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Donald Trump Gets Away With It

David Graham: “Trump pulled off this legal trick with a simple and effective strategy of running down the clock until being reelected president. Traditionally, defendants have had two ways to beat a rap. They could convince a judge or jury that they didn’t do the crime, or at least that there isn’t enough evidence to prove they did. Or they could look for a way to get sprung on a technicality.

 

Bonus Quote of the Day

“If you voted for Trump because you thought he was going to bring grocery prices down, I have some very bad news for you.”
— Catherine Rampell, on CNN.

 

Senate Democrats Won’t Put Up Much of a Fight

“Senate Democrats don’t sound like they’re gearing up for a repeat of the ‘hell no’ approach to Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks that they adopted during his first term,” Semafor reports.

 

Trump Will Grant Sweeping Security Clearances

“Donald Trump’s transition team is planning for all cabinet picks to receive sweeping security clearances from the president-elect and only face FBI background checks after the incoming administration takes over the bureau and its own officials are installed in key positions,” The Guardian reports.

 

Will Kamala Harris Run Again?

Jonathan Bernstein: “Of course normal people want nothing to do with the 2028 election, and won’t until a long time from now. Even most primary voters, who are already a fairly small subset of the electorate as a whole, are unlikely to really engage until the weeks just before their state votes in winter or spring of the election year.”

 

Trump Is a Weakling and That’s the Problem

Timothy Noah: “The pithiest summary of Donald Trump’s last presidency was by the comedian John Mulaney. He compared it to a horse being set loose in a hospital.”
Said Mulaney: “No one knows what the horse is gonna do next, least of all the horse. He’s never been in a hospital before!”

 

A Guide for the Politically Homeless

Eliot Cohen: “Those of us who first became politically homeless in 2016 have lately been in a quandary: We need to figure out who we are. If we are not to succumb to the Saruman trap—going along with populist authoritarians in the foolish hope of using them for higher purposes—then we had better establish what we stand for.”

 

The Fight Against Misinformation Got Much Harder

Financial Times: “The incoming Trump administration’s vow to dismantle the leftwing ‘censorship cartel’ has thrown a shadow over the cottage industry of academics, non-profits and researchers that sprang up to combat a tide of digital misinformation — and threatens to disrupt the Big Tech companies behind the world’s most popular platforms.”

 

The Democrats’ Billionaire Mistake

Caitlin Flanagan: “The minute it became clear that Harris had lost, reporters and panelists began offering explanations—explanations so obvious that you had to wonder why they hadn’t seen the loss coming.

 

A More Chaotic Transition Than the Last Time

Tara Palmeri: “The breakneck speed with which Donald Trump filled out his cabinet may have looked deliberate, but I’ve learned that the process was even more freewheeling, complicated, and downright nasty than it was during Trump’s first transition to the presidency. Back then, of course, Trump had few experienced hands around him, beyond his family (Jared and Ivanka) and a handful of operatives (Reince, Bannon, Kellyanne…).

 

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