This just in: Trump has been indicted…again. I’m not talking about the tax evasion and insurance fraud case in New York. I’m not talking about the defamation/rape case. I’m not talking about the election interference case in Georgia. I’m not talking about inciting an insurrection case on January 6th. All of those are real cases. All of them are very serious but I’m not referring to any of those.

I’m talking about the case where Trump knowingly took highly classified documents from the White House after he was no longer president, denied he had them, and then tried to hide them. That’s the case Trump was just indicted for.

Jack Smith, the special counsel assigned to investigate this case has come through with overwhelming evidence. No hearsay or “read between the lines” to find some guilt. He has confessions. He has photos, videos, and audio tapes.

In short, the case against Trump is stronger than if he had shot someone on 5th Avenue in broad daylight in front of thousands of people.

He will go to jail for this.

But let’s look at how the Republican Party is handling this.

You might remember that they call themselves the party of Law and Order. They call themselves Constitutionalists.

They can call themselves whatever they want. The real question is: What do their actions say?

Let’s go through some of their defenses. The common thread here is that every one of these is easily countered with facts. Facts like: What does the law say? What did previous investigations find? That type of thing.

Let’s start with the Pillow Guy defense. This is where they accuse or promise something groundbreaking but never come through.

1. Hunter Biden’s laptop, any day now, will show that he and his dad did something unspeakable. We can’t tell you about it just but believe us when we tell you it’s really bad.
2. Joe Biden took $5 million from the Chinese. We don’t have evidence just yet but we’re sure to find it soon because we read all about this on the QANON site online.

Then there is the Deflection defense:

1. What Hillary did was much worse. Really? Tell me more because Trump had 4 years to investigate her and found nothing.
2. Joe Biden is a dictator. Really? Tell me more because I don’t think you know what that word means.
3. Joe Biden did the same thing? Really? Tell me more. Don’t just say words. Go through the 37 points in Trump’s indictment and for each one, cite the thing that Biden did that was equivalent. How about you just pick one and show me the equivalence?

Then there are all sorts of other things.

1. McCarthy claims it was okay because the bathroom door had a lock. He forgot that the bathroom door only locks from the inside. He implies that the documents would wait for everyone to leave the room and then lock themselves inside.
2. McCarthy also claims that Biden hid thousands of documents in a garage and we all know that garages don’t have locks. In response to this, someone on Twitter said, “I’m going to invent a garage lock and make millions.”
3. Jim Jordan said that if Trump claimed to have declassified the documents then he believed him. Never mind that this is a case of facts, not beliefs. For example, it’s a fact that Trump did not have the power to declassify any of these documents. There is also the fact that there is an audio tape of Trump saying he didn’t have the authority.

Ask a Republican about any of these points of fact and they will say, “I haven’t heard the tape” or “I haven’t read the charges.” What this means is they are twisting themselves into pretzels to defend Trump even though they claim to not know any of the facts.

Here is the problem: A lot of people only get their news from their politicians or Faux news. Thus, they are uninformed.

An uninformed public is the only reason any Republican is ever elected.

By the way, I post stuff like this on online all the time. Every now and then, someone will respond with “Hey, asshole. They all do it.”

I find this an uncompelling argument.

Time to save the world,

Up, up and away…

Jim