* Among scenarios potentially impacting a 2024 Trump run: the 14th Amendment. It has a heretofore unpublicized but timely clause that bans public officials from serving in any future federal, state or military office if they have engaged in, say, “insurrection or rebellion.”
* Apparently some of the White House documents that Donald Trump improperly took to Mar-a-Lago were marked “classified.” National Archives & Records Administration officials have asked the Justice Department to check it out. For the record, official paperwork belongs to the nation—not to a president or ex-president. This isn’t the Trump Organization. The Presidential Records Act should still matter. Let’s find out.
* Trump can flush evidentiary documents, but, alas, we still can’t flush his presidency.
* “Nixon had the plumbers. Trump’s the one who needed them.”–Maureen Dowd, NYT.
* “People who have nothing to hide don’t … destroy evidence to keep it from being publicly archived as required under federal law.” That was presidential candidate Trump in 2016—in his criticism of Hillary Clinton over her handling of emails. Timing and hypocrisy are everything.
* “It will take years to clean the stain Trump has smeared on a party he never cared much about in the first place. And the Republican ‘leaders’ have no one to blame but themselves.”–Jonah Goldberg, The Dispatch.
* Can there be ‘Trumpism’ without Trump?It’s not a rhetorical question, even for an increasingly “deplorable” base. But the answer is NO—not unlike a cult without a cult leader.
* “The truth is, there’s more at stake than our party or political fortunes. … If we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections—we’ll lose our country.”–Mike Pence, trying to save faith—and face.
* According to a YouGov. December poll, 71 percent of all Republicans believe that President Joe Biden was not elected legitimately.
* “For the united front Never Trump, there’s no greater heroine than Liz Cheney, and no clearer embodiment of Republican cowardice than Susan Collins, the Maine moderate who even now won’t say definitively that she’ll oppose if he’s the 2024 nominee.”–Ross Douthat, NYT.
* “Gazpacho police”: Who Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Stormtrooper, said was being unleashed by Nancy Pelosi on lawmakers. Gazpacho, Gestapo, whatever.