The Senate Still Seems Safe For A Decisive GOP Win
Is Trump electable now? Between how effectively he has been destroying Meatball Ron’s viability and the way he is being perceived as a victim by Republicans, Trump pretty much has the nomination locked up now. What after that? A landslide for Biden?
Last night Fox was calling for protests, inciting violence by calling the indictment an act of political repression and predicting “unrest.” Kremlin agent Tucker Carlson: “It almost feels they’re pushing the population to react. ‘We think they’re demoralized and passive, let’s see if they really are.’ At what point do we conclude they’re doing this in order to produce a reaction?”
Carlson’s guest, former ESPN personality Jason Whitlock, struck a similar tone: “They are agitating for unrest. That is the only way to interpret this,” he said, before seeming to call for some kind of response: “I’m ready for whatever’s next. And I hope every other man out there watching this show, I hope you’re ready for whatever’s next. If that’s what they want, let’s get to it.”
Carlson’s 8 p.m. show offered some of the most fiery talk on a heated night of conservative reaction to a New York grand jury’s decision to indict Trump after hearing evidence about hush money paid to an adult-film star during his 2016 race for president. Former Fox host Glenn Beck visited the show to predict the country would be “at war” by 2025; the indictment’s intent, he warned was “to inflame this country” so that an unnamed entity “could close the cage” on those who react.
While Fox’s early-evening news show delivered a fairly straight discussion of the “historic” nature of the indictment, the opinion hosts who dominate the cable network’s prime-time schedule uniformly presented it as a political plot against the former president.
“It’s an effort to take him out of the political race. That’s not allowed,” said Carlson, describing the charges as “much greater” than the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. “If you believe in our system and you want it to continue, you have to raise your hand and say ‘Stop,’ because this is too great on assault on our system.”
“This day will go down as a dark day for America,” Fox News host Jesse Watters told viewers. “This is a calculated move. Do you think Donald Trump would be indicted if he wasn’t running?”
Jeanine Pirro, co-host of “The Five,” described Thursday as “a sad day for America, a sad day for the office of the presidency of the United States, and it is a sad day for a former president. … This is hate like I have never seen in my lifetime. This is as political as it gets.”
The strongly pro-Trump Fox host Dan Bongino said the indictment proves the United States is now a “police state” but predicted it would end up handing Trump the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“This ushers in what will probably be a very dark era of political persecution and prosecution, the type we normally associated with the Soviet Union or banana republics,” said Mollie Hemingway, editor in chief of the Federalist, during a panel spot on Fox’s evening newscast.
She and the Daily Caller’s Vince Coglianese both described the indictment as a form of election fraud, with Coglianese calling it “an exercise in election meddling— again.”
Hemingway also called for Trump’s supporters to rise up and voice their opposition. “People who care about the country need to stand up and make sure they let it be known that they don’t support this type of political prosecution,” she said.
Watters, meanwhile, maintained that the criminal charges wouldn’t “stick.”
“The president’s not going to go to prison for this. Everybody knows that. So what’s the point?”
But he encouraged his guest, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), to pursue action in Congress— “some sort of resistance, some sort of action, because there has to be a line that they can’t cross.”
While 9 p.m. host Sean Hannity called the indictment “repulsive” and “disgusting,” he ended his show by urging his audience to refrain from violence.
“I want to say to every conservative, and every Republican, and every Donald Trump supporter,” Hannity said. “Do not take their bait. We are peaceful, we are law-abiding, we are God-fearing. You are the people that really make this country great.”
And speaking of the insurrectionist senator from Missouri, if you want to help replace him with someone loyal to the U.S., please consider a contribution to Lucas Kunce’s campaign here.
After the indictment, Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey reported that Trump and his advisers were caught off guard yesterday when the indictment finally came down. “Some Trump aides— including adviser Boris Epshteyn, who is taking a leading role on Trump’s legal team— had even begun telling the former president that he would not be indicted at all, people familiar with the comments said. In a sign of the chaotic scramble, Trump misspelled ‘indicted’ in a post on his social media network Truth Social, writing that ‘Thugs and Radical Left Monsters’ had just ‘INDICATED’ him.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said in an interview that he spoke with Trump on Thursday evening for a few minutes and that the former president was “upset and disappointed” but also “very calm.”
“They are using the law as a weapon against me,” Trump griped to Graham.
Graham said he counseled calm and that Trump seemed to agree. “He thinks most people will see it as a weaponization of the law,” Graham said. “From a political point of view, it’s going to solidify Trump’s standing with the Republican Party.”
Indeed, Trump almost immediately escalated his fundraising pitches Thursday night, asking his supporters in an email titled, “BREAKING: PRESIDENT TRUMP INDICTED,” to give at least $24 to “defend our movement from the never-ending witch hunts.”
“We are living through the darkest chapter of American history,” read the email, which claimed all contributions would be matched up to 1,500 percent, but failed to say who would match the donations.
One adviser said that while Trump would prefer not to be indicted, the former president planned to “milk it for all it’s worth politically,” using the criminal charges to rally Republicans around him and his 2024 campaign, portray himself as a victim and fundraise.
Trump allies have said his fundraising haul has increased significantly since he posted on Truth Social that he expected to be arrested, taking in more than $2 million. And the biggest fundraising day of his post-presidency so far was the day after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago last year for classified documents.
The problem for the Republican Party is pretty ghastly. They’re stuck with Trump and that’s going to destroy them down-ballot in 2024. The chances of the Democrats winning back the House have been good all along. Yesterday, those chances were quadrupled. As we saw earlier, there are 2 dozen incumbents— not even counting George Santos— who are more likely to be defeated now than they were a week ago. The problem for the Democrats, though, is the Senate. The electoral map for them for 2024 is— to put it it mildly— grim. Of the 33 seats up for election, Democrats will be defending 23. Worse yet, many of those seats are on very shaky ground— Ohio, Montana and West Virginia are red and have gotten redder since the incumbents, respectively Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester and the odious Joe Manchin, last ran. On top of that, Wisconsin (Tammy Baldwin), Virginia (Tim Kaine), Pennsylvania (Bob Casey), Arizona (independent Kyrsten Sinema), Nevada (Jacky Rosen) and Michigan (open, with the likelihood of the Democrats nominating an uninspiring conservative piece of shit) are swing states.
Meanwhile, conventional wisdom is adamant that the Republican seats are all safe. By the numbers, Florida (Rick Scott) and Texas (Ted Cruz) are the only ones that look even “possible,” but the Florida Democratic Party is all but extinct and the state has no viable bench, so that’s one the GOP doesn’t have to worry about. Will Texas finally flip? Nope, not this cycle without a viable candidate, despite how disliked Ted Cruz is. That leaves one long shot chance for the Democrats to gain a seat: Missouri— where the GOP has a putrid incumbent and the Democrats have their best nominee nationwide, Lucas Kunce. Completely safe Republicans:
John Barrasso (WY)- R+25
Kevin Cramer (ND)- R+20
Marsha Blackburn (TN)- R+14
Mitt Romney, if he runs (UT)- R+13
Pete Ricketts special election (NE)- R+13
Deb Fischer (NE)- R+13
On top of that, Mike Braun is retiring to run for governor of Indiana and Neo-fascist congressman Jim Banks is running for his seat- R+11
Roger Wicker (MS)- R+10
Democrats could even have a problem with New Jersey, where Bob Menendez, their incumbent, is as much a criminal as Trump. And, the 3-way race in Arizona could go in any direction.
A betting man would have to say the Republicans are surely taking back the Senate because even Trump’s indictments aren’t going to help the Democrats hold West Virginia and Montana. If I was the DSCC, I’d be pouring money into Missouri— but I’m not— and they’re not. (Again, you can help Kunce here)
