The real story of Donald Trump and his gag order surrogates isn’t that they’re doing it. It’s that they’re blowing it.
Donald Trump now has his surrogates, including Republican members of the House and Senate, standing outside the courtroom and violating the gag order on his behalf. The whole key to making this work is deniability; as long as Trump and his surrogates insist they’re not coordinating on this, there’s no legal basis for the courts to bust them. The trouble is they’re very much not sticking to that script.
Earlier today I pointed out that Trump, who comes off as more senile by the day, made a point of praising the way his surrogates were attacking the people covered by his gag order. Now it turns out Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville, who has always had the political savvy of a turnip, has flat out admitted that he’s there to speak on Trump’s behalf.
With the trial pretty close to being over, it’s still not clear whether the judge or the prosecution will try to break up this gag order violation by proxy racket. If you’re the prosecution, and you’re winning a trial by a mile on your way to near certain conviction, it’s not always wise to allow yourself to get sucked into sideshows that muddy the legal waters.
But either way there’s an important political story here. It’s not that Trump and these goons are trying to get away with this. It’s that they’re blowing it, quite badly. These House and Senate Republicans are merely out there parroting Trump’s ineffective, incompetent talking points in the hope of keeping a senile Trump happy.
Worse, these idiots are actively marrying themselves and their Republican Party to Trump’s trial. Once he’s convicted, and once persuadable voters in the middle use it as a basis for moving away from Trump, the Democrats will be able to convince those same persuadable voters to turn against the Republican Party on the whole. After all, it’s the Republican Party leaders who are down there tying their anchors to a sinking Trump outside his trial. By all means, they’re welcome to keep digging.
