Tuesday's postcard, and the day's honk of history
April 4, 2023
Ring-necked pheasant, western Whitman County
Happy Arraignment Day, etc…
To cut to the chase, this morning, Happy Trump Arraignment Day everybody.
I’ll admit it was tempting to look away from this bloated, sloppy, cheese and mustard-leaking enchilada of news, buffoonery and instant history to focus on more dignified fare. But that would be too much like the fatal satire of the Don’t Look Up film from late 2021.
This salacious nightmare was and is real. Trump happened and happens still, and today will—if nothing else—offer a glimpse of a tangible possibility that this twice-impeached disaster of a human being may actually be held accountable for at least one of his crimes. In essence, the charge(s) appear to be fraud associated with his arranging to pay off one or more women with whom he had sex in order to avoid news of the sordid affairs leaking out as he was campaigning for President in 2016.
Sometimes the dark satire of a film like Don’t Look Up is replicated in real life, and I think this was the case a few days ago in an interview Trump gave to Fox News’s Sean Hannity.
With Trump’s problems mounting, Hannity was obviously trying to help get the former President (and announced 2024 candidate) around one of the more glaring legal problems that awaits him. This would be Trump’s alleged role in knowingly resisting a federal subpoena to turn over government documents (many of which were classified) that he’d stashed away at his Mar-a-lago resort/home in Palm Beach, Florida.
From the March 27th interview with Hannity—
Hannity: “I can’t imagine you ever saying, ‘Bring me some of the boxes that we brought back from the White House, I’d like to look at them.’ Did you ever do that?”
“I would have the right to do that, there’s nothing wrong with it,” Trump replied.
“I know, but I don’t think you would do it,” said Hannity, helpfully volunteering a character reference.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” Trump replied, “but I would have the right to do that. There’d be nothing wrong. Remember this…”
(If I may interject. This is where an actual journalist would invite Trump to elaborate, since he’s right to the verge of admitting he had illegally absconded with the documents in question and was brazenly defying the subpoena. But, of course, that’s not how it works at Fox.
“All right,” Hannity interrupts, obviously trying to save Trump by trying to cut him off. “Let’s move on.”
No such luck.
“This is the Presidential Records Act,” Trump then proclaimed (wrongly) “I have the right to take stuff.”
It was just a few days later (April 2nd) that the Washington Post broke the story that federal investigators have now “amassed fresh evidence pointing to possible obstruction” by Trump, personally, in the unlawful stowing of secret documents at Mar-a-lago.
Enough of that.
On a more solemn note, today is also the 55th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination in Memphis.
On a more inspiring note, yesterday and over night, more than a thousand students in Nashville walked out of their classrooms to converge on the Tennessee state house to loudly protest the GOP-controlled legislature’s inaction on guns. This in the wake of last Monday’s school shooting in Nashville. Organized by the youth-led “March for Our Lives” group, one of the more polite messages aimed at the gun-guarding legislature was this one: “It’s not drag queens, it’s not books, it’s not Black history, it’s not trans rights — GUNS are KILLING KIDS.”
—tjc