The Easter Madness Of Donald J. Trump

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Trump’s Messianic Complex

I trust that most of you were offline celebrating the holiday, warming to the Spring, welcoming baseball back, or watching college basketball. Congrats on missing another unhinged online weekend for Donald Trump.

Over the course of 70+ posts Easter morning, Trump vilified and attacked a wide range of his antagonists in ALL CAPS zeal. At the same time, he reposted articles declaring himself to be “The Chosen One.”

The contrast between the irreligious candidate embracing Christian nationalism and the lifelong Irish Catholic was, shall we say, striking:

It’s all so infantile and incredibly ridiculous that you can hardly be blamed for not wanting to be bothered about it over the weekend.

Just Say It!

Somehow the NYT can’t bring itself to use the phrase “Christian nationalism” in its story on “The Church of Trump: How He’s Infusing Christianity Into His Movement.”

The story fails to place Trump’s bible-thumping faux populism in the broader historical context of right-wing extremism and Christian nationalism. It also has the effect of conceding too much. Trump is embracing a certain corrupted brand of Christianity (that many Christians themselves find offensive), and it gives him both too much credit and allows him to co-opt Christian images and motifs.

Trump Keeps Up Attack On Trial Judge’s Daughter

After days of sustained attacks by Donald Trump on the daughter of the trial judge in the hush money case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg asked the judge Friday to tighten up the gag order against Trump. Over the weekend, the former president responded by reposting images of the trial judge’s daughter. The judge could rule on Bragg’s request as soon as today.

Beware of April Fool’s Day:

The Next Phase Of Trump’s Delay Strategy

I’ve been meaning to flag for you in advance the likely next phase of the Trump delay strategy, when the most ostentatious and obvious “dog ate my homework”-style excuses are likely to come in an effort to gum up the works in his criminal trials. But Joyce Vance has beat me to it with this succinct warning: “There are also the time-honored strategies of the desperate: getting sick or finding a sick or dying family member and firing your lawyers.”

Trump Accountability Miscellany

• MAL: Judge Aileen Cannon’s “shadow docket,” as explained by the invaluable Roger Parloff.
• Georgia RICO: Trump and his co-defendants appealed the trial judge’s decision not to disqualify Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis.
• Election Delegitimization: The vicious cycle of election denialism, notes TPM’s Khaya Himmelman:

The concern now, going into November, is not only another uptick in threats against election workers, but the continuation of a larger delegitimization cycle that originated in 2020: a greater number of clerical election errors due to new and inexperienced election staff, leading to more election conspiracy theory fodder, and ultimately culminating in more violence and another wave of resignations, where the vicious cycle begins again. 

COVID … Four Years Later

• A sobering and necessary thread from ER doc Craig Spencer on the first wave of COVID in NYC.
• The WSJ can be so inadvertently grim sometimes that it takes my breath away: “Occupancy rates at many senior communities, which fell during Covid-19 era, are rising.” All that pandemic dying made it hard on investors in senior living facilities.
• Brian Beutler on COVID and the Baltimore bridge disaster:

[W]e know from Trump’s response to COVID, and to a number of other disasters that struck non-Republican states and territories during his single term, that if he inherits the effort to rebuild after this disaster, he will likely sabotage it or hold it hostage until the leaders of Baltimore and Maryland offer him political favors or concessions. It’s a reminder in microcosm of one of Trump’s most disqualifying abuses of power …

Bridge Disaster In B’more Brings Out The Racism

There’s a right way and a wrong way to deal with racist attacks on Black elected officials.

The WaPo handled it the right way, with a nice tidy headline: “Baltimore mayor weathers racist attacks after bridge collapse.”

The Sunday shows took a different tack, confronting Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (D) with the bogus “DEI” attacks from the right and demanding they react.

In the TV news world, this is called giving them a chance to respond. Scott and Moore each handled the situation gracefully, but they’re the victims of racist attacks and challenging them to confront the attacks or defend against them on air has a certain detached and tone deaf quality to it. “Is this racism?” Dana Bash asked Moore, as if the white anchors can’t identify it themselves. And so the responsibility for explaining and contextualizing the racist attack falls on the victims themselves.

LOLOL

Bellingcat, the open-intel investigative outfit, has been able to geolocate Ammon Bundy, on the lam in Southern Utah, based on YouTube videos he’s posted. A great thread on Bundy to accompany the Bellingcat finding.

2024 Ephemera

• The American Conservative, in an essay titled “Trump 2028”: It’s time to ditch the 22d Amendment and its two-term limit.
• WaPo: Many GOP billionaires balked at Jan. 6, but now they’re coming back to Trump.
• WaPo: Cesar Chavez’s family tells RFK Jr. to stop using activist’s name and image

‘Made From 100% Bible’

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