This nonsense about Merrick Garland’s “messaging” is completely off the rails
This month we’ve seen the return of an unfortunate trend in which prominent liberal pundits all loudly insist that the Democratic Party is terrible at messaging, so they can position themselves as being smarter and more aggressive than the Democratic Party. Of course these types are really just trying to distract you from the party’s actual messaging, which on the whole is quite good.
Unfortunately, once these kinds of baseless slogans like “Democrats are bad at messaging” get repeated enough times, they tend to stick, no matter how blatantly untrue they are. Imagine for one minute if these pundits instead used their platform to amplify the Democratic Party’s messaging, instead of pretending the Democratic Party has no messaging – but we suppose that’s another story.
In any case, the “Democrats are bad at messaging” hysteria has gotten so out of control on social media this month, one person went so far as to try to convince me that Merrick Garland is bad at messaging. This is almost incomprehensibly bizarre. What kind “messaging” would an Attorney General even have? What do they think an Attorney General is?
Is this because of Bill Barr’s verbal pro-Trump “messaging” while he was Attorney General? None of that made one bit of difference Barr’s words did nothing for Trump. That was just Barr publicly kissing Trump’s backside in order to keep his job.
The corrupt things Barr did that actually helped Trump (burying the Mueller report, stalling the DOJ case against Giuliani) were done behind closed doors. Barr’s mouth didn’t help Trump. Nor would any knowledgeable observer have expected it to, since the AG’s powers are that of a prosecutor, not a press secretary.
These folks surely can’t want Garland to waste a bunch of this time on the same ineffective cheerleading that Barr was forced to waste his time on. Of course these types will respond to that by yelling yet another popular yet fictional slogan: “But Garland isn’t doing anything!”
Meanwhile back in the real world, Garland has taken down the entire Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leadership. He’s flipped at least two of them against Trump world. And he’s had a prosecutor and grand jury secretly targeting Trump world for several months.
If none of it’s moving swiftly enough for your expectations, that’s a matter of your expectations being incompatible with reality. An Attorney General can, rightly or wrongly, instantly pull the plug on an existing case and make it go away. But an Attorney General cannot just instantly conjure up the kind of criminal case that will actually get a conviction at trial; that takes significant time to build from the ground up.
There’s a reason that even Bill Barr, corrupt as he was, never brought phony criminal cases against Trump’s biggest enemies like Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama: none of it would have stuck. It would all have been laughed out of court, and it would only serve backfired against Trump. It would have been a total waste of time. That’s why Barr limited himself to burying things for Trump’s benefit, which is infinitely easier.
Do you really want Garland to bring criminal cases against Trump world before they’re ready, knowing they would likely result in acquittals? Of course not.
As for what sort of “messaging” anyone thinks Merrick Garland is supposed to be doing, it’s not his job. He has publicly stated multiple times that the DOJ is taking the January 6th prosecutions all the way to the top. But beyond that it would be foolish for him to publicly speak about targeting specific individuals, before the criminal cases against them are comprehensive enough to get a conviction.
Merrick Garland’s job is to build the kinds of criminal cases that can get convictions, with as little extraneous “messaging” as possible. It’s not his job to reveal inside details of ongoing criminal cases, or to explain to you how these kinds of cases work. You know whose job it is to explain these kinds of things to you? The same pundits who instead spend all day dishonestly bashing Garland and pretending the Democrats have no messaging.
