Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: European reactions to Trump's NATO threat

[Brexiter]

We begin today with Dan Sabbagh of The Guardian, who notes the mixed European reactions to Donald Trump’s incendiary comments about NATO at a South Carolina rally on Saturday.

On Monday, some European leaders were openly critical of Trump. On a visit to Cyprus, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s president, said: “These statements are not responsible, and they help Russia.”

Others were more nuanced. David Cameron, the UK foreign secretary, said Trump’s remarks were unhelpful: “Of course we want all countries, like us, to spend 2% [of GDP], but I think what was said was not a sensible approach.”

There was a more sympathetic response from an EU neighbour of Russia. Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s prime minister, said: “I think what the presidential candidate in America said is also something to maybe wake up some of the allies who haven’t done that much.”

[Polish Prime Minister Donald] Tusk, who leads the Nato country with the highest proportion of defence spending, said: “The European Union, France and Poland must become strong and ready to defend their own borders and to defend and support our allies and friends from outside the union.”

A little context for Tusk’s take:

Frank Gardner of BBC News simply says that Number 45’s comments are dangerous in these times.

Did Trump mean what he said? Probably not. This is typical Trump fare. Say something provocative, grab some headlines, outrage your critics and thrill your fans.

[...]

Mr Trump's throwaway comments still constitute dangerous talk at a dangerous time, for Nato and for the Western world. Ukraine's summer 2023 offensive has failed.

[...]

… should Moscow decide to send tanks across its borders into, say, Estonia, then this would trigger a massive response by Nato. Under a Trump presidency, that certainty would not look nearly so certain.

And thereby lies the danger in Trump's comments. If a future aggressor, be it Vladimir Putin in Europe or Xi Jinping in the South China Sea, begins to doubt Washington's commitment to defend its allies, then it risks a massive miscalculation. You don't have to look far for an example. Two years ago, President Putin's intelligence people told him the West would sit on its hands if he invaded Ukraine.

They were wrong - and a catastrophic war has ensued.

Matthew Karnitschnig of POLITICO Europe thinks that maybe Europe should take the hint.

Europe would be crazy to leave its security every four years up to the whims of about 50,000 American swing-state voters (the rough margin of victory in recent presidential elections).

The reality is that whoever wins in November, MAGA will remain a factor in American politics for some time to come. Who’s to say Trump’s Republican heir doesn’t renew his anti-NATO bent? It’ s a risk Europe can’t afford to ignore.

Even as a candidate, Trump has shown the extent of his influence over the Republican party, forcing it last week to block a legislative package that included another batch of sorely needed military aid for Ukraine. The U.S. Congress may yet send more help to Ukraine, but may well not.

The bottom line is that it’s become risky to count on America.

I will note that Karnitschnig isn’t the only European pundit saying that maybe Europe should take Trump’s “hint” and act accordingly. French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron has been saying that they need to beef up their own defenses in response to U.S. political instability.

Near the end of his column, Karnitschnig also linked to this interesting speech that then-Sen. Joe Biden made in December 1995 about the war in Bosnia.

#Biden speech from 1995 about "US Troops in Bosnia". He foresaw everything that is happening now in #Ukraine and Europe: Biden answers: What is our interest in Bosnia? War will spread in Europe, if we don't stop it. 25 Mio Russians live outside of Russia. Western Alliance will… pic.twitter.com/0uQoHDSE0z

— Goran Majić (@Goran_Majic) February 10, 2024

Chris Geidner comments at his “Law Dork” Substack about Trump’s request to the U.S. Supreme Court to continue the stay on his D.C. federal trial while he seeks appellate review for his claim of presidential immunity.

“Without immunity from criminal prosecution, the Presidency as we know it will cease to exist,” Trump’s lawyers told the high court on Monday in arguing that both lower courts got it wrong — extraordinarily wrong, they argued.

With (I suspect) unintended irony, that line came only a few sentences after the lawyers acknowledged in the same paragraph that “n 234 years of American history, no President was ever prosecuted for his official acts.”

In other words, from the first two pages of Monday’s filing, Trump’s lawyers urged that not giving Trump an immunity that no president before him has sought or needed will destroy the presidency.

On Monday morning, University of Texas School of Law professor Steve Vladeck explained how he thought this request was likely to proceed, and I agree with him that the Supreme Court is most likely either to deny the request for a stay or to treat the application as a petition for certiorari (appeal) as well, grant a stay and grant cert, and set a quick timeline for briefing and arguments.

Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo begins digging into documents turned over to Michigan prosecutors by Kenneth Chesebro and obtained by TPM. The documents indicate that Trump’s lawyers may have been prepared to fight long past Jan. 6, 2021.

Chesebro, emails show, sought to take the myth of fraud that Trump had created to its logical conclusion: a stalemate in Congress over the result, and a country without a president-elect. If Congress couldn’t act, the theory went, the Supreme Court would have no choice but to decide the election.

During that critical Jan. 6 to Jan. 20 period, Chesebro envisioned the Trump campaign presenting supposed evidence of voter fraud over and over again, capitalizing on the chaos to make its case while proving that Congress was “unable to act.”

That meant ensuring that the Jan. 6 certification session in Congress essentially never ended. As Chesebro put it to another attorney, “Jan 6 is the real deadline” for certifying the election result. By extension, Chesebro suggested, the Trump campaign could keep the election result up in the air if Congress kept debating the 2020 election result on Jan. 6 without certifying it.

Nadra Nittle of The 19th News warns that while an overwhelming number of people approve of the conviction of Jennifer Crumbley, there’s a good chance that there will also be some unintended consequences.

It is rare for parents to be charged, let alone tried and convicted, after their child commits a school shooting. Yet, the novel charges and conviction of Crumbley have been widely celebrated. The prosecution called her behavior before the shooting “egregious,” and many people took to social media, where Crumbley trended the day of the verdict, to share that view. Some legal experts and parents argue, though, that the case could lead to more charges against parents in connection with their children’s crimes, a trend they say could disproportionately affect racially and economically marginalized families.

Crumbley, who is White, is the second mother in recent months to face a court conviction over her child’s role in a school shooting. In November, Virginia mom Deja Taylor, who is Black, was sentenced to 21 months in prison after her 6-year-old son used her gun in a nonfatal shooting of his first-grade teacher early last year. Federal agents said there was no evidence that Taylor had ever safely stored the gun, and she faced up to 25 years in prison. Both Taylor and Crumbley were portrayed as bad moms outside of their children’s gun violence — including for consuming marijuana and having an extramarital affair, respectively.

[...]

W. David Ball, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, does not dispute that Jennifer Crumbley’s parenting was lacking. But what’s novel about the Crumbley case, he said, is that it indicates a mother can be held criminally liable for a child’s behavior because of her bad parenting.

“And I think the concern here is that typically when the criminal law is expanded, all of the sorts of inequities in society that we see expand right along with it,” Ball said.

Mary Ellen McIntire of Roll Call writes about the national implications of Tuesday’s snow-filled special election in New York to replace George Santos.

The race to replace expelled Rep. George Santos, who faces 23 federal criminal charges, has drawn millions of dollars in outside spending and a trial run for issues both parties may try to focus on in swing districts nationwide this year.

[...]

Former Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, is seeking a comeback to Congress after giving up his seat to run unsuccessfully for governor in 2022. The former three-term House member is campaigning on his bipartisan credentials and focusing on issues meant to appeal to both the Democratic base, like abortion rights, and voters who have followed the region’s trend toward Republicans, like immigration.

[...]

New York is a focal point of the House battleground this year, with seven districts that are set to have competitive races, although the map could still change through redistricting. The Republicans facing reelection in districts that President Joe Biden would have won four years ago are Reps. Nick LaLota, Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro and Brandon Williams. Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan also faces a competitive race in the 18th District.

[...]

An Emerson College poll of “very likely voters” released last week found Suozzi led Pilip 52 percent to 48 percent when voters who were leaning toward a candidate were added to those who were already behind someone. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

I wonder why Renée Graham of The Boston Globe would be suspicious to the point of being cynical about corporate America’s response to Black History Month.

As necessary as Black History Month remains, it is often fraught with reminders that corporate America’s yearly pandering is less a celebration to “uplift Black culture” — as one currently available T-shirt says — than a cynical money grab on products that will disappear as soon as February ends.

All event-focused store displays, like those for Valentine’s Day or St. Patrick’s Day, have limited shelf lives. But American history is not a fixed holiday that should garner attention for a few weeks before it is relegated to the discount tables, especially at a time when Black history in particular is being attacked by Republican-led legislatures and books are banished from public school classrooms and libraries

[...]

But this year’s corporatization of Black culture and history is happening as diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are vanishing from companies faster than you can say “What racial reckoning?” The dissonance between performative celebrations of Black history and the dissolution of programs to help make corporate America look more like America is impossible to overlook.

When a group has been disrespected for so long, their achievements downplayed or ignored, there’s a misconception that they’ll settle for any crumb of recognition tossed their way. We won’t. But for many companies, that’s how low their bar is in acknowledging Black History Month.​

Finally today, Naira Galarraga Gortázar of El País in English has a timeline of Bolsonaro’s coup against Brazil as laid out in a 135-page indictment against the former Brazilian insurrectionist.

The judge’s indictment against Jair Messias Bolsonaro — the retired Army captain who governed Brazil from 2019 until 2022 — is devastating. The 135-page document is based on the confession of a witness with privileged access to the former president. It includes screenshots of compromising WhatsApp conversations between the suspects, including the former Minister of Defense.

No country uses the encrypted messaging app as intensely as Brazil. Hence, it’s not surprising that WhatsApp was one of the means of communication used to cook up an attempted coup d’état. The Supreme Court and the Federal Police accuse former president Bolsonaro, four generals, an admiral and around 20 civilians of concocting the plot.

The police’s case leans heavily on the confession (and mobile phone) of the man who probably spent the most time with Bolsonaro while he was president: his personal secretary, 44-year-old Lieutenant Mauro Cid. The military appears as a central intersection for the exchange of information between the suspects in the coup plot. After four months in prison for falsifying his vaccination card, Lieutenant Cid finally decided to speak out. He has offered valuable information, which the police are using to accuse the former president and the rest of the suspects.

Try to have the best possible day, everyone!