OK, fine. The Mar-a-Lago Papers and 2024.

 I spy with my little eye, a guy who should be in federal super-max!  Of course, he should have been in Club Fed long ago, but learning that the warrant listed the Espionage Act as one of the laws Trump potentially violated when he stole highly classified documents?  How perfect was that?  That said, don't expect Trump to get locked up for an Espionage Act violation.  That is not going to happen.  I still think that the document issue is the only real legal danger Trump faces, but even on this matter, if there were to be a prosecution, it would only be on the easiest charge for the DoJ to get a conviction.  Yet this one is real.  Nothing else is a real legal threat to Trump, but this one is real.

But the clock is ticking, because in just over two years...

Let's walk through the mechanics of Trump's return to power.  First, the GOP nomination.  Donald Trump has retained his grip on his party, and while there have been occasional indications that the primary base might be slipping, or moving towards Ron DeSantis, DeSantis has never had to face a savaging by Trump.  If necessary, Trump would tell his cultists that DeSantis is... something.  He would make something up, and they would believe him.  But the question is whether or not the incident with The Mar-a-Lago Papers, as I am calling them, changes anything in the nomination contest.

Consensus seems to be that, within the news cycle of the week, Donald Trump "won the week," by which punditry and their ilk mean that... um... something.  This is the kind of empty blather that one can say without cost because it doesn't actually mean anything.  The closest we can come to meaning is as follows.  The predictable effect on the GOP was that they went down the path of batshit conspiracy theories.  Also entirely predictably, some psychopath attacked an FBI field office.

Also, the Republican Party is the party of Defund The Police FBI.

Have you ever read a book that was so badly written that you yell at the pages, and then have to glower and shake your head at popular culture when you discover that this kind of thing passes for good writing among the unwashed masses?

Anyway, all of this was predictable.  Donald Trump plays the victim-- you know, like a tough guy-- and the party wraps itself in inflammatory lies, which Trump uses to consolidate his power.

But how is this situation really any different from two weeks ago?  He had the nomination in the bag two weeks ago.  What's the difference?  Always think through the counterfactual.

And the general election?  What general election?  My point remains that if Trump wins, he gets the Oval Office again, and if he loses, the GOP steals it for him.  The probabilities we assign to Case 1 and Case 2 are irrelevant if they both lead to Trump getting the Oval Office.

The questions I occasionally see circulating have to do with whether or not The Mar-a-Lago Papers affect the probability of Trump losing a general election.  Should they?  Yes.  One way or another, he appears to have stolen classified documents, and refused to hand them over either when the Feds first showed up, or in response to a subpoena.  That's bad enough.  If there really are nuclear secrets of some kind?  Or... we don't know, but from what the search warrant says, he could have stolen some really high level shit.

But of course, to anyone reasonable, Donald Trump disqualified himself long ago, and asking whether or not any new demonstration of his unfitness for office affects his probability in a new election misses the point because my point is that even if he does lose, the GOP will steal the election for him.

We're watching them set the pieces in place for that now.  We're watching conspiracy theorists win elections around the country, we're watching them pass laws at the state level, and there is no fucking way in hell that the incoming House majority will ever certify a Democratic victory.

Ever.

It won't matter what the vote tallies are.  Donald Trump will lie, make up the craziest conspiracy theories ever, which will make that Italian satellite shit sound downright sane, and Kevin McCarthy will go along with it.

Unless you think that Kevin McCarthy is going to grow a spine and decide to stand up to Trump, and if that is your assertion, I think the evidentiary burden falls on you at this point.

But that was the case two weeks ago.

So what changed?

Nothing.

Unless Garland actually can indict, prosecute and convict Trump.

Which creates its own set of problems and dangers, but that's it.  That is the only way that Trump isn't back in the White House in January, 2025.  Everything else?  Same as it was two weeks ago.

Tune out the chatter.  But don't put too much confidence in the justice system.  This is still bad.

Freddie King, "I Got The Same Old Blues," from Burglar.  Freddie is my favorite King.  Today, anyway.