Comments from Nikki Haley this afternoon on Fox are getting some attention as a possible pivot away from the uniform and fulsome defense of Donald Trump we’re seeing from every Republican candidate aside from Asa Hutchison. It’s less than advertised but it’s not nothing. It’s also a bit of an incoherent mishmash. She’s going to purge the Deep State DOJ/FBI. Also Trump was reckless and endangered America and the American military. Also, can’t we just nominate me since he’s probably going to get indicted a few more times and it’s all getting to be a bit much and a distraction.

Watch the comments and decide for yourself.

I posted the video of Bill Barr’s Fox News interview on the Trump charges over the weekend. I’ve had several of you ask to see the transcript itself. So here it is.

With your support, we’ve managed to get to the 40% milestone on our way toward our goal in this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive. We’re now at $202,575, which is great for five days. Still a very long way to go. But we’re encouraged by the response so far. (Really, it’s hard to convey how much of a relief, a show of support, a validation and above all a big, big assist on our collective work that is.) We’ve got an overflow of news, which is kind of inconsiderate of the ex-President. But we’ll do our best to drive and news at the same time. If you’d like to support our efforts in this critical drive, just click right here.

It’s a funny thing pointing to Bill Barr as an authority on anything. But it’s worth watching this interview with Barr about the Trump indictments on Fox News.

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.