John Stoehr

First, instead of worrying about the worst thing, which is rooted in what Donald Trump and the Republicans say, let’s say this: Biden had a very bad night on a very bad night to have a bad night. Second, let’s leave it at that.

Here’s my good-faith assessment of Thursday’s debate. The president struggled in the beginning, which is probably the part most people watched, if they watched, but he rallied over time and ended strong. Even so, altogether, it was a bad night, maybe a terrible night, because it seems to have reignited nuisance arguments about his age and whether the Democrats should pick someone else as their nominee.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump lied and lied and lied and lied. He lied so much not even the great Daniel Dale could keep up. It wasn’t just the number. It was the size. Trump accused Biden of favoring abortions all the way up to birth, which would be, you know, murder. And that’s just one galaxy-class example. His lies were a goddamn meteor shower.

That’s the part that was missing from yesterday’s arguments over the debate. If Biden looked like he was struggling, and he was, it was in the context of Trump’s nonstop, malicious lies. Biden seemed genuinely shocked when Trump said he favored killing babies after they’re born. No president has ever talked that way, Biden said, and he was right. Meanwhile, his ignored questions of substance to rehash of hoary conspiracies – Biden “opened the border,” for instance. He refused to admit the J6 insurrection happened or accept the results of the election if they don’t mean his idea of fairness. (Hint: they never will.)

I think the president’s biggest mistake, and I’m not talking about things beyond his control, like “optics,” was trying to pick a lie in order to fact-check it. You could see on his face the question of where to begin countering all the bullshit. Biden was best when he stopped doing CNN’s job and said he’d never heard so much malarky in his life. He was best when he lost patience and called Trump a fool and a child.

Turns out that firehosing lies, which Trump does naturally without thinking about it, has a name: Gish galloping. Professor Heather Cox Richardson cited it Friday. “It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.”

To me, that explains the look on Biden’s face.

You can interpret the look to mean anything, even cognitive decline. But as someone who recognizes in Biden a variety of neurodivergence – he stutters; I have ADHD – I also saw in him what happens when lies are coming at you like a torrent. It’s paralyzing, temporarily. I mean that literally. You don’t know what to do. And while your brain is firing in all directions simultaneously, you look like someone, as my friend Hussein Ibish said, who “couldn’t keep his train of thought together most of the time and had difficulty forming coherent sentences.”

And Trump’s lies weren’t the only thing. So was his habitual incoherence. The longer Trump speaks in public, the less sense he makes. That was evident Thursday. He came out strong in the first 30 minutes, which is probably the part most people watched, if they watched, but he unraveled as the minutes ticked by. There were moments when even the deepest rightwing conspiracy theorist would have scratched head in bewilderment. It’s hard to know where to begin countering bullshit. Where do you begin countering word salad?

Still, Biden didn’t look good. He seemed tired. His voice was hoarse. When he got mad, which was frequent, the emotion was barely above a whisper. (He apparently had a cold and he was taking medicine, but that was revealed during the debate, not beforehand when it should have been revealed.) And everyone knows who Trump is. If his lies were going to be a problem, why wasn’t Biden more prepared?

The worst part wasn’t that Trump “won the debate” or won swing voters to his side (according to Roll Call’s Niels Lesniewski, he almost certainly didn’t), or even that the Times has accelerated its nasty habit of making of fetish of Biden’s age, but rather this: Some liberals and Democrats seem to have lost a measure of faith in their man. And I’m not talking about liberal commentators like Paul Krugman. I’m talking about normal people who watched the debate and asked themselves whether Trump and the Republicans were right about Joe Biden.

I’ll pay attention later to the tedious debate on whether the president should drop out. I’m going to ignore it now, because I want to say something directly to liberals and Democrats who are feeling a crisis of confidence. First, instead of worrying about the worst thing, which is rooted in what Donald Trump and the Republicans say, let’s say this: Biden had a very bad night on a very bad night to have a bad night.

Second, let’s leave it at that.

It’s July. There’s time to recover. The president held a rally the next day in North Carolina. I watched it very closely. The difference could not have been more pronounced. His voice was low and firm. His face was clear and alert. He came out swinging, too, calling out Trump’s lies. The audience, meanwhile, was roaring. Both seemed to know he flubbed the debate. Both seemed to know democracy is on the line.

Could he have another bad night? Yes, but I doubt it. I’m not the first to recall what happened after Barack Obama sleepwalked through his first debate with Mitt Romney in 2012. Like Trump, Romney firehosed him with “lies, non-sequiturs and specious arguments.” Everyone said Obama lost, and lots of liberals, Democrats, donors and allies panicked. But by the time of the second debate, he was a laser canon. It took a major high-stakes screw-up to get him properly focused, and he was.

To be sure, the comparison is imperfect, but you get the idea. If you don’t, well, lots of Democrats do. As I said, they were roaring for Biden in North Carolina, as if their champion needed a boost when everyone, including the Times – over and over and over – seems to think he should quit. If that rally is any indication, normal Democratic partisans are getting more energized, not less. If any of them could afford complacency before, none can now. We won’t know until the end, but perhaps Biden’s very bad night was just the jolt Democrats needed.

The last thing I’ll say is this. You will find all the confidence you need when you consider the choice. Forget about replacing Biden. That’s not going to happen. Democrats don’t want it. Democratic Party leaders know it. It’s going to be Biden and Trump. One candidate is trying to win the White House. The other is trying to take it. You can keep fighting or you can give up now. I hope you will keep fighting.

NOW READ: Why I'm sticking with Joe Biden

The first debate is Thursday, so naturally, the Washington press corps is busy setting expectations for Joe Biden, most of them high enough to match the feeling of suspense that editors and producers want to create to attract that most coveted of all commodities: your attention.

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace offered a representative sampling of what’s been offered so far this week: “He has to come in there and punch [Trump] in the face with his own boasts. Trump boasts about things that are traitorous. Trump boasts about things that are disgusting. Trump boasts about grabbing women between the legs. And if Biden doesn’t go in there and punch him in the face, with his own things that he’s proud of, the [debate] is lost before it starts.”

Yeah, no.

To win, the president doesn’t have to do anything as theatrical as (metaphorically) punching Trump in the face. He doesn’t have to stage low drama for CNN’s cameras. He doesn’t even have to be the hero of the republic. All he has to do is act like a normal incumbent in whom most people most of the time can continue placing their trust. All he has to do is remind a majority of Americans why they canned Trump.

I mean, I understand the need to dispel concerns about his advanced age, but he’s not going to dispel them with one debate performance, even if it were the best performance in the history of ever. Whatever effect it will have, it will be temporary, as it was shortly after his homerun speech at this year’s State of the Union. Concerns about Biden’s age will come roaring back in one form or another once CNN’s lights go out. The rightwing media apparatus will see to that.

No, an ordinary debate performance will be a win, because on Thursday, the president will no longer be seen in isolation by the public, as he has been seen since taking office. His appearance, his record of achievement and his vision for the country will be seen in their proper context, in relation to a felon who’s the embodiment of lawlessness, indecency and betrayal. An ordinary debate performance by a good democratic leader next to that of a criminal spells victory.

By “ordinary debate performance,” I do not mean lukewarm. I think the president should and will go on the offensive. Indeed, he has been doing so for months. (I have been saying to anyone who will listen that Biden is the most combative Democratic nominee in my lifetime.) Nicolle Wallace says he should punch Trump in the face, but his face is practically bloody from all the blows it has received. In January, hardly anyone was paying attention to those attacks. By Thursday, attacking him as a loser and coward – and now, as a felon – should be ordinary.

It’s important to remember how we got to where we are. In mid-May, Biden proposed, and Trump accepted, a series of debates that included one in June. A summer debate hasn’t happened since no one remembers. Debates are a fall thing. However, Biden wanted one this month, not only because it would take place soon after Trump’s felony trial concluded, but also because it would come right before the parties’ conventions, which is around the same time that lots of people who have not been paying attention to politics start paying attention.

The Biden campaign has for months been operating under the belief that its biggest problem, reflected in polling, is the sheer disbelief of people who have not been paying attention to politics. The idea is that these “undecideds,” as they are sometimes called, just could not believe the Republican Party would nominate Trump for a third time, not after he botched America’s response to the covid pandemic, not after he led a failed paramilitary takeover of the US government.

As far back as January, the Biden campaign believed the president would glean more support from “undecided” voters every time Trump won a Republican primary, or after some kind of major news event, such as his criminal conviction on 34 counts of business fraud or the first presidential debate of the election year. The Biden campaign described this awakening by people who have not been paying attention as a kind of “switch” that will increasingly “turn on” as time goes by.

The Biden campaign seems to have been right, though it’s still too early to know for certain. For the entirety of the current year, the approval rating of Trump has run parallel and above that of Biden, according to 538’s poll of polls. That changed for the first time on the eve of the summer solstice, last Thursday. The president’s aggregated approval rating reached 40.6 percent, two tenths above Trump’s.

Some attribute this movement, slight as it is, to a single event, namely Trump’s felony conviction. That’s Karl Rove’s theory, though he wasn’t citing 538’s poll of polls. On Fox over the weekend, the Republican strategist held up a white board showing select polling results.

“These are the polls since June 1,” he said. “If they’re in red, Donald Trump won ‘em, if they’re in blue, Joe Biden is leading, and if they’re in green, it’s a tie. And take a look, from the first of the month, where it’s Trump up by 1, Trump up by 2, Trump up by 1, Biden up by 1, a tie, Trump up by 2, Biden up by 2, tie, Biden up by 2. So there’s been a trend since the … May 30th guilty verdict in the New York case.”

But Trump’s conviction didn’t change things on its own any more (or less) than the president’s homerun speech at this year’s State of the Union changed things. No one event is going to wake up people who have not been paying attention. Only an accretion of events, big and small, can do that. The “switch” may take time to “turn on,” but once it’s on, it stays on. To win, the president doesn’t need to do anything extraordinary, because what counts as ordinary is already changing.

I think it’s important to remind yourself of the basics. In the case of Donald Trump’s campaign, the basic good-faith question is: why does he want his old job back? Indeed, he wants the job from which he was fired. What’s he going to do right this time that he did wrong last time?

Why was Trump fired? That’s debatable, but I don’t think there’s any question that his mismanagement of the covid pandemic was the deciding factor in why a majority of the electorate chose his opponent.

More than a million Americans got sick and died. Many of those deaths were preventable. Unemployment soared. So did rates of crime, including murder. The economy seemed to come close to collapse, as did society generally. Everyone was miserable from being in isolation.

That wasn’t the problem. All presidents need grace from the public while facing national emergencies. The problem was Trump’s lying about how bad it was, covering up his incompetence, negligence and harmful choices, his scapegoating of others to mask his deficiencies and refusing on every level to be held accountable democratically.

READ: ‘Creepy weirdos’: Senator fears Trump WH staff would destroy government from ‘inside’

“I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump said in March 2020.

Incumbents are almost always reelected. They have to do something pretty bad to get axed. In Trump’s case, voters were spoiled for choice, but it was the covid that sealed his fate. He botched it. He was fired.

And now he wants his job back.

You would think, as a man who committed a firing offense, that Trump would come to the American people with his (red maga) hat in hand to acknowledge what he did wrong, take responsibility, and promise to do everything in his power to make things right if given a second chance.

I’m going to pause while I wait for you to stop laughing.

Feel better?

Trump could do all that while changing virtually nothing about his current campaign objectives, which is to turn the president into the Great Satan of America. He could ask for forgiveness while accusing Joe Biden of stealing the 2020 election, rigging his felony conviction and otherwise sending the country down the road to perdition.

Admittedly, this would be a giant act of cognitive dissonance. How could he be contrite while also vindictive? This is Donald Trump we’re talking about. What’s a little more cognitive dissonance going to do?

Trump isn’t doing that, obviously. What’s not obvious, however, is he seems to be going in the opposite direction of someone who made a mistake, was punished for it and is now seeking redemption. Indeed, I haven’t seen press coverage that fully reflects just how deranged his bid for a second chance has become. Instead of promising to succeed where he failed last time, Trump is, well, um, promising to fail again.

"I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.”

Trump said that Tuesday in Wisconsin. It wasn’t the first time. It won’t be the last. According to Steve Benen, “the line was familiar. After all, the Republican recently peddled the identical line in Michigan. And Florida. And Washington, D.C. And Texas, Minnesota, and New Jersey. And Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, and Virginia. And that's just recently.”

He’s said the same thing “word for word, for over a year,” Benen added. “Every time, his base applauds, offering timely reminders that Trump often takes his cues from his followers, as opposed to the other way around. Far-right voters oppose life-saving vaccines, so the Republican candidate is only too pleased to tell them what they want to hear.”

Expect more of this because, with vaccines, Trump is most vulnerable to Robert F Kennedy Jr, the independent presidential candidate who regularly draws about 9 percent of the public’s attention. Kennedy is a well-known vaccine conspiracist. If Trump doesn’t come out hard and harder on vaccines, all vaccines, he risks Kennedy eating into his base.

If Trump loses even a fraction of his base he’s in trouble because he has done nothing – stress on nothing – to expand his base, because he refuses to take responsibility for botching the covid pandemic.

Trump can’t or won’t concede that he’s anything less than perfect, practically a demi-god, to non-base voters who might see nobility in a man’s act of admitting when he’s wrong. To his base, he’s promising failure, because it wants failure, and he’s eager to promise failure, even if that alienates non-base voters, whom he needs to win and who will recoil at the notion of a renewed pandemic, because, as a child, his dad didn’t love him enough and his need for attention is now sociopathic.

As I said, it’s important to remind yourself of the basics. In the case of Trump’s base, these are people who love the idea of stripping federal funding from schools that require life-saving vaccines for students but who were themselves saved from the pandemic, which their nominee mismanaged, by life-saving vaccines. They love the idea of making perceived enemies suffer, though it risks their own suffering.

A normal candidate would promise success.

Trump is promising failure.

If that sounds crazy, it is.

NOW READ: ‘Creepy weirdos’: Senator fears Trump WH staff would destroy government from ‘inside’

You have noticed by now we are living through a backlash. I’m talking about the backlash against the progressive gains made in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a white police officer. After the country witnessed that crime, the business world was awash in the rhetoric of diversity, equity and inclusion. Years later, however, not so much.

Why? A lot of white people didn’t like it. Fueled by Donald Trump, the Republicans and the rightwing media apparatus, there has been a titanic reaction against well-intended (though feeble) attempts by America’s biggest corporations to make society fairer and better.

This backlash is being felt in ways serious and silly. Serious: when southern state governments outlaw the teaching of Black history. Silly: when “DEI” programs are blamed for a bridge collapse. Both, however, are expressions of a white-power backlash that we’re living through.

Not only are America’s biggest corporations in retreat. They are fearful of future litigation, as the US Supreme Court’s rightwing supermajority has been creating legal conditions in which well-intended (though feeble) attempts to make society fairer and better could be crimes.

However much it might have wanted to pay lip-service to multiracial democracy, the business world has been nonetheless keenly receptive to the backlash against it. After Floyd’s death, they said Black lives matter. Not long after, though, it’s clear white power matters more.

I do not mean to point out the obvious. What I mean to do is point out a pattern. Since the post-Floyd backlash began in earnest, America’s top CEOs have demonstrated a deep concern about their reputations among a radicalized white minority while seeming downright blithe about their reputations among a multiracial democratic majority.

They fear the price of being better.

They don’t fear the price of failure.

This pattern was in relief last week after leaders of some of America’s biggest corporations met with Donald Trump in Washington. Some were surprised, reportedly, by what I have called his habitual incoherence. According to CNBC, some were concerned “about whether we were going to see a similar movie to the last presidency where there were so many different issues that came up and made their jobs not easier but ultimately harder.” That’s an oblique reference to Trump’s deadly mismanagement of the covid pandemic response.

But despite Trump’s record of failure, and despite the demonstrable decline of his cognitive functioning, these same business leaders are nevertheless “flocking” to him, according to the Wall Street Journal. The choice is easy, Hayes Brown explained. Big business is faced “with a big choice to make over the coming months: support an incumbent who will bring stability but potentially reduced profits or back a loose cannon who might threaten democracy but not its bottom line.”

That, however, may be giving them too much credit. After all, if “big business” were truly concerned about their bottom lines, as they seemed to be after George Floyd’s death, they would have doubled down on the rhetoric of diversity, equity and inclusion. Multiracial democracy, not a radicalized white minority, is where the future, and the profit, is. They didn’t, though. As I said, they have shown much more concern about their reputations among illiberal white people.

So you have to wonder about that bottom line. You have to wonder generally about material incentives, such as corporate tax cuts. They saw with their own eyes Donald Trump’s habitual incoherence. They witnessed firsthand his demonstrable decline. Some expressed fear of seeing “a similar movie to the last presidency.” Their firms, meanwhile, have never been more valuable. On Monday, the S&P 500 bested itself for the 30th time this year. Consumers, taking home higher wages, are spending like rarely before. All this wealth is being generated under a Democratic president. Yet business leaders are “flocking” to Trump.

If “big business” were really motivated by their bottom lines, they would stick with the man who shepherded the country out of the worst plague in a hundred years, not the man who led us into it. They wouldn’t tell themselves lies like this one from a business advocacy: “The threat to capitalism from the Democrats is more concerning than the threat to democracy from Trump.” No, it’s not. Really. Capitalism is doing better now than it has in a long time. Without democracy and the rule of law, you won’t have capitalism. You’ll have something else.

Perhaps we should pay less attention to what they say and more to what they do. Since 2020, America’s top CEOs have shown us they care about their reputations among a radicalized white minority more than they care about it among a multiracial democratic majority. While Trump clearly “doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” that’s evidently no reason not to back him, not when you’re afraid to get on his wrong side. That’s fear, not profit motive. Let’s not confuse the two.

Last Monday’s edition of the Editorial Board was about what you would say to someone who believes the economy is terrible. In fact, this is best economy we have seen in half a century. A lot of people, however, aren’t feeling it, according to some polls. “What would you say?” I asked readers. The answers were equal parts illuminating and shrewd.

Today, I want to tell you what I think.

Three things.

One, “the economy” is an abstraction that most people most of the time don’t think about, know about or care about. What they do think, know and care about is prices – the cost of stuff, especially necessities. Since the covid pandemic, the cost of groceries has been high, perhaps too high. So has the cost of housing. Combined, the experience of high prices means a lot of people think “the economy” is bad when it’s not.

Two, the Washington press corps has made a fetish of “inflation” such that the other economic indicators – the stock market, wages, and the unemployment rate, all in record territory – are minimized while “inflation” gets top billing. This is a reflection of the interests of the very obscenely rich, who have been saying for years that a recession is around the corner on account of inflation being so high. That inflation has been easing makes no difference in improving the public’s view of the economy, because no other indicators are given equal attention.

Three, Donald Trump and the Republicans lie about “the economy.” They lie so much, and their lies are amplified so widely, that a lot of people who don’t otherwise think about, know about or care about “the economy” might believe their lies, especially given the higher than usual cost of groceries and housing. Some people might be doing great personally, in fact, but all the Republican lies – and there are so many lies – end up giving the impression that somewhere in the world, out beyond one’s personal experience, is an economy that’s in recession.

At this point in an essay like this, you’d expect me to say what I think Joe Biden and the Democrats should do to explain the real state of the economy, which is gangbusters, and to claim credit for the fact that it’s gangbusters. At this point, moreover, you might expect me to concede the challenge of doing so. How does he set people straight about the economy without insulting their experience about the economy? The more the president says the economy is great, the more chances Trump and the Republicans have to say the president is out of touch.

I’m not going to. I think Biden can skip that by doing what he’s been doing, which is attacking Trump as if he were a brat who’s always complaining when things don’t go his way. Trump’s literal message is America sucks. Vote for me and it won’t suck anymore. To that, Biden can pull what you might call the “good dad” card. In effect, he could respond: Actually, son, America is great. The economy may not be where it needs to be, but we’re getting there, for everyone’s sake. We can act like brats or we can man up and be who we were meant to be.

Josh Shapiro didn’t use those words last week, of course, but he came close. The Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, a swing state critical to Biden, was on MSNBC last week. He explained to Jen Psaki the real state of the economy. “We’re producing more energy than ever before in this nation. We have the strongest economy in the world. We’re beating China for the first time in decades. More people went to work this morning in America than at any other time in our nation’s history.”

Shapiro said the economy’s strength reflects the strength of Joe Biden’s leadership. “I know the good people of Pennsylvania. They care a lot whether they’re in rural communities, urban communities or suburban communities, about basic things. They want good schools for their kids. They want safe communities. They want economic opportunities. And they want their freedoms to be protected.”

But instead of leadership and problem-solving, Shapiro said, all we’re hearing from Trump is “a bunch of whining about this country. I think Trump has got to quit whining … I got a message to Donald Trump and all his negativity and his whining. Stop shit-talking America.”

That’s the part that got people’s attention. A governor said “shit” on TV! It seemed appropriate. After all, Trump has been campaigning nonstop for nearly a decade and during all that time, his main focus has been “shit-talking America” to get people to believe that he, and only he, can make America great again. But I think it was Shapiro’s next line that should have gotten more attention. “This is the greatest country on earth,” he said, “and it’s time we all start acting like it.”

I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s “good dad” energy. Shapiro is setting people straight by way of modeling good behavior that everyone, including Donald Trump, can emulate if they choose to. He made the issue a question of character, of Trump’s character, rather than economics. America doesn’t suck but it could become what it was meant to be – if we all start acting like the great country that we are.

I think that’s important in communicating to people who may not know much about “the economy,” but who know a lot about the price of stuff, especially food and housing. Good dad energy is not only about what you say, but how you say it and how firmly it’s said. A lot of Democrats and Democratic-leaners might believe we’re in a recession, but a lot of them can be turned around, I think, with some dad power.

I was telling you about how Donald Trump and the Republicans don’t mean what they say, and when it’s discovered that they don’t, they simply move on to the next thing, which they also don’t mean. This pattern is so predictable, it’s amazing they have any credibility among people who are not incentivized to believe things they don’t mean.

I was telling you about that pattern in reference to the conviction of Hunter Biden, a historic event that should illustrate the president’s dedication to the principle that no one is above the law, not even his only living son. But this morning, I was reminded of that pattern again.

According toPolitico, Trump called Mike Johnson days after his conviction, demanding the House speaker do something about it. “Trump was still angry when he made the call, according to those who have heard accounts of it from Johnson, dropping frequent F-bombs as he spoke with the soft-spoken and pious GOP leader,” Politico said.

“We have to overturn this,” Trump reportedly said.

During the same period, Trump and his allies spun his conviction as if it were the greatest thing to happen to him since James Comey reopened the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state. They said it made him stronger.

They didn’t mean it.

His conviction hurt. That should not surprise anyone with common sense. It’s not a good idea to run for president after you have been convicted on 34 counts of business fraud, especially when your best selling point is your reputation as a powerful businessman. It hurt him and you don’t need to be a DC insider to know it. All you need to do is listen to him go on and on about wanting to get even with Joe Biden.

According to a new AP poll, about half of Americans approve of his conviction. That’s in keeping with other polls taken shortly after May 31. The takeaway should be that most people still have basic faith in the institutions of law enforcement. The takeaway should be that this is his greatest challenge – and overcoming it will require a lot of lying.

I’m talking about more than the lie that’s at the heart of the entire GOP response to Trump’s conviction, which is that it’s Biden's fault, not Trump’s. I’m talking about titanic lies, like the one about the American economy being so devastated that GOP congresspeople can no longer say with a straight face that America is the greatest country on earth.

The economy has rarely been better in any of our lifetimes, but if you’re going to lie like that, you'd better have solutions ready to take care of the problems that you say are problems. Of course, Trump and the Republicans don’t have solutions ready, because they didn’t mean what they said, and if you try to force them to stand by what they said, they’ll simply move on to the next thing, which they also don’t mean.

When people say one thing but do another, we usually call them hypocrites, but Trump and the Republicans don’t know what hypocrisy is because they don’t mean anything they say. They are calling for vengeance upon Biden, not because Biden did something wrong. They know he did nothing wrong. They’re calling for vengeance upon Biden because it justifies the unjustifiable. Lying about his role in Trump’s conviction makes doing what they want to do seem jim-dandy.

That’s not hypocrisy. That’s saying who you are and what your vision of society is. They accuse Biden of applying a two-tiered system of justice to create the conditions needed for applying, when the time comes, their own two-tiered system of justice. They believe the law should be applied unequally. It should protect “us.” It should punish “them.”

The same goes for the US Constitution. The founding document enshrines the separation of powers. Each state is its own sovereignty, with its own laws and law enforcement. Yet Trump wants Johnson’s help in violating the Constitution by overturning a state verdict.

Johnson, an attorney who also prefers to call himself a “constitutional conservative,” has pledged to do everything he can to help. You could say Johnson, as a “constitutional conservative,” is being a hypocrite. It would be more accurate to say, however, that he never really meant what he said. His “principles” are clearly just means to political ends.

Hypocrites can be held accountable for what they say if they value what they say. But Trump and the Republicans can never be held accountable because the only value they place on what they say is whether it achieves their goals. Virtually everything they have said, post-conviction, is in the service of rationalizing something else, something that would be unreachable if they were mere hypocrites.

Trump and the Republicans want us to believe Hunter Biden’s conviction hurts his dad as much as Trump’s conviction hurts him. It won’t, because, among other reasons, including that Hunter Biden is a private citizen, the president means what he says. He stands by the rule of law as well as the Constitution. Principles are not just means to an end, and his son’s conviction is an opportunity to demonstrate that.

Of course, there may be a price to being so principled.

What’s certain is it’s a price Trump would never pay.

Sometimes I wonder if all the attention Donald Trump gets is going to backfire. I suppose “wonder” might be another word for “hope,” but I don’t hope (or wonder) without a good reason. There are so many people, even powerful people, who are not paying attention to this election. Why? Perhaps because Trump dominates news of it.

For example, I was watching this clip this morning. In it, CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin reported what he heard from some of America’s top CEOs yesterday after their meeting with Trump in Washington.

Many of them, Sorkin said, had been “predisposed to former President Trump” but walked away from the meeting “a bit disheartened, a bit questioning … I don’t want to say of his mental fitness, but questioning of just how meandering, how, in some cases, one said to me, ‘he could not keep a thought straight. He would go in one direction, then he would go in another direction, and there wasn’t necessarily a through-line to the way he spoke or what he was talking about.’”

"At one point, he discussed his plans to bring the corporate tax rate down from 21 percent to 20 percent, and … was asked why he had chosen 20 percent, and he said, 'well, it’s a round number.' I think that itself had a number of CEOs shaking their heads … I think there was a concern about whether we were going to see a similar movie to the last presidency where there were so many different issues that came up and made their jobs not easier but ultimately harder (emphasis ours)."

In other words, they appeared to have been surprised by what I have been calling Trump’s habitual incoherence, which is to say, incoherence that’s become so habitual that it characterizes virtually everything he says in every public setting, even sober settings, such as his criminal trial in Manhattan or, in this case, a meeting with America’s top CEOs.

The question is, or should be: how could these top CEOs have been so surprised? I don’t expect very obscenely rich men like them to read the Editorial Board, but I do expect them to be thoroughly informed about politics, given that politics is central to their very obscene riches.

At the very least, I expect them to be attentive to the goings-on inside the GOP, including that time when Trump’s closest rival for the GOP nomination, Nikki Haley, drew attention to his habitual incoherence.

“Trump is at a rally,” she said in late January. “And he’s going on and on, mentioning me multiple times, as to why I didn’t handle January 6 better. I wasn’t in office then. They’re saying he got confused. That he was talking about something else. That he was talking about Nancy Pelosi. He mentioned me multiples times in that scenario.” She added:

“The concern I have is – I’m not saying anything derogatory, but when you’re dealing with the pressures of a presidency, we can’t have someone else that we question whether they’re mentally fit to do it.”

It’s reasonable to assume that powerful people inclined to support a Republican nominee, such as America’s top CEOs, would have known about Haley being the highest-profile Republican to call Trump’s mental fitness into question. Indeed, she continued to draw primary voters away from him long after dropping out, perhaps in part because she did what no other Republican had done up to that point.

How could they have been surprised?

One explanation is they aren’t paying attention to him as much as they are to his policies, or policies they associate with the Republicans, no matter who their nominee is. If they paid attention to the man as much as to corporate tax cuts, they might have been familiar with Trump’s habitual incoherence. They didn’t, so they were surprised.

Another explanation is they don’t see Trump’s habitual incoherence on account of it being omitted from, or minimized by, whatever news media they consume. In this, America’s top CEOs are in good company.

The rightwing media apparatus, including Fox, prevents audiences from seeing Trump’s frailties while maximizing Joe Biden’s. The Washington press corps doesn’t follow suit, strictly speaking, but it does echo its choices. So it may not be that surprising that top CEOs, like millions of others who consume the press corps’ offerings, did not know about Trump’s habitual incoherence until it was in front of them.

Yet another explanation is the most general, but, I think, the most worthy of debate, which is that Trump so dominates the news that people, even very powerful people, like America’s top CEOs, aren’t really paying attention. They already know what they need to know. One more story about Trump, and the stories are usually about Trump, is not going to add to, or take away from, what they already know.

Think about it.

Trump has been running the same campaign nonstop for nearly a decade. (He campaigned even while in the White House.) America’s appetite for outrageous Trump-related news could be close to exhaustion. Lots of people, even very powerful people, seem to have tuned out all news about politics. That includes all news about Trump.

They probably won’t pay attention until they have to, by which point, they are going to be surprised to discover something, like Trump’s habitual incoherence, that they wouldn’t have been surprised to discover had politics not been all Trump all the time for nearly decade.

I said I wonder if all the attention Trump gets is going to backfire on him, but of course, it could backfire on the country – if people who have not been paying attention, including very powerful people, begin paying attention too late to make a difference. If they don’t start soon, Trump’s habitual incoherence won’t be his alone. It will be ours, too.

Hunter Biden was found guilty Tuesday of three felony charges in connection with lying on a federal gun-permit application. He swore he wasn’t addicted to drugs, but he was. For that, he was convicted. He’s facing up to 25 years, though he might not see any prison time.

The key thing to understand about the conviction of the president's son is that it's proof that Donald Trump and the Republicans have been lying. Caught in the lie, they're now lying about what they lied about, hoping that the new lie covers up the old one. It’s also proof that they don’t mean what they say, and when it’s discovered that they don’t mean it, they move on to other things, which they also don’t mean.

The first lie is that Biden is weaponizing the rule of law against his political adversaries. According to the lie, Trump was not convicted of 34 state felonies on account of committing 34 state felonies. He was convicted, because Biden applies a two-tiered system of justice. Republicans like Trump are prosecuted while Democrats get off.

The second lie is that Trump, as the victim of the president’s weaponization of the rule of law against his political adversaries, is justified in weaponizing it against his own. After all he’s been through, Trump now says he deserves some payback – if he wins the election. (He’s going to say he won even if he loses. You know it, so expect it.)

Presidents do not have anything to do with state law enforcement. Presidents are the chief executive of the federal government, not state governments. (They don’t really have anything to do with federal law enforcement, either, though they do appoint the person who does, the US attorney general.) Trump’s trial was a state case in a state court presided over by a state judge according to state law. Trump wants us to believe the president rigged his New York trial. That’s a total lie.

But even if there's doubt about whether Biden might have had something to do with Trump’s New York trial, Hunter Biden’s conviction should dispel it. Trump says he’s a victim of one set of rules being applied to Biden’s friends while another is applied to his enemies. The president’s own administration, however, prosecuted the president’s own son. Indeed, the prosecutor, David Weiss, was appointed by none other than Donald Trump when he was president. This is not a two-tiered system. It’s one-tiered. Under Biden, the rule of law is applied equally.

No one is above the law, not even the president’s son.

Perhaps a better way of understanding all this is that Trump blames Biden for his criminal conviction. It’s not his fault. It’s Biden’s. So he’s entitled to getting even once he returns to the White House. No one has ever been treated like this, Trump often says, so it’s only “fair” that he gets a chance to treat badly those people who treated him badly.

Biden, however, does not blame Trump (or the prosecutor whom Trump appointed) or anyone. Biden accepts, as presidents should, the outcome of the neutral administration of justice. To make the distinction between him and Trump starker, Biden said last week he would not pardon his son if he were found guilty of federal crimes.

Trump blames Biden for a crime Trump committed.

Biden blames no one for a crime his son committed.

That’s the difference.

Just as Trump won’t accept the consequences of his trial, he won’t accept the consequences of lying. He and the Republicans are simply moving on to other lies. Hunter Biden’s conviction doesn’t prove that they’ve been lying about Biden’s two-tiered system of justice. No, no, no. All it does is distract us from “the real crimes of the corrupt Biden crime family,” according to a Trump campaign spokeswoman.

They didn’t mean what they said when they said that the president applies a two-tiered system of justice, one for his friends and one for his enemies. But now they want us to believe that they mean what they say when they say that “the real crimes of the corrupt Biden crime family” are yet to be revealed. You can call that a conspiracy theory.

Or you can call it lies.

Lies that go all the way to the Kremlin.

“The real crimes of the corrupt Biden crime family” is the tell. It’s a reference to the now-familiar allegation that Joe Biden, when he was vice president, pressured Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor for investigating an energy company that Hunter Biden worked for.

Vice President Biden did pressure Ukraine into firing Viktor Shokin, and he succeeded. His effort was not, however, because Shokin was investigating Burisma, the gas firm in question. It was because Shokin wasn’t investigating Burisma enough. Biden’s actions as vice president were in keeping with US policy toward global corruption, which was in turn part of its policy toward Russia. Shokin was a Kremlin stooge.

The allegation that Biden bent US policy for his own, and his son’s own, personal gain originated in the Kremlin. It was later adopted by Trump when he was president. It was central to that moment in 2019 when he demanded that Ukraine announce an investigation into Biden. Trump wanted to smear his most likely and dangerous rival by bending US policy (dirt in exchange for the release of military funding). For these high crimes and misdemeanors, Trump was impeached the first time.

Hunter Biden’s conviction proves that Trump and the Republicans are lying. There is no two-tiered system of justice. There is no justification for revenge. No one is above the law, not even the president’s son. Caught in the lie, they're now lying about what they lied about, hoping that the new lie covers up the old one. But what no one is saying yet is that the new lie isn’t new. It’s not even their lie. It’s the Kremlin’s.

It doesn’t look it, but Donald Trump is weak. It doesn’t look it, because he keeps saying scary things. That gives the impression of strength. He’s weak, though. My evidence? Those scary things he keeps saying.

No presidential candidate in his right mind would say out loud for everyone to hear that he wants to establish for himself, in the words of Time magazine reporter Eric Cortellessa, “an imperial presidency.”

But that’s what he did. Over and over, in two long interviews with Cortellessa, published last week, the former president said he would turn the office of the president into something no one alive has seen.

Trump said, for instance, he would withhold funding for things he doesn’t like even if funding for those things had been approved by an act of Congress. To spell out its essence, this is what he’s saying:

“I would do the same thing I was impeached for the first time, and I would do it, as you can see from my saying this out loud for everyone to hear, with absolute impunity, not only for the rule of law and the Constitution but for the democratic institution that impeached me.”

In our lifetimes, no candidate has pitched himself as a lawbreaker. No candidate has pitched himself as a lawbreaker after being held accountable for breaking the law. (In 2019, he withheld congressionally approved military funding to Ukraine in order to involve that country’s leader in a conspiracy to smear Joe Biden. For that, he was impeached.)

It’s almost like he’s willing to say such things because, for him, there’s no downside to saying them. Trump is like the rich man’s son who knows that Daddy will bail him out, no matter how much he fails.

Which is what he is.

Not only did his actual dad come to the rescue throughout much of his profligate life, so have many other very obscenely rich men, who are these days ponying up millions in anonymous contributions, as well as the whole of the Republican Party and the rightwing media apparatus. They will bail him out no matter what. They must. Trump is weak.

The more they bail him out, the worse he gets. It should come as no surprise that what started as bad (his 2016 campaign) has since then decomposed into something no one alive had thought was thinkable.

In addition to saying he’d “withhold funds appropriated by Congress,” according to his interviews with Cortellessa, Trump said he would:

• “build migrant detention camps and deploy the US military, both at the border and inland.”
• “let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans.”
• “withhold funds appropriated by Congress.”
• “fire a US Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone.”
• “[give] pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury."
• “might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense."
• “gut the US civil service.”
• “deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit.”
• “close the White House pandemic-preparedness office.”
• “staff his administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”

Again, I know these things sound scary, and they are. Very scary. But these are also things no candidate in his right mind would say. You’ll notice no one else is saying them quite like this. There’s a reason other Republicans are more circumspect. The consequence for saying such things is too high and they aren’t going to get bailed out like Trump.

Let me put this another way.

A strong presidential candidate would look at his successes (in Trump’s case, 2016) and his failures (2020), and try to modulate so that his current campaign, at the very least, does more of the former and less of the latter. A strong candidate would fear losing. He would learn from his past mistakes, recognize his liabilities and build on his assets.

A weak candidate, on the other hand, has no such fear. He would refuse to learn from his mistakes, because what’s there to learn when he didn’t do anything wrong the last time? On his third try, he does the same thing, over and over, oblivious to the consequences, and he’s oblivious, because he’s being shielded from those consequences.

He offered a shit sandwich in 2016 and got lucky. Just enough people in just enough places thought a shit sandwich was better than a female president. He offered it again in 2020, and he lost. Most people didn’t want a shit sandwich because it’s a shit sandwich. But because he’s surrounded by people – billionaires, Republicans, Fox – who tell him Americans love eating shit, here he is, in 2024, with more of the same.

That’s the most striking thing about his interviews with Time magazine. Not the scary things he said, though they are scary. The most striking thing is that he’s running the same campaign he ran the last two times. That’s what happens when you’re prevented from feeling the consequences of your actions. History doesn’t matter.

History never happened.

One of the happy outcomes of publishing a daily newsletter about politics in plain English for normal people and the common good is it tends to attract like-minded people who are equal parts liberal, informed and shrewd. When I ask open-ended questions on Twitter, I typically get serious, practical and often illuminating responses.

My most recent question (or “public thread”) was prompted by the latest jobs report. The US economy added 272,000 jobs in May, “reflecting a booming labor market that continues to fuel the economy with workers benefiting from wages that are outpacing inflation,” the Postsaid Friday. “Job creation accelerated from the previous month, rising above the average monthly level of growth so far this year, which was already strong, after a period of cooling for part of 2023.”

“The American middle class is seeing their economic standing improved. The strong wages and improving living standards are the main takeaway from this very strong jobs report,” Joe Brusuelas, chief economist for the accounting firm RSM US, told the Post Friday.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is a lot of people don’t know it, or they don’t feel it, or they believe some bullshit about the economy. It’s hard to say. The cumulative effort, however, is a majority that appears to believe we're in a recession, according to one poll, when the opposite is true. No one has seen a better economy in 50 years. Wages are outpacing inflation. I couldn’t have written that sentence even in the boom-boom nineties.

This disconnect is bad for the incumbent. Don’t sugarcoat it. Joe Biden’s campaign isn’t. “Inside Biden’s orbit,” according toPolitico this morning, “the fear is that there’s little new the administration can do to change the perceptions of a stubborn electorate that’s living through an economic upswing — yet simply refusing to believe it.”

I think the president’s people will figure this out. Perhaps, they will do as Stephen Robinson recommended recently, which was to concede the plain fact that lots of people are not feeling the gaga economy, and blame Donald Trump and the Republicans for those bad-bad vibes.

Meanwhile, what can you do to correct this apparent misperception? That’s what I asked readers and subscribers on Twitter on Saturday. “What would you say to someone who believes the economy is terrible? How would you persuade them to vote for Biden?” I think you’ll agree the answers below (which I edited for accuracy, length, clarity and context) are equal parts liberal, informed and shrewd.

(PS: Let’s keep the dicussion going. If you have experience talking to people who believe a great economy is terrible, share with us. What did you say? Did it seem to work? How did you know? Reply to this email or contact me at johnastoehr at gmail dot com. Thanks!)

Victoria Brownworth: Are you asking about the lived version or the “on paper” version? That's the real issue for Biden his campaign needs to figure out. I love the paper version. It's not the one I am living in, alas. Yet I still know Democrats offer the only chance at a better economy.

Steve Campbell: If they already believe it's "terrible," they're clearly misinformed and I'm not sure that telling them it’s not terrible would work, nor do I think presenting numerous statistics saying otherwise would work, since they'd likely dismiss them as "rigged" or "fake."

John Panzer: I’d ask if they or their family are doing worse. If so, I’d dive into why. If they say (as many do) they are doing fine but the country is worse off, I’d talk to them about the accumulation of income and wealth for the top 1 percent over the past few decades.

Virginia Heffernan: The economy is great, but if you have the standard rightwing terror of Biden, just say so.

David Akadjian: I've just been talking about how supermarket prices have been returning to normal. Even gas prices have come down and it's summer with the higher-priced fuel mix.

@JMGFord: I know someone who said his mortgage went up. It wasn’t his mortgage. It was his property taxes. His home gained value. He didn’t care that his home appreciated, though, because he wasn’t selling. Ergo, he thinks the economy sucks because “inflation.”

BarbaraG: Four companies control up to 85 percent of the meat market. Four control 80 percent of air travel. Three control 92 percent of the soda market. Three control 73 percent of the cereal market. Don't hear about it? Six companies control 90 percent of the news.

Wendy Jacobson: The stock market is all-time, unemployment is at an all-time low, if you were here during the 2008 financial crisis or the covid crisis of 2020, there is no possible way that you could compare today to them. High prices are not the economy.

Catherine Hagman: I've spent most of my life in a country with a higher unemployment rate than the present one, which hasn't been matched since my childhood. I've looked for work in times of high inflation, recession and challenging job markets. The previous administration practiced senseless chaos.

John Creighton: This is a particularly odd situation considering so many of the Trump supporters I know justified their support for such an unethical and corrupt candidate on the basis of “look at how good my 401(k) is doing.” Well, it’s doing even better now.

@LiberalLab: I'm over 50, have a gap in my resume (was unemployed by choice), reentered the market, sent one resume, interviewed, got a great job. Best job market of my lifetime! 401(k) through the roof. Restaurants and theaters are packed. People are spending!

@varanus: I sympathize with people who falsely think the economy (the real one or the rich-people one) is terrible. I usually start by asking which part they’re thinking of. Most people say they are looking at rising prices and/or job insecurity, both of which are unfortunately not under the direct control of the president or even the Fed. We are not in the middle of a “traditional” inflation crisis. We’re in the middle of a “sellers are gouging us for all they can get” crisis, so the “normal” tools to deal with inflation (rising interest rates, etc.) just aren’t working because that’s not the problem. I then remind them that Republicans literally never want to curb prices or stabilize jobs.

@SouzM6: Ask them if they're being deprived of anything in their life – if they traveled for a holiday or plan to travel; if they've been going out to restaurants or sporting events or concerts or any other leisure activity; or if they've been cutting back on spending drastically.

@CaveatEmproto: You can’t. All you can do is keep repeating and explaining reality and hope they come to their senses when they’re alone with their thoughts.

@aaricka34: I'd ask for what metrics they are looking at to make them feel that way. Inflation? We know it's corporate greed. Gas prices? Coming down. Just a feeling? Tell them to stop watching cable news.

One of the eternal questions among liberals and leftists is whether Donald Trump and the Republicans believe what they are saying.

These days, they’re saying Joe Biden manufactured the former president’s felony conviction in an effort to interfere with the 2024 election. They’re saying the president’s “weaponization of the legal system” is the reason for their own weaponization of it in the future.

“You have to wonder if the magas believe their own outlandish rhetoric,” Lindsay Beyerstein said in her latest for the Editorial Board.

Some do, she said, but most don’t.

“This embrace of frothing conspiracism is an excuse to justify the authoritarian measures they’ve long wanted to implement.”

I agree, but I want to add a layer.

Some don’t know.

The great depth of ignorance in America

I don’t mean the Republicans. As Lindsay said, they are not ignorant. They know they are peddling a conspiracy theory. They know the facts, too. They know the criminal trial of Donald Trump is led by a state law enforcement official who sought justice according to state law in a case presided over by a state judge in New York state’s judicial system.

They know the president – this one, or any other, at any time – has nothing to do with state and local law enforcement. The president is the executive of the federal government, not state government. He’s the leader of America, but he’s not the leader of Manhattan or Albany.

No, I’m talking about normal people, including some GOP voters.

Some don’t know.

We can ask if Trump and the Republicans believe what they’re saying, but let’s not forget the impact of their saying it on those who are, for reasons good and bad, too ignorant to even ask whether they mean it.

They just believe the Republicans do.

They don’t know enough about how government in America works. They don’t know enough about the US Constitution, the sovereignty of the states, the separation of powers. They don’t even know that Biden doesn’t control, you know, everything. (Indeed, lots of people, even quite famous people, believe presidents are very nearly omnipotent.)

This is important to point out, because liberals and leftists typically do not place value on the important role played by the ignorant. (We tend to go straight to whether the Republicans believe what they say.) The Republicans, however, do place value on ignorance. They depend on it. There are only so many people around as cynical and craven as they are. A vast majority of people don't agree with them or don't know enough about anything to know whether they agree with them.

Which brings me to Merrick Garland.

For the Republicans, conspiracy theories work

The US attorney general gets a lot of grief from liberals and leftists, because he’s an institutionalist who believes in maintaining norms. But what he said during yesterday’s testimony on Capitol Hill wasn’t just more of the same, not when you consider the great depth of ignorance in this country, which is usually working in the Republicans’ favor.

In front of the House Judiciary, he said what many needed to hear. “We do not control the Manhattan district attorney, the Manhattan district attorney does not report to us,” he said. Later, he added: "That conspiracy theory is an attack on the judicial process itself.”

That might have sounded obvious, and it might have come off as rather feeble on account of sounding obvious, but remember – lots of people just don’t know enough about how government works to know it was obvious. They might have been surprised to learn the president has no control over state criminal proceedings. (Perhaps they might have felt lied to!) And remember, the Republican response partly depends on ignorance. People who are knowledgeable about civic structures are unlikely to be duped into believing their conspiracy theories.

These days, conspiracy theories are the Republican party line, not because the Republicans are crazy, but because they are practical. Conspiracy theories work. “Joe Biden rigged the trial” attacks their chief adversary while softening the blow to Trump’s campaign.

But they only work on two groups. One is the cynics, that is, people who may know they are being lied to, but go along with it, because going along is useful. Two is the ignorant, that is, people who don’t know enough about anything to know they’re being lied to. Conspiracy theories rally the GOP’s cynics while bullying the ignorant (who are sometimes politely called “low-propensity voters”) into falling in line.

Together, these two groups may constitute a majority of American voters, but things like Garland’s remarks can wedge them apart. He can’t do that alone, of course. Fortunately, the Republicans themselves often provide the wedge by way of saying the quiet part out loud.

Wedge apart the GOP and the ignorant

According toAxios, on Tuesday, the Republicans in the House want to move on legislation that would “allow current or former presidents to move any state case brought against them — such as the one in New York that resulted in Trump's conviction — to federal court.”

With this bill, these Republicans are admitting they don’t believe Joe Biden rigged Trump’s trial. If they believed it, they wouldn’t be talking about moving things from the state to the federal level. They wouldn’t be talking about levels of government at all given that levels of government are entirely missing from their lies. According to the conspiracy theory, there are no levels. Biden controls everything.

“Current or former presidents” refers to Trump, presumably. Why move state criminal cases to the federal level? Because presidents administrate the federal government, not state governments. Trump can’t stop state trials, but he could (in theory) stop federal trials.

Moreover, if more people were aware of the fact that there are indeed levels of governments – by which one does not usually involve the other – the impact of their conspiracy theory on people who don’t know much about government would be blunted, perhaps neutralized.

Merrick Garland is trying to make them aware. So are the Republicans – indirectly. Liberals and leftists can talk about whether they mean what they say or we can talk about the meaning of what they say for the benefit of those who don’t know enough to know what it means.

Do yourself a favor. Stop wondering if Donald Trump’s felony conviction on 34 counts of business fraud in Manhattan is going to hurt his campaign. Stop wondering, because there’s nothing to wonder about. The former president and his allies are telling us it’s going to hurt. You don’t need any polling to say what they are saying directly.

Yes, I know. They are adept at spin. The former president and his allies have convinced bored and cynical reporters the thing that looks like it’s going to sink him is the thing that’s going to save him. Bored and cynical reporters have their reasons for believing that. (They’re bored and cynical.) But you don’t have to. Sometimes things are very simple, and it’s simply very bad to be a convicted felon running for president.

You don’t need to know much about politics or the law to know this. All you need to do is listen to Trump and his allies. If they believed a guilty verdict worked in his favor, they wouldn’t attack the same system of justice that produced the guilty verdict. His Republican allies wouldn’t tell fantastical lies about the case, about the prosecutor, about the judge and about Joe Biden’s role in it all. They wouldn’t call on the US Supreme Court to overrule the jury’s decision and exonerate him.

They do all these things because a felony conviction hurts like hell.

Trump is practically howling in pain.

But a lot of people are still wondering.

For the most part, all this wondering comes from very clever people who are paid very handsome salaries to wonder aloud about things, even in the face of plain reality that should end all the wondering.

I’m talking, of course, about members of the Washington press and pundit corps, even some liberals, who want more than anything else to get your attention. They can’t do that as well as they would like if the contours of the election align with normal common sense. It’s normally very bad for a convicted felon to run for president, but it’s more fun, and more perhaps lucrative, to pretend the opposite could be normal.

Political reporters are probably more bored than cynical. Trump never changes. He’s been campaigning nonstop since 2015. The main difference is while he was fascist-lite then, he’s full-on fascist now. That’s not enough, though, and when political reporters get bored, they assume everyone else is bored, too. That assumption, however, should be seen as a choice of political convenience. It provides a credible rationale for believing spin about a felony conviction working in Trump’s favor, instead of what it really is, which is a painful wound.

This boredom animates one of the genres of political journalism, which I’ll call “Will it matter?” You usually see it emerge after Trump has done something outrageous (and stupid), like saying he’d be a dictator on “day one” (but not after that, apparently). Every time he does this, news stories spring up wondering whether Trump’s latest outrage will matter. Because polling has the candidates running within the margin of error, political reporters assume they’re right. Everyone is bored.

Normal people get bored, obviously, but they don’t get bored as quickly as political reporters do. They don’t spend their time thinking about politics. (They may not think about politics at all.) It’s going to take time before they internalize something that’s never happened before (a former president being held criminally accountable). For the press and pundit corps to wonder, mere days after a guilty verdict, if it will hurt Trump is a press and pundit corps that’s working on (bored) autopilot.

I don’t expect political reporters to stop being bored, but I do expect them to pursue fresh angles in their coverage of the presidential election. That’s what you’ll find in polling that asks whether people think Trump should stay in the race now that he’s a convicted felon.

This morning, Morning Consult released the first of more to come from pollsters. It found that nearly half of independent voters (49 percent) and 15 percent of Republicans think Trump should drop out of the race. (Reuters released a poll this morning in which one in 10 Republicans said they were less likely to vote for the GOP’s nominee.)

Don’t get ensnared in debate about whether Trump should drop out. He’s not going to, full stop, no point is talking about it. There is a point, however, in talking about what those polls mean. They mean what normal common sense tells you about a convicted felon running for president. It’s simply a very bad idea. There’s no wondering about it.

As you know, one of my mantras is that most people most of the time have something better to do than pay attention to politics. That goes double for criminal prosecutions. Despite the media’s focus on Donald Trump’s trial, most people most of the time did not focus on it. They would focus in the end, and in the end, he was found guilty 34 times.

That most people most of the time do not pay attention to politics can be to Trump’s advantage. He and his allies can lie about the prosecutor, they can lie about the judge, they can lie about Joe Biden’s role, and with those lies, they can win over some people, because those people don’t have a base of knowledge that comes with paying attention.

But I think it’s important to say that this fundamental – that most people most of the time do not pay attention – can work against Trump at least as much as it can work for him. They did not pay attention to Trump’s criminal trial, because, above and beyond everything else, they have a basic institutional faith in the rule of law. If a jury of Trump’s peers found him guilty, well, he’s probably guilty.

This does not mean Trump and his allies will stop lying. They can’t. Lying is practical. His conviction is a fact. It’s not going away. So they must lie, and their lies – about the prosecutor, about the judge, about the president’s role in it – will get more and more fantastical. Count on that. The more fantastical they get, the more they might affirm for a lot of people they were right to maintain their faith in the rule of law.

READ: It’s obscene: Inside the Medicare Advantage sham

I think this would be the case even if Trump were found not guilty. Most people most of the time, on the basis of their institutional faith in the rule of law, wouldn’t give his acquittal too much thought. They might not like it. They might even hate it. But they wouldn’t spend time trying to understand its complexities. They’d accept it, even if they also had serious doubts about their institutional faith in the rule of law.

I also think it’s important to point out that Trump and the Republicans know all this. They know most people don’t pay attention, and that only the most dramatic headlines, usually about partisan conflict, are going to snap them into focus. They know about the basic institutional faith in the rule of law. This is why they made a big deal about the US Senate twice acquitting Trump. They knew most people would not pay attention until the very end, and in the end, he was found not guilty. They knew about basic institutional faith as well as indifference to politics. The trick was making sure they were on the right side of both.

They also know that today’s headlines are going to hurt Trump and the Republicans, no matter what they’re saying now. It’s going to hurt, not only because these headlines give his opponent a history-making advantage, but also because so many people have a basic institutional faith in the rule of law. If Biden says a convicted felon has no place in the White House, lots of people would have to go to extraordinary lengths to find reasons why he’s wrong.

I’m not talking about Trump’s loyalest supporters. They don’t need reasons beyond their führer. I’m talking about respectable white people, that great globular middle of American politics. Swing voters tend to believe they stand above politics. (That’s why so many of them don’t pay attention.) They are also the most likely to maintain a basic institutional faith in the rule of law, because it works in the interest of maintaining their privilege in the existing order of things. If Trump and the Republicans want to win over respectable white people, their lies will have to be not only extraordinary but extraordinarily believable.

They will succeed, to a degree. I have no doubt about that. Neither should you. A lot of these respectable white people will believe their lies, because it’s in their interest to believe them. They will find some of the lies believable, because they consume just enough of the rightwing media apparatus, which is in the business of providing “reasons” for people to overlook Trump’s felony conviction. The trial was rigged. The prosecutor was biased. The judge was conflicted. Joe Biden is behind it all. All lies. But a lot of people want to be lied to.

However, a lot of respectable white people don’t want to be lied to. They don’t believe the lies, because they haven’t been paying attention to the trial, except for the end, and they have a basic institutional faith in the rule of law. If a jury thinks he’s guilty, then he’s probably guilty. The lies have to be huge to overcome not only basic institutional faith in the rule of law but also a general indifference to politics, and in the process, those gigantic lies may end up looking like what they are.

I’m not naive. Lies are powerful. To succeed, they need just enough people in just enough places in this country to believe them on Election Day. But it’s too easy to say Trump’s felony conviction won’t matter. It matters, at least because it forces swing voters to reach for extraordinary reasons to support a convicted felon for president.

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It’s not that the news was wrong.

It’s that it wasn’t quite right either.

And because it wasn’t quite right, lots of liberals and Democrats (and even some leftists) are not really hearing what the president is saying. That’s too bad, because what he’s saying is what they want him to say.

Joe Biden gave brief remarks at a ceremony commemorating victims of the Holocaust. The AP’s lede is representative of coverage elsewhere:

President Joe Biden on Tuesday decried a 'ferocious surge' in antisemitism on college campuses and around the globe in the months since Hamas attacked Israel and triggered a war in Gaza, using a ceremony to remember victims of the Holocaust to also denounce new waves of violence and hateful rhetoric toward Jews.

That’s right.

But it’s wrong, too.

It’s right in that’s what the president said. It’s also right in that’s the immediate context for understanding his remarks. In recent weeks, there have been scores of demonstrations on college campuses protesting Israel’s killing of about 35,000 Palestinians. Some of the protesters have expressed what looks like – or, in fact, is – antisemitism. Protests have emerged amid a rise in antisemitism worldwide, though they play a tiny part in the global phenomenon.

But it’s wrong, too, in that the context is larger than that. It’s wrong in that Biden himself outlined that larger context. He was very clear that hatreds, all hatreds, are bad for everyone, and that if they are allowed to fester, as they have been allowed, bad things can happen, for instance, the catastrophe (or shoah) whose victims he commemorated.

“We have an obligation, an obligation to learn the lessons of history so we don’t surrender our future to the horrors of the past,” Biden said. “We must give hate no safe harbor against anyone. Anyone. From the very founding, our very founding, Jewish Americans represented only about 2 percent of the US population and helped lead the cause of freedom for everyone in our nation. From that experience, we know scapegoating and demonizing any minority is a threat to every minority and the very foundation of our democracy(all italics mine).

Later, he said: “I’m calling on all Americans to stand united against antisemitism and hate in all its forms. My dear friend, he became a friend, the late Elie Wiesel said, quote: ‘One person of integrity can make a difference.’”

In another passage, he addressed American Jews specifically: "I see your fear, your hurt, your pain. Let me reassure you, as your president, you’re not alone. You belong. You always have and you always will."

In this, he was echoing past remarks to other minorities.

Just days after the Hamas massacre, on October 7, 2023, Biden said the exact same thing to Arab-Americans and Muslims in the US. “We must, without equivocation, denounce antisemitism. We must also, without equivocation, denounce Islamophobia. To all of you hurting — those of you who are hurting, I want you to know: I see you. You belong.And I want to say this to you: You’re all America. You’re all America.”

Last month, on Transgender Day of Visibility, which happened to fall on Easter Sunday, the president said: “Today, we show millions of transgender and nonbinary Americans that we see them, they belong, and they should be treated with dignity and respect. Their courage has given countless others strength, but no one should have to be brave just to be themselves. Every American deserves that freedom.”

To Jews, he said: You belong. You are America.

To Muslims, he said: You belong. You are America.

To trans people, he said: You belong. You are America.

This is the full story behind Tuesday’s news. Whenever Biden talks about one kind of hatred toward one kind of group, he’s never only talking about that one hatred or that one group. He’s talking about all the groups and all the hatreds toward them, because, while the details are consequential in ways peculiar to each group, the evil is the same.

This is what liberal and Democrats (and even some leftists) want from Joe Biden. They want him to recognize the perils facing each minority group, even if, or especially if, the perils come from another minority group. And they want him to offer assurances that he, as the president, is going to defend them using the force of law. They want the leader of a democratic community of equals to treat everyone equally. They want him to honor and practice the idea of the universal human family.

In an American* context, they are getting what they want.

But I’m afraid they are not hearing it. And I’m afraid they are not hearing it, because they are not listening to what Biden is saying. Instead, they are listening to what someone else said Biden said.

If someone is against college campus protestors, because they believe college campus protests are the same thing as antisemitism, then they will find what they are looking for in Biden’s speech. That person can point, for instance, to the Associated Press report and say, look – the president denounced college campus protests. See? I was right.

Biden did not denounce campus protests. He denounced hate speech against Jews credibly reported on college campuses. (He very clearly defended the right to “peaceful protest.”) Moreover, he denounce all hate speech against all minority groups. He even elevated it as one of the biggest threats not only to democracy but to civilization itself.

But if you’re only hearing what this person said Biden said, then you might not know any of that. You might even conclude that Biden is somehow sanctioning one kind of hate by way of whitewashing another. Liberal and Democrats (and even some leftists) don’t want that. Happily, Biden isn’t doing what they don’t want him to do.

*I’m talking about politics in America. While Israel is an ally, Biden can’t force its leader to quit looking like a war criminal. He can stop sending arms, though. We shall see. The AP reported Tuesday that the US paused a shipment of weapons as Israel prepared to invade Rafah.

It’s time to remind readers and subscribers of the Editorial Board that you are, by dint of being readers and subscribers of the Editorial Board, kinda sorta not normal. You spend time thinking about politics. Most people don’t do that. The most time most people think about politics is whatever the last person they talked to said about politics.

To put this another way, we tend to assume, because we spend time thinking about politics, that most people know what we know about politics, including all the dangers of second term for Donald Trump, including all the era-defining achievements of Joe Biden’s first term.

They almost certainly don’t.

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When I say “most people,” I’m not talking about people who believe propaganda and lies. I’m not talking about people who are so deep in the tank for Donald Trump they’re unreachable. Those people actually spend lots of time thinking about politics. The difference is it’s bullshit.

I’m talking about people who know so little about politics that Donald Trump can come off as a reasonable person. Think about that. If you know something about politics, that’s not possible. But if you lowered your political knowledge to the average person’s level of political knowledge, Trump can seem like the reasonable flip side of Joe Biden.

And I don’t mean to insult anyone who doesn’t know much about politics. I once knew very little myself. I knew so little I voted, to my shame, for Ralph Nader in 2000. Politics, like anything else, takes time to learn. Everyone needs a reason. I had reasons. Most people never find one. The result is that lots of people think Trump is just another politician, though perhaps better, because he doesn’t act like one.

So … knowing that most people don’t know much about politics, what would you say to someone who might be on the fence about voting for Donald Trump. By “on the fence,” I mean genuinely on the fence. I mean someone who might want to vote for him but has doubts. (I also mean someone who might want to vote for Biden but has doubts.) What would be your most serious effort to persuade that person?

Last week, I put that question to my Twitter followers. Here are the results. (I have edited for length, context and clarity.) If you’d like to join the conversation, click the reply button (or email me at [email protected]). If I get quality responses, I’ll make this an ongoing thing – a set of tools we can use to defend our democracy.

David Akadjian: If the person truly is on the fence, I talk about how every first-world country is a democracy. The common thread in third-world countries is they're run for the benefit of a few at the top.

John Panzer: I'd ask what their top values are. Then I'd point out how Trump is directly opposed to those values, giving examples.

Elizabeth Gardner: If they're on the fence, because they aren't paying attention, you might point out how many people worked in his administration aren't coming back, are warning people not to vote for him, or are testifying against him. Contrast that with Biden’s team.

@YesQuake: First thing, I would do is listen to their concerns and life situation. Example: Recently, I was talking with a Trump supporter who was upset to learn taxes are taken out of her Social Security. I could tell her that was a GOP bill passed under Ronald Reagan.

Catherine Hagman: Honestly? The warming planet. I know it's not the top Republican issue, but then that's precisely the point. Biden acts on the environment. Trump will exacerbate the crisis. Oil profits and tax cuts won't rescue anyone from the only Earth we have.

Roger A. Reynolds: Would you do business with that guy? Would you do a professional service for that guy without being paid up front, in full? Would you want you wife sat next to that guy at dinner? Do you trust anyone with no art in their life? Do you cheat at golf?

Jon vanHorne: Your savings and any wealth you have are only protected by the rule of law, which Trump has promised (see Project 2025) to end. Russia oligarchs have learned this rule.

Steve Dowling: My question would be, "Why do you think he's going to do anything he promises?" Couldn't repeal Obamacare, Hillary is still at large, the wall won't ever be built, infrastructure week was a joke …

@IvoGatzinski: Demonstrate concretely how Trump already has cost her/him real dollars, and how another Trump term will be worse for her/his personal finances. A selfish opportunity-cost argument.

@kmgunder: Look, we disagree about economic policy and probably some social issues. But we almost certainly agree that soldiers who’ve sacrificed for their country deserve our utmost respect. Look at just how horrifically he’s treated them. Oh, and once Trump is dictator …

@fxshea62: Maga isn’t conservative. They take their foreign policy cues from Putin. They proclaim family values with an adulterer as their leader. Jeez, the man can’t even pay his own bills. The dictator answer should’ve been, “No, I would not be a dictator, even for an hour.”

@Lukethomas101: Trump isn’t a Republican. Ask them to mention any issue that a traditional Republican cares about (respect for law and the military, fiscal responsibility, the US Constitution, small government) and show how Trump opposes what someone like Reagan believed.

Fran Auerbach: He tried to overthrow the government of the United States in order to stay in power. He wanted to destroy our democracy which had been America’s backbone from the beginning. I cannot image any American being OK with this.

@Soaps_Hope: Forget policies for one election. Listen to Trump at a rally in full sounding like a lunatic. Listen to Biden sound like a compassionate, intelligent and decent man who can talk for over an hour straight. Then tell me which of these two you want in charge.

@beatthebrain: Your daughter, granddaughters, nieces and their female friends, and their teachers and coaches etc – all of them need you to be a good dad, grandfather, uncle, and vote against Trump. They will probably face extreme death-dread horribleness otherwise.

Robert Thweatt: You may assume the trains will run on time. They won't. They'll derail. Things that never occurred to you to question will become insecure. There will be nothing you can do. Not go to court, not vote. You'll have to hit the streets with BLM and maybe get shot.

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