Donald Trump has been preparing for this moment for a long time

[dalton99a]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/09/donald-trump-has-been-preparing-this-moment/
https://archive.ph/698Cf

Donald Trump has been preparing for this moment for a long time
Analysis by Philip Bump
August 9, 2022 at 1:54 p.m. EDT

...

Trump actively stoked the idea that the FBI was out to get him for one very obvious reason: It ensured that his supporters and his allies in conservative media would approach the investigations into his actions as themselves suspect. It also had an added benefit: Should the FBI launch further probes, his team would already be conditioned to respond with skepticism.

There are rewards to be earned from moving quickly in casting the probe as suspect. Following an example set in part by Trump himself, GOP officials rushed to offer up products in the robust marketplace of social media commentary. The most outrageous denunciation of the search could earn more attention and more followers — and perhaps more clout. A number of people hustled to raise money off the news, including GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who suggested that angry donors contribute to the party’s Senate nominee in Georgia; J.D. Vance, a Senate candidate in Ohio; and Trump himself.

One reason that the Mar-a-Lago search might “unite [the] different factions in the party,” as a Trump aide told Politico, is that it isn’t pro-Trump but anti-FBI. Republicans from both the pro- and less-pro-Trump segments of the GOP get to express outrage at a group that Republicans are primed to distrust. Outrage at a government department that can be cast as the swamp or the Deep State or even the Elites, depending on who’s doing the casting.

Trump’s effort to depict the search as the work of “Radical Left Democrats” has its own value to politicians or members of the conservative media. If you want to appeal to a Republican audience, casting this as Democrats-against-Trump is valuable. More than three-quarters of Republicans still view Trump favorably, down only slightly from the height of the 2020 campaign. That includes more than half who view him very favorably. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, is viewed favorably by essentially no Republicans.

[C_U_L8R]

1. The magats were more than ready to shriek 'civil war'

A bit too ready and eager. Thank goodness they offered so much more damning evidence.

[Metaphorical]

2. Perhaps, though I think this hurts both him and the GOP far more than not

The FBI is an interesting organization (I've had a chance to work with it at one point in my own career). Especially after J. Edgar Hoover, the organization cleaned house dramatically, and put a lot of safeguards in place to prevent that level of abuse again. They have historically leaned Republican, but they have also believed in law enforcement. For a long time, most Republicans respected the FBI and what it stood for.

The current GOP has, on the other hand, moved so far to the right that they don't trust Federal LEOs and see them as the enemy. This is very new, certainly within TFG's tenure. The same shift has happened in the military, where many officers have found themselves increasingly faced with the untenable situation of disobeying a direct but illegal order.

For the Trump-driven GOP, this is just fine, but it also has caused a lot of uncomfortable former Republicans to become Independents or even Democrats, because the GOP, supposedly the party of Law and Order, has become lawless and criminal.

Up until now, this hasn't made that much difference, yet when a Trump-appointed head of the FBI seeks and executes asset seizures legally with a writ, this is going to solidify feelings by all of those independents who were already uncomfortable with the indications that the GOP was becoming criminal into coalescing those vague feelings into belief.

It is seventy five days - two and a half months - to the general election. In the last few weeks, the rights of women to an abortion have been significantly curtailed, with similar bans on contraceptives on the horizon. The "sleepy" president has managed to enact one of the most sweeping reforms across a wide-array of problems in recent history. Inflation and gas prices are both now dropping, and unemployment stays persistently low, giving the lie to the US being in a recession. The US is out of Afghanistan, Putin is facing united opposition in Ukraine, and increasingly the Republicans are on the wrong side of the issues - pro-Crime, pro-Dictators, anti-Worker, anti-Woman, pro-Russia, pro-Climate Denialism.

This is not where the GOP wants to be this close to the election.

[Beetwasher.]

3. Agreed, Enough Navel Gazing, Time for Justice

[ProfessorGAC]

4. "Unite The Factions..."

Said by a TFG acolyte. And WaPo thinks it's worth basing a piece on such self-serving nonsense?