By Chris Satullo
Four comments on the week’s events – a few pleasant surprises and a pair of persistent puzzlements. First, the good:
1) In no way did I expect Justice Juan Merchan to seat a full sworn-in jury of 12 by the end of this week in Donald Trump’s falsification of records trial in New York City. Plus six alternates. He got the job done in time for opening arguments to begin Monday. Bravo, judge.
My skepticism was in part because I live in Philadelphia, a city as deep blue as Manhattan. That means I know few people, very much including myself, who could honestly claim they could serve on this jury impartially.
As much as I would love to be part of sending Mr. Trump to Rikers Island to get fitted for a jumpsuit to match his orange hair, if I were sitting in that jury box undergoing voir dire, I would have to admit something disqualifying: My fierce desire to see the man held accountable for at least something would cloud my judgment of the case.
That said, I don’t disagree with the legal experts who’ve been called upon this week to explain jury selection and have opined that the average person is more capable than you might think of setting aside biases to weigh evidence fairly in light of the law.
Last summer I served for the first time on a jury. To my shock, a judge deemed my status as a journalist, which previously had always got me booted from jury pools in the first cut, to be a convincing token of my potential objectivity.
It was a criminal case, a garden-variety bodega robbery in Philly. What slightly surprised and definitely moved me was how seriously our motley crew in the jury room took our responsibility.
We acquitted the defendant, though I don’t think any of us was sure he was innocent. What we found crystal clear was this: The incompetent prosecutor had comically failed to make the state’s case; we just couldn’t send a man to prison based on such a clownish jumble of accusations. The judge visited us in the jury room after the verdict to thank us not just for our service but for “ensuring justice was done.”
So, I’ll make a promise: I’m going to trust this jury to get it right. I do expect them to convict Trump on the more minor allegations regarding false business records, for which the evidence is a slam-dunk. And if they don’t buy District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s attempt to prove his key, bank-shot felony accusation – that the paper fraud was in service of a larger election-law crime – I’m going to assume that’s the right conclusion.
2) I’ve had some sharply critical things to say in this space about House Speaker Mike Johnson’s faulty grasp of two sacred texts he claims to revere, the Christian Gospels and the U.S. Constitution.
But fair’s fair. When a man’s right, he’s right. When he’s brave in service of what’s right, you have to applaud no matter what else you might think of him.
To get America to perform its moral duty to support Ukraine’s noble but imperiled defense of its sovereignty, Johnson is taking the kind of political risk that very few of his fellow Republicans have been willing to take since the rise of MAGA.
The way he’s maneuvered a complicated Ukraine-Israel-Pacific rim security aid package into realm of possibility is impressive. He’s shown legislative savvy rarely in evidence on the GOP side of the aisle in recent years, the kind of savvy that naifs and know-nothings all across our political spectrum often pooh-pooh.
He’s done all this knowing full well it will likely lead the Idiot Caucus on his side of the aisle to seek to oust him from the speakership, as it did his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy.
Failing to send more aid to Ukraine would rank as one of the United States government’s most shameful deeds of this century, which is saying something.
So, respect, Mike. Respect.
Now, the bad:
3) What was Chris Sununu thinking?
He didn’t have to go on This Week with George Stephanopoulos last Sunday to grovel before a graven image of Donald Trump and spew pretzel logic with a coating of yellow mustard.
He had nothing to gain. The governor of New Hampshire, who blistered Trump over Jan. 6 and backed Nikki Haley for the nomination, has no future in a MAGA-fied GOP that is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Trump’s id.
His tortuous rhetorical loop-de-loops to justify his support of Trump in the general election accomplished only this: His name is now scratched off the list of recent Republican leaders whom history will treat with a modicum of respect and kindness.
Here were Sununu’s lame talking points:
— “51 percent” of Americans don’t see Trump’s election denials or his fomenting of the Capital riot as disqualifying, so why should he?
— “People” see Trump’s indictments and trials as “reality TV,” so why should he focus on the actual violations of law and assaults on the Constitution that led to those charges?
— He can justify re-electing an insurrectionist because, “For me, it’s not about him as much it is having a Republican administration.”
Oh, my. Where to begin?
Chris, at no point ever have 51 percent of Americans supported Donald Trump on anything, let alone Jan. 6. He didn’t get to 51 percent when he won in 2016; he certainly didn’t when he got thumped in 2020. His peak rating in the Gallup presidential approval poll was 49 percent, but for most of his term it lingered in the low 40’s, occasionally dipping into the 30’s.
Besides, even if Trump ever did soar all the way up to 51 percent, since when do Republicans change their positions simply because a majority of Americans disagree with them? They don’t on abortion. They don’t on gun control. They don’t on the Affordable Care Act. They don’t on tax hikes for the ultra-rich. And all those polling majorities are far more robust than 51 percent.
— “People see…” Are these the same “people” that Trump always invokes, who always “are saying” exactly what his own voracious ego needs to hear? And even if some dim bulbs really can’t tell the difference between The Apprentice and a bid to end our democracy, you are the chief executive of one of the United States who put your hand on a Bible and swore to uphold not just your state’s constitution, but our national document as well.
Finally: A “Republican administration”? Chris, there is no “Republican” anymore, in the way you mean it. There is only MAGA.
Here we see the durability of a desperate fantasy to which old-guard Republicans still cling: “Wise Republicans like me will gather around President Trump to keep him in check, and meanwhile we’ll get the tax cuts, deregulation and friendly judges we want.”
No, Chris, this time there would be no adults in the room holding DJT back – certainly not you. It would only be true-believing hacks like the odious Stephen Miller. It would be all vengeance and chaos without guardrails.
4) By eyewitness accounts, Trump dozed off twice during jury selection – at his own criminal trial, with both his personal liberty and his political future at stake.
But there were no videos, no photographs of either moment, due to courtroom rules. No indelible images for the late-night hosts to sink their jaws into; nothing to be replayed endlessly on cable TV or to be clicked over and over on YouTube.
Sure, MSNBC and progressive Twitter flapped their wings a bit about Trump’s catnaps, made the predictable jokes. Still, even if Trump ends up snoring so loudly the judge orders him to wear a CPAP mask in the courtroom, one out of three Americans will continue to tell pollsters that Joe Biden is too old to be president while insisting that Donald Trump is in fine fettle and good to go.
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia