Decapitation, electrocution and expectoration are just a few of the emerging hazards.
Follow this authorDana Milbank's opinions
FollowPerish the thought.
In a sign that the heat had, in fact, gotten to him, the fatality-fascinated former president further imagined himself having to choose his manner of death aboard a battery-powered boat that was foundering. “What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?” he wondered aloud to the Vegas crowd. “Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?”
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Without hesitation, Trump said he would choose death by battery — exactly the sort of cool thinking we need from a commander in chief when the heat is on.
Of all the potential means of his undoing that Trump has contemplated this week, decapitation seems the most likely. In MAGA world, losing one’s head is a frequent occupational hazard.
For example, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), speaking to the Nevada crowd before Trump took the stage, said his felony convictions relating to his payoff of an adult-film actress made him like Jesus Christ. “The Democrats and the fake news media want to constantly talk about ‘Oh, President Trump is a convicted felon,’” she said. “Well, you want to know something? The man that I worship is also a convicted felon, and he was murdered on a Roman cross.”
Then there was Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Tex.), who previously wore a T-shirt featuring Trump’s mug shot to the State of the Union. After former Republican House speaker Paul Ryan, in an interview Tuesday with Fox News, called Trump “unfit for office” because he put himself “above the Constitution,” Nehls offered this reasoned critique to CNN’s Manu Raju: “Paul Ryan, you’re a piece of garbage. You’re a piece of garbage, and we should kick you out of the party. ... You’re spitting in the face of the leader of our party.”
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Thus did Nehls identify yet another emerging hazard endangering Trump: expiration by expectoration.
While Trump has so far evaded hungry sharks, lethal batteries, desert heat and Paul Ryan’s saliva, one of his leading conspiracy theories has not been as lucky. His complaint about the “weaponized” Justice Department just suffered a head-on collision with reality.
Trump and his GOP allies have been yammering for weeks about how his “rigged” trial, in a state court in New York, proved that a “corrupt” and “two-tiered” justice system is “weaponized” against Republicans. They suggested the fix was in with the Hunter Biden gun trial and that the jury in Delaware wouldn’t convict him. Then the jury convicted the president’s son on Tuesday and the Republicans’ conspiracy theorizing suffered a setback: Doesn’t the successful prosecution of Biden’s only living son show that the Biden Justice Department is doing the very opposite of weaponizing the rule of law?
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But the contrary evidence only made Republicans more devoted to their conspiracy theory. The Trump campaign said the trial was “a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family.” Longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller took the younger Biden’s conviction as evidence that the “DOJ is running election interference for Joe Biden.” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said it was clear to him that Justice Department “officials continue to cover for the Big Guy, Joe Biden.” On the House floor on Wednesday, Comer alleged that “President Biden’s Department of Justice appears to be taking every step to insulate him.”
Including, apparently, by successfully prosecuting his son.
But soon, the MAGA faithful had hatched a whole new conspiracy theory. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), on Fox Business, declared that Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict “creates an opening for Democrats to slip someone like Michelle Obama in here” as the Democratic presidential nominee, rather than Biden, he said.
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Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo replied: “I am buying into what you’re saying there.”
So, Biden ordered the Justice Department to prosecute his son to create an excuse to decline the presidential nomination? That one is so crazy, it must be true!
The craziness resumed Thursday morning when almost all congressional Republicans prostrated themselves en masse before Trump. The former president was returning to the scene of the crime — Capitol Hill — for the first time since he tried to get the Secret Service to take him there during the 2021 riot. House Republicans postponed the day’s hearings by an hour so they could adore Trump at their Capitol Hill Club. They sang him “Happy Birthday” a day before his 78th and gave him a bat and ball from the Congressional Baseball Game. In the private meeting, according to leaked accounts, they listened to Trump call the Justice Department “dirty, no-good bastards,” bash Milwaukee, host of next month’s Republican convention, as a “horrible city,” attack Republicans who voted to impeach him and (according to Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman) recount a bizarre, disputed anecdote in which he said Nancy Pelosi’s daughter told him that he and the former speaker would make a a perfect couple.
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Emerging from the session, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced that, “in many ways, President Trump has become a symbol of ... pushing back against corruption, the deep state, the weaponization of the judicial system, and that’s a very encouraging development.” Johnson endorsed legislation that would give Trump the ability to move the election case against him in Georgia to a federal court. After that will likely come attempts to defund the Justice Department to shut down Jack Smith’s prosecutions of Trump.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee departed the session with Trump so they could open a hearing to attack Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, who brought the hush money case. Their first witness, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, went right to yet another conspiracy theory, blaming progressive........