A few of you wrote in in response to my post on the sheer “normalness,” the “mundaneness” of the prosecution of Donald Trump. You took me to task, arguing that this is all far from normal. It’s a crisis, in fact. Nothing about Trump’s time on the political stage is normal.

I think we are speaking past each other.

From TPM Reader JS …

I’m getting so enraged by all of these headlines in the NYT and WaPo that claim this is “bad for Biden” or a “test for the rule of law.’ No.

I sort of held my tongue through most of the revelations and hijinks yesterday. I will share some thoughts later on the particulars of the indictment. (You can do no better than reading Josh Kovensky’s global wrap-up here.) But for now I wanted to share one thought.

That is the sheer ordinariness of the whole story. That may seem like an odd thing to say: ex-President facing multiple federal felony indictments for the first time ever, the bizarre details of this antic clown’s Florida Villa-cum-Hotel stuffed with banker’s boxes of classified documents, the bathroom chandelier, the power glitz jammed together with gaudy dime store aesthetic. But we grant Trump too much by lavishing, wearying too much in the purported weightiness of the moment. It’s very normal. Yes, powerful people get away with a lot. But if you commit crimes repeatedly and brazenly you’re very likely to get charged with one or more crimes, particularly if you’re in the public spotlight.

Obviously we didn’t anticipate that Trump would be indicted by federal prosecutors on the second day of our critical TPM Journalism Fund drive. So we’re focused on covering every dimension of this story while still doing everything we can to hit the number we need to make. We are off to a solid start, which is awesome and a great relief. But we’ve still got quite a ways to go. As of this morning we’re move than a third of the way there, roughly $180,000. (Thank you!) It would be great to get to the halfway point going into the weekend or as close as we can get to that milestone. If you have a moment this afternoon, wonderful. The link is right here.

Late Update: And more news (indictment unsealed). Think of it as classic fundraiser interference, with Trump deliberately seeking to hurt TPM.

It’s hard not to feel a sense of the weightiness of this moment. But it’s worth resisting that feeling, stepping back from it. It grants Trump too much. If you brazenly commit crimes again and again there’s a good chance you’ll get charged with a crime. That’s normal and commonplace. It is as predictable as night following day, the order of the seasons. This case doesn’t even include the constitutional wrinkles of judging actions as head of state. These are alleged crimes Trump committed as an ordinary citizen: theft of government documents, obstruction of justice, lying to federal agents.

If you’re feeling pumped that ex-President Trump has now been indicted, why not celebrate by contributing to the TPM Journalism Fund? Really? Don’t you want to memorialize the moment? Click here.

We’re in day two of our critical drive for the TPM Journalism Fund. Here’s a bit more about why it’s important, and especially important this year. On day two we’re almost 1/3 of a way toward our goal. If you didn’t get a chance yesterday, please consider donating to this year’s drive. Just click right here.

You probably saw that President Trump has now received a “target letter” from Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s office. We don’t know precisely when it was received, at least not in the reporting I have seen. But presumably it is quite recent. In federal law enforcement, a “target letter” is a mix of threat and good faith warning about your status and what to expect. In other words, we’re not just looking at a potential crime that you’re proximate to or involved with. You’re the target. We are looking at you as a probable criminal defendant and we assume we’re going to indict you. So act accordingly. It provides some back stop to prevent a defendant from saying prosecutors made it like they were just a witness and not the person who was going to get indicted. Lawyers who practice in the federal courts might put the nuance a bit differently or disagree among themselves. But I think this is the gist.

If you’re focused on the “hey is this thing really going to happen?” front, the answer is, you should assume it will. It’s not a guarantee. But it makes it highly likely. And not based on what some outside commentator speculates and pieces together from the clues. This comes from the guy who does the indicting.

A very sincere thanks to everyone who contributed since we launched this drive yesterday. As I noted yesterday we’ve got a particularly high hill to climb this year (see yesterday’s post). But we’re off to a solid start. By our counter, which you can see here, we are at just under $123,000. But we also received a single mega (I mean, truly mega!) contribution of $25,000 which isn’t yet reflected on the counter since it came by check. That brings us to just a smidge under $150,000. And a big thanks to the contributor who made such a massive contribution. If memory serves that’s five times larger than the biggest contribution we’ve ever gotten to the TPM Journalism Fund.

There’s always more than a bit of an element of stage fright when launching a drive. Success is really important but you don’t know how it’s going to go, especially when you need to raise more than usual. So I’ll give a bit more of behind the scenes of what goes into these efforts and a bit more about how it’s going. But for now, thank you. Our whole team truly appreciates it. If you’re ready to contribute, just click here.

In this post I’m going to ask you to contribute to this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive — because the journalism business is brutal at the moment and your contribution is really important to our future. That’s the gist. If that’s enough, awesome: click right here. You have our deep appreciation.

If you’d like to hear a bit more about the why, here goes.

Have you noticed how a week doesn’t seem to go by without another online news outlet closing its doors? The TPM Journalism Fund has been the critical difference that’s saved us from that fate. So it’s really important.

Last year I told you our unique brand of punch-above-our-weight investigative reporting was even more necessary today than in the past. The success of last year’s drive allowed us to make key decisions that resulted in our big Meadows Texts exclusives from last December, our big early stories on George Santos and, just recently, our exclusive about an influential neo-Nazi working as a congressional staffer.

We want to do more of that, and we can. But we need your help.

What makes this year’s drive particularly critical is that we have a large number of one-time expenses coming due in a single year — the bulk of which is tied to retrenchments we made early in the pandemic. Those were key strategic decisions that have put us on a firmer footing for the future. But the costs come due this year.

That’s why we’ve set an ambitious but necessary goal of $500,000 for this year’s drive. If we succeed it will get us through this year on a solid footing and keep us investing in breaking important stories. We want to keep moving forward, not back. But we need your help to do that.

Thank you for reading. If you would like to contribute, here’s the link. Again, you have our deep appreciation and thanks.