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Item one: Fani Willis is a distraction. Trump’s defenses are falling apart.

The big headlines Friday morning concerned Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and the combative testimony she offered Thursday concerning her affair with Nathan Wade. But that wasn’t the big story of the week on the Donald Trump legal front. In fact, it may have been about fifth.

What’s bigger? Let’s start with Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision to deny Trump’s attorneys’ bid to delay pretrial motions in the case she’s hearing, about Trump’s removal of classified documents from the White House. Cannon, you’ll recall, was appointed by Trump. After the documents case landed so unserendipitously in her lap, she made a series of nakedly pro-Trump rulings; the Eleventh Circuit vacated one order of hers that would have helped Trump delay the proceedings. She also blocked federal investigators from examining the material seized by the FBI, a decision eviscerated by legal experts. So maybe she’s gotten the message that she’d better be a real judge, not a sycophant.

Trump also was dealt a blow this week when Juan Merchan, the judge in the Stormy Daniels hush-money trial, dismissed another attempt at delay by Trump’s lawyers. That trial will start, as scheduled, on March 25. 

And—no, it doesn’t stop!—another judge, Arthur Engoron, is supposed to hand down his decision in the penalty phase of the civil suit brought by the New York attorney general against the Trump Organization. Letitia James is seeking $370 million. There are reasons to think that that number may be on the low end of where Engoron will land.

But for my money, the worst part of Trump’s week came in the filing by special counsel Jack Smith to the Supreme Court in response to the Trump team’s request for a stay on that trial, which is the January 6 insurrection case. In a 40-page filing, Smith and his attorneys dismantled Trump’s arguments one by one. Smith had until February 20 to file this response, but he did it eight days early and he means business: "The charged crimes strike at the heart of our democracy. A President’s alleged criminal scheme to overturn an election and thwart the peaceful transfer of power to his successor should be the last place to recognize a novel form of absolute immunity from federal criminal law. Applicant seeks a stay to prevent proceedings in the district court from moving towards trial, which the district court had scheduled to begin on March 4, 2024, before applicant’s interlocutory appeal necessitated postponement of that date. Applicant cannot show, as he must to merit a stay, a fair prospect of success in this Court."

Why is this filing so important? Three reasons. First, Smith urges the court to act quickly. He still wants the trial to start in March. If the court agrees, picture it: Trump on trial in two separate courtrooms, on charges that strike precisely at the heart of the two biggest manifestations of his moral turpitude: in New York, as a private citizen, as a man who treats women like garbage; in Washington, as a public, um, servant who mocks the Constitution and believes that no law applies to him. It will be a perfect stereo spectacle for Americans to spend the spring observing.

Second, while it’s true that we’re dealing with a very politicized Supreme Court here, and it’s obvious that at least two justices (Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas) will rule for Trump on just about anything, Smith’s response makes a very strong set of arguments that should appeal to at least some of the court’s conservative originalists. "The Framers," Smith writes, "did not provide any explicit textual source of immunity to the President." 

And third: The Smith case is the most important of all for the simple reason that inciting the January 6 insurrection is the worst thing Trump has done. Granted, there is stiff competition for his most mortal sin. But egging on a crowd to overthrow the government and hang your own vice president still takes the cake. If Smith succeeds in convincing the Supremes to expedite this case and goes on to win a preelection conviction, that ought to seal Trump’s fate. Some recent polls have shown that swing-state swing voters would be highly disinclined to vote for Trump if he were convicted of a crime. 

We’ve seen the conventional wisdom turning on this question in recent weeks. Last year, the standard media line was to say that all the indictments were helping Trump, which was true if you were talking only about Republican primary voters. But now the attention of the media and of pollsters is turning toward general election voters, and they see matters differently.

Every one of these cases is important because each one points to a grotesque deficiency of character that demonstrates why Trump should never be president again. But the insurrection case is the first among equals. A conviction in this case before November 5 really should be the end of the road for Trump. It all depends on the Supreme Court agreeing with Smith’s motion this week. He made as strong a case as could be made.

Item two: Alexei Navalny and our Putin apologists

It is stunning but not surprising. The news broke Friday morning around 6:30 or so that Alexei Navalny, the leading political foe of Vladimir Putin, died in prison. He was 47.

Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service said merely that he lost consciousness and that was that. "The facility’s medical staff immediately arrived, and an ambulance brigade was called," the penitentiary service’s statement said. "All necessary resuscitation measures were taken, which did not lead to positive results. The ambulance doctors confirmed the death of the convict."

This will be a day, and weekend, of sick excuse-making and rationalizing by America’s Putin apologists, Donald Trump of course chief among them. My thoughts upon hearing the news turned first to Senator Tommy Tuberville, proud winner of The New Republic’s "Dumbest Senator" award for 2023, who spoke these words on Monday in trying to defend Trump’s statements from last weekend about ditching our NATO allies: "You can tell Putin’s on top of his game. One thing he said that, it really rung a bell, is the propaganda media machine over here, they sell anything they possibly can to go after Russia."

The week also brought us Tucker Carlson’s interview with Putin, which was so sycophantic that even Putin himself was bewildered and mildly offended, and Carlson’s visit to a Moscow supermarket where he marveled over how affordable everything was compared to the United States. There is an interesting history behind such grocery gamesmanship, of which Carlson is surely aware. Back in the 1950s, Vice President Richard Nixon showed Nikita Khrushchev a model American kitchen full of conveniences unfamiliar to the average Soviet housewife. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush took a dumbstruck Boris Yeltsin to a Houston supermarket full of well-stocked and colorful shelves with 10 different kinds of laundry detergent, which was supposedly the moment that Yeltsin understood in his kishkes that communism was doomed. Carlson was attempting something specific with his supermarket stunt: Those tables have turned. It is now we Americans, captives of wokery and lumbering bureaucratic democracy (as opposed to Russian’s efficient and streamlined authoritarianism), who are getting the short end of the consumerist stick. 

Anyway, back to Navalny: He was a genuine hero of our time. Keep an eye out for demented dismissals of the importance of his "death" from the right—and for that matter, from those elements of the far left that have been cheering for Putin to demolish Ukraine, which are equally appalling.

Join TNR at these upcoming events:

Item three: A little good news, if Democrats can put it to use

An important poll came out this week showing that 59 percent of voters now call corporate greed a "major factor" in inflation, which represents a 15-point jump over the last two years. For the first time, corporate greed is exactly tied with government spending as the reason for inflation. Democrats and Republicans answered about as you’d expect. What’s worth noting here, as usual, is what the independents thought, and that news is encouraging, as 62 percent of independents called corporate greed a major factor, while that number for government spending was 57 percent (people didn’t have to choose one or the other but could name both or neither).

What does this mean? It means that Democrats should be talking about corporate bad guys, picking specific fights and naming names, as I’ve written until I’m almost sick of writing it. They need to counter the government-spending narrative from the right, and they need to say to voters, "We know who’s making your life hard, and we’re going after them on your behalf."

Some of them get it. Look at this amazing video from Katrina Christiansen, the Democratic candidate for Senate in North Dakota:

Yes, it’s highly unlikely that a Democrat is going to win a Senate race in that state, but that isn’t the point. The point is that she’s fighting and naming names. Democrats, get with it.

Quiz time!

Last week’s quiz: A rilly, rilly, rilly big shew: February 9, 2024, marked the sixtieth anniversary of The Beatles’ first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. 

1. The group played five songs, three to open the show and two to close. What was the first song America heard The Beatles play?

A. "I Saw Her Standing There"

B. "A Hard Day’s Night"

C. "All My Loving"

D. "I Want to Hold Your Hand"

Answer: C, "All My Loving," followed by "Til There Was You" and "She Loves You"; then at the end they played "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand." If you said, "A Hard Day’s Night," I give you the back of my hand, because it wasn’t even released yet.

2. The group landed on February 7, greeted by thousands of fans at the recently renamed JFK airport. Throngs of fans also lined the streets around which famous hotel where they stayed?

A. The Waldorf Astoria

B. The Plaza

C. The Essex House

D. The Sherry-Netherland

Answer: B, The Plaza. Rooms 1209 through 1216, apparently.

3. How many people watched that first appearance, in a country of 190 million?

A. 38 million

B. 51 million

C. 64 million

D. 73 million

Answer: D, 73 million. That represented 45.3 percent of all television sets that were on at the time. That’s a M*A*S*H finale-type number. The difference is that M*A*S*H had been a beloved show for 12 years. The Beatles were unheard of a month before. 

4. A lore of its own has risen up over the years regarding the other, and quite overshadowed, guests on the show. In 2005, This American Life ran a poignant episode on McCall and Brill, who’d waited years for their big break, finally getting it, only to find themselves booked the same week as The Beatles. They flopped horribly. What kind of act was McCall and Brill?

A. A husband-and-wife comedy duo

B. A male, Vaudevillian comedy duo

C. A brother-and-sister gymnastics act

D. A husband-and-wife magic act

Answer: A, husband-and-wife comedy duo. And 41 years later, they were still peeved. They said the lads themselves were quite nice and charming, but they were still plenty angry at the showbiz gods.

5. The show represented the group’s first live performance in the United States, but it was not their first full-fledged concert. That wasn’t even held in New York. In which city did The Beatles play their first U.S. show?

A. Boston

B. Philadelphia

C. Washington, D.C.

D. Miami

Answer: C, Washington. At the Washington Coliseum. Joe Louis boxed there, and Malcolm X spoke there a few times. It spent many years as a garbage transfer station, where you could peek your head in and see massive garbage bins on the floor and still some arena seats. Wish I’d stolen one. Today it’s fancy condos anchored by an REI store and a hipsterish beer garden, and it’s finally capitalizing on its history, with posters of The Beatles and Malcolm and others.

6. As the group made its way around Manhattan, hitting the clubs and posing for photo-ops, a small gaggle of reporters was assigned to follow them wherever they went. One of these, a young New York Post reporter, later became quite famous as a writer and filmmaker. Who was this person?

A. Nora Ephron

B. Michael Crichton 

C. David Mamet

D. Elaine May

Answer: A, Nora Ephron. Met her at a small dinner one night. A couple other people asked about her movies. I asked about this, and she clasped her hands to her breast and got a rapturous look on her face and said something like, "Oh, it was magic!"

This week’s quiz: "I am a lineman for the county…": No, this is not about Glen Campbell. Or Jimmy Webb. It’s about the counties of the United States. Cuz I look at maps a lot.

1. How many counties are there in the United States?

A. 1,783

B. 2,662

C. 3,143

D. 4,380

2. Which state has the highest number of counties, and which state the lowest?

A. Alaska, Hawaii

B. California, Rhode Island

C. Texas, Delaware

D. Minnesota, New Hampshire

3. Match the major American city to the county in which it sits.

4. What is the only county in the U.S. that borders four other states?

A. Ballard County, Kentucky

B. Cimarron County, Oklahoma

C. New Castle County, Delaware

D. New Madrid County, Missouri

5. Of the top 10 richest counties in the U.S., fully half, five, surround one city. What city is this?

A. Washington, D.C.

B. San Francisco

C. Los Angeles

D. Denver

6. Nine states have counties that are wholly or predominantly islands. Which one of the below states does not belong in this category?

A. New York

B. Massachusetts

C. Michigan

D. Virginia

I knew all of these except 4, which is really weird and interesting. Answers next week. Feedback to [email protected].

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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