Bragg the New Crooked Sheriff But Trump Still a Losing Choice
Corrupt New York a questionable place to do business
For starters, let’s stipulate that Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney who just indicted former President Donald Trump, is a penny-ante Leninist and the contemporary equivalent of a crooked mid-century southern sheriff who thinks he is the law.
For Leninists, politics trumps everything else. Duty to country and community, oaths of office, public safety, and justice itself, are mere talking points to be used with unironic cant in service of a political end. The indictment of Trump on phony charges for an abstract, arcane alleged offense before he was president is the culmination of a long process of Leninist politicization of everything including the justice system. It marks a fundamentally undemocratic abuse of power. Instead of relying on the verdict of voters, the elite will pass judgment on who can and cannot lead us from privileged enclaves like Manhattan courtrooms where the decks are stacked in their favor.
Just as voters cannot be trusted anymore to separate good ideas from bad ones—an essential task democracy has entrusted the American people for centuries because they are good at it—as evidenced by the Left’s big tech-government axis of censorship, they also cannot be trusted to choose the right leaders. After his surprise election in 2016, voters rebuked Trump directly or indirectly in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections, but that was not sufficient. Corrupt publicity-seekers like Bragg now perceive not only the authority but the righteous obligation to subvert political processes by conflating them with legal process.
New York City now looks to the world like a banana republic run by urban hicks. Crime is out of control, people are still moving out en masse, and the city is a shadow of its former self long after the rest of America returned to normal. Yet its top prosecutor thinks his resources are best devoted to hounding Trump, who, like millions of other Empire State refugees, doesn’t even live there anymore.
This political-legal putsch by people who are utter failures at serving the public is the lamentable state to which we have been delivered by a group of progressive politicians ranging from local yokels like Bragg all the way up to President Joe Biden.
No longer can New York be called the capital of world with a straight face, as previous mayors referred to the city. With pols like Bragg leading it down the drain, the Big Apple may no longer even lead in finance for much longer. Internationally, it faces competition from the likes of Singapore and Dubai. Domestically, it is losing to finance hubs like Menlo Park, Charlotte, and West Palm Beach.
The latter, known increasingly as the “Wall Street of the South,” falls in the state of Florida. There, Governor Ron DeSantis and a Republican legislature have done the opposite of New York—including reining in abusive progressive prosecutors. DeSantis declared today that Florida would refuse any extradition request New York makes of Trump.
Trump may get a boost in polls from past supporters rightly outraged at this abuse of the legal system. Trump himself has artfully portrayed his persecutors as “the enemy of the hard-working men and women of this Country.” But it would be a mistake for Republicans to reward him with the presidential nomination when caucuses and primaries begin nine months from now—and I doubt they will.
Trump’s defense, beginning with his statement today, will be another fatiguing, distracting cycle of self-reference, self-pity, and self-promotion. Despite its dubious legal founding, the prosecution of Trump will remind swing voters who Trump lost in 2020 that scandal follows his every move—in this case the distraction of a porn star paid for her silence. After all, the original foundation of the prosecution is a plausible-sounding claim that, as a friend put it, Trump was “shtupping Stormy Daniels at a golf tournament while his wife was at home with a newborn and then relied on a legal ace like Michael Cohen to cover it up…” (Trump denies the affair and called Daniels “horse face.”)
The reality is that nominating Trump would lead to four more years of Democratic governance and there are alternatives to Trump that offer the best of what he demonstrated—a willingness to fight, a refusal to allow the media to set the rules of debate, and a GOP oriented toward blue collar America—without the endless baggage.
The answer to the Leninists who have perverted America and brought this injustice has to be to defeat them politically—not going down in flames in an effort to spite them. After a wave of outrage, voters will ask who is best to salvage a country that is divided, indebted, heading into recession, marred by violent cities, and unprepared for conflict with China. Which Republican can deliver the first successful two-term presidency in decades?
It isn’t Donald Trump, his endless baggage train, and his four-year track record of failing to control the government he led. Instead, the nominee should be someone like DeSantis who has an effective track record of actually getting control of government, crediting people other than himself, attracting swing voters by improving their lives, and being the happy warrior who never lets the media or the establishment set the rules of debate. Trump talks about winning; DeSantis gets the job done.
Speaking of DeSantis
Did you catch the full interview of DeSantis by Piers Morgan on Fox News? Well worth your time to see a leader who speaks on a broad range of issues without hesitation or scripted, focus group-tested talking points.
Simon and Whiton
In our latest episode, Mark and I discussed the latest on DeSantis and other GOP contenders plus Xi and Putin and William Lai as Taiwan’s prospective next president. Take a look.
While I can admire DeSantis, he is valuable as a FL leader - showing the nation what can be accomplished, I'd prefer he not run in '24. I would like to see Vivek Ramaswamy get some traction. Like Andrew Yang, he is an outsider with an ability to manage. Neither has any chance with the political machines to control their sinecures in the Uniparty.
Trump did well to latch onto MAGA which to my mind was a resurrection of the Tea Party but with a leader. I still think we have a huge citizen desire for some level of control of our federal government, to reign it in. It may be impossible to do that but it needs to start.
This is so spot on! Appreciate your thinking and clarity in writing. Trump is a continual distraction--he can’t help himself.