Trump is repulsive, pitiful, and needs to be humiliated
Democrats can’t pass up this golden roasting opportunity
Welcome to a Sunday night edition of Progress Report.
Tonight we’re splitting our focus, with some important elections and voting rights news out of the states followed by a national intervention. There’s a lot to discuss, so I’m excited to hear what you have to say in the comments.
By the way, if you have a bit of time, check out Godzilla Minus One on Netflix. It’s the newest movie in Toho’s iconic kaiju series, the first to win an Oscar, and genuinely one of the best movies I’ve seen in a few years. A beautiful reimagining of the original 1954 Godzilla movie, it requires absolutely zero prior knowledge about the big guy but rewards longtime fans as well.
OK, let’s get to it.
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1️⃣ Butts test: The Kansas Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the state’s constitution does not guarantee the right to vote, a shocking decision that could have vast ramifications in a state where Republicans have been hacking away at universal suffrage.
Chief Justice Caleb Stegall, once the top lawyer for former Gov. Sam Brownback, wrote in his majority opinion that the right to vote was instead a “political right” and therefore could be more easily regulated than if it were in the state’s Bill of Rights.
Stegall asserted that voting rights were still well-protected, because under Kansas law, any change to voting laws must pass something called the “Butts test,” which asks whether the proposed change “unreasonably burdens the right to suffrage.” That’s less than reassuring, however, considering that Stegall made that argument in a decision that upheld two out of three voting laws passed in 2021.
The law that Stegall struck down was a ban on impersonating elections officials, while he permitted limits on how many absentee ballots a person could collect and the implementation of a strict new signature match for absentee ballots.
2️⃣ Maximum pain: In another annoying state high court decision, the Michigan Supreme Court declined to intervene on behalf of a ballot initiative that would raise the state’s minimum wage. The decision handed another victory to Republicans and business interests, who collaborated in 2018 to sabotage a similar initiative. A lawsuit over that debacle is still pending before the state Supreme Court.
3️⃣ Arkansas: OK, here’s a slightly more positive state Supreme Court ruling for you: Arkansas’s high court shot down a request to certify ballot initiatives that proposed implementing paper ballot voting as well as major changes to the state’s absentee voting system.
Normally, I’d call that unequivocally good news, but the right-wing plaintiffs were actually suing in part to strike down laws that have hampered progressive initiatives, too. One requires the state Secretary of State to approve ballot initiatives, which caused all kinds of trouble for this year’s public education initiative, and the other requires initiative supporters to collect petition signatures from 50 counties instead of the 15 specified in the state constitution.
4️⃣ Racism: A massive new study of home loans and demographics shows that the racist practice of redlining, which prevents people from getting mortgages in very specifically drawn neighborhoods, is still alive and well.
5️⃣ Think different: Here’s my exclusive new report on the acrimonious contract negotiations between Apple and an Apple Store in Towson, MD.
Back in June of 2022, workers at the store voted to make it the first unionized Apple retail location, and since then, the company has been running every anti-union tactic in the book. You’ll have to watch to learn more, but there is some good news near the end of the piece.
A report in Politico on Friday highlighted Democratic leaders’ ongoing internal debate over whether to use Trump’s felony convictions as a campaign cudgel or maintain a sober and dispassionate stance on the historic verdict. President Biden and his campaign team, the report says, believe that because the trial hasn’t yet move the needle in polls, then the convictions won’t either, so they should only exist as a data point in a larger story.
Others in the party — younger strategists and lawmakers especially — are incredulous over the deference, arguing that by largely ignoring Trump’s big loss in court, they would be blowing a unique opportunity to attack a madman who is usually on the offensive (my words, of course).
While it’s about an unprecedented moment in history, the debate is really just a new permutation of the same schism that has plagued Democrats for decades, pitting those who want to take action against an establishment that always urges circumspection.
The problem with the passive, decorum-focused politics to which so many senior Democrats default is that nobody else cares about preserving institutions or maintaining propriety, so those appeals fall on deaf ears. If Americans were seeking tepid press releases and self-restraint, or if they truly objected to a (white collar) felon in the White House, Donald Trump wouldn’t be leading in the polls.
By staying quiet, Democrats aren’t just choosing not to seize an opportunity, but instead ceding a historic moment to a Republican Party that is bound by neither reality nor shame. Preserving the status quo is impossible, so they’ve got to decide whether to step up or simply let Republicans control the narrative as it develops.
Republicans spent more than a month attacking the legitimacy of the trial in preparation for a guilty verdict. Now, they have a head start and — through courthouse appearances, raucous rallies, cable news hits, and venomous social media posts — it’s clear that the MAGA crowd is working to transform Trump from convict to victim, turning him into the martyr targeted by the liberal deep state that is at the center of so many of its paranoid narratives.
If there’s no serious partisan pushback, the events of the trial will fade from memory, leaving that Republican framing as the lingering narrative.
Does this sound familiar?
This is more or less exactly what happened in the wake of the Capitol insurrection. The Department of Justice took two full years to decide to start investigating Trump for his role in leading the attempted coup, during which time the White House largely let the process unfold without comment. It distanced itself from the House’s high profile Jan. 6th investigation while Biden’s 2022 State of the Union address didn’t even mention the fact that the first insurrectionist trial would begin the next day.
Now, Democrats are trying to run on the urgent threat that Trump poses to democracy, which is belied by their prior reticence to hold him accountable for attempting to overthrow democracy. Republicans who shunned Trump after the coup attempt now humiliate themselves on his behalf and a majority of Republicans now believe that the insurrectionists were the good guys. The insurrection has gone from universally condemned to just another partisan issue, and again, if it mattered that much to people, Trump wouldn’t be leading in the polls.
A freshly minted felon, Trump has cast himself as a “political prisoner” and accused Democrats of being “fascists,” an idiotic inversion of reality that has received little pushback beyond the typical high-minded deference to the rule of law. There is no end to what Trump is willing to do or say, not only because he’s a lunatic, but because he’s allowed to act like a bully, even after being found guilty.
This leaves Democrats with two choices: They can either get off their high horses and participate in modern politics or watch this verdict get jujitsu-ed into yet another advantage for Republicans and Trump, who have already succeeded in convincing 87% of GOP voters that the trial was politically motivated. At the moment, 44% of independents believe that the trial was politically motivated, and the longer that Democrats hold their tongues while Republicans repeat that very point, the higher that number will grow.
Planting the seed
There was a squeamishness among the media at the more personal elements of Stormy Daniels’ testimony, in part because it was understandably upsetting for her to recall some of the details of her sexual encounter with Donald Trump. Reporters also took cues from Trump’s defense team, which tried repeatedly to stop or strike her descriptive testimony, leading to a fair amount of the coverage of those days being about courtroom motions and maneuvers. Some asked whether Daniels and the prosecutors went “too far,” a backhanded way of trying to silence a woman who went through something horrendous.
Unfortunately for Trump, there are all manner of cringey details and embarrassing moments that remain on the record and thus available for public consumption. Unfortunately for me, I read through her testimony and have to live with the mental images it conjured.
Daniels — her real name is Stephanie Clifford, but I’ll stick with the stage name for the sake of clarity — was actually mercifully sparse in her description of the act itself. She was also even-keeled when discussing everything surrounding that short and unpleasant experience, but there’s no getting around the fact that Trump was a manipulative weirdo.
The testimony reviews Trump’s awkward pursuit and failed attempts to get a second adult actress involved — calls went ignored and then straight to voicemail, which is in and of itself embarrassing. In just a few sentences and gestures, Daniels paints a clear portrait of The Apprentice host’s pitiful proposition and pathetic appeal for future “dates,” which together evoke the spirit of an oafish and perverted grandfather with a juvenile brain, hopelessly uncool and sleazy even two decades ago.
Nothing in Daniels’s testimony seemed implausible or even unlikely, which is why Trump’s insistence that he never met her falls so flat. The guy has come to dominate our collective conscious so thoroughly that it’s sickeningly easy to imagine Trump asking relentless questions about adult film stars like a titillated teenager, splaying out in his boxers and posing like a sea mammal on his bed, and telling Daniels that “we were terrific together” over and over again in hopes of landing a second “date.”
These pitiful images provide a sharp and irrefutable counterpoint to the right’s preposterous yet firmly entrenched view of Trump as a confident, charming playboy who always gets what he wants. A rumpled slob has become a font of masculinity because he is crude and unvarnished and says whatever comes into his head, with no regard for political correctness or cancel culture.
Last night, Trump blew off some steam at a UFC event, another appeal to the male demographic most swayed by this toxic appeal. Whereas Biden won young men 18-34 by 26 points in 2020, he’s down to just a six-point lead with them in 2024. There are a number of reasons why such a shift is occurring, but the aforementioned pseudo-masculinity and grievances are a huge part of it.
The crowd chanted his name at the event, cheering him on like a conquering hero, not an old oaf who just became a convicted felon after his clumsy attempts at seduction were exposed to anyone willing to read a transcript. There was little awareness of the details of the trial had just concluded.
None of these guys are going to be swayed by earnest arguments about the rule of law — in all honesty, testimonials from liberals about the legitimacy of the trial plays right into the hands of right-wing cynics and snake oil salesmen. On the other hand, repeated mockery based on trial testimony could help to open their eyes to what a loser they’re supporting and temper some of that enthusiasm.
Pummeling Trump with mockery takes away the perception that he’s some singularly brave truth-teller and The problem with basically all anti-Trump mockery to this point is that it has come from a place of liberals’ sense of superiority, which may be cathartic but also serves to reinforce the right’s populist pushback against so-called elites.
One can imagine a fuselage of ads from independent PACs hammering Trump with the kind of stuff that would humiliate a man whose image is built on such shaky foundations. Holding back isn’t the responsible thing to do, it’s tantamount to surrender.
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I agree, and we need to humiliate him with clips from his incoherent rantings at his rallies. He’s weak and stupid and we need to ruthless.
I agree with you that the Democrats are too passive about going on the attack with Trump. Hammer the hell out of the convictions. Dwell on his lack of character in many facets of his business and personal life. His mental stability is certainly questionable especially as of late. These are all demonstrable attack points. Hit hard on his quotes that he will use the office and the Executive branch to “get back” at enemies real and perceived. Our democracy is in peril and we need to pull out all stops.