Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Media's failure to deal with Trump is rivaled by the courts

[Brexiter]

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.

The Hill:

Trump says federal abortion ban is not needed ‘because we broke Roe v. Wade’

“Because we don’t need it any longer. Because we broke Roe v. Wade, and we did something that nobody thought was possible,” Trump said. “We gave it back to the states. And the states are very working very brilliantly, in some cases conservative, in some cases not conservative. But they’re working and it’s working the way it’s supposed to.”

“You’re having some very, very beautiful harmony to be honest with you,” Trump said.

When he’s incoherent, and a liar to boot, statements like this don’t take the issue off the table for Donald Trump, no matter how hard he pushes the idea that it does. This is not a story he can control, and that’s driving him nuts. But that doesn’t mean our political media is dealing with it thoughtfully.

What if the media, instead of reporting "Trump says…,” reported that "Trump, who has often lied about this issue, says …”? It would: * Give Trump's comment a truthful context. * Violate widely held “objectivity” standards. In today's media, truth-telling is often seen as bias.

— Mark Jacob (@MarkJacob16) April 11, 2024

Wesley Morris/The New York Times:

O.J. Was an Earthquake. We’re Still Living With His Aftershocks.


He tried to shed his Blackness, but his all-consuming murder trial put the historically lurid American psyche on full display.

Are we still in Great American territory? I think so. After all, folks knew what he meant. It can be a real burden, standing for, standing in for. Folks also knew that O.J. liked to run. That was him in 1977, galloping in Africa alongside LeVar Burton on night one of “Roots.” The man was not an intellectual — not in any conventional sense. He did exist as an idea, though, as a curious, compelling, perhaps glorious “what if?” What if a Black man were free to live as himself and never face a consequence for merely being? What if white people truly just saw him as he wished they would — as O.J.? He appeared to be living just that dream. In a place some call “La La Land,” no less. But it was more like a program the La Las once produced: “Fantasy Island.”

There are a lot of lenses one can use to look at the O.J. Simpson story—and this is one of the more interesting ones.

Analysts spend countless hours and resources compiling the precinct-level election results they need for litigation and research. They want legislation to force states to make it all accessible. NEW in @boltsmag from @DaraGold5: https://t.co/pvmg4weB97

— Bolts (@boltsmag) April 12, 2024

Bolts covers voting topics at a ‘big picture but local’ level that others just don’t.

POLITICO Magazine:

How Donald Trump Gets Special Treatment in the Legal System The former president rails against a “two-tiered system of justice.” But he’s the one benefiting from it.

Today, Trump routinely spouts invective far more inflammatory than anything Hill said. He denigrates prosecutors. He lies about his cases. He vilifies the judges overseeing them — and then vilifies their wives and daughters, too. Yet Trump has never faced the swift repercussions that were imposed on Hill — and are routinely imposed on other defendants in America.

Instead, Trump gets special treatment.

“I can’t imagine any other defendant posting on social media about a judge’s family and not being very quickly incarcerated,” said Russell Gold, a law professor at the University of Alabama.​

State prosecutor to investigate Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in Trump case; Pete Skandalakis was assigned the Jones case after Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney recused District Attorney Fani Willis from overseeing an investigation of Jones #gapol https://t.co/SYFpLLCktS

— Brian O'Shea (@bposhea) April 11, 2024

Simon Rosenberg/”Hopium Chronicles” on Substack:

Why I'm Optimistic About Winning This November

• 
  My Latest Take on Where Things Are (Video, 4/12/24) - This is my latest overview of where we are in the 2024 election and why I am so fundamentally optimistic. The post also has a deep dive on recent, encouraging polling data. While it remains a close, competitive election, things have gotten bluer in recent weeks, and Trump no longer leads.
  
  
• 
  My Interview With the NYT - This long interview with me ran last week. Do read. Lots of great stuff in here.
  
  
• 
  Deep State Radio Podcast with David Rothkopf and Tara McGowan - every week few weeks I get together with my good friends David and Tara for a review of the latest in the 2024 election. Do listen, this is always a great podcast with two of the smartest people I know.
  

Philip Rotner/The Bulwark:

Judge Cannon Signals a New Plan

Understanding her sudden swerve in the context of everything that came before in the the classified documents case against Trump.

IF CANNON IS DETERMINED to acquit Trump, the smart move would be for her to keep deciding every pre-trial motion in favor of Smith, not Trump, thus ensuring that she stays on the case, just where she needs to be to issue an order of acquittal at the close of Smith’s case.

The only way Smith can prevent that is to go to the Eleventh Circuit now. It comes down to a matter of assessing patterns and weighing risks. There is no way to know for certain that Cannon is executing a new plan to acquit Trump, and there is a risk that if Smith goes to the court of appeals too soon, it will deny his request to remove Cannon from the case.

But the risk of being rebuffed by the Eleventh Circuit is outweighed by the risk of allowing Cannon to engage in judicial rope-a-dope that would exhaust Smith’s case for Cannon’s removal until it is too late.

Smith may not be able to know exactly what Cannon will do. But he does know what she can do. And based on what she has done, that should be enough for him to act now.

Democrats should respond by requiring the federal government to give everyone a free national identification card and let it count as voter registration https://t.co/wvfG9diadg

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) April 12, 2024

Walter Olson/The UnPopulist:

The Right’s Bogus Claims about Noncitizen Voting Fraud

Trump, Musk, and Vance’s baseless accusations undermine public confidence in American elections and are dangerous

For four years, the Department of Justice reported to Donald Trump, who had inveighed against voter fraud. So far as I have been able to tell from news reports, its biggest resulting prosecution of noncitizen voting came in 2020 in North Carolina, where a federal grand jury, following a DHS investigation, indicted 19 persons of varying nationalities for voting in the state’s federal election. That’s 19 persons too many to have voted, assuming the charges panned out, but it’s unlikely that it changed any outcomes given that more than 3.6 million persons cast their ballot in North Carolina’s 2018 election.

Why can Trump run on a huge sales tax and get no grief for it, while Biden can oversee an oil glut, and a collapse in murder, and still be viewed as a carbon-taxing, soft-on-crime pinko? Because the issue opinion is about vibes more than substance, too. https://t.co/XT4hGMxTVH

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) April 12, 2024

Noah Berlatsky/”Public Notice” on Substack:

Republicans remain terrible at picking Senate candidates

Tim Sheehy and Kari Lake are the new Blake Masters and Herschel Walker.

Republican Montana Senate candidate Tim Sheehy spent last week confirming that he’s a liar, which is not exactly how you want to spend your week as a Senate candidate.

Sheehy also demonstrated, for anyone who doubted it, that the GOP continues to have serious problems recruiting decent candidates for high office. Recruitment problems are why they don’t control the Senate right now. And it’s why, despite every advantage and a map that couldn’t be better for them, they still, with a good bit of luck, may be able to pull defeat from the jaws of victory this November.

Cliff Schecter on Bob Cesca’s show discuss Trump’s appeal:

YouTube Video