There’s a new poll out from Politico Magazine/Ipsos the results of which are straight out of Obviousville. But surprisingly few people ever go to Obviousville. So those results are worth discussing. The central finding is that the parade of criminal charges against Donald Trump are not in fact good news, politically or individually, for Donald Trump. More specifically, majorities (albeit bare ones) of Americans want his trials to be held before the election (61%), believe he’s guilty (51%) and believe he should go to prison if convicted (50%).

Critically, Politico notes that a substantial minority of the population (between a quarter and a third) says they’re not that familiar with the charges against Trump. Since the charges – especially those in the Mar-a-Lago case – are quite strong as an evidentiary matter that suggests there’s plenty of room for things to get worse for Trump.

How did we get here? How did we not get here? By which I mean how many were the overlapping layers of bad acts, transgressions, crimes, lies that got us here? Looking back over the span of Trump’s presidency and post-presidency it’s not just one stream of actions building to this moment. There are so many, each of which might have gotten us here. It is almost as if — and perhaps this is the best way to look at the matter — Trump was determined to get us here even as we collectively, as Americans, resisted it.

Numerous American presidents have lost power at the ballot box. Every American president, save the eight who died in office, has voluntarily ceded power to his successor. There is no evidence that it so much as occurred to any of them not to do so.

Until Donald Trump.

The Miami Herald’s headline this morning had it that the state’s governor “fights for attention” in the first GOP presidential debate. Instapolls and betting markets says it was a big win for Vivek Ramaswamy who as I put it last night “comes off as a cocky little shit” and thus will “probably be rising in the polls.” For a good rundown of what happened you can listen to Kate Riga and my overnight insta-pod, in which we provided our initial reactions.

Kate Riga and I just recorded a quick debate recap insta-pod which should be showing up in your feed a bit later in the evening if you’re a Josh Marshall Podcast subscriber. If not, we’ll post it here on the site too. Our first impressions were pretty similar: surprisingly strong showing by Mike Pence. We debated today on the regular episode whether Hutchinson or Christie would be the one who brought the fight to Trump. Pence was also possible but he simply didn’t seem to have it in him. But as it turned out, it was Pence who took up that challenge and he managed to wrestle applause from the audience for doing it. There’s a strong element of “not that it matters.” But in the context of this debate, it was Pence.

10:23 p.m.: Needless to say this debate is a total mess. The way that this cranked-up weirdo Ramaswamy basically takes over the whole debate with his inane claims is the story in microcosm of the contemporary GOP.

10:11 p.m.: Pence helped himself with that little speech that he gave when he briefly took over the debate.

10:04 p.m.: DeSantis gives a highly principled explanation of why he has to dodge the question.

9:58 p.m.: Finally Christie at least justifies his being on the stage … I would say Christie did okay with that. But he could have done better. Sorta meh.

9:38 p.m.: Fascinating to me that Pence makes an unabashed, bible-based anti-abortion stand and then embraces the 15-week national ban. That’s a pretty good barometer of where the pro-life movement is.

9:26 p.m.: Fox just let them veto the climate hand raise. Amazing.

9:16 p.m.: Even though I expected it, it’s kind of amazing to me how much of this debate is being conducted as though Trump never happened.

9:14 p.m.: Kind of a small thing but Tim Scott said unemployment was 3%, the lowest ever when they lost their majority. Actually in November 2020 it was 6.7%.

9:08 p.m.: I was hoping Chris Christie would entertain me tonight. But this is weak. Mealymouthed.

8:58 p.m.: Tonight is going to be pretty traditional coverage for us. But we’re going to be doing more live, real-time coverage of some breaking events in the future. Likely election nights, perhaps major breaking news and possibly debates. So let us know what you think about that. I like being able to get immediate audio and video commentary but I don’t necessarily want to get the canned stuff from the cable networks. So we’ll be experimenting with that.

8:55 p.m.: Trey Gowdy: “All eight have something in common. They’re behind.” Good one. Lol.

8:52 p.m.: This debate could decide who will come in second place for the GOP nomination.

In today’s episode of the podcast, Kate Riga and I did a preview of tonight’s GOP debate. So if you’re going to be watching tonight try to listen before the show. We did our best to give pointers on what to look out for. It should be showing up in your feeds this afternoon if you subscribe.

It’s a bit off our radar. But I wanted to point your attention to this eye-popping story on defeated former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro embraced the Trump comparison in office and followed that pattern with his own failed insurrection which broke out after he refused to recognize his reelection defeat in 2022. Since then he’s been under a number of investigations into subjects ranging from his failed coup to various Watergate-like infractions in office to other instances of corruption. But the one that is his most immediate threat turns on his allegedly fencing fancy gifts he received from foreign heads of state at stores and auction houses in the United States.

In addition to the prosaic matters of corruption, securities fraud, free home renovations from a donor and obstructing federal investigations, Texas AG Ken Paxton’s upcoming impeachment trial in the Texas state Senate will include evidence that he used a fake Uber account to hide visits to his mistress as well as burner phones and secret personal email addresses.

Recently we were planning debate coverage. And to do that we went back and watched one of the early 2016 GOP debates. It was striking to me on a number of levels. Only seven years ago — but it was a lifetime ago, truly a different world in politics. A huge amount of the debate was about combating the ISIS threat. You had a bunch of grandstanding about the power and necessity of being willing to say the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism.” But the biggest difference was that hard-to-quite-capture dimension of nothing Republican presidential candidates say really mattering because of the unspoken presence of Donald Trump.

Trump was on the stage in this debate. But it was early. It was before the only real question was whether or not any of the candidates would be able to stop Trump. Today you might see Nikki Haley, or Mike Pence or Ron DeSantis making a speech or doing an interview. But it doesn’t really matter what they’re saying. Because whatever they’re saying isn’t actually what they’re saying. It’s a way to make an argument or communicate something else about the thing that can’t be mentioned: Donald Trump. It’s like a mime performance where the unseen object they’re reacting against is Donald Trump.