A consortium of television networks yesterday released a joint statement inviting President Joe Biden and his presumptive opponent, Donald Trump, to debate on their platforms: “There is simply no substitute for the candidates debating with each other, and before the American people, their visions for the future of our nation.”

President Biden’s spokesperson should answer like this: “The Constitution is not debatable. The president does not participate in forums with a person under criminal indictment for his attempt to overthrow the Constitution.”

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Until tried and convicted, Trump must be regarded as innocent in the eyes of the law.

But the political system has eyes of its own. No doubt exists about what Trump did, or why, or what his actions meant. Trump lost an election, then incited a violent mob to attack the Capitol. He hoped that the insurrectionists would terrorize, kidnap, or even kill his own vice president in order to stop the ceremony to formalize the victory of Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris. By disrupting the ceremony, Trump schemed to cast the election’s result to the House of Representatives, where Republican voting strength might proclaim him president in place of the lawful winner. Many people were badly injured by Trump’s violent plan, and some died as a result.

In case you hadn’t heard, the sentient world is waking up to the horror of what transgender madness has done to some thousands of children. The emblem of this is the Cass Report in Great Britain. I’ve read much about it, but nothing that so captures the essence as this:

Instead of taking narrow claims of dysphoria at face value, Cass adopts a holistic approach, arguing that such statements must be considered “within the context of poor mental health and emotional distress among the broader adolescent population.”

Nina Power, The Trans Reckoning is Here. Considering the context doesn’t mean ignoring, but exploring all possibilities before doing something radical.

I just heard the story of a candidate who was furious with his estranged wife for not posing for a family photo with the kids. I can’t say more for fear of too precisely identifying the situation, in which wife and children are quite innocent and don’t need the hassle.

Our six primary candidates for governor aren’t much better, although their badness differs from his.

Politics is so phony it makes me want to puke. Well, actually, it makes me want to post.

Antichrist is another Christ. That’s what Trump invites his supporters to think of him. From a video clip:

Michael C. Bender, The Church of Trump: How He’s Infusing Christianity Into His Movement

Open a King James Bible and read Daniel chapter 8 with a dictionary and you cannot help but see that he is the prophesied king of the west who “at the time of the end” will fulfill the prophecy in making his nation “very great.” (Daniel 8:9)

Blurb for Bible Prophecy & Trump: Daniel Prophesied of a Goat Stubborn King of the West that will Make His Nation Great in the End Times Then the Unthinkable Occurs Over 150 End Time Prophecies

Wanna bet I can’t? I’m increasingly convinced that Trump’s “an antichrist.” Just think about the self-aggrandizing crap he pulled during Holy Week 2024.

Consistent Folly

Whether this Bible is an example of Christian nationalism I will leave to others. It is at least an example of Christian syncretism, a linking of certain myths about American exceptionalism and the Christian faith. This is the American church’s consistent folly: thinking that we are the protagonists in a story that began long before us and whose main character is in fact the Almighty.

Esau McCaulley

Trump looting the GOP

One might assume that a presidential nominee who generates as much devotion as Mr. Trump would be a financial boon to his party. One would be wrong. With Mr. Trump, everything is about Mr. Trump … While the Republican base may be smitten with Mr. Trump, plenty of big-money donors are skittish about bankrolling his nonsense. The former president has been scrambling to close the gap, leering at potential funders as if they were contestants at the Miss Universe pageant.

Michelle Cottle, Trump Is Financially Ruining the Republican Party

I haven’t seen gullibility like today’s GOP since Harlem stood by its man Adam Clayton Powell.

Covering all the bases

President Biden issues some manner of Easter Proclamation Sunday.

He took care of the Transgender Day of Visibility Proclamation on Friday.

I’m so confused. What am I supposed to celebrate today?

Is this really deep, or is it deeply silly?

I never listened to Andrew Huberman and know little about him, but I kept reading this endlessly gossipy article in this shit magazine, waiting for even a single revelation about his private adult life that merited public interest or knowledge, and never found a single one.”

Glenn Greenwald on New York Magazine, via Andrew Sullivan

RFKJr

I thought Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was likely to take more votes from Trump than from Biden. Now that Ms. Shanahan is his VP choice, I no longer think that’s remotely likely.

Biden’s Age, Trump’s Vim and Vigor

To listen to the fretting over how many hours a day Biden can vigorously work, how many speeches he can authoritatively deliver and how many miles he can comfortably travel is to get the sense that he’s independently on the hook for the nation’s welfare. That he’s more action figure than decision maker. That, um, he alone can fix it. That he shoulders all the responsibility.

But he’s not Atlas; he’s POTUS. And the president of the United States is only as good as the advisers around him, whose selection reflects presidential judgment, not stamina.

We acknowledge as much when we discuss how a president might fill or has filled his cabinet. We recognize that many vital decisions are made — and that most important policies are realized — outside of the Oval Office.

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Really, how many people say to themselves: Heck, Biden may be the guy with a proper respect for democracy, won’t blow air kisses at murderous tyrants and doesn’t sound like a fascist, but that Trump sure can shout louder, talk faster and clomp around more thuddingly! He’ll bring the vim to trashing democracy that Biden can’t muster for preserving it. I guess I’ll go with Trump!

No, many of these Trump supporters like what he’s selling — maybe the lower taxes for corporations and wealthy Americans, maybe the promised crackdown on immigration, maybe the nihilism, maybe just the vitriol — and have found a way to defend a vote for him (Biden’s decrepit!) without fully owning up to it.

In an age of rampant falsity, let’s be honest about that.

Frank Bruni

Vicarious Indictment

Did you know that antiChrist isn’t just “against Christ,” but is “another (or substitute) Christ.” Hold that thought:

I’m a very proud Christian, actually. I’ve been very busy fighting and, you know, taking the, the bullets, taking the arrows. I’m taking ’em for you. And I’m so honored to take ’em. You have no idea. I’m being indicted for you….

Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communist, and fascists indict me. I consider it a great badge of honor. I really do. It’s crazy. I’ve gotta have something a little bit different up there, but I do because I’m being indicted for you. And never forget our enemies want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom. And I’m never gonna let it happen. They wanna silence me because I will never let them silence you. And in the end, they’re not after me. They’re after you. I just happen to be standing in the way.

Donald Trump, addressing the National Religious Broadcasters annual meeting, via Robert Jones

Vicarious indictment, huh? Are these not the words of an antiChrist?

Writing for Christianity Today, Russell Moore unpacked how the evangelical subculture rejected virtue, “driven specifically by the very same white evangelical subculture that once insisted that personal character—virtue, to use a now distant-sounding word the American founders knew well—matters.” He continued: “Part of the vulgarization of the Right is due to the Barstool Sports/Joe Rogan secularization of the base, in which Kid Rock is an avatar more than Lee Greenwood or Michael W. Smith. But much more alarmingly, the coarsening and character-debasing is happening among politicized professing Christians. The member of Congress joking at a prayer breakfast about turning her fiancé down for sex to get there was there to talk about her faith and the importance of religious faith and values for America. The member of Congress telling a reporter to ‘f— off’ is a self-described ‘Christian nationalist.’ We’ve seen ‘Let’s Go Brandon’—a euphemism for a profanity that once would have resulted in church discipline—chanted in churches. If we are hated for attempted Christlikeness, let’s count it all joy. But if we are hated for our cruelty, our sexual hypocrisy, our quarrelsomeness, our hatefulness, and our vulgarity, then maybe we should ask what happened to our witness. Character matters. It is not the only thing that matters. But without character, nothing matters.”

The Morning Dispatch for the Feast of Annunciation

It’s the birthday of composer and songwriter Stephen Sondheim, born in New York City (1930). His musicals include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd (1979), and Into the Woods (1987).

He said, “I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface.”

The Writer’s Almanac for March 22, 2013

The State of the Union should be an easy topic for a writer. It’s a televised event; you watch it; you react.

But it’s actually quite challenging to find anything non-obvious to say about it, especially in 2024. Suspense around the address used to derive from what the president might say. Now, given his age, it derives from whether he might expire before the speech ends.

Joe Biden did not expire last night. Read any analysis today and that’s the top-line takeaway.

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Then came Sen. Katie Britt to deliver the Republican rebuttal to Biden’s speech. Of her performance, the less said, the better. Watching it, I found myself wondering whether she had seized the opportunity to deliberately sabotage her chances of becoming Donald Trump’s running mate, mindful of how close the last guy who held that position came to being murdered.

There isn’t much else to say about Thursday night. Biden is plainly too old to serve competently for another four years, one “fiery and confident” address notwithstanding, and his agenda is too liberal to make any conservative happy.

I’ll be at the polls early on Election Day to vote for him.

Nick Catoggio, The State of Our Union

Eleventh Circuit Strikes Down Stop W.O.K.E. Act’s Restrictions on Private Employers

This was as predictable as the sun coming up in the morning. It’s one of the reasons I couldn’t warm to the thought of “President Ron DeSantis.” A Harvard Law grad who swore to uphold the constitution should never have signed, let alone pushed, a law like the Stop WOKE Act with provisions trying to mute private employers.

Give Trump what he’s asking for, Nikki!

Oh, how I wish [Nikki Haley] would take a different message from this result than the one she appears to be taking (at least publicly). The message she claims to have received is this: I may not be the Republican present, but I am its future. Trump may win the nomination this year, but he will lose to Joe Biden. And then the voters will come to their senses, realize that candidates like me are the key to victory at the national level, and make me a leading contender for the presidency in 2028. I’ll be back!

To which I can only reply: Seriously? You think the party positively thrilled by the prospect of renominating a hateful, moronic, demented, conspiracy-addled, coup-plotting, multiply indicted would-be dictator will turn on a dime to rally around a daughter of Sikh immigrants from India who espouses a policy agenda suited to a member of George W. Bush’s Cabinet? The same voters who are rewarding Kari Lake for losing her winnable race for Arizona governor in 2022 by nominating her for the US Senate in 2024? The same voters who sent to Congress the 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election results? The same voters who on Tuesday made a Holocaust denier who mocks children killed in school shootings the party’s nominee for governor in the state of North Carolina? Nikki Haley will be the leader of that party four years from now?

I’m sorry, but are you out of your f*cking mind?

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Trump and his personally installed nepo babies at the Republican National Committee … want the Haley voters out of the party, just as Lake explicitly asked supporters of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain not to vote for her two years ago. That led directly to Lake’s loss, just as the same move this year could help to ensure that Trump’s third bid for the presidency sinks.

Please, Nikki Haley: Give Trump his wish. Make it happen. Lead your supporters on a mass exodus out of the Republican Party. And not out into the nowheresland of the third-party wilderness, but into the Democratic Party. You need not love Joe Biden. You need only say what is true: That a party led by Donald Trump and the thugs he’s surrounded himself with have no business wielding power at the highest levels.

Damon Linker