Worse, Brooks is playing the old "economic anxiety" card, that the poors are mad at the "elites" for taking all the good jobs, looking down their noses, etc., and that's why they voted for Trump. Which is bullshit, of course, and even a cursory look at the breakdowns by income of how people voted would have shown him, but our Mr. Brooks is more interested in his feels than in data.
I think even worse than either the Brooks or Von Drehle columns is this excrement by Jack Goldsmith, which call the prosecution of Trump "unseemly" because it comes so close to the election, as if Trump running is some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card, and ropes in the Mueller investigation (which resulted in numerous convictions) and the Hunter Biden nonsense (which resulted in charges, and a disputed plea deal) as examples of biased prosecutions. In other words, he treats Republican complaints as good faith ones, and takes them at face value, while claiming he is not engaging in "whataboutism" (spoiler alert: he is). In the end, Trump's charges are a result of the "politicization of crime," regardless of whether or not he committed the crimes and will lead to "tit-for-tat investigations" by some future Republican-led Congress (he somehow misses what's going on with the current one).
What's funny is that Goldsmith ignores Trump's actual politicization of the DOJ: First, when he tried to get Ukraine to give "dirt" on Biden to the DOJ (which is what the first impeachment was about); then he tried to get Jeffrey Clark installed as acting director, in order to shore up the fake electors scheme. One could argue the the politicization of crime goes all the way back to Nixon asking Hoover to go after his "enemies" more aggressively, the Constitution be damned (and even for Hoover that was a bridge too far).
Goldsmith ends with this: "None of these considerations absolve Mr. Trump, who is ultimately responsible for this mammoth mess. The difficult question is whether redressing his shameful acts through criminal law is worth the enormous costs to the country." Clearly, the only way to prevent this from happening again is to not prosecute the person responsible for it happening in 2020.
It’s bizarre that guys like Brooks and Von Drehle are still stuck in the “Trump’s a silly billy doofus” mindset after all this time.
Worse, Brooks is playing the old "economic anxiety" card, that the poors are mad at the "elites" for taking all the good jobs, looking down their noses, etc., and that's why they voted for Trump. Which is bullshit, of course, and even a cursory look at the breakdowns by income of how people voted would have shown him, but our Mr. Brooks is more interested in his feels than in data.
I think even worse than either the Brooks or Von Drehle columns is this excrement by Jack Goldsmith, which call the prosecution of Trump "unseemly" because it comes so close to the election, as if Trump running is some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card, and ropes in the Mueller investigation (which resulted in numerous convictions) and the Hunter Biden nonsense (which resulted in charges, and a disputed plea deal) as examples of biased prosecutions. In other words, he treats Republican complaints as good faith ones, and takes them at face value, while claiming he is not engaging in "whataboutism" (spoiler alert: he is). In the end, Trump's charges are a result of the "politicization of crime," regardless of whether or not he committed the crimes and will lead to "tit-for-tat investigations" by some future Republican-led Congress (he somehow misses what's going on with the current one).
What's funny is that Goldsmith ignores Trump's actual politicization of the DOJ: First, when he tried to get Ukraine to give "dirt" on Biden to the DOJ (which is what the first impeachment was about); then he tried to get Jeffrey Clark installed as acting director, in order to shore up the fake electors scheme. One could argue the the politicization of crime goes all the way back to Nixon asking Hoover to go after his "enemies" more aggressively, the Constitution be damned (and even for Hoover that was a bridge too far).
Goldsmith ends with this: "None of these considerations absolve Mr. Trump, who is ultimately responsible for this mammoth mess. The difficult question is whether redressing his shameful acts through criminal law is worth the enormous costs to the country." Clearly, the only way to prevent this from happening again is to not prosecute the person responsible for it happening in 2020.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/opinion/trump-indictment-cost-danger.html
Forwarded this piece to my spouse. He said “I like this guy’s take on the shitweasel.”