Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.
Jennifer Rubin/Washington Post:
A rotten week for MAGA Republicans’ feeble stunts
In dismissing the articles of impeachment with a party-line vote, Senate Democrats ignored crocodile tears from the likes of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — who voted against the most meritorious impeachment in history following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot — that dismissing an impeachment before trial would create a bad precedent (unlike letting an insurrectionist off the hook?). Schumer deserves credit for nipping in the bud the GOP-controlled House’s abuse of power.
When Republicans blatantly lie, disregard their oaths and — to borrow a phrase — weaponize government, Democrats have an obligation to call them out. That entails refusing to take Republican antics seriously. When hearings and investigations obviously lack good faith, the Democrats can uphold the stature of Congress by simply walking away and refusing to play these games.
David Frum/The Atlantic:
Trump Deflates
It wasn’t just Putin who lost in the House vote on Ukraine aid.
Ukraine won. Trump lost.
The House vote to aid Ukraine renews hope that Ukraine can still win its war. It also showed how and why Donald Trump should lose the 2024 election.
For nine years, Trump has dominated the Republican Party. Senators might have loathed him, governors might have despised him, donors might have ridiculed him, college-educated Republican voters might have turned against him—but LOL, nothing mattered. Enough of the Republican base supported him. Everybody else either fell in line, retired from politics, or quit the party…
At the beginning of this year, Trump was able even to blow up the toughest immigration bill seen in decades—simply to deny President Joe Biden a bipartisan win. Individual Senate Republicans might grumble, but with Trump opposed, the border-security deal disintegrated.
Three months later, Trump’s party in Congress has rebelled against him—and not on a personal payoff to some oddball Trump loyalist, but on one of Trump’s most cherished issues, his siding with Russia against Ukraine.
That’s not just a throwaway line. Indies and moderate voters dislike Putin and support Ukraine. Republicans including Trump risk a lot in this election by bucking what normal Americans want.
How large parts of Trump’s trial are playing out in the shadows
Critical aspects of the case have been shielded from the media and the public.
Behind the scenes, a maze of arcane rules and archaic systems has made it virtually impossible for the media — and the public — to access key motions and pretrial rulings in real time. New York’s docketing practices have not been updated for the digital age. The judge, Justice Juan Merchan, has imposed policies that force days or even weeks of delays before crucial documents become public. When they do, they have been subject to a heavy, court-imposed redaction process.
And Merchan frequently uses email to communicate with Trump’s defense lawyers and the prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office. That’s led to a ballooning set of off-the-book messages that are shielded from the public.
The result is that one of the most consequential chapters of American history is being drafted with missing pages and invisible ink.
I suspect the public is less bothered by this than reporters (who are not wrong). The trial starts today, and that’s more important than anything else.
‘We Just Finally Saw the Dam Break’: How House Republicans Embraced the Chaos
Veteran Rep. Tom Cole is fed up with his party’s insurgents.
In press shorthand, Cole is usually described as an institutionalist, and since the tea party era, he’s also been known for butting heads with his more rambunctious, often newer colleagues on the far right.
Today’s antagonism toward House leadership stems from “a lack of respect for the institution and the wisdom of the institution,” he said. Speaking of the bomb-throwers, he added, “You know, you’ve got to grow up.”
Cole is also a member of the Chickasaw Nation, a trained historian and as a cigar aficionado, literally a devotee of Washington’s smoke-filled back rooms.
On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, we got deep into the weeds of why the Rules Committee has been such a trouble spot for recent GOP speakers and whether Cole thinks Johnson can hang on as members threaten to oust him. I also had Cole answer some prying questions from some of his favorite historians on the subject of Donald Trump.
The New York Times does its New York Times thing of mitigating any negative to Trump stories that they can:
Will a Mountain of Evidence Be Enough to Convict Trump?
Monday will see opening statements in the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump. The state’s case seems strong, but a conviction is far from assured.
Though the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has assembled a mountain of evidence, a conviction is hardly assured. Over the next six weeks, Mr. Trump’s lawyers will seize on three apparent weak points: a key witness’s credibility, a president’s culpability and the case’s legal complexity.
Prosecutors will seek to maneuver around those vulnerabilities, dazzling the jury with a tale that mixes politics and sex, as they confront a shrewd defendant with a decades-long track record of skirting legal consequences. They will also seek to bolster the credibility of that key witness, Michael D. Cohen, a former fixer to Mr. Trump who previously pleaded guilty to federal crimes for paying the porn star, Stormy Daniels.
It’s showtime, baby. Watch the sparkly stone, avoid the tough questions about trying to throw an election.
But the news in this story is the DA will open with David Pecker. And pecker is the key witness, not Michael Cohen.
Contrast and compare the typical Washington Post/New York Times political coverage with this from Dan Froomkin/Press Watch:
An interview with a newsroom leader who speaks the truth about Donald Trump
A few weeks ago, the editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Chris Quinn, became an instant hero to the legion of news consumers who are fed up with the media’s refusal to call Donald Trump what he is.
In his weekly “letter from the editor,” under the headline “Our Trump reporting upsets some readers, but there aren’t two sides to facts,” Quinn wrote:
The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.
The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.
He continued, bluntly:
As for those who equate Trump and Joe Biden, that’s false equivalency. Biden has done nothing remotely close to the egregious, anti-American acts of Trump.
It was a brilliant clarion call against dishonest both-sidesing in political journalism, and it went viral. The response, as he wrote a week later, was overwhelming – and overwhelmingly positive.
Trump’s New York trial is knocking him off balance
While the former president was stuck in court, his opponent hit the trail.
For the first time in months, despite his many legal entanglements in New York and elsewhere, it was Trump, not his opponent, President Joe Biden, who seemed to have been thrown off balance, constrained by a judge’s schedule and gag orders as he whipsawed between the courtroom and the functions of his campaign.
And even Trump seemed to acknowledge the liability that the trial was becoming for him — and likely will be for weeks more as the general election campaign picks up and, simultaneously, his court proceedings drag on.
Hicks and Pecker. Sounds like a new restaurant. It's actually a likely early witness list for Trump's trials.
Cliff Schecter covers what the political pundits gloss over:
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