The Emperor, His Clothes and My Fellow Substack Writers
By "Emperor," of course, I mean Trump.
I’ve been reading
’s Political Wire since it launched in 1999 and finally became a paid subscriber after decades of freeloading. Now I enjoy his newsletter here,I became a fan of
during his appearances on MSNBC, and admire his ability to speak in thoughtful, complex paragraphs and appeal to viewers’ most deeply held values and beliefs. He’s just as articulate, provocative and interesting at .But guys…I think you’re wrong about the inevitability of Donald Trump.
Look, I haven’t worked in as many campaigns as one of you, or covered politics as intensively as the other. But I have been a consultant to campaigns for President (well, one), Congress, state and local office, and I made national headlines with the campaign I managed for the first corporation to run for Congress, Murray Hill Inc.
In that campaign, we maintained the fiction that, thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case, a corporate person could not only give money to candidates, but vote and run for office itself. I was the first to say, “corporations are people too”—we even made mousepads.
But now, another wild narrative is taking hold—that Donald Trump is absolutely going to be the Republican nominee, no matter how many serious crimes he’s been convicted of by the time the primaries start, or how many more convictions he’s facing.
If Trump had been found guilty of murder while running for President, would you still say he could win?
No? So why would obstruction of justice, conspiracy, inciting an insurrection and stealing secret documents be much different?
Try to answer that question without the words “because he’s Trump.”
“Because he gets away with everything. Nothing matters to his voters. He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue…”
The truth is, we don’t know what it will be like when the next charges come down in Georgia and from Jack Smith and the DOJ.
What if there are tapes, testimony, witnesses and evidence that only the truly delusional (and Marjorie Taylor Greene) could question?
Remember—you can’t say, “because he’s Trump.”
The fact is, right now Donald Trump controls the narrative. He can bloviate about witch hunts and George Soros and racist prosecutors all he wants, and rise in the polls while knocking down the lightweight opposition of pudding-dippers and hopeless strivers.
The media can respond to his poll numbers and brute politics without the counterweight about to crash down on his orange head of the multiple 20+ year prison sentences he’e facing.
“Because he's Trump” may not be enough to stand up to that.
I’ve asked these questions before, but that won't stop me doing it again.
Is it panic, fear and cynical disillusion with your fellow voters that makes you so sure Trump will win the nomination, or do you really think he’ll come out on top against the DOJ?
Substack wants us to start conversations like this in Notes, so if you happen to wander over there, please tell me why the Emperor is not only not naked, but clad in the finest raiments in the land.
Thanks for that! But I still think we’re living in a Before Times when we don’t know the specificity and perfidy of Trump’s crimes… and that ultimately Trump will tell his base to go back to being non-voters.