Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, the first edition since the United States became a banana republic. So long as newsletter gags are still legal, everything should be all right.
Let’s start by taking a look at the initial fallout from the Trump trial verdict, then get to the fun stuff about Mrs. Alito’s extensive flag collection. The Biden team has handed the keys over to Robert De Niro, who, being one year younger than Joe Biden, solves the campaign’s age problem. Joe Manchin is no longer a Democrat, but Democrats aren’t complaining.
But, OK, fine, Trump …
By Jim Newell
1. Donald Trump
Here’s exactly how this will play out politically: well, some way or another.
Donald Trump was found guilty on 34 felony charges of doing fishy things with money. Want more specifics? Read the legal reporters’ stuff. The Surge’s job is to skip ahead to the big question of: What effect will this conviction and subsequent sentencing have on the election? Democrats would like to think that Trump’s having been found guilty of dozens of felonious counts is politically damaging to Trump. Republicans, meanwhile, are united in hostility to the New York case and New York itself, with everyone from Susan Collins to Matt Gaetz taking their shots. Who’s right? Not only do we have no clue at this time, but you don’t either! This is an unprecedented, unknowable political moment. It could be that the verdict has no meaningful effect on the state of the race, as a Manhattan jury finding Trump guilty of sending secret sex money through one of the little tube things at the bank drive-thru to the sex “fixer” (this is what happened, right?) may well have been baked into voters’ impressions already. Were you surprised to hear the verdict? Did it make you see the election in a new light? Or did yesterday still feel like Friday, and will tomorrow still feel like Sunday?
2. Martha-Ann Alito
Bless this stupid story.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is still in the thick of it over the flying of suspect flags at his domiciles. First there was the upside-down American flag flown outside his Alexandria home shortly after Jan. 6, then there was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag—a flag that over the years has gone from something the San Francisco city government enjoyed flying to one co-opted by contemporary Christian nationalists—spotted flying above his New Jersey beach house. The two incidents prompted Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee to request a meeting with Chief Justice John Roberts to ensure that Alito recuse himself from pending cases related to Jan. 6. Alito himself responded to the senators this week in a simply fantastic letter, arguing that if you’re seeing any flags out there on Alito property, that’s all Martha-Ann. “My wife is fond of flying flags,” he wrote. “I am not.” She put up the flagpoles, and she put them to work. “In addition to the American flag,” he continued, “she has flown other patriotic flags (including a favorite flag thanking veterans), college flags, flags supporting sports teams, state and local flags, flags of nations from which the ancestors of family members came, flags of places we have visited, seasonal flags, and religious flags.” Alito revealed that he had asked Martha-Ann to take down the upside-down American flag—but if you know Martha-Ann, you know how that went. “As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but for several days, she refused,” he wrote. “My wife and I own our Virginia home jointly. She therefore has the legal right to use the property as she sees fit, and there were no additional steps that I could have taken to have the flag taken down more promptly.” This is the Fellas … you know what I’m talking about defense, although it is not footnoted as such.
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3. Robert De Niro
Step aside, youse hacks! This is Bobby De Niro’s campaign now.
We can’t tell what the Biden campaign made of the Trump trial. In the abstract, you’d think that it would be politically useful to have the media focused on the infidelity-related criminal trial of your opponent. And yet the campaign seemed frustrated that Trump, and his numerous daily surrogates, had the microphone all to himself for weeks at a time. In an effort to reverse that, the Biden campaign surrendered itself to actor Robert De Niro, who promptly got them some attention. The Biden campaign now is little more than Ace Rothstein’s Tangiers casino. De Niro is doing the ads. He’s doing the email fundraising blasts. And this week he was doing a Biden campaign press conference outside the Trump trial in Manhattan, casting aspersions on Trump—a strategy shift from the campaign, which had kept the proceedings at arm’s length. Now … is there a reason why the strategy of letting Robert De Niro run point on messaging hasn’t been deployed by previous Democratic presidential campaigns? Yes, there’s a lot of them. But one of them is that De Niro’s a touch prickly and is likely to get into profanity-laced screaming matches with pro-Trump protesters. Hey, at least the Biden campaign is experimenting.
4. Joe Manchin
How leaving the Democratic Party could help the Democratic Party.
The West Virginia senator left the Democratic Party on Friday and registered as an independent. “To stay true to myself and remain committed to put country before party,” he said in a statement, “I have decided to register as an independentwith no party affiliation and continue to fight for America’s sensible majority.” Now, going to the clerk’s office at the state Capitol on May 31 was not something he did as a lark. He needed to do that 60 days prior to West Virginia’s Aug. 1 filing deadline for an independent campaign. Indeed, there’s still a chance he could reverse course on his planned retirement and run again as an independent for either Senate or governor. If he ran for Senate as an independent, he would do so as a long shot—though, from the perspective of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, that could usefully require Republicans to divert resources to the state. He’d be more competitive, meanwhile, in a governor’s race against West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, whom he’s beaten before. Without Manchin in either race, the Senate and governor’s race would be assumed losses for Democrats. With him in either, there’s some Democratic upside.
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5. Bob Good
He did not catch Trump in a forgiving mood.
Somewhere during Trump’s busy week, he found a moment to endorse John McGuire, the GOP primary challenger to Virginia Rep. Bob Good, the extremely conservative chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. This came in spite of Good’s recent suck-up efforts, including a field trip to the Manhattan courthouse where Trump was being tried. This is all because Good was one of the few House Republicans to endorse Ron DeSantis in 2023. And it came at a particularly painful time for Trump: shortly after his indictment in the New York hush money case. Things got worse for Good later in the year, when a private conversation with a voter was secretly recorded and published, with Good questioning Trump’s electability and baggage and calling out the former president for blaming “pro-lifers” for the GOP’s midterm losses last November. “Bob Good is BAD FOR VIRGINIA, AND BAD FOR THE USA,” Trump wrote on social media on Tuesday. “He turned his back on our incredible movement, and was constantly attacking and fighting me until recently, when he gave a warm and ‘loving’ Endorsem*nt - But really, it was too late. The damage had been done!” And that’s pretty much that! As a side note, Good was also one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy, so his defeat would be a twofer in terms of settling scores. Don’t think McCarthy isn’t aware of that.
6. Larry Hogan
When you’re a Republican and can’t even get in on the fun.
On the surface, most Republicans were livid following Trump’s verdict. And yet, what a satisfying release they had. They all got to scream and fantasize about revolution or prosecuting Democrats. They were united in fury, raising scads of cash—and, really, it doesn’t get better than that. Which is why it must have made it all the more painful that while others partied the night away, Maryland Republican Senate candidate Larry Hogan was stuck playing designated driver. The former governor needs to keep Trump at arm’s length in his campaign to win a Senate seat in solidly blue Maryland, and that means releasing a limp statement about how everyone should be nice to each other. “Regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process,” Hogan said. “At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders—regardless of party—must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship. We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.” This prompted the Trump campaign’s Chris LaCivita to respond to Hogan: “You just ended your campaign.” There are, of course, worse things for a Republican in Maryland to have than the Trump campaign taking a swipe at you.
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7. Todd Blanche
(It was Trump’s fault.)
Trump’s defense lawyer was under scrutiny from across the spectrum following the verdict. That makes sense, because his defense of Donald Trump did not work. The scoreboard shows that he went 0-for-34, and the scoreboard does not lie. For whatever reason, Todd Blanche followed up this defeat by going on every television show in the country for the next 24 hours. In a Fox News interview, when host Jesse Watters asked him how involved Trump was in his defense strategy, Blanche said, “What do you think? I mean, very involved. He’s a smart guy—he knows what he’s doing. He jokingly said to us, a lot, he wanted to be the litigator, he wanted to be the one who’s actually arguing because he’s a smart guy and he knows what he’s doing. We made every decision together.” This is actually one of the smoother things Blanche did through the trial, simultaneously flattering Trump’s ego while putting it out there that Trump owns just as much of the criticism about defense strategy as Blanche does. Not that what Blanche is saying is particularly surprising. It was not difficult to guess that Trump going on social media and speaking to reporters before and after every court session to talk sh*t about the judge was not the attorney’s decision.
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