CNN Perspectives on Donald J. Biden and the 21st Century (The New York Post Dispatch). The Reaction of the 2016 Midterm Elections on the Party Unification

A professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, Zelizer is a CNN political analyst. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including his forthcoming co-edited work, “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Lies and Legends About Our Past” (Basic Books). Follow him on Twitter @julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. There is more opinion on CNN.

It looks like former President Donald Trump is going to launch another bid for the White House. On Thursday, Trump told his followers to “get ready” for his return to the presidential campaign trail – and top aides have been eyeing November 14 as a potential launch date, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Trump, it seems, is hoping to be the first person since President Grover Cleveland to win two non-consecutive elections.

A week like this might shatter that status quo. Now that there are more Republicans, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who could possibly do Trumpism in more effective fashion, the former president’s standing within the party inevitably becomes more precarious. There will be growing clamor to consider throwing the weight of the party, including the messages spread on conservative media, toward a viable alternative. This week the New York Post had a negative opinion of the next run by Trump.

But the 2024 election will be as much about Biden as it will be about Trump. Biden can boast of a successful legislative record, but it will be hard for him to win the presidency because of the baggage that comes with it. In a way that they were four years ago, the problems that he has struggled with, such as inflation and the aftermath of Afghanistan will be included in the conversation. If he runs, Biden will no longer be campaigning to be the new boss – he is the boss.

If the midterm campaigns have shown the Democrats anything, it is that the Republicans remain a strongly united party. Very little can shake that unity. After Trump left the White House, the party didn’t change in substantive ways and the “Never Trump” contingent failed to emerge as a dominant force. Indeed, officials such as Congresswoman Liz Cheney were purged from the party.

Even with candidates such as Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz running, the polls show that the GOP is in a good position going into the election. Meanwhile, Democrats are scrambling to defend several seats and even candidates in reliably blue states such as New York are at risk.

If Republicans do well next week, possibly retaking control of the House and Senate, members of the party will surely feel confident about amping up their culture wars and economic talking points going into 2024. A strong showing in the polls will likely lead to a unified GOP behind Trump, because there are so many election-denying candidates. Although there has been copious speculation about the rise of other Trump-like Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, it’s likely they will look “liddle” once the former President formally reenters the political arena – as his formidable opponents learned in the 2016 Republican primaries.

Finally, it’s worth noting that a midterm win would energize Republican voters like little else. The party of the incumbent is worn down from the realities of governance and the out-party is more prepared for the battle than it is.

Trump is Nominated by the House of Representatives: A Case Study in Daniels’s Judicial Insights on the 2018 Midterm Biden Campaign

— A charge in the Daniels case would not be Trump’s only legal problem – or arguably his most serious one. Justice Department probes into his role in the January 6 mob attack on the US Capitol and Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election are still expanding. A separate grand jury looked into Trump’s pressure to overturn Biden’s win in Georgia. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said at the end of January that decisions in the inquiry were “imminent.” While an indictment in New York might be seen as politically invigorating for Trump’s campaign, it’s hard to see how a crush of charges or trials in multiple cases would allow him to concentrate fully on a credible presidential bid.

If Trump is spared prosecution, it will surely lead to an assault on the President, who could be struggling with a shaky economy and divisions within his own party. Trump will likely take advantage of the loyalists that have penetrated state election offices to ensure that his victory is his, if election deniers don’t get punished for it by January 6. It will be useful for Trump to perfect the technique and rhetoric of his campaign because he’s been to this rodeo before. The media could once again have a chance to direct and shape its conversation with the reinstated Trump. (Trump, who founded Truth Social, where he has been active since he was banned from Twitter, has not publicly indicated that he will return).

The midterms have shown that the Democrats’ focus on the radical nature of the GOP and the dangers posed to democracy are not necessarily enough to rally voters. These dangers have been outlined many times over, including in Biden’s closing speech Wednesday, but Democrats are nonetheless struggling to maintain power.

To be sure, none of these developments mean that he is done. I am one of many commentators who have argued that it is possible for Trump to win the nomination in 2024.

The price of supporting Donald Trump to the Republican Party keeps getting higher. The former president has gone through one of the most tumultuous weeks possible, with fresh evidence of why the party’s connection to him – and his potential nomination in 2024 – could be extraordinarily damaging.

Trump, Fuentes and West: Corrupted, Anti-Semitic, and/or Anti-Censored Activities in the Trump Organization

A Manhattan jury found two of the companies in the Trump Organization guilty of criminal tax fraud and falsifying tax business records on Tuesday, though Trump and his family were not charged in the case.

In Georgia, the Senate was given a 51 seat majority by the Democrats in the election on Tuesday. Trump posed for photos with a prominent conspiracy theorist that day at Mar-a-Lago.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that a team of investigators hired by the former president’s lawyers, under a federal judge’s order, found two documents with classified markings in a Florida storage unit.

Nor was this week some sort of one-off. His decision to dine with Kayne West came after he made more antisemitic comments. Nick Fuentes was present at the table that evening, he is a notorious promoter of racism.

Republican strategist Scott Reed said this week that the two prior ones were bad news for Trump. The writing on the wall, Reed told the New York Times, seems clear. “Abandonment,” he said, “has begun.”

A case against him that some legal experts say isn’t a sure-fire winner in court is making him feel even more uncertain. The consequences of a failed prosecution against a president would be huge and could make the country even more divided. Trump and his associates would use a miss like that to further their theory that every attempt to hold him responsible for his behavior isn’t politically correct.

He seeks to weaponize the anger and animosity that he creates so that he can be loved. Despite Trump’s name-calling and personal drama, he twice won the GOP presidential nomination – and the 2016 election. The same dynamic held true throughout his one-term presidency.

While many speculate about whether Trump has “gone too far,” this has never proven to be a concern to Republican powerbrokers such as Sen. Mitch McConnell. They are not motivated by this issue.

Almost nothing that happened in recent weeks is totally new to Trump, unless a person hasn’t been paying attention. He has been involved in scandal from the moment he set foot in politics. As president, he constantly flouted the limits of power. He has a history of saying antisemitic things.

But now things might start to look different. The 2022 midterms could turn into a dividing line in the history of the Trump-Republican relationship. Decision-making is above all else in Republican politics because of partisan power.

Over the past six years, Republican officials, and the rank and file, have learned how to live with Trump because they believe that he can win, and that his loyal base can help them be victorious. Even if it was out of fear or hope, Republicans still would tolerate almost anything in order to protect him.

But the danger facing Republicans is that they will either have to bind themselves even tighter to the mast of an intensely polarizing figure, or risk splitting the party by not coming out in his defense. Navigating between those pitfalls will require some willingness to criticize Trump, while going hammer and tongs against the likely decision to prosecute a rather arcane alleged violation of state law.

He will need to convince more Republicans that he can deliver votes and that he is not aloser if he wants to solidify his position. This has become more difficult due to the fact that Democrats are in charge of the White House, Senate, and many state legislatures and governorships. Trump will have a much harder road ahead if Republicans conclude that by not fighting his nomination tooth and nail, they might end up handing Democrats a united government two years down the road.

Adding fuel to the fire: a case study of a prosecuting former state senator charged with felony felony murder, burglary, and other crimes

Now she could be facing a much bigger case: the potential prosecution of a former president. Considering the known facts and Willis’s demonstrated skill at presenting juries with sprawling conspiracy cases, a lengthy RICO trial is a distinct possibility. The approach she would be using would require a huge investment of her office’s resources and a political appetite for a lot of backlash and spectacle.

Nearly two years into Willis’s term, “I give her all the positive marks for going after President Trump,” Jackson told me. I think it is a brave move. I think it was the right move. She paused. “Yeah, that’s my praise.” And her criticism? Jackson sighed and said Willis had come to the State Senate to make a presentation about public safety, talking about gangs and other crime. Jackson had studied local crime statistics during the pandemic, however, and found a more complicated picture: murders up, other major crimes down. Jackson recounted that he was literally looking at the statistics on his desk. “So I just struggled with that,” she said. I know what it’s like to be a politician. And I understand that we have to respond to public pressure. I do not think we have to add fuel to the fire. And there have been times — I’m trying to be very careful here, because I respect her — but there have been times in which I felt like she added fuel to a fire that we could have easily put out.”

But the morning after we spoke, I sat in the back of a courtroom where the judge was holding a series of preliminary hearings for jail inmates, all Black men, who had been arrested and held since mid-July. One, accused of stealing equipment from a landscaping truck, had been in jail for 112 days; another, accused of smashing storefront windows, had been locked up for 116. It turned out that the initial police report had overestimated the amount of damage, presenting the crime as a felony rather than what it actually was, a misdemeanor.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/magazine/she-took-on-atlantas-gangs-now-she-may-be-coming-for-trump.html

The Manhattan DA’s case against the alleged payment to Stormy Daniels is a ploy to expose a TV star with an affair with Donald Trump

The magazine has a writer named Mark Binelli. He last wrote about the opera director Yuval Sharon, and before that about the tangled legal aftermath of a deadly Waco, Texas, biker brawl. A visual artist that is interested in stories through a black female’s perspective is named “Nydia Blas”. She was named one of the British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch in 2019.

After Trump posted about being arrested as soon as Tuesday, his allies declared that the action would increase the odds of him winning the presidency. “If the Manhattan DA indicts President Trump, he will ultimately win even bigger than he is already going to win,” far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia declared in a tweet Saturday. The people who want to lock him up don’t appreciate the backlash to arresting him, according to the conservative commentator.

The ex-reality TV star who was a commander in chief is facing investigations for trying to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents after leaving office. The case over the alleged payment to Stormy Daniels might be the most immediate exposure he has.

There was a lot of interest in New York after the expected indictment in the case of Stormy Daniels, a porn star who claims to have had an affair with Trump. The grand jury did not meet on Wednesday. A source with knowledge of the investigation told John Miller that it will sit on Thursday.

There were some concerns about why a previous prosecutor didn’t prosecute the case against Trump over the alleged payment to Stormy Daniels and they have pointed out the fact that the matter is more than six years old.

DR. Paula Habba: The Case for a Proseclative Investigation into the Manhattan DA Hysteresis

The ex-president tried to intimidate prosecutors, mobilize his grassroots supporters and pressure top GOP officials to support him, despite the fact that attempts were made to call him to account. Every American has a constitutional right to political self-expression, but the ex-president’s call this weekend for his loyalists – “Protest, take our nation back” – struck an ominous tone since he showed on January 6, 2021, that he was willing to incite violence to further his interests.

There would be serious consequences if Trump were to be indicted for a minor offense, said the lawyer for Trump. “It is going to cause mayhem, Paula. It is just a very frightening time in our country, Habba said. She also said that Trump supporters shouldn’t be violent.

For a lifetime in the public eye, Trump has always had a checkered personal history and an unquestioned ability to drive the media narrative. Republican leaders are arguing that the New York prosecutors trying to press charges for falsifying business records could be in trouble.

Bragg’s team will not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process nor will they let baseless accusations stop them from applying the law. The spokeperson’s statement also rebutted Republican claims that Bragg has ignored violent crime in New York in his zeal to find a pretext to prosecute Trump in order to fulfill a political vendetta.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Sunday called it “the weakest case out there.” The California Republican, who has instructed GOP-led committees to investigate whether the Manhattan DA used federal funds to probe the hush money payment, said at a news conference that he had already spoken to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan – who is investigating “the weaponization” of the government against political opponents – about looking into that question.

Trump and the Daniels Insights: A Critical Analysis of a Failure of the 2016 Black Belt Correlations Indictment

The speaker said that people should not protest, and that Trump didn’t want that either. “If this is to happen we want calmness out there … no violence or harm to anyone else,” McCarthy said.

The question is whether the mainstream Republicans are able to say what they want while leaving a light between themselves and the former president. His one-time Vice President, Mike Pence, recently sought to straddle the fence, calling the potential charges a “politically charged prosecution,” even as he criticized Trump’s actions in inciting violent protests on January 6.

New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who has said it is time for Republicans to move on from Trump, told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” the Bragg investigation was “building a lot of sympathy for the former president.” He added: “I (had) coffee this morning with some folks, and none of them were big Trump supporters, but they all said they felt like he was being attacked.”

The concept that everyone is equal under the law could be a key principle to consider in an indictment. It would be necessary to rebut arguments that Trump was being targeted because of who he is and not due to fair treatment. McCarthy tried to move the debate over the case onto this ground in an exchange with CNN’s Manu Raju on Tuesday.

There is an issue of political division and trauma in a case that is not as consequential as those of the January 6 investigations. History may not look kindly on any failed prosecution.

The fact that the Daniels case dates back to an election that is now more than six years old, even as the nation faces another White House campaign, could also raise questions for the public, especially given the uncertainty about the case for anyone outside the small bubble of the investigation. On CNN on Sunday, senator Mark Kelly said that nobody in the nation should be above the law. But he also said: “I would hope that, if they brought charges, that they have a strong case, because this is … unprecedented. And there are certainly risks involved here.”

The comment made by Kelly emphasized how Trump, eight years after bursting onto the scene with an upstart campaign, is again shattering convention about the role of presidents and ex-presidents. He again may be about to leap to the center, in the most contentious of ways, of the national psyche and political debate.

The Indictment of the 2024 Republican Presidential Candidate: Bragg’s Actions Are Neither Proseco nor Corrupt

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, House Oversight Committee Chair Jim Comer, R-Ky., and House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil, R-Wis., kicked off their own probe on Monday, sending Bragg a letter demanding documents, communications and testimony related to his investigation of the former president.

In a statement, the three chairmen said that the possible indictment was based on a novel legal theory that federal authorities had declined to pursue and that it was an abuse of prosecutorial authority.

They added that if Bragg does indict Trump, Bragg’s actions “will erode confidence in the evenhanded application of justice and unalterably interfere in the course of the 2024 presidential election.”

They do not set a date for a hearing, but they do expect him to show up soon. They gave Bragg a deadline of Thursday to respond to them to set up a possible appearance.

House Republicans are huddling at their annual retreat in Orlando, Fla., and the former president, who is running for the GOP nomination in 2024, is dominating the conversation.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy focused his response on attacking Bragg’s tenure and legal approach, rather than defending Trump’s behavior, at a press conference Sunday evening.

“One of the reasons we won races in New York is based upon this DA of not protecting the citizens of New York, and now he’s spending his time on this,” McCarthy said. “The statute of limitations are gone.” He added about an indictment: “This will not hold up in court, if this is what he wants to do.”

The GOP Shouldn’t Be About Trump, But It Should Be About Them: Hispanic Leaders Who Are Not Supposed to Be Trump

As House Republicans sought to showcase their legislative agenda in the majority, questions about Trump continued to be front and center — a dynamic they struggled with during his time in the White House.

At a bilingual press conference with Hispanic Republicans Monday morning, the first question was about Bragg’s probe. According to Gimenez, it smells like it’s political, the same claim most GOP lawmakers have made.

Amid all the other uncertainties surrounding the possible indictment of Donald Trump, the flurry of events has made one thing unequivocally clear: the former president remains the center of the GOP universe.

The GOP’s poor showing in the next elections would have been forgiven if they had learned lessons from Trump’s defeat in 2020, according to a former state Republican party chair. “It’s like they are addicted to him. The GOP can’t break their addiction to Trump.”

“I think there are core Trump voters that this galvanizes,” says Dave Wilson, a conservative strategist in South Carolina with close ties to the evangelical community. “I think that there is a much broader group of Republican/conservative voters that this may give enough pause to, to then say, ‘I’m going to at least look at everybody else in the field.’”

Robinson said that it may not be realistic for the hopefuls to believe that enough Republican voters will reach that conclusion. If another candidate wants voters to pass over a figure that looms as large over the party as Trump, Robinson maintains, they will need to give them an explicit reason to do so – and the prospect of sustained legal trouble could provide them a powerful argument in making that case. An alternative for Trump would be to say the election should not be about him. Robinson said something.

The survey found that about three-fifths of GOP voters said they most prioritized a nominee who shared their positions on issues, while about two-fifths wanted someone who had the best chance of beating President Joe Biden. Among the voters who wanted a candidate who shared their views, Trump led, as well as those who prioritized electability. It was not only the group focused on shared values larger that the Florida governor’s problem was, but President Trump led among them more than twice as much as the leader of the group who focused on beating Biden.

In South Carolina, Wilson also expects the same kind of bifurcated reaction. While many might rally around the former president, Wilson said a Trump indictment could reinforce what he felt was the dominant sentiment at the conference the Palmetto Family Council, a social conservative group, held in Charleston last weekend for GOP leaders and potential 2024 candidates. He said that the belief was that Americans can and should be focused on the future, as opposed to the past. People want to be focused on what’s happening for the next eight, twelve, twenty years from now and not looking at the mirror.

House Republican leaders made it clear that they are not opposed to the party disowning itself from the former president because they have not received that memo. It sounds similar to the language that would be heard in an authoritarian state like China, according to Horn. “That is genuinely outrageous,” she said. It is an outrage, but the speaker of the House suggests that a legal investigation should be stopped because it is against a guy. It is anti-American.

All of this followed a midterm election when Republicans underperformed historical patterns for the party out of the White House in large part because too many swing voters discontented about the economy and disenchanted with Biden still viewed the GOP alternative as too extreme. Key statewide races in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona were lost by candidates who were hand-picked by the president four years before the 2020 election. More than a third of voters in critical battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona viewed Trump unfavorably, according to exit polls.

Which is why Democrats are watching with such amazement, as McCarthy tattoos the Trump stamp onto the House GOP. “You now have multiple elections from 2018 forward showing that this playbook is not only extremely dangerous [for the country], it is completely ineffective” politically, said Dan Sena, former executive director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Donald Trump has never been a winning electoral strategy.

Matt Bennett, executive vice president of public affairs at Third Way, a centrist Democratic group, agreed that the Republicans may be getting the broader electorate wrong. Bennett believes that the larger and more ominous message is that Republicans are prepared to break almost any convention in order to protect Trump.

Bennett said it was profoundly dangerous and bad. “This is the conduct, the quisling approach to strong men, that gets countries into very serious trouble.”

Donald Trump’s Republican allies in the House are doing what the former president taught them to do – use government power to try to keep his legal threats at bay.

There are enough doubts about a possible prosecution by Bragg, and the fact that there are potential charges for business and electoral law violations to fuel questions from nonpartisan legal experts about the case possibly not living up to its billing. This issue is particularly important given the gravity of any potential case against a former president.

What has changed in New York with respect to where we are, and how we’ve dealt with it? An attorney for the ex-president John F. Trump

Trump’s calls for protests, meanwhile, have authorities on edge in New York, where security cameras and barricades have been erected, and in Washington amid painful flashbacks to his incitement of violence to further his personal and political ends on January 6, 2021.

He said that he is concerned about justice not being equal to others in the history of where we are. If a local district election leads to the formation of a presidential campaign, don’t you think it will happen across the country?

It appears that the use of power by the government to advance political ends is what Republicans are accusing the FBI and the Justice Department of.

Jim Jordan warned of the Manhattan investigation, saying it is obvious that this is a sham, and they want to know if federal funds were involved. The Ohio Republican said they don’t think that President Trump broke the law.

Republicans, along with every other American, do not know exactly what the evidence against Trump might be other than hints contained in media accounts and a previous case involving his ex-lawyer – Michael Cohen, a pivotal witness in the current matter – who was previously sent to jail for for tax fraud, making false statements to Congress and violating campaign finance laws.

The district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, said in January that charging decisions were imminent in an investigation into the ex-president’s attempts to overturn the victory of President Joe Biden. Willis’ office, which is considering bringing racketeering and conspiracy charges, could make decisions this spring, CNN reported on Monday. Trump’s lawyers attempted to get a court to throw out the final report of the grand jury.

What has changed in the New York case? CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero spoke to Wolf Blitzer on Monday. “The facts of this case, going on almost seven years now, are really stale. And so the big question that I have with respect to New York is what has changed more recently in the past year or so that has gotten it to this point?”

This is a complicated narrative that may be difficult to sell to a jury in a case of this magnitude, but it also may be hard to sell to the general public.

The attorney who has represented Trump associates like Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon testified before the grand jury on Monday after appearing at the request of the president’s team.

The idea that the case would be made on Cohen’s word, without any corroborating evidence, seems unlikely. The rest of the country doesn’t yet know much about the grave matter.

Trump isn’t a crime: Cohen’s testimony against Corcoran could lead to obstructions of justice in the high-energy investigation of the 2020 election

That is not, however, quelling the storm that has accompanied Trump’s return to political center stage, which could reach hurricane strength in the days ahead.

Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and CNN legal analyst, said the piercing of this bedrock legal protection was highly unusual and an ill omen for Trump, since Corcoran’s testimony could be used to suggest he committed a crime. This could involve not just the mishandling of classified documents but also possible obstruction of justice. “It considerably worsens what was probably Trump’s most federal legal peril,” Eisen told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on “The Situation Room” on Wednesday.

Cohen’s conviction for lying to Congress could make him lose his credibility in a trial since he made the payment to Daniels. CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams explained that Bragg would have to test the question of Cohen’s trustworthiness now before a grand jury or at trial. He said that it was their interests to step back and make a decision. This type of thing occurs all the time, as prosecutors decide on how to bring cases.

The ex-president and his lieutenants are being investigated by the Justice Department over their attempt to steal the 2020 election and the US Capitol insurrection. Smith subpoenaed former Vice President Mike Pence to testify, in a sign of the seriousness of the probe. (Smith is also investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents.)

The Donald Trump Presidential Debate Revisited: The Case for an Extra-Gov. Candidate Whose Name Will Be America’s Next President

The GOP presidential race is getting even more intense after Trump lashed out at the Florida congressman, who is yet to announce a campaign. “The fact is, Ron is an average Governor, but the best by far in the Country in one category, Public Relations, where he easily ranks Number One,” Trump said in a Wednesday statement savaging the record of the man he once considered a protégé. Look at the facts and figures, and you will understand that we don’t want Ron as our President.

One of the advisers to the governor told CNN that the governor can’t afford to be marginalized. “He clearly made the calculus it was time to push back.”

The nation is nowhere near repairing the damage done by Trump’s term, two years after he left office. And if the events of recent days are any indication, Americans may be in for another round of turmoil.

Patrick Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center which is based in Washington DC. He is also a former senior policy adviser to Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. You can follow him on social media. The views expressed in this piece are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

The Diehards: Why Trump Shouldn’t Be the Presumptive Candidate of the U.S. Post-Trump Presidential Campaign

Perhaps Republican primary voters may take both routes — immediately flocking to support the former president against his perceived adversaries before being persuaded to opt for a safer, more scandal-free option once the 2024 presidential primary campaigning begins in earnest.

But the biggest political impact may be in creating a tightrope that Trump’s would-be challengers, and other Republicans interested in charting a post-Trump future, will need to walk.

On the legal question itself, many Republicans will go on the record as calling it the politicized decision of an overzealous prosecutor. Some will be tempted to vote for Trump in order to unify the party against the media and the deep state. The strategy of the diehards is to convince the rank-and-file Republicans that they will come for them if they support Trump.

The ancient Greeks called this type of rhetorical move apophasis, which means “not to be bringing up a subject in a debate.” Republicans who offer a response coupling implicit criticism of Trump with explicit criticism of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg offer a textbook example of the strategy.

It runs the risk of being a little too clever. The former president himself, who is a supporter of the “MAGA” movement, was offended by the quip. It would be hard for Republicans to back any other candidates if they only focused their rhetorical attacks on the legal adventures of the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

Successful candidates and parties need to have a compelling story around their campaign. Without making a case, directly or indirectly, why Trump shouldn’t be the presumptive nominee, the Republican Party narrative will focus on Trump and his adversaries. A response that solely focuses on the sins of prosecutors in New York runs the risk of letting Trump claim the nomination by default.