Writes Rich Lowry, in The New York Times, in "Imagine What Another Indictment Could Do for Donald Trump."
Lowry compares Trump to the historical figures Huey Long and Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
August 8, 2023
"As Mr. Trump showed in 2016, when it comes to media coverage, quantity has a quality all its own."
"The indictments make everything about him more so than is the case ordinarily. His motorcades haven’t been covered as extensively since he was president, and his latest Truth Social posts denouncing his mistreatment are being covered as breaking news. It all contributes to the miniaturization of the rest of the field. Other candidates are given the choice of saying what many Republicans want to hear about how shabbily Mr. Trump is being treated and end up simply echoing his points or condemning his underlying conduct and seeming to pile on with his bitterest and most-hated enemies.... A figure like Mr. Trump, a colorful populist adored by a political base in part because he is so embattled, is unlikely to be taken down by the very authorities he says are corrupt and arrayed against him."
Writes Rich Lowry, in The New York Times, in "Imagine What Another Indictment Could Do for Donald Trump."
Writes Rich Lowry, in The New York Times, in "Imagine What Another Indictment Could Do for Donald Trump."
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"adored by a political base in part because he is so embattled"
No, he is valued because he fights back.
All Trump did was get the media industrial complex and their billions of in-kind contributions to democrats over multiple decades working for him. So much so in fact that it appears some of their networks can't live without him.
People just don't appreciate the staggering mediocrity of the people in charge of these networks. If they weren't born to the manor and their trust funds went to zero you'd be reticent in giving them a mop job.
Just like January 6, Trump is leading people into a Dem trap. If he gets nominated, he will lose the general. Vivek is correct when he says that the mere mention of Trump’s name drives 30% of the electorate crazy. We need to put all this drama behind us as a country. Last Saturday Vivek said we need a landslide victory and not a slim majority. He says he can deliver that with his message.
Indeed.
Many of Trump's ardent supporters fail to take into consideration that the entire shit-show is by design. Sucking all the air out of the room for Trump...is by design. Oh yeah - they hate him, want him locked up...killed... (and brought back to life) but they also need him... at the top.
2016 - The left let their collective guard down with Hillary - assuming she was well ahead of Trump. Trump managed to win (but not by much.) The left (all of the left - their corrupt institutions and their corrupt media) all realized this means war. War against free speech and the war to install mob-democrats into permanent one-party rule is the short and long game with the collective.
Even if it means propping up an old crook like Joe biden. Trump is the perfect shiny object.
The left said so out loud many many times.... and prove how far they will go to keep power.
Never again, they said. Fetterman's win in PA tells the story. The democrat don't even need functioning humans.
I guess I get what Lowry is saying but the implication is ridiculous. The 2020 idea of Trump as media creation, that the added media attention is helping Trump garner support…and/or if they paid less attention to him he’d go away and Jeb! or whatever mainstream approved Washington General you guys say you like would float to the top…c’mon. Smarten up….
"A figure like Mr. Trump, a colorful populist adored by a political base in part because he is so embattled, is unlikely to be taken down by the very authorities he says are corrupt and arrayed against him"
But no one else is good enough. So - we will get Trump. And he will lose to... Biden or anyone else in 2024.
But, but at least Althouse doesn’t fall for it and post about The Creature From the Orange Lagoon all the time.
What’s next…3-D of The Bad Orange Man shooting arrows into the audience?
If nothing else, The Donald gets a Lifetime Achievement Award for drawing audiences.
One difference with Trump is the absence of actual criminality.
We can't wait to vote for President Trump again.
Imagine what another 4 years of Biden is going to do to America. Go back to sleep. Nothing to see here. Suckers.
When Huey Long became Gov of Louisiana, there were only a few hundred miles of paved roads. By the time he died (assassinated), there were thousands of miles. He also but textbooks in all the public schools for blacks and whites.
The guy wasn't a saint, but he did take on Standard Oil.
"Trump is the perfect shiny object."
No, THAT would be DeSantis, who the elites and their faithful think that the left will leave alone. They won't.
"Trump’s name drives 30% of the electorate crazy."
My husband is in that 30%. No sense of humor about Trump at all.
But I'm glad Lowry is sophisticated enough to see there are other precedents besides Hitler. I thought Huey Long too, I thought also Mussolini.
But the media treats him like Napoleon returning from Elba. How flattering!
Let's make something perfectly clear: I hate Donald Trump.
He's an oaf, a liar, mid-intelligent, a cheat ... and worst of all, he's ineffective. He doesn't understand levers of power and how to operate them. He's not a student of our own history. He ran for President to demonstrate to Barack Obama just how easy it is to get in there and that's it. Just to thumb his nose at the man who couldn't produce a birth certificate for 2 years.
Given a 2nd chance at the Presidency, Trump wouldn't really know what to do to excise the enemies of Democracy from our lands. Or understand the existential threat they represent.
I'm voting for Donald Trump not because he's effective or because I like him ... I'm voting for Donald Trump because the NY Times got a Pulitzer Prize for their Russia Collusion coverage and won't return it.
Those people are evil incarnate. And given a choice between OAF and EVIL I'm going with the Oaf every time. Be the sabo in their engine.
“Vivek said we need a landslide victory and not a slim majority. He says he can deliver that with his message.” Well if he says it, it must be so.
Vivek also says “Every 18-year-old should pass the same citizenship test that every immigrant is required to pass in order to become a citizen of this nation.”
Just say no to Vivek.
Trump 2024.
Trump being Trump better work, otherwise, the prospect of a president prosecuting his political rival will stand as #thingsthatdowork. The way I see it, Trump has to be preferable to that. And I don’t think I’m wrong about that. Nothing would be more banana republic, meaning, jailing your political rival is the worst aspect of a banana republic.
Pile on Althouse.
Hunter's Hooker said: "But no one else is good enough. So - we will get Trump. And he will lose to... Biden or anyone else in 2024." So that's Trump's fault?
wendy - you, like many other Trumpies - have fallen into the left's trap.
"Lowry compares Trump to the historical figures Huey Long and Adam Clayton Powell Jr."
Don't forget James Michael Curley. "He served four terms as mayor of Boston ... He was twice convicted of criminal behavior and notably served time in prison during his last term as mayor. Curley was immensely popular with his fellow working-class Roman Catholic Irish Americans. During the Great Depression, he enlarged Boston City Hospital, expanded the city's public transit system, funded projects to improve roads and bridges, and improved the neighborhoods with beaches and bathhouses, playgrounds and parks, public schools, and libraries, all the while collecting graft and raising taxes. He was a leading and at times divisive force in the Massachusetts Democratic Party, challenging Boston's ward bosses and the party's white Anglo-Saxon Protestant leadership at the local and state levels." wikipedia
"... the mere mention of Trump’s name drives 30% of the electorate crazy."
I'm already voting for him. You don't have sell me.
buckwheat hikes...
yeah - I don't hate him but I agree. Trump did a few things right, but what he did wrong is a longer list... It won't matter tho - Trump's support has a shrinking ceiling...
and Trump's supporters are blind to the fact that the left and many Trump-haters in the middle (see indies) will crawl over broken glass to vote for crook dementia patient ... or the pretty boi who ruined CA.
What Dave Begley said. Alas - the Trumpies will soon call Vivek a Jeb! in 3...2...1
I think a much more apropos comparison would be Teddy Roosevelt.
If someone other than Trump gets the GOP nomination prepare yourself for the return of the Bull Moose Party, a split GOP electorate, and the next Woodrow Wilson.
The NYT gave Rich Lowry prime real estate to tell us all that this whole indictment thing must go away via a nonsensical John Kerry hypothetical, and the lie — now a classic — that the Russia investigation uncovered nothing. He avoids telling us what the upside of the indictments going away would be, besides making Trump & the GOP happy, because why bother; just leave us alone, Democrats, because we said so.
It’s staggering the NYT would supplement the reach of a man *with his own publication* to make such a non-argument, but they did.
The ironic thing is that the MAGA crowd already dismisses anything that National Review says as lies because they were insufficiently supportive of Trump in 2016. They are never getting those readers back.
If you are doomed anyway, it is much better to die with your back straight, your honor intact, and at least a little of your dignity left.
Re James curley
I always liked his slogan "stick with me and you'll be farthing through silk"
As a memorable way of saying he would bring prosperity
John Henry
I wish Republicans would be pragmatic for once. Trump will be wrongly convicted in DC. He will be sentenced to prison. But he will win the nomination unless people wise up. He can't win the general. Too much baggage. Women hate him.
A vote for Vivek would solve this problem. Vivek can win the general. He can win over young people. And he would pardon Trump on Day One.
We have to move forward and not get caught up in this mindless relitigation of the past. China is eating our lunch now. The next Dem nominee will also do nothing about China.
This is serious fucking business. The Dems can't win in 2024.
So, "Fake Conservative" RIch Lowry, ends up writing in the Leftwing NYTs. Suprising - not.
One way to give legitimacy to the outrageous assault on Trump and attempt to jail an ex-POTUS (leading in the primary polls for 2024), is to somehow act as if Trump is responsible for his prosecution by the corrupt stalinist Biden DoJ.
Lets talk about Trump and his situation/actions. Not the DoJ's. And lets not talk about how everyone involved in trying to Jail Trump is partisan Democrat ultraleftist that hates Trump. Or how insane, corrupt, and norm-busting this whole attempt to jail him is.
BTW, Rinos. Just keep attacking Trump or remaining silent if you want Biden till 2028, and letting the Democrat DOJ choose the R candidate in 2028. Because that's what you're getting. I assume you like that.
Hunter Biden's tax payer funded Hooker said...
wendy - you, like many other Trumpies - have fallen into the left's trap.
8/8/23, 9:21 AM
Look in the mirror, because YOU are aping the left.
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see. Then those Trump haters deserve what they will get.
"the miniaturization of the rest of the field"
A bonus for progs.
"a colorful populist adored by a political base in part because he is so embattled"
Stirring that adoration is part of the point. More opium.
"unlikely to be taken down by the very authorities he says are corrupt and arrayed against him"
But they don't want to "take him down." Instead, progs aim to weaken him politically by tying him up in lawsuits and increasing majority revulsion, but keep him politically viable as their prime opponent "adored" by his base and stronger than his challengers. They may miscalculate, of course, but the basic calculation makes sense. So far, it's working.
I can appreciate those, who with superior intellect, have sussed out the "dem trap".
However, having gotten away with 2020, what compels you to think the dems are gonna straighten up and not cheat?
Judicial watch has gotten some "inactives" off the voting rolls but the Soros Mob still counts the votes. You've seen what they've done in 2020. You expect them to want to do less?
With no audits of the voting machines and networks, you might as well sit in your garage blowing spit bubbles as vote Republican.
Here is how I evaluate who it is best for the GOP to nominate:
(1) Trump; simply because him getting elected a second time, however remotely I think the possibility really is, would cause all the right people the greatest amount of emotional anguish.
(2) DeSantis; simply because when he loses not only the presidency, House, and Senate in an avalanche of mail-in-ballots arriving the day after the election, I won't have listen to all the arguments about how things would only get better for the GOP if Trump stood aside.
Rich Lowry writes yet another op-ed about too much coverage about Trump.
Precious.
April Apple, Dave Begley, etal. You guys are shockingly naive. You won't be voting your way out of this, and I don't care who the GOP nominates. If the 2020 election didn't open your eyes, I fear nothing ever will. This is the best argument for nominating someone other than Trump- when that other candidate loses in a landslide with today's voting systems, perhaps you will have learned the lesson. At least, I would hope so.
Without Trump, we would be, right now, in the 2nd term of the Hillary Clinton Administration, with 6 progressives on the Supreme Court, and with Tim Kaine ready to assume the Presidency in 18 months.
Blogger Rich said...
The ironic thing is that the MAGA crowd already dismisses anything that National Review says as lies because they were insufficiently supportive of Trump in 2016. They are never getting those readers back.
Chuck in his "rich" persona spews more lies. National Review had an hysterical issue in 2015 or January 2016 attacking Trump and violently opposing his campaign.
Now we know who paid for it.
It looks like conservative mag National Review was taking Google cash too. To suppress conservative speech on social media. Was this something that @NRO donors & contributors knew was taking place? Let's ask @JonahNRO @DavidAFrench & others today.
Blogger Tank said...
"adored by a political base in part because he is so embattled"
No, he is valued because he fights back.
After decades of war and letting Democrats run up the national debt (with help from Republicans), the voters finally rebelled and elected Trump. He presided over a booming economy, low inflation and prosperity. Then came the WuFlu. The bureaucracy took over and wrecked the economy. Was it a first attempt at bio-war or an accident? We will probably ever know for sure. Certainly, if an accident, it was made possible by the bureaucracy setting up labs banned in the US to manipulate virus infectiousness by bio-engineering. The lies and furious, lying, denials make some of us suspicious.
The fact that he was as effective as he was when under near revolt by the bureaucracy suggests that he could b e more effective with the Russia hoax ancient history. Right now we are living in a disastrous Obama third term. Before collapse, we need to try to rescue the country. I don't see DeSantis doing that. I like him but his donors have too much control. They are not our friends.
Everyone should read this long article about Obama and where he came from. He is still running things.
LLR "Ch_"Rich"_uck": "The NYT gave Rich Lowry prime real estate..."
Shorter: Lefty Billionaire funded NYT gives Lefty Billionaire funded National Review editor "prime real estate" to attack the only republican candidate that is threat to the combined Dem/GOPe alliance and "LLR" on blogsite believes that is somehow significant!
LOL
I. Did. Not. See. That. Coming.
DeSantis has been shown to be utterly incapable of garnering and consolidating a majority, or even plurality, of the non-Trump voters in the republican primary.
Why is that?
Discuss.
“Women hate him.”
I’m assuming you mean liberal Democrat women. They will no more vote for DeSantis or Ramaswamy than they will Trump. The intensity of their vote won’t change the value of their vote.
I also think you’re wrong. These legal assaults are bringing out a nurturing instinct in folks - both male and female.
--- Vivek also says “Every 18-year-old should pass the same citizenship test that every immigrant is required to pass in order to become a citizen of this nation.”
Do you think that's a bad thing, Eva Marie? I like the idea myself. A small counter to the leftist indoctrination that they have received for the prior 4, 8, 12, or 13 years. Our youth have to find the way out of this dead end or the dream is over.
Dave B wrote: “We have to move forward and not get caught up in this mindless relitigation of the past. China is eating our lunch now. The next Dem nominee will also do nothing about China.”
In the shambolic Trump administration, Robert Lighthizer was the only effective cabinet-level official. He had a plan. He understood Washington. He was an adroit operator. The rest of the administration were either grifters or wooden Indians (see Michael Pence). Lighthizer changed Washington because he saw that 40 years of China policy had failed and understood how to exploit this insight.
In 2024, the presidential election like those of 2016 and 2020 may turn on 100,000 voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and a couple of other potential swing states. Being "soft" on trade or on China is fatal if trying to swing these voters behind a winning national campaign. (The Clinton campaign never understood the 100,000 or possibly even its existence.) The potential for demagogic "who lost to China" appeal is high. With the most effective national politician since Huey Long with demagogic appeal loose on the national stage, the politics of China is fundamental to Democratic success in 2024.
The economic containment policy is the right overall frame while the job-creating reindustrialization policy should be a pillar of the reelection campaign since it is both visible and local. Being "tough on China" is smart politics.
But the failure of the America's long-standing neoliberal China policy has wider consequences. The policy was a product of the Washington elite and wealthy, plutocratic foreign trade and globalization interests -- it was "made in Washington" and much of the rest of the country always suspected it of being so. The policy was fueled by campaign contributions from the mighty finance sector in particular, which many Americans view as an alien army occupying the commanding heights of the capital city.
The American electorate "out there" is as much at war with the Washington establishment as it is congruent with the idea that Washington is representative of the public's interests. Besides partisan polarization, an important axis of polarization in America is between its public out in the states and its government in Washington. Joe Biden's appeal next year as a "regular Joe" may be much more important than many think. He seems to have the policy matrix right. Can successful incumbency defeat the barbarian at the gate?
"I wish Republicans would be pragmatic for once."
Being pragmatic would mean that people like you should swallow whatever it is about Trump that you claim upsets you and unite behind the only candidate who has any chance of taking backing the White House.
There is no other option. The people like me who have seen the injustices that the left and the government and the Republican party have done to this man will never support a usurper who can't defeat him in an honest contest but who tries to feed off Trump's carcass after they and you have sent him to his political death.
Ramaswamy? Get serious. Or just go to Hell with your hidden agendas. Either works.
Kai Akker says: Do you think that's a bad thing, Eva Marie? I like the idea myself.
Do you want the Democratic machine be in charge of who votes 18 to 25?
That’s what would happen.
I want the government to have less power over American citizens not more. And I expect conservative Presidential candidates to be in favor of less power in government hands not more. I don’t want another enormous bureaucracy in charge of civic tests for citizens.
How about a sample question?
Was America founded on ideas of a) freedom b)slavery c)stealing lands from Indians?
Do you really think that this wouldn’t become politicized? And then what if this or that minority was found to pass at a lower rate? Then we lower the standards so everyone passes but we keep the enormous bureaucracy that just keeps getting bigger.
“Do you think that's a bad thing, Eva Marie?”
I previously gave a practical answer. But here is the fundamental answer: If you were born in this country or became a legal citizen you have a right to decide how you are to be government. And no one has a right to say that you are too stupid to vote. Now this is me being practical again: it’s not the stupid people that put us through 2020.
--- Vivek also says “Every 18-year-old should pass the same citizenship test that every immigrant is required to pass in order to become a citizen of this nation.”
What does he say will happen if they don't pass? Kick em out?
The ironic thing is that the MAGA crowd already dismisses anything that National Review says as lies because they were insufficiently supportive of Trump in 2016.
Insufficiently supportive? They were NEVERTRUMP, you twit. They even put it on the gawd damn cover.
Huey Long and Adam Clayton Powell were guilty of actual crimes, not made up from whole cloth manufactured ones to fit the barest definition of the law.
Talk about cluelessness:
"In 2024, the presidential election like those of 2016 and 2020 may turn on 100,000 voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and a couple of other potential swing states."
Those states are only in play if Trump is the nominee. If you want to know how they lean with a normal GOP candidate, look to the 2012 election where Obama was re-elected with 7.5+% unemployment. He won those three states by 300K, 350K, and 220K respectively. They are not swing states. Trump is the only GOP candidate to win any of them in the last 35 years. When Trump is not on the ballot, all three states go back to being solid blue in the electoral college. Even worse, without Trump on the ballot, the GOP will likely lose Iowa and will have to fight hard to hang onto Ohio and Florida, which really are swing states.
"Imagine What Another Indictment Could Do for Donald Trump."
Probably millions more people chanting, "Four more years! Four more years...!"
The Key point about Lowry is he's controlled opposition. Notice he's not outraged in the least at this insane abuse of power by Biden's Stalinist DOJ. But then, that's been his shtick for 25 years. He NEVER gets upset at ANYTHING the Liberal/Left does. And that was even before he was paid off by Google.
No, like Rod Dreher, he only gets angry at those to his Right. Trump, Levin, Coulter, Palin, Roy Moore, Limbaugh, Derbyshire, etc.
He does make a great fit for the NYT's. Or the Sunday talk show panels. He'll sit there quietly and engage in some feeble pushback against anything crazy left and he'll join in the attack on Trump or anything GOPe doesn't like.
You can thank Buckley for his promience (sic). WFB caved to pressure and got rid of John O'Sullivan and put this "girly-man" (as Coulter called him) in charge. He played his part well. He got rid of anyone truly conservative, or even interesting, and made
NR "Conservatism" into the Liberalism of 5 years ago. Eventually he gave us "NeverTrump" and welcomed the prospect of POTUS Hillary. And then he left NR where it is Today, a zero. Read by a few GOPe and no one else.
Well done Rich!
“What does he say will happen if they don't pass? Kick em out?”
They get their voting rights at 25 with no test. It’s a dumb idea that immediately brings to mind the literacy tests Democrats instituted in the South.
I have thought for a while that McCarthy, Lowry and the editors at National Review believe that federal criminal law includes a secret element to any crime requiring the government to prove that the defendant is not a Republican and that membership in the Democratic Party is a wildcard element that can be used to substitute for any other element of a crime.
--- Vivek also says “Every 18-year-old should pass the same citizenship test that every immigrant is required to pass in order to become a citizen of this nation.”
What does he say will happen if they don't pass? Kick em out?
I wouldn't kick them out, but I wouldn't let them vote either.
And no one has a right to say that you are too stupid to vote.
Sure I do. And you have the right to disagree with me.
"Trump’s name drives 30% of the electorate crazy."
The same is true of any and every Republican.
Desantis of course trump lost in 2020 Biden is president.The worm turns?
@Eva Marie, VG arguments on the civics test idea. Maybe it would be too easy to corrupt.
Another way to change our limitless, lawless government -- and those who live off its largesse, principally the left in all its nooks and crannies -- is to starve it of resources. Tax receipts say that process has begun. Couple falling receipts with the much-higher costs from rising interest rates and budgets are going to be decimated. So perhaps circumstances are about to teach the young some of those same lessons they need to learn.
And not only the young. The problem is, those lessons only come from bitter experience. And bitter experience is bitter. But it would shatter a lot of fantasies.
No, he is valued because he fights back.
...on Twitter.
In the real world, he got rolled. And learned nothing.
Yes agree the former president wins on social media with his followers gets battered in the courts of reality over and over and over.
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