From J C

Careful C&C readers will recall my prediction earlier this week that the new Biden Banana Prosecution of President Trump was backfiring. Let’s check in and see how things are going.

Trump surrendered yesterday for yet another arrest and arraignment — his third arrest in four month

Apart from the unhinged left, who were celebrating this travesty of a failed republic, reactions were pretty strong. From Rogan yesterday:

“The people that love Trump, they feel like this is a witch hunt. They feel like all the things he’s getting indicted for are bull*** anyway… These are the actions of a banana republic, you take your political rival and you arrest him. Specifically, you charge him with things you’re f**ing guilty of.

https://twitter.com/theblaze/status/1687188176236908544?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Fox News’ Jesse Waters:

“Biden’s attempts to arrest Trump are backfiring. Trump’s now demolishing the primary field and is tied with Biden in the general. This is the strongest Trump’s been politically this cycle. The harder the Washington establishment tries to separate Trump from the people, the tighter that bond becomes.”

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1687299215696007168?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

From comedian Chris Rock (a couple months ago, but still relevant):

“You guys really going to arrest Trump? You know this is only going to make him more popular. It’s like arresting Tupac, he’s just going to sell more records. Are you kidding me?”

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1686543585456316416?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Dark brandon

https://twitter.com/OldRowSwig/status/1687212083191181312?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Anonymous officials in the White House said Biden’s next move will be for democrats to arrest Trump for failing to abate a smokey chimney.

The democrats really don’t get it. They are rapidly creating a campaign issue bigger and more compelling than any campaign issue in history.

Before I continue, let me remind everyone that I am a huge DeSantis fan. How could I not be, after what we went through in Florida during the pandemic? From March 2020, I gave up my cozy, well-run boutique litigation practice to work full time to stop the slide into biomedical despotism — and the Governor was an essential part of that life-altering experience. I personally think DeSantis was instrumental in stopping FEMA camps and restoring sanity to the U.S., and maybe the world. A hundred percent. He would be a terrific president.

And for many reasons, President Trump is a deeply flawed candidate; and DeSantis has none of Trump’s baggage.

But — thanks to democrats and feckless Republican officials should be shutting all this down hard but aren’t — I now predict the upcoming presidential election won’t be about policy, inflation, recession, jabs, Russia, China, Taiwan, Disney, drag queens, the deep state, January 6th, or Proxy Wars. Instead, it will be about a singular, existential crisis in our rule of law, a crisis affecting every single American whether they admit it or not.

In other words, if they can do this to President Trump, they can do it to anybody.

If we aren’t there already — and if we’re not, we will be soon — it’s not going to matter whether Governor DeSantis (or anybody else) is better able than Trump to brake this runaway political prosecution train. Trump’s absolutely compelling campaign message will be: you can’t let them get away with this. Because if they get away with it, there won’t be any stopping it, not ever.

In other words, if the Trump prosecution works, the Dark Brandon of the apocalypse will be out of Hell’s barn and galloping toward your house.

Again, do not misunderstand me. I am not stumping for President Trump in the primary. My preferences are not public and don’t matter. I am only predicting what Trump’s campaign issue will be, a campaign issue that is unprecedented in American political history. Cycle after cycle, politicians have campaigned on made-up existential issues, like global heating, global cooling, running out of fossil fuels, polar bear drownings, nuclear war, and the proper spelling of the word “potato.”

But this time — thanks to literally unbelievable political over-prosecution — it will be an existential issue, an issue that is manifestly and painfully real to a whole lot of people. Trump can argue that if he loses the primary or even the general, the polls prove it was only because they arrested him for everything they could think of — up to and including running Mar-a-Lago’s sprinklers on a Tuesday.

The truth of it is painfully and inescapably obvious. And it is already starting. Here’s just one example from an AOC parody account, but it’s not at all funny

Three arrests and three indictments are at least two arrests and indictments too many for most sane people. The democrats have badly overplayed their hand, and it’s probably too late to stuff the Biden Bobblehead Doll back in its box. Even if they dismissed all Trump’s charges tomorrow — which they won’t — the issue is firmly front and center.

It’s not just Trump. The January 6th prosecutions of grandmothers and firefighters, the FBI raids on soccer moms complaining at school board meetings, the Gretchen Whitmer Fed-napping plot, and the Biden Administration’s vast social media censorship bureaucracy will coalesce around the Trump prosecutions to make the inarguable case that it is now or never.

I’m not saying DeSantis is out of it. There is a brief moment in time right now — before Trump starts campaigning for real — where DeSantis could take the lead on this issue. I’m just a lawyer, and not a political consultant, but it seems to me the Governor should fiercely make fixing the lopsided legal system his main campaign issue and never shut up about it. But it would take unprecedented courage, because he’ll have to defend a rival candidate, but mostly because if Governor DeSantis successfully campaigns against the deep state’s lawfare, then he will likely find himself in the crosshairs as well.

Before this weeks indictment, it would be fair to argue they wouldn’t possibly try this on another Republican candidate, at least not in the same campaign cycle. But we’re now well past the time that argument would get any traction.

Don’t believe any predictions about what’s going to happen. Nobody can predict this, because it has never happened before in modern history. But mark my words: this campaign will be the most contentious, most hyperbolic, highest-stakes campaign in our lifetimes.