember how during the insurrection one of the WH lawyers Pat Cipollone was warning staffers to literally not get near Trump or they'd be potentially on the hook for treason!
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/01/after-a-day-of-violence-and-25th-amendment-chatter-trumps-allies-jumping-ship
Treason charges aren't COVID. I'm no lawyer, but I don't think you can usually be charged as accessory to a crime just because you hear someone say they'd like to commit the crime. What dangerous, toxic things was Trump saying on the 6th that even after all the awful stuff he's said already, his lawyers were scared of people even hearing?
We all saw what happened between Newsmax and the My Pillow guy. Trump's favorite media outlets are wary of having Trump call in or otherwise appear on their shows/networks, now that the lawsuits have been sent.
But yes, without his social media accounts, he can no longer speak up, even if to lie about something completely irrelevant and unimportant.
This is a good thing. He can't spoil Biden's spotlight with distractions.
Trump's a disciple of Roy Cohn, so he'll do whatever his most trusted attorney says.
If you want to know what Trump is going to do, just look to whomever is Trump's favored attorney is at the moment. Insane? Act insane. Relatively sane? Act relatively sane. Brash? Act brash.
If Trump truly is laying low until the impeachment trial is over, I must admit that dramatically raises the appeal of delaying the trial for 100 days...
Not really on point here, but worth mentioning, I think: Apparently Trump's attorneys are under instructions to never refer to him as "the former president". Instead they are referring to him as "the 45th president". I guess its too much to ask for them, and him, to acknowledge reality.