No, Georgia Republicans cannot magically remove Fani Willis and save Donald Trump
Republicans love nothing more than inventing doomsday narratives about how they’ve supposedly already won, and the media loves nothing more than hyping those empty doomsday narratives for ratings. Usually these kinds of silly narratives fall apart of their own accord, as everyone is able to see in hindsight that the particular “magic wand” in question never existed. But one doomsday narrative that just won’t go away is the notion that Georgia Republicans are going to be able to remove Fani Willis from power and thus magically save Donald Trump. In the hope of putting this one to bed once and for all, let’s review why this isn’t really going to be a story, so we can move on from it.
Months ago a series of headlines popped up claiming that Georgia Republicans had given themselves the ability to remove District Attorneys from office. But that’s not what actually happened. Georgia Republicans could have written this legislation any way they wanted. But they made a point of not giving themselves the ability to remove District Attorneys, and instead granted that power to an independent review board starting in October.
If Georgia Republicans were actually looking to remove Fani Willis, they’d have granted themselves the ability to remove her. And they’d have given themselves that ability immediately, so they could have gotten rid of her before she brought indictments. Instead they gave that power to someone else, on a delay. It seemed obvious right then and there that they weren’t trying to get rid of Willis, they were just trying to create the appearance that they were trying to get rid of Willis. Why? It’s an easy opportunity to fire up Trump’s base and fundraise off it.
It’s the exact same reason Jim Jordan just announced House hearings into Fani Willis. There isn’t anything that Jordan can do to hurt Willis or help Trump, but he’s sure going to make it look like he’s trying to hurt Willis and help Trump. These things are always about appearances. Specifically it’s about baiting the media (on the left and right) into running stories which falsely imply that Republicans do indeed have these kinds of magical powers.
Now that the Fulton County indictments have come down, the media (specifically MSNBC) is making a point of once again hyping this narrative that Georgia Republicans have given themselves the power to remove Fani Willis and magically save Trump. But nothing about this narrative is any more real than the last time the media decided to hype it for ratings. Nothing has changed, beyond the media’s need to counter Trump’s Fulton County arrest with “But wait, stay tuned because he might magically get away with it!”
There is still no indication that there will be enough popular momentum among Georgia Republicans to bother appointing a review board to examine Fani Willis’ case against Trump. Even if such a review board were put in place, there is still no reason to expect that it would result in Willis being removed. Nor would there be any reason to expect that such an effort would survive the inevitable court challenges.
That’s the most maddening aspect of all these magic wand ideas. Not only are they generally based on an idea that isn’t a real thing to begin with, it’s also laid out as having the ability to magically succeed without any consequence, or pushback, or legal challenge. It’s one side waving a magic wand and the other side saying “Oops, we’re doomed” and falling through a trap door. It’s cartoon silliness, being hyped up by the media as if it were somehow reality.
Meanwhile back in the real world, Fani Willis clearly isn’t worried about being magically removed from power. If she were, she would have brought her indictments a long time ago. She had a grand jury window back in May, which she reportedly passed up when some of the fake electors agreed to immunity deals which made her case against Trump stronger. If she thought she were up against some kind of magical ticking clock, she’d have brought her case as soon as she could, in the hope of getting it to trial more quickly.
So you have to ask yourself if Fani Willis is some kind of hapless idiot who’s too oblivious to realize that she’s about to be magically removed from power, or if she’s taking her time because she understands that she’s not in any danger. Everything we’ve seen out of her up to this point suggests that she’s very savvy. Yet for there to be anything real about this notion that Republicans are going to be able to magically remove her, she’d have to be a complete idiot. Then again, these magic wand ideas are always based on the idea that our side’s leaders are oblivious idiots who don’t know that the Republicans are about to wave the magic wand! Like I said, it’s all child-level cartoon stuff.
Here’s another thing to chew on. Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro have now both filed for speedy trials. If they thought there was anything to this notion that Georgia Republicans were going to be able to magically remove Fani Willis in October and kill off the RICO case, they’d be stalling their trials, not trying to speed them up. Even the Kraken lady understands that Georgia Republicans do not have a magic wand for removing Fani Willis in October. So why does MSNBC keep pretending this magic wand exists?
When political pundits on TV and Twitter begin hyping a simplistic idea about how one side is about to wave some clever magic wand and get whatever it wants, it’s really instructive when you look around and see that no one in the real world is basing their decisions on it. Fani Willis doesn’t think she’s being removed by magic wand in October. The defendants don’t think she’s being removed by magic wand in October. So why does MSNBC keep trying to make us think she’s being removed by magic wand in October?
At the end of the day there is the political fantasyland that exists on TV and Twitter, where media and pundit types trip over each other to see who can bring themselves the most attention and make themselves look the most clever with whatever soundbite they can come up with, and then there’s the real political world where nothing ever correlates to any of that nonsense. And in the real world, Fani Willis not going to be magically removed from power in October, no matter how hyperbolically this kind of thing gets hyped in political fantasyland.
