Jack Holmes/Esquire:
Donald Trump Is Not a Legitimate Candidate for President
He may have legal standing to run, but anyone who attempts to stay in power after American voters tell them to leave should be barred from holding any office of the public trust.
CNN will hold a town hall event with Donald J. Trump on Wednesday evening. On the face of it, hosting a presidential candidate to answer questions from voters is an unremarkable cable-network exercise, though in this case it's the day after the candidate in question was found liable by a civil jury for sexual abuse. Even before that verdict, critics were pounding CNN on the basis that in a live format, it will be highly difficult to get viewers the truth alongside whatever Trump is serving up. Moderator Kaitlan Collins has a massive task wading through the river of drivel, but the root question we ought to be asking here is why we, the press and public, have decided to treat Donald Trump as a legitimate presidential candidate.
This is even more true after the disastrous town hall.
David Rothkopf/Twitter:
Hard to say what was the worst part of the CNN debacle: Trump repeating the Big Lie, promising to pardon Jan 6 insurgents, further victimizing E. Jean Carroll, not promising to honor the 2024 election result, not calling Vladimir Putin a war criminal......or condemning his invasion of Ukraine, implying that there was equivalency between Russia and Ukraine, attacking our allies yet again, promising to double down on many of his worst policies, taking credit for the abomination that was the Dobbs decision......the lies upon lies upon lies, the clear message he sent that if elected again would could face even worse than his disastrous, scandal-ridden, failed first term, his insults to Kaitlan Collins for doing her job, the way the audience was constituted......the fact that giving him this platform normalized him, allowed him to spread his disinformation & will help him raise $? Each of those was terrible, each chilling in light of the past 7 years.But no, worst of all was CNN's decision to air this in the first place. Disastrous.
And the write up of what he really thinks:
Sexual abuse verdict renews Republican doubts about Trump’s electability
On Capitol Hill and in the presidential race, the former president faced criticism from some in his party
In contrast to the almost uniform support for Trump in response to his indictment in a hush-money scheme, which was unsealed last month (Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts), several of Trump’s current and prospective GOP rivals were quiet on the verdict on Tuesday. Among those who did respond, the reaction was mixed.
Adam Klasfeld/Law and Crime:
Inside Trump’s Truth Social rage bender: How the former president is spinning E. Jean Carroll’s sex-abuse verdict
Using the same platform that sparked his defamation liabilities, Trump raged in the immediate wake of the civil judgment. He raged throughout the evening. He raged three times after midnight. Then, presumably after getting some sleep, Trump woke up in the morning and raged again.
Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark:
E. Jean Carroll Won, But the Country May Still Lose
The more trouble Trump gets in, the more his fans admire him.Patience, all of you in despair at the crawling pace of federal and state investigations into the Former and Possibly Future Guy. Justice delayed isn’t always justice denied, even when you’re up against Donald J. Trump.
This is the lesson of E. Jean Carroll’s legal triumph this week, both for her and for the other women who have accused Trump of sexual assault and misconduct (and there have been many, whether the count is 19, 26, or at least 43). It’s also a victory for all women who have been sexually assaulted by anyone, for all those who never spoke up or filed suit or who did and lost, and for anyone, male or female, who wondered if #MeToo accountability would ever come for this particular celebrity who never had to pay for his assertion that “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
Carroll won her civil case against Trump. The jury found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation, and awarded her $5 million.
What Jill is writing was shown true in the CNN debacle. And part of the reason for the debacle was the audience:
David French/New York Times:
A Guilty Ex-President
I spent decades litigating cases, including a number of sexual harassment cases, and as I watched the evidence accumulate, I reached a tipping point — I would have been surprised by any verdict other than the one we received Tuesday. Juries can always surprise you, of course, but what made the verdict truly notable wasn’t the outcome. It was the identity of the defendant. In an important moment for the rule of law, a jury heard evidence against a former president and reached exactly the conclusion that it likely would have reached for anyone else.
Igor Bobic/Twitter collects reaction to the E Jean Carroll verdict:
Steve Daines, who just endorsed Trump, reacts to NY verdict: “Sounds like President Trump’s legal team will be appealing this decision.”“The jury is a joke. The whole case is a joke;” Rubio says of Trump being found liable for sexual battery in NYRubio dismissed Trump being found liable of defamation: “If someone accuses me of raping them and I didn’t do it, and you’re innocent, of course you’re going to say something about it…it was a joke.”Romney: “The jury reached their decision and I hope the jury of the American people reach the same conclusion: we need a different nominee to be the nominee for president. He is no position to be the president of the United States.”GOP Sen. Tuberville says the NY verdict against Trump "makes me want to vote for him twice." "They're going to do anything they can to keep him from winning. It ain't gonna work...people are gonna see through the lines, a New York jury, he had no chance."
Finally a very long read from Will Saletan/The Bulwark whosh spends several chapters of documentation using lindsey graham as a case study of what’s wrong with the Republican Party:
Greg Dworkin May 12, 2023 at 01:18PM From Daily KosEpilogue: Lessons
I set out to research the story of Graham’s relationship with Trump because I wanted to understand how authoritarianism arose in the United States. I wanted to see how the poison worked: the corruption, the rationalizations, the vulnerabilities in the system. I wanted to learn how democracies could detect such threats and counteract them.
Here are some of the [twenty] lessons I learned.
Emerging authoritarianism doesn’t look like an ideology. It appears in the form of a demagogue. It’s easy to support him while laughing off the idea that you’re embracing authoritarianism.
Celebration of fear is a warning sign. When a demagogue brags about intimidating his enemies, and when voters and politicians flock to him for that reason, look out. Maybe he knows who the real villains are. Or maybe he’s the sort of person who attacks anyone in his way.
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