Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, under pressure from Trump allies, is taking his first stab at addressing the Trump indictment situation. It shows both his inevitable strategy and the inherent difficulty of the situation. He pleads little knowledge of how it works when you pay “hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I just, I can’t speak to that.” But he also insists that Alvin Bragg is a “Soros-funded prosecutor and so he like other Soros funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety.” The approach isn’t surprising: Deep State/Soros yada and also did you hear he paid hush money to a porn star he had sex with?

I’ve only gotten a couple negative replies to the post below about Alvin Bragg’s expected indictments of ex-President Trump. But those replies have had a wild intensity that started me thinking about what the possible disconnect was between me and these readers. What I said was that it’s not great. But it’s happening entirely outside any framework that any of us can do anything about. And, mostly, I don’t think it will matter much one way or another if, as I expect, it is followed by indictments for graver crimes. In fact, even if this is the only Trump indictment ever, I still don’t think it matters much.

People just see things differently of course. And intense disagreement is nothing new to me. But I think there’s something more going on here — or two things rather. And, because I think these few TPM Readers represent a lot more people who think the same way, here’s what I think those things are.

I have been assuming that Trump’s unhinged reference to his being “arrested” on Tuesday is based on what Alvin Bragg’s office has told his lawyers (for arranging Trump’s turning himself in to be booked in Manhattan). In other words, the “leak” is from Trump and the information is accurate. But CNN is reporting that Robert Costello, a one time legal advisor to Michael Cohen, has been designated by Trump’s lawyers to testify to the Manhattan grand jury about Cohen’s credibility on Monday. You could still have last-ditch testimony on Monday and an indictment on Tuesday. But that makes me significantly less confident that Tuesday is the day.

Quite a lot of ink has been spilled in recent weeks over the supposed problem — perhaps a very big problem — that the years-old case of the Stormy Daniels’ payoff might be the first — and perhaps the only — prosecution of Donald Trump. It weakens, so the argument goes, the whole global case against Trump. It’s old, technical, small stuff, and “why now?” when Trump needs to be held accountable for the gravest sorts of crimes against the country itself. Trump will clearly try to take the iffy nature of a Daniels’ payoff prosecution, use it to make the case that charges against him are all weak and manufactured and then try to use that broad brush to color whatever other more serious charges come later.

Some of these points I agree or agreed with; some not. So let me address different parts of this question.