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Donald J. Trump will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024, according to the New York Times.

After interviewing nearly 50 Democratic officials, from county leaders to members of Congress, as well as disappointed voters who backed Joe Biden in 2020, the Times reported last weekend that Democrats from coast to coast are quietly worrying about Mr. Bidens leadership, his age and his capability to take the fight to former President Donald J. Trump a second time.

Its an apparent concession to the inevitability of a second Trump candidacy. You have to read all the way down to paragraph 31 before the story even mentions another Republican hopeful.

The Times quotes terrified-sounding Democrats around the country: terrified that Joe Biden will run for re-election, terrified that theres no consensus for anybody else, and most of all, terrified that if given the option, the American people will re-elect Donald Trump.

The current series of Congressional hearings about the events of January 6, scheduled to conclude just before the ballots mail out for the November elections, is perhaps the last, best chance before the midterms [for Democrats] to break through with persuadable swing voters who have been more focused on inflation and gas prices, the Times reported. If the party cannot, it may miss its final opportunity to hold Mr. Trump accountable as Mr. Biden faces a tumultuous two years of a Republican-led House obstructing and investigating him.

Its generous of the Times to invite all of us into the Democratic Partys strategy sessions. Now we know, not that we didnt, that the one-sided investigation into the former presidents thoughts, words and actions on January 6 is just a desperate attempt to do what every investigation so far has utterly failed to do, which is find Donald Trump guilty of something, anything, in order to prevent the American people from having the opportunity to put him back in office.

People are really, really down, Biden told the Associated Press on Thursday. Theyre really down. The need for mental health in America, it has skyrocketed, because people have seen everything upset. Everything theyve counted on, upset.

That sounds a lot like President Jimmy Carters July 1979 Crisis of Confidence speech, better known by its informal title, the malaise speech.

On live television, Carter told the American people, I want to speak to you first tonight about a subject even more serious than energy or inflation. I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy.

Its as if the speech got stuck in the Democrats teleprompter.

Carter spoke about growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and the erosion of our confidence in the future threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. Then he blamed OPEC for the long lines which have made millions of you spend aggravating hours waiting for gasoline as well as the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face, called for more sacrifices, and asked Congress to give him authority for mandatory conservation and for standby gasoline rationing.

Yeah, no, said the American people, as they voted Jimmy Carter out of office the next year. No matter how hard the Democrats tried to demonize and ridicule the Warner Bros. movie star who had gone on to become governor of Californiaand they did tryRonald Reagan was elected and re-elected.

It worked out fine.

The same scare tactics were tried in 2016, from both parties, when a real estate tycoon and reality TV star vowed to secure the border, drain the swamp and put America first. Critics dont like to hear it, but the country enjoyed four years of peace and prosperity while Trump was president, and its not all that easy, as we have now seen.

Under President Joe Biden, Democrats are like, What the hell is going on? Texas Democratic congressional candidate Jasmine Crockett told the Times, Our country is completely falling apart.

Its pretty clear whats going on in Texas. This week in a special election for a vacant congressional seat in a South Texas district where 84% of voters are Hispanic, Republican Mayra Flores defeated Democrat Dan Sanchez by a margin of 51% to 43% and flipped the seat red.

Flores and Sanchez will face each other again in November in the newly redrawn district, where voters went for Joe Biden in 2020 by a 15-point margin, higher than Bidens 4-point margin among voters in the special-election district. The Democrats may ultimately win back that seat, but the trend away from automatic-blue voting among Hispanics is undeniable.

Between 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump picked up 10 points in Hispanic support, according to a post-election survey by Pew Research, especially notable given the relentless repetition in campaigns and in the media accusing Trump of racist border and immigration policies.

That supposedly sure-fire political messaging weapon has failed against Trump, and now panicked Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans have joined forces to produce a summer-long show trial.

The Democrats problem is that every time the show ends and the news comes on, Joe Biden is the president.

Even some of the earliest supporters of Mr. Bidens 2020 campaign are now questioning whether he can lead the party through another daunting election cycle against Mr. Trump, the Times reported.

We must face the truth, and then we can change our course, said President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

And thats exactly what happened.

Write Susan at Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley

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Why Democrats are terrified of Donald Trump Orange County Register

A day after the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault illustrated the serious danger that rioters posed to Mike Pence, former President Donald J. Trump unleashed a new attack on the man who had served him as vice president, criticizing him for refusing to interfere with the Electoral College certification of the 2020 presidential contest.

Speaking on Friday afternoon before a faith-based group, Mr. Trump said that Mike did not have the courage to act in trying to unilaterally reject the Electoral College votes that were being cast for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

On Thursday, the House panel demonstrated that Mr. Trump and his advisers were told repeatedly that Mr. Pence had no power to block the certification and that doing so would violate the law, but pressed him to try anyway.

The committee also used witnesses to dismantle and debunk Mr. Trumps false claims of widespread election fraud arguments that he repeated in his keynote speech on Friday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Nashville.

Mr. Trump has grown angry watching the hearings, knowing that he lacks a bully pulpit from which to respond, according to his advisers. He used much of his Friday address to repeat his false election claims and to denigrate Mr. Pence.

Most striking was the context for the attack on Mr. Pence, whose presence on the presidential ticket in 2016 was critical to reassuring evangelical voters that Mr. Trump, a thrice-married New York real estate developer whose first divorce was tabloid fodder for months and who had supported abortion rights, had become sufficiently conservative on social issues.

Mr. Pence, who often talks about his religious faith, is a favorite among the kind of voters attending the conference. But that did not stop Mr. Trump from denouncing him from the stage on Friday.

After repeating claims about election fraud that have been widely debunked, including by his former attorney general, William P. Barr, Mr. Trump turned his sights on Mr. Pence.

First, he insisted that he had not called Mr. Pence a wimp in a phone call with the vice president on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, even though Mr. Trumps former aide Nick Luna had testified under penalty of perjury about such a comment. I dont even know who these people are, Mr. Trump told the crowd.

I never called Mike Pence a wimp, said Mr. Trump, whose daughter Ivanka was present for the call and later told her chief of staff that Mr. Trump had effectively called Mr. Pence a coward, using a vulgarity. Then, Mr. Trump went on to describe Mr. Pence as weak.

Mike Pence had a chance to be great. He had a chance to be, frankly, historic, the former president said. But just like Bill Barr and the rest of these weak people, he said, Mr. Pence did not have the courage to act. The comment was met with applause.

Mr. Trump continued to mock Mr. Pence, whose aides testified that he had told Mr. Trump repeatedly that he did not have the power to dismiss Mr. Bidens Electoral College victory or declare a 10-day recess in the congressional session to send the votes back to states to be re-examined.

Mike Pence had absolutely no choice but to be a human conveyor belt, Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump also mischaracterized the 1801 certification of Thomas Jeffersons presidential victory a process that Jefferson, then the vice president, oversaw to argue that Mr. Pence should have used that model to keep Mr. Trump in office.

I said to Mike, If you do this, you can be Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Trump said. And then after it all went down, I looked at him one day and I said, Mike, I hate to say this, but youre not Thomas Jefferson.

Marc Short, Mr. Pences former chief of staff, said this conversation never happened. Mr. Short did not comment more broadly on Mr. Trumps speech.

Mr. Trump also complained that the House committee had edited videos of his former aides testimony so that they were not played in full context. He appeared to be referring indirectly to testimony by his daughter Ivanka, whose remarks have been used against her father in two hearings.

Speaking of the mob that left his speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and swarmed the Capitol, Mr. Trump remained defensive. It was a simple protest, he said. It got out of hand.

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Trump Attacks Mike Pence for Not Rejecting Electoral Votes in 2020 ...

Many sophisticated observers of the January 6 committee will judge its success by two key metrics: whether the panel refers former President Donald Trump for criminal investigation and, if so, whether Attorney General Merrick Garland actually proceeds. But committee members are doing another job at least as important as advising the Justice Department: They are giving an off-ramp to those who accepted Trumps insistence that the 2020 election was stolen out from under himand who might excuse or even support violence done in his name.

Democracies do not fail in a single moment; they gradually break down from within. The same can be said of violent movements. Since the Capitol riot, the United States has been waging what is essentially a counter-extremism effort against Trump and the forces that nearly toppled our democracy. Such movements grow by portraying themselves as successful and their leadership as exceptional. The committee hearings have shown Trump to be not only an insurrectionist and an inciter of violence, but also a desperate sore loser. Almost everyone around Trump was telling him that his public claims of election fraud were bullshit, as former Attorney General William Barr put it. The people who continue spreading that myth need to know that Trump is making a fool of them. The savviest of his advisers long ago headed for the exits, and the ones who havent are not to be believed.

Notably, most of the committees witnesses against the former president are or were members of Team Trump or the GOP. Look at them, the committee is sayingthere is a way out. Trump, according to Representative Liz Cheney, the committees Republican vice chair, was advised by an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani. This description, based on the accounts of Trump-campaign figures, isnt idle gossip, but is meant to humiliate Trump, make him seem like a puppet of the unhinged and reckless. Run away from that guy! Trump is also betrayed by his daughter Ivanka, who in videotaped testimony looks deflated and pale as she sides with the forces telling Trump to stop his madness. The implication is clear: If his own daughter isnt with him, why should you be?

Read: The January 6 committees most damning revelation yet

The former presidents critics may rightly ask why neither she nor Barr spoke up in the moment. But longtime Trump skeptics arent the committees target audience. The message to his remaining supporters is: Trump has peaked. His best days are behind him. You wont be the first to take the off-ramp, but you dont want to be the last.

Instead of subscribing to Trumps stolen-election fantasies, Republicans can join Team Normal, the term used by the former campaign manager Bill Stepien to describe those who were not instigating violence. If these former Trump loyalists can reject the lies, the committee is effectively telling his current followers, then so can you. And by the way, there was no honor among Trumps abettors; the committee has evidence, one of its two Republican members has said, that GOP politicians who may have been involved with coordinating the January 6 effort had sought pardons, leaving everybody else exposed to prosecution.

According to evidence aired Thursday, John Eastmana Trump legal adviser who kept insisting that thenVice President Mike Pence had the power to alter the Electoral College votepresumptuously declared in an email after the riot, Ive decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works. One of Trumps White House lawyers testified that hed told Eastman, Get a great effing criminal-defense lawyer. Youre gonna need it. The message to Trump supporters: With company like this, do you need any more reason to take an exit?

My background is in homeland security, and I have previously argued that counterterrorism holds lessons in how to isolate Trump and de-radicalize MAGA extremists. (Earlier this year, I was among hundreds of experts contacted by committee staffers who were seeking perspective about the events of January 6.) The committee and its investigators plainly understand the one way in which extremist groups gain a foothold politically: Their leaders present themselves as more reasonable and less violent than they really are. The committee is trying to deny Trump and his MAGA allies that option by reminding Americans that the threat of brute force was always the undercurrent behind Stop the Steal.

A single congressional committee cannot make Trumps most violent supporters better, kinder, more accepting of Americas diversity. But it can help separate the former president from elites, donors, and those who would support him simply because they dont like the alternative.

The committees case against Trump is relentless and personaland one apparently targeted at Americans who might have voted for the former president or been sympathetic to his ideas. As Cheney said, There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain. The committee and its investigators arent being nasty for its own sake.

Quinta Jurecic: The January 6 committee is not messing around

A fair question is how many of Trumps most enthusiastic supporters are actually seeing the committees work; some of Trump supporters preferred media platforms are largely ignoring the proceedings. But the hearings and the conversations they spawn appear on numerous national outlets and local news. Fox News at least covered them in the daytime. Republican elites and conservative influencers are paying attention. Commentators at The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post were not pleased with Trump after the first days proceedings; donors are expressing their annoyance; and some GOP members seem more vocal in treating Trump as a political liability for 2024. Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, has said that many in the GOP are looking for the off-ramp from Trumps election fiction. On the left, many of Trumps critics seem to yearn for a single blow of reckoning, but perhaps the threat he and his followers pose is best handled with a thousand cuts.

The most effective attempt to isolate Trump came at the end of the second hearing, when Representative Zoe Lofgren highlighted the Trump familys greed and opportunism in the days after the election. This narrative isnt particularly necessary for an indictment. Still, a committee staffer disclosed that, after losing the November 2020 election, Trump and his allies raised $250 million in pursuit of the lie but never set up the special fund that they had promised to dedicate to the cause. Some of the money went to paying Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.s fiance, $60,000 for a two-and-a-half-minute speech on January 6. Donors deserve better than what President Trump and his team did, Lofgren declared, lending a sympathetic ear to those who might be feeling a little duped. Perhaps she doesnt really believe it, but it works as a way of saying: Have you had enough yet?

The conservative commentator Ann Coulter appears to concur. Every time you think you have your arms fully around Trumps con, she wrote this week, you realize its unfathomably more cynical and far-reaching than you could have imagined. She added, Is there anyone in Trump World who isnt trying to fleece the Deplorables?

The committee is building a historical record as well as a legal case against Trump and his aides. But it is also grappling with the threat posed by a violent movementa threat that weakens if enough of Trumps supporters quietly back away from him. Trump does not need to go to prison to be disgraced. If the former president ends up a rich, lonely man who can no longer fill a stadium, begging a dwindling number of radical adherents for attention while his children grift off his name, then America will have won.

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The January 6 Committee Is Giving Trumpers an Off-Ramp - The Atlantic

The searing testimony and growing evidence about Donald Trumps central role in a multi-pronged conspiracy to overturn Joe Bidens election in 2020 presented at the House January 6 committees first three hearings, has increased the odds that Trump will face criminal charges, say former DoJ prosecutors and officials.

The panels initial hearings provided a kind of legal roadmap about Trumps multi-faceted drives in tandem with some top lawyers and loyalists to thwart Biden from taking office, that should benefit justice department prosecutors in their sprawling investigations into the January 6 assault on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.

Ex-justice department lawyers say new revelations at the hearings increase the likelihood that Trump will be charged with crimes involving conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding or defrauding the United States, as he took desperate and seemingly illegal steps to undermine Bidens election.

Trump could also potentially face fraud charges over his role in an apparently extraordinary fundraising scam described by House panel members as the big rip-off that netted some $250m for an election defense fund that did not exist but funneled huge sums to Trumps Save America political action committee and Trump properties.

The panel hopes to hold six hearings on different parts of what its vice-chair, Liz Cheney, called Trumps sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the election.

Trump was told repeatedly, for instance, by top aides and cabinet officials including ex-attorney general Bill Barr that the election was not stolen, and that his fraud claims were completely bullshit and crazy stuff as Barr put it in a video of his scathing deposition. But Trump persisted in pushing baseless fraud claims with the backing of key allies including his ex-personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and lawyer John Eastman.

The January 6 committees investigation has developed substantial, compelling evidence that Trump committed crimes, including but not limited to conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct official proceedings, Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the DoJ told the Guardian.

Donald Ayer, a former deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration, told the Guardian that the committee hearings have bolstered the need to seriously consider filing criminal charges against Trump.

The crux of any prosecution of Trump would hinge heavily on convincing a jury that Trump knew he lost the election and acted with criminal intent to overturn the valid election results. The hearings have focused heavily on testimony that Trump fully knew he had lost and went full steam ahead to concoct schemes to stay in power.

New revelations damaging to Trump emerged on Thursday when Greg Jacob, the ex-counsel to former vice-president Mike Pence, recounted in detail how Eastman and Trump waged a high-pressure drive, publicly and privately, even as the Capitol was under attack, to prod Pence to unlawfully block Bidens certification by Congress on January 6.

The Eastman pressure included a scheme to substitute pro-Trump fake electors from states that Biden won for electors rightfully pledged to Biden a scheme the DoJ has been investigating for months and that now involves a grand jury focused on Eastman, Giuliani and several other lawyers and operatives.

Eastman at one point acknowledged to Jacob that he knew his push to get Pence on January 6 to reject Bidens winning electoral college count would violate the Electoral Count Act, and that Trump, too, was told it would be illegal for Pence to block Bidens certification.

Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the DoJs fraud section, said: It is a target-rich environment, with many accessories both before and after the fact to be investigated.

But experts caution any decision to charge Trump will be up to the current attorney general, Merrick Garland, who has been careful not to discuss details of his departments January 6 investigations, which so far have led to charges against more than 800 individuals, including some Proud Boys and Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy.

After the first two hearings, Garland told reporters, Im watching and I will be watching all the hearings, adding that DoJ prosecutors are doing likewise.

Garland remarked in reference to possibly investigating Trump: Were just going to follow the facts wherever they lead to hold all perpetrators who are criminally responsible for January 6 accountable, regardless of their level, their position, and regardless of whether they were present at the events on January 6.

But Garland has not yet tipped his hand if Trump himself is under investigation. Despite that reticence, justice department veterans say the wealth of testimony from one-time Trump insiders and new revelations at the House hearings should spur the department to investigate and charge Trump.

Barbara McQuade, a former US attorney for eastern Michigan, said the panels early evidence was strong, including video testimony of Trump insiders who told Trump that he was going to lose badly, and that with regard to claims of election fraud, there was no there there, as Trumps ex-chief of staff Mark Meadows acknowledged in one exchange made public at the hearings.

McQuade added that Barrs testimony was devastating for Trump. He and other Trump insiders who testified about their conversations with Trump established that Trump knew he had lost the election and continued to make public claims of fraud anyway. That knowledge can help establish the fraudulent intent necessary to prove criminal offenses against Trump.

In a novel legal twist that could emerge if Trump is charged, Bromwich said: Bizarrely, Trumps best defense to the mountain of evidence that proves these crimes seems to be that he was incapable of forming the criminal intent necessary to convict. That he was detached from reality, in Barrs words. But there is strong evidence that he is not crazy but instead is crazy like a fox.

How else to explain his attempts to pressure the Georgia secretary of state to find the votes necessary to change the result? Or his telling DoJ officials to simply declare the election corrupt and leave the rest to me and Republican House allies?

Bromwich added: All of this shows not someone incapable of forming criminal intent, but someone who understood what the facts were and was determined not to accept them. Because he couldnt stand to lose. That was far more important to him than honoring our institutions or the constitution.

Former federal prosecutor Michael Zeldin said Trump could face charges over what Cheney called the big rip-off, which centers on the allegation that Trump raised money from small-dollar donors after the election under false pretenses.

Zeldin said: Specifically, he asked for money to fight election fraud when, in fact, the money was used for other purposes. This type of conduct could violate the wire fraud statute.

Ayer cited the importance of a justice department regulation identifying factors to consider in deciding whether to charge, and noted three of particular relevance to Trump the nature and severity of the offence, the important deterrent effect of prosecutions, and the culpability of the individual being charged.

But it might not be all plain sailing.

Simmering tensions between the panel and the justice department have escalated over DoJ requests rebuffed so far to obtain 1,000 witness transcripts of committee interviews, which prosecutors say are needed for upcoming trials of Proud Boys and other cases. However, the New York Times has reported some witness transcripts could be shared next month.

Nonetheless, as Garland weighs whether to move forward with investigating and charging Trump, experts caution a prosecution of Trump would require enormous resources, given the unprecedented nature of such a high-stakes case, and the risks that a jury could end up acquitting Trump which might only enhance his appeal to the Republican base. Yet at the same time ,the stakes for the country of not aggressively investigating Trump are also extremely high.

No one should underestimate the gravity of deciding to criminally charge an ex-president, said former federal prosecutor Dennis Aftergut.

For Aftergut, though, charging Trump seems imperative.

Ultimately, the avalanche of documents and sworn testimony proving a multi-faceted criminal conspiracy to overturn the will of the people means one thing: if no one is above the law, even an ex-president who led that conspiracy must be indicted.

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Searing testimony increases odds of charges against Trump, experts say - The Guardian US

One of two Republicans on the House's Jan. 6 committee said Sunday he believes former President Donald Trump's actions as described during this month's public hearings "rise to a level of criminal involvement" in the events around the U.S. Capitol attack.

When asked by anchor George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week" if he thinks Trump should be prosecuted, Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger said: "I certainly think the president is guilty of knowing what he did -- seditious conspiracy, being involved in these kind of different segments and pressuring the DOJ, Vice President [Mike Pence], etc.," Kinzinger said.

He continued: "Obviously, you know, we're not a criminal charges committee. So I want to be careful specifically using that language. But I think what we're presenting before the American people certainly would rise to a level of criminal involvement by a president and definitely failure of the oath."

A new ABC News/Ipsos poll released on Sunday showed that 58% of Americans think Trump "bears a good or great amount of responsibility for the events of Jan. 6 and that he should be charged with a crime." (Trump has repeatedly dismissed the House's Jan. 6 investigation as politically motivated and one-sided.)

The House select committee was set up to probe what took place surrounding the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, following Trump's 2020 presidential election loss and his months-long campaign to overturn that defeat.

In a series of ongoing hearings, the House committee has detailed some of the evidence gathered in its 11-month investigation, including testimony from Trump's inner circle showing, investigators say, that Trump knew his push to contest the 2020 results and have Pence reject Joe Biden's victory was baseless -- and illegal.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger leaves during a break in a hearing on the January 6th investigation in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, June 13, 2022.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images, FILE

"It is essential at this moment that we get a grip on this and figure out how to defend our democracy," Kinzinger, a vocal member of the GOP's anti-Trump minority, said on "This Week."

"I think this blows, actually, Watergate out of the water," Kinzinger said of the current moment, blaming the "lack of leadership" for the partisan division. The congressman, who is not running for another term, said his party had "utterly failed the American people at truth. ... Makes me sad, but it's a fact."

"If you're not willing to tell people the truth in America, you shouldn't run for Congress," he said.

Stephanopoulos also asked Kinzinger about upcoming elections, noting that the next presidential contest could have "a similar controversy."

"We're seeing allies of President Trump being elected to run elections in state after state. I've already pointed out the divide between Republicans and Democrats over what happened on Jan. 6. How worried are you about 2024?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"Very worried," Kinzinger replied.

"This is the untold thing," he continued. "We focus so much on what goes on in D.C. and Congress and the Senate, but when you have these election judges that are going to people that don't believe basically in democracy authoritarians 2024 is going to be a mess."

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Adam Kinzinger thinks Donald Trump 'is guilty of knowing what he did' in Jan. 6 insurrection - ABC News