Cagle World

In the early minutes of Wednesday’s Republican debate, while everyone on stage was studiously ignoring the fact that their AWOL rival is a serial criminal defendant, someone on Twitter asked what we’d prefer to be doing instead of watching that show. I posted my answer:

Prepping for a colonoscopy.

I would’ve preferred gagging on polyethylene glycol than witnessing what happened at the 58-minute mark of Fox News’ fascist-adjacent spectacle. That’s how long it took for this pitiable assemblage to even begin to address the most crucial issue facing America today: the ongoing, still-metastasizing threat to democracy itself, as perpetrated by the criminally accused racketeer and espionage agent who will soon be immortalized in a mug shot.

Nearly one hour in, co-inquisitor Bret Baier braved the braying MAGA audience and asked whether the contestants would still support Donald Trump as the GOP nominee if he were convicted of a crime prior to the election.

Six of the eight candidates actually raised their hands.

Trump is staking his 2024 campaign on his criminal contempt for democracy, and most of the wannabes are on board with it. That’s how precipitously far this party has fallen since the bygone days when it prided itself for being tough on crime, for championing law and order.

Did it matter a whit that Trump will be prosecuted for trying to overturn a free election and subvert democracy? That Trump’s former top lawyer, plus the lawyer who authored a coup blueprint, have now been booked in a Georgia jailhouse? That a key witness in the stolen documents case has flipped, and is now confirming that Trump tried to destroy key video footage?

Nope.

Instead, when Chris Christie stated the obvious – “Whether you believe the criminal charges are right or wrong, (his) conduct is beneath the office of President of the United States” – the audience roundly booed him.

When Vivek Ramaswamy, the rich entitled motormouthed twerp who’s running as MAGA 2.0, declared that if he were president he would pardon Trump of all convicted crimes, the audience lapped it up like it was Jim Jones’ killer Kool-Aid. When Tim Scott was asked whether he supported Mike Pence’s pro-Constitution stance on Jan. 6, he bobbed and weaved and said “the bigger question” was the so-called “weaponization” of the Justice Department – and the mob in the arena ate it up. When underwhelming Ron DeSantis was similarly asked whether Pence had done the right thing, he dodged a la Scott and dredged up a golden oldie, to the mob’s delight, about sending Joe Biden back to his basement.

The lies began even before the show kicked off. Fox News branded its event as “Democracy ’24,” which was a tad hilarious, coming from the network that shelled out a $787,000,000 settlement to the Dominion balloting firm, which Fox had defamed while magnifying Trump’s lying assault on democracy.

One more thing: How was it possible for Nikki Haley to occasionally sound so sane, like when she dared say out loud that Trump (“the most disliked politician in America”) is no longer electable…yet she raised her hand to signal that she’d support him as a ’24 candidate anyway, even if he were criminally convicted for trying to overturn an election?

I could list more of the evening’s horrors – like when Christie detailed Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine, reminded the audience that Trump has called Putin “a genius,” and was then heckled for his candor – but writing about this cult sickens me almost as much as colonoscopy prep. Excuse me, I need to lie down and gird myself for the next debate one month from now. At least colonoscopies are spaced every few years.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

While we ponder the pathetic fact that the top candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination is a twice-impeached quadruple-indicted electorally-defeated accused racketeer, and while we absorb the breadth and depth of Georgia’s “criminal enterprise” case (19 defendants, 41 felony counts, 30 un-indicted co-conspirators), let’s bear in mind what British essayist and novelist Aldous Huxley once said about the downside of human nature:

Man “often behaves more stupidly than the beasts. Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic.”

In Georgia this week, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and a grand jury comprised of ordinary citizens basically channelled Huxley and gifted us 98 historic pages.

Buttressed by scores of witnesses (most of them Republicans), they’ve concluded that Trump lost Georgia in the 2020 election, refused to accept defeat, then conspired with 18 others to invent lunatic “election fraud” theories in a sustained criminal quest to overturn the legal results. Their “criminal enterprise” (so named in accordance with Georgia’s anti-racketeering statute) “engaged in various related criminal activities including, but not limited to, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, filing false documents, inluencing witnesses, computer theft, computer trespass, computer invasion of privacy, conspiracy to defraud the state, acts involving theft, and perjury.”

How sweet it is that, in Georgia, anyone convicted of a racketeering conspiracy is required to serve five years in prison (that’s the mandatory minimum); that a president or a governor cannot pardon a racketeering criminal (only the Board of Pardons can do that, and only after five years in jail). That’s called being tough on crime, something that all Republicans supposedly support.

And oh, I almost forgot: In Georgia, arraignments and trials are televised by cameras in the courtroom. At some point before the election, the mountainous evidence of Trump’s criminality will be broadcast worldwide. That won’t make a dent in the dead minds of MAGA devotees, but it will be edifying for the rest of us who presumably constitute the electoral majority.

We need a televised trial, if only to demonstrate that facts and truth are still the hallmarks of our fragile civilization. Mona Charen, a sane conservative who served in the Reagan White House, wrote the other day that Trump’s relentless lies are “an acid eating away at the already frayed bonds of affection among Americans,” and we need only read the Georgia indictment to see those lies at work.

“Trump will not have the scope, so often exploited in the past, to create diversions,” Charen wrote. “(A trial) will hold us and him in its grip.”

Page 51 alone gives us a flavor. When Trump tried to pressure three Georgia election officials into “finding” him enough votes to overturn his loss, he unleashed a barrage of garbage: That “anywhere from 250,000 to 300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls” on election day; that “4,502 people” voted even though they weren’t registered; that “close to 5,000 dead people” voted; that “thousands of dead people” had voted in Michigan; that fake ballots were stuffed in Detroit and Pennsylvania; that a seasoned Georgia election worker named Ruby Freeman was “a professional vote scammer” who, with her daughter, rigged 18,000 votes for Joe Biden.

It’s all there in the Georgia document: The rancid lies, the harassment of innocent election workers (Freeman had to flee her home), the slate of fake electors, the whole nine yards.

It’s distressing that most members of his hermetically-sealed cult still indulge Trump – to the point where they’re apparently willing to award another presidential nomination to the accused head of a criminal enterprise who’s saddled with 91 felony counts in four jurisdictions. And Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican who testified against Trump to the grand jury, is a party outlier who warns that Trump is “taking the party straight into the ditch.” But, at minimum, we should be heartened that our criminal justice machinery is still grinding along. Lies, and criminal acts on behalf of those lies, do not play well in courts of law.

Our best hope – don’t give up hope! – is that schoolchildren for generations to come will learn for themselves what it was like in America when the world’s stupidest mob boss and his criminal confederacy of dunces lied with alacrity in their desperate attempt to destroy democracy in the Peach State and the nation at large.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For now, it’s enough to conjure Ray Charles:

“Just an old sweet song / Keeps Georgia on my mind.”

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

In a red Ohio referendum this week, forced-birth reactionaries got blown out by a whopping margin of 430,000 votes. No word yet on whether Roe v. Wade killer Donald Trump has aspirationally asked Republican election officials to find 430,001 votes.

To fully appreciate what just happened in Ohio – where an anti-abortion ballot gimmick was crushed, 57 percent to 43 percent – we first need to revisit the Supreme Court’s anti-Roe ruling.

The MAGA-buttressed majority, led by Sam Alito, said that the issue of abortion should be “resolved like most questions in our democracy, by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting.” Ultimately, “the people” should have “the power to address (this) question of profound moral and social importance.”

Be careful what you wish for, theocrats.

The forced-birth forces in Ohio soon realized they had a problem. Mainstream citizens had managed, via a massive petition campaign, to place on the November 2023 ballot a measure that would put abortion rights in the state constitution. The November measure seems certain to pass, because, like everywhere else in America, a majority of citizens support abortion rights. It also seems likely to pass because – this is crucial – the Ohio constitution has stipulated, ever since 1912, that the document can be amended if a simple majority of the voters say so. In other words, 50 percent plus one.

But the extremists in the Ohio Republican legislature didn’t like the idea of 50 percent plus one. They sought to rig the November rules – by scheduling an August referendum (August, when supposedly the pro-choicers would all be on vacation) that would raise the threshold for passage to 60 percent of November’s voters.

Clearly, the rule-riggers were scared of their own constituents casting ballots in a direct democracy process with rules established in Ohio 111 years ago.

And no wonder they were scared! Because ever since Roe was erased, abortion had been on the ballot in five states – and the abortion-rights majority had won all five. It happened in red Kentucky. It happened in red Montana. It also happened last August in red Kansas. It happened this spring, indirectly, in swing Wisconsin, where a successful state Supreme Court candidate campaigned heavily in favor of abortion rights.

If you’re tempted to ask whether Republicans might wake up and realize that their crackpot crusade to control women’s bodies via government fiat is political suicide, the short answer is: They won’t.

They’ll tell themselves that the wipeout in Ohio last night was just a speed bump. (Ohio’s right-wing secretary of state said on Fox News: “The all out assault is coming from the radical left…the war continues.”) They’ll dismiss mainstream opinion as “the radical left,” because it’s comfy inside the batshit bubble. They’ll tell themselves that just because 57 percent of the Ohio voters (in a massive turnout, especially for the dog days of August) rejected their attempt to rig the November rules, that surely they can somehow still win a majority in November. This despite the mountain of evidence that women under age 45, in particular, are furious about Roe‘s erasure and the ongoing right-wing assaults on bodily autonomy.

The GOP’s anti-abortion extremists are impervious to facts; they’ll keep ignoring the will of the people and keep pushing for a congressionally-enacted nationwide ban.

Fine. Here’s hoping they keep it up. There’s arguably no better way to galvanize the Democratic grassroots in advance of the 2024 presidential election, to unite centrists and progressives in a common cause, and to buoy the only party that still believes in American democracy. Hey, the fight against home-grown fascism needs all the help it can get.

So put your hands together for Sam Alito, who authored the opinion erasing Roe. He said that the people, not the courts, should have the ultimate say about abortion; indeed, he said, “Women are not without electoral or political power.” True that, theocrat.

Be careful what you wish for.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

To borrow a quip from the Beatles, the long-awaited coup indictment is truly “the toppermost of the poppermost.”

Millions of Americans are benumbed by Donald Trump’s rampant criminality, while millions more rabidly embrace it. I only wish that all zombies and zealots would take the time to read the fact-packed document unsealed this week by the Department of Justice, because it’s far more than a narrative of how we came close to losing our democracy at the dawn of this decade. It’s ultimately a five-alarm warning of what awaits us in the near future unless the failed coup’s ringleader is convicted by a jury of his peers and jailed into old age.

Thanks to confessional material shared with the federal grand jury by a galaxy of Trump insiders – most notably, former Vice President Mike Pence – the indictment demonstrates that “the defendant perpetrated three criminal conspiracies” during the post-election period when he refused to accept defeat and knowingly spread “pervasive and destabilizing lies” about nonexistent election fraud.

According to the indictment, Trump conspired “to defraud the United States” by impairing “the lawful federal government function” of collecting and counting votes. He conspired “to corruptly obstruct and impede” Congress’ ceremonial certification of the election. And he conspired against the average citizen’s “right to vote and to have one’s vote counted” when he ginned up fake slates of electors to replace the real ones.

Special counsel Jack Smith did three smart things. First, he indicted only Trump (not the six unnamed co-conspirators, whose lawyers could’ve slowed the court process), thus boosting the prospects of a speedy trial long before the ’24 election.

Second, he ignored the thorny issue of whether Trump had specifically ordered the Jan. 6 goons to commit violence, instead focusing solely on the fact that Trump “exploited” the violence once it happened, to pressure Congress not to certify Joe Biden’s victory.

And third, in Smith’s quest to prove criminal intent (crucial in a jury trial), he listed all the ways that Trump knew he had lost before “knowingly” lying over and over about how his purported win had been stolen.

Trump knew he had lost, according to the indictment, because he was informed of that incontrovertible fact “on multiple occasions” by his own veep, by his highest senior appointees at the Justice Department, by his director of national intelligence, by the Homeland Security Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (“whose existence the defendant had signed into law”), by the “senior White House attorneys selected by the defendant to provide him candid advice,” and by the state and federal courts (sometimes helmed by his own judicial appointees) who’d “rejected every…post-election lawsuit filed by the defendant.”

Trump’s own advisors got fed up with his lies. One senior campaign advisor lamented in an email that “our research and campaign legal team can’t back up any of the (election fraud) claims…I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.”

If and when this case goes to trial, it would be a hoot to see Pence in the witness chair, because, having escaped the MAGA noose, he’s well positioned to harpoon the whale. Turns out, he has shared his contemporaneous notes with the feds. He took notes during the dying days of the regime when Trump repeatedly and falsely insisted that Pence had the power to reject Biden’s electoral college win at the Jan. 6, 2021 ceremony. Pence repeatedly pushed back, prompting Trump to tell him on Jan. 1: “You’re too honest.”

Bingo! Trump knew that he was dishonest. That quote will come up at trial.

On Dec. 29, Trump told Pence that “the Justice Department (was) finding major infractions,” i.e., voter fraud. That was a lie. On Jan. 4, according to Pence’s notes, Trump told him: “Bottom line (we) won every state by 100,000s of votes.” That was a lie. Trump also told him: “We won every state.” That was a lie. Trump also told him: “What about 205,000 (more) votes in PA than voters?” That was a lie.

According to the indictment, Justice Department officials had told Trump that was a lie “as recently as the night before.”

Mike Murphy, a veteran sane Republican strategist, arguably said it best on Wednesday night: “Donald Trump did far more to subvert our democracy than the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Party ever dreamed of.”

This wanton mutt will not stop unless or until our democratic system of laws puts him down. Bring on that speedy trial. The ultimate stress test is at hand.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

When George Washington was a schoolboy teenager, he composed more than 100 “Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior,” borrowing heavily from French Jesuits. Rules 21 and 22 go like this: “Reproach none for the infirmities of nature…Show not yourself glad at the misfortune of another.”

That’s wise advice for those of us who’ve long loathed virtually everything that Mitch McConnell has said and done.

The Senate Republican leader had quite the medical moment this week. During a press briefing about a Pentagon bill, he started a sentence – “There’s been good bipartisan cooperation and a string of – ” but he never finished it. He stared at nothing for 20 long seconds as Republican colleagues hovered ever more restlessly, until Joni Ernst put her hand on his arm and said, “Are you, good, Mitch?”

He was not.

John Barrasso, who’s a doctor, coaxed him from the podium with the kind of query that many of us have said to aged loved ones who’ve lost their way in life. Barrasso soothed, “Let’s go back to your office. Do you want to say anything else to the press? Let’s go back.”

Now just imagine what the MAGA Republican reaction would’ve been if President Biden had zoned out at a podium for 20 seconds… especially after having recently fallen at a Washington hotel, suffering a concussion and landing in a rehab center (as McConnell did in March)… especially after having recently fallen at a Washington airport and done what sources called “a face plant” (as McConnell did earlier this month)… especially having frequently resorted to a wheelchair in airports (ditto McConnell).

If that had been Biden at that podium, with all those medical woes, MAGAts would be laughing hysterically. Heck, they’ve long been depicting him as half dead anyway.

Fox News would have that medical moment (a mini-stroke?) on a continuous loop. And we know from experience that the MAGAts are bullish on cruelty. Think back to all the jokes they made about Paul Pelosi after his skull was bashed in by a weapon-wielding MAGA lunatic. Think back to all the ridicule that Hillary Clinton endured (ridicule led by Donald Trump) when she suffered a bout of flu during the 2016 campaign.

By contrast – and in accordance with George Washington’s rules – Biden called McConnell to wish him good health. That’s what classy people do – they set aside fervent political disagreements and focus on the person. That’s how Biden rolls, like the time he was campaigning and encountered a kid who stuttered. He hit pause and comforted the kid.

Empathy should trump cruelty, although I suppose we’ll get another verdict on that in the next election.

For many of us, it’s tempting to play the world’s tiniest violin for McConnell – a scoundrel who said back in 2010, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president” (more important than any policies helping the American people); who refused to give Merrick Garland a Supreme Court confirmation hearing, the first big step toward rigging a 6-3 conservative bench; who refused to convict Donald Trump in two impeachment trials, even after blaming Trump for the Jan. 6 insurrection; who votes with the NRA to boost the nation’s weapons arsenal…don’t get me started.

But we should stay out of the sewer – it’s overpopulated at the moment – and simply offer McConnell our sincerest thoughts and prayers. Focus on the person, not the politics. Let’s wish him a long life, in the hopes that, well into his 90s, he will witness the ultimate downfall of the fascist-infested party he once led.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

While pondering the pathetic fates of three Trump legal eagles – Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Lin Wood – I’m reminded of a line from an old Jackson Browne song:

“The strangled cries of lawyers in love“

Plus, this old cliche:

“When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.“

It’s been satisfying to see those guys suffer the consequences of fronting for a crime boss. Lawyers with even a smidgen of integrity know full well there are lines they should not cross, even when the client is a fascist lowlife. But this toxic trio was apparently so in love with their client that they disgraced themselves and soiled the legal profession. Now they’re paying the price.

John Eastman, who won Trump’s heart with his cockamamie scheme to throw out Joe Biden’s wins in seven key states and substitute fake electors, is currently on trial by the California bar – in layman’s terms, he’s charged with trying to sabotage the U.S Constitution – and he’ll likely lose his law license. (Lest we forget, he also stoked the Jan. 6 mob with fake claims of Democratic fraud. After the mob went wild at the Capitol, one of Mike Pence’s lawyers emailed this gem to Eastman: “Thanks to your bulls—, we are now under siege.”)

Lin Wood, a Georgia lawyer who pushed the lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” in Georgia and elsewhere, announced last week that he’s giving up his law license – one step ahead of disbarment proceedings. The Georgia State Bar said that Wood’s sudden decision to retire “has achieved the (bar’s) goals of disciplinary action, including protecting the public and the integrity of the judicial system and the legal profession.”

And then there’s Rudy, the conspiracy freak and Four Seasons Total Landscaping host who followed Trump down the rabbit hole and destroyed himself in the process. Last week, an ethics panel for the Washington D.C. bar – having weighed Giuliani’s misconduct during a December trial – unanimously recommended that he be permanently stripped of his professional bona fides. This disbarment admonition must still be ratified by higher-ups, but it’s hard to imagine that the panel’s scathing fact-packed conclusions will be overruled. Check ’em out:

“(Giuliani) attempted unjustifiably and without precedent to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania voters, and ultimately sought to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election. He claimed massive election fraud but had no evidence of it…his hyperbolic claims of election fraud and the core thesis of the Pennsylvania litigation were utterly false, and recklessly so. Mr. Giuliani’s rash overstatement claiming that the election was stolen had no evidence to support it. His utter disregard for facts denigrates the legal profession…

“(N)o president – until 2020 – refused to accept defeat and step away from that office. And no lawyer – until 2020 – used frivolous claims of election fraud to impede the peaceful transition of presidential power and disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters. Mr. Giuliani’s effort to undermine the integrity of the 2020 presidential election has helped destabilize our democracy. His malicious and meritless claims have done lasting damage and are antagonistic to the oath to ‘support the Constitution of the United States of America’ that he swore when he was admitted to the Bar.”

I remember back in 2018 when Rudy went on TV and declared: “Truth isn’t truth.” Turns out, it is.

Even though tens of millions of Americans have become deaf and dumb to reality, even though big lies have become embedded in the dead space between their ears, it’s heartening to know that a grifter like Eastman can face consequences for violating (in the words of the California bar trial counsel) “our values as a nation,” that the aforementioned trio might even be indicted by the feds for their roles in the failed coup, and, best of all, that the squeaky wheels of justice are still grinding in this country.

It’s enough to make you feel patriotic.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

What a perfect holiday-week news story, the equivalent of a brainless summer movie.

Some clown recently left a small baggie of cocaine in the White House visitors area, thus inspiring various clowns in the MAGA cult (especially the twice-indicted clown) to froth at the mouth. Suddenly they’re all concerned about “security,” which would be laughable if it were not so detestable, given how they were fine with their thugs beating up on Jan. 6 and smearing feces on Capitol corridor walls.

The white powder was discovered last Sunday, in a place where touring visitors leave their cellphones in cubbies (“a heavily traveled area,” says Joe Biden’s press secretary), and the Secret Service says it’s running “an investigation into the cause and manner” of how the coke wound up there. Fine. That’s a worthy probe. But the clown prince of hysteria, terrified more than ever that his ultimate reckoning is at hand, cooked up a quintessentially noxious stew on social media:

“Does anybody really believe that the COCAINE found in the West Wing of the White House, very close to the Oval Office, is for the use of anyone other than Hunter & Joe Biden…Has deranged Jack Smith, the crazy, Trump hating Special Prosecutor, been seen in the area of the COCAINE? He looks like a crackhead to me.”

Well. I have a question for his beleaguered attorneys: Given the fact that your client sought to overthrow the U.S. government, stoked an insurrection, and stole classified government documents that he has since sought to share with God knows who, is it wise to refer to the guy who’s investigating him – and who may yet further indict him – as a “crackhead”?

Just wondering.

Meanwhile, on Fox News, right-wing congressman Darrell Issa, best known for his repeated failed attempts to blame Hillary Clinton for Benghazi, popped up yesterday to announce without evidence that the coke in the visitors area is somehow tied to…you guessed it…Hunter Biden: “He (the president) continues to have somebody with a history of drug addiction in the White House. It is not a small problem that we find cocaine after Hunter Biden has been in the White House.”

Issa was just trolling. The coke was discovered on Sunday, likely “minutes” after it was left there; that’s according to ex-Trump press secretary Kayleigh, who has lately rediscovered factual reality. She said yesterday, “For it to be Hunter Biden, he left on Friday, he was at Camp David. There’s no way, It’s inconceivable to think cocaine could sit for a 72-hour period, so I would rule him out at this point.”

OK, so maybe the coke has no connection to Hunter, and maybe (despite Trump’s insinuation) the coke was not intended for Joe’s nose. Nevertheless, Tom Cotton is on the case. The MAGA senator from Arkansas has sent a letter to the Secret Service, demanding answers: “I urge you to release that information quickly, as the American people deserve to know whether illicit drugs were found in an area where confidential information is exchanged. If the White House complex is not secure, Congress needs to know the details, as well as your plan to correct any security flaws.”

As my mother used to say, “That’s a scream!”

How entertaining it is – there are harsher words, but I’m in holiday mode – to hear that a MAGAt is professing “security” concerns about a baggie of coke “in an area where confidential information is exchanged.” I’ve clearly missed Cotton’s statements professing concern about the recorded exchanges of confidential information at Trump’s Jersey golf club; I’ve clearly missed his statements professing concern about the stacking of confidential documents next to a Florida toilet.

This is just bread-and-circuses stuff, grist for the MAGA-GOP distraction machine. Steve Schmidt, the former Republican strategist, brings the mockery: “Cocaine in the White House. Did you hear? Is that something to fear? Might there be something else? Fascist in the White House.”

And if not for Cokegate, perhaps people might start reading about the resilient economy, the lessening inflation, the spike in consumer confidence, the strong labor market (doubling expectations in June), and the billions of bucks currently flowing to red-state road, bridge, and broadband projects.

So a little perspective, please. Just ask yourself what’s more important as we head toward 2024:

A summer mystery about white powder – or a threatened White House restoration of white power?

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Like every other Philadelphian, I was astounded by the news that the cratered stretch of I-95 would be reopened to traffic in a veritable blink of an eye. How sweet it was to see good government in action.

As the state’s new chief executive, Josh Shapiro, remarked the other day, “When we work together we can get s— done.”

By spearheading the speedy response (with strong backing from fellow Democrat Joe Biden), Shapiro basically put into practice his party’s 2024 campaign message. Minus the minor obscenity, it’s simple: We get stuff done.

As mantras go, “good governance is good politics” isn’t exactly new. But at a time when one party has devolved into a personality cult, when the cult’s devotees are willfully enslaved to an imbecilic criminal, when the cult’s House leaders are hooked on performative fascism (symbolic renunciations of the cult leader’s two impeachments, etcetera), high-profile Democratic governors, and especially the Democratic president, may have the upper hand.

The notion of actually doing the job might resonate with the non-cult electoral majority.

Shapiro is new to the job, but his early moves as a doer have already earned praise from conservative outlets like the Washington Examiner, which lauded Shapiro’s “effective, capable coordination with all levels of government (in the I-95 crisis)…city officials, city police, city fire, state police, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation all have worked together to lessen the road closure’s overall economic and emotional impact.”

More seasoned, twice-elected Democratic governors are getting stuff done. In Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer has followed through on her campaign promise to “fix the damn roads,” and has signed measures to expand access to childcare, protect abortion access, create tuition-free community college programs, and pump nearly two billion bucks into cleaning up the water by replacing lead pipes.

In Illinois, J.B. Pritzker has turned a deep state budget deficit into a $3-billion surplus, and has signed measures to phase out carbon-generating power production and hike the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Whitmer, Pritzker, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom are all raising money for the national party’s ’24 races.

If independent swing voters care at all about getting stuff done, they need only note the federal job-creation stats, especially the new manufacturing construction (this year alone, $190 billion) that has been spurred by Biden’s signature achievements: the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the (somewhat misnamed) Inflation Reduction Act.

Roughly 100 battery and electric-vehicle plants are being built or nearing construction. It’s also noteworthy that the federal government is giving a hefty loan to the Ford Motor Company for the construction of three battery factories in Kentucky and Tennessee – red states will never vote for the president who’s bringing them jobs. But Biden is fine with that, because he’s focused on getting stuff done.

By contrast, just imagine (if you can bear it) how Donald Trump would’ve reacted to the I-95 closure if he were still in the White House. His response would’ve taken one of two forms: (1) “Pennsylvania didn’t vote for me, so I’m not lifting a finger to help,” or (2) “Pennsylvania voted for me, but it was stolen because bad things happen in Philadelphia, so I’m not lifting a finger to help.”

Revenge is the antithesis of effective governance.

If it’s true, as the polls suggest, that most voters want the parties to work together to get stuff done, Democrats indeed appear to have the wind at their backs – provided, of course, that they can blast their message out and compel voters to focus on substance, not MAGA sideshows.

How hard should this be? It’s the party that gets stuff done versus the cult of One.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

I get why the Republicans are so obsessed with Hunter Biden. They don’t much of anything else.

Inflation is down, job creation is up, the deficit is down, the Dow is up, Joe Biden’s achievements (especially on infrastructure) are kicking in, and the GOP has chained itself to an espionage criminal defendant.

So it’s no surprise that MAGA heads detonated when news broke that Hunter Biden and the Justice Department had agreed on a plea deal. The talking point du jour is “TWO-TIER JUSTICE!,” supposedly because pop the president put the fix in for his son, or something like that. We’ll shortly count the ways that their complaint is a crock of dung.

Hunter Biden, a long lost soul with addiction problems, will plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to file timely income tax returns in 2017 and 2018. He’ll also admit that he lied about his drug abuse when he purchased a handgun. He has also paid the taxes he owed ($100,000 for each year). If he stays drug-free for two years, the Justice Department won’t prosecute him on the gun charge. Nor is he allowed to own a gun again.

He has agreed to all the terms, which must still be OK’d by a federal judge.

Naturally, twice-indicted Donald Trump is very upset about this plea deal. On his social media site, he thumbed: “The corrupt Biden DOJ just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere ‘traffic ticket.’” That’s quite an assessment, coming from a guy who stacks stolen classified documents next to his toilet.

Most hilariously, his agitprop about a “corrupt Biden DOJ” somehow omitted the fact that David Weiss, the federal prosecutor who spent five years investigating Hunter, the same federal prosecutor who worked out the plea deal, was appointed by none other than…Donald Trump.

In fact, President Biden could’ve replaced Weiss at any time in order to protect his son. Instead, he chose to keep Weiss on the job in order to demonstrate the Justice Department’s independence and dispel perceptions of family favoritism.

Nevertheless, “sweetheart deal” is a new MAGA mantra – even though the deal is anything but. Douglas Berman, an Ohio State law professor and sentencing expert, told the New York Times regular folks are rarely prosecuted for the crimes Hunter is admitting.

“If these are the only offenses, most prosecutors are going to say it’s not worth a federal case,” Berman said.

In other words, the Justice Department is being tougher on Hunter because he is a high-profile individual.

“Everyone is paying attention, and the facts are not in dispute, so a failure to bring charges would create the perception that there was some sort of special treatment or leniency being given to the president’s son,” Berman told the Times.

House Republicans are crying “leniency” anyway, and they’ll keep chasing Hunter for the next few years anyway, because they need another “Hillary’s Emails!” in order to bamboozle the base. With so little to work with on the policy front, they’re committed to the weaponization of ignorance.

Knock yourselves out, guys. I’ll just quote from the recent letter that Weiss, the Trump-appointed prosecutor, sent to House Republican sleuths: “I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of the prosecution, consistent with federal law, the Principles of Federal Prosecution, and Departmental regulations.”

Or as Succession CEO Logan Roy would’ve put it, “F–k off.”

One other thought: Hunter Biden has admitted his tax dodges. He has admitted lying on his gun application. He has admitted his drug addiction. What wrongdoing, pray tell, has the espionage criminal defendant ever admitted?

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

On the eve of his federal arrest and arraignment, former president and criminal espionage defendant Donald Trump fled to his social media safe place and commanded his fascist foot soldiers to come forth in multitudinous numbers for a big beautiful mob scene at the Miami courthouse.

“ALL HANDS ON DECK! SEE YOU IN MIAMI ON TUESDAY,” he decreed, and Miami police reportedly braced themselves for a as many as 50,000.

As Homer Simpson would say, “D’oh!”

The turnout for Trump – a motley collection of dolts, nuts, and live-streaming loons – peaked that day at somewhere between 500 and 2,000 people.

Bill Mitchell, a prominent radio guy and erstwhile Trumper who has defected to Ron DeSantis, tweeted: “Nice turnout Trump, you clown.”

According to traditional journalistic metrics, a huge crowd (especially a huge violent crowd) is, by definition, a big story. And an anemic crowd (especially an anemic non-violent crowd) is, by definition, a non-story. But, at least with respect to the teensy Miami freak show, I beg to differ.

Given the fact that Florida is Trump’s home turf, and that more than five million Floridians voted for him in 2020, you do have to wonder why turnout for Trump’s federal bust was such a bust. Various theories are being banded about. Maybe he’s wearing out the MAGA masses with his roundelay of indictments and arraignments. Maybe they think the classified documents case is no big deal because they think his theft of the documents was no big deal, so maybe they’re waiting for a bigger case (Jan. 6, the 2020 election) to draw them into the streets.

I think it’s simpler than that. They’re afraid of winding up in jail.

Three cheers for the law enforcement authorities, who’ve responded to the Jan. 6 insurrection by dropping the hammer on the domestic terrorists who wreaked havoc and death at the Capitol. The message, from the forces of law and order, is obvious: If you take to the streets and commit a crime, you’ll get cuffed and may well do the time.

That seems like the best explanation for the anemic turnout in Miami, and the anemic turnout in New York two months ago when Trump was arraigned on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The Justice Department has made it crystal clear that if you raise hell in a MAGA mob that spins out of control, the consequences for your life could be dire.

When I last checked, more than 1,033 insurrectionists have been arrested for their Jan. 6 actions, 570 have pleaded guilty, 277 have been sentenced to jail terms, and 113 have been sentenced to home detention. A top insurrectionist leader, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, was sentenced last month to 18 years in federal prison; the judge told Rhodes, “You, sir, present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country and to the republic and to the very fabric of this democracy.”

It’s called deterrence. What aspiring agitator wants to risk a close encounter with feds who mean business?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of authoritarianism, tweeted this week that “prosecuting criminals protects society from further extremist violence. Trumpworld can heroicize the (Jan. 6) thugs, but the message that they will be held accountable is received…Prosecution of crimes sets an example (to show) democratic institutions able to work without threat or interference.”

Still, let’s not get giddy. The MAGA shock troops are busy at the grassroots, attacking gay people and harassing school boards, and Jeff Sharlet, who writes about what he calls America’s “slow civil war” is correct when he warns that mocking MAGA’s clownishness “is no antidote to fascism, a term that more and more historians and political scientists say at last applies to a mass American movement, even as many news organizations still shy away from it.”

I don’t shy away from it. But the federal law enforcement response to Jan. 6 should inspire all who love to democracy to defend it and fight for it wherever the seeds of sedition take root.

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Copyright 2023 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]