One measure of how busy a week has been is how distant Tuesday’s news seems by the next Monday. Last Tuesday is when the E. Jean Carroll verdict was announced: The jury refused to say definitively that Trump had raped Carroll, but it did rule that he sexually assaulted her and then maliciously lied about her when she went public.
Seems like a while ago, doesn’t it?
Immediately after the verdict, this conventional wisdom seemed to be everywhere: Satisfying as it is to see that Trump’s lies don’t fly in a court of law, the verdict won’t actually mean anything politically. If anything, Trump’s personality cult will just double down on the Deep-State-persecution narrative and support him more than ever.
In this week’s first featured post, I’m going to challenge that view. The Carroll verdict might matter, even to dyed-in-the-wool Trumpists. But if you’re waiting for one of them to announce their re-evaluation of Trump on television, you’ll wait in vain. That’s not how sea changes happen on the Right. But they do happen sometimes. So in “Why the Carroll Verdict Might Matter”, I’ll describe how conservatives actually change their minds, and what you should be listening for. That’s ready to go and should be out shortly.
The second featured post concerns the Trump town hall that CNN aired Wednesday. I’ll let other people correct all the lies Trump told and lament how he mistreated the “nasty” moderator. (It’s amazing how many Trump lines sound like they could come from Gollum. Somebody needs to redub Trump clips with Gollum’s voice.) In “Normalizing Trump normalizes political violence” I’ll focus on his unapologetic embrace of January 6. Can we really debate a violent attempt to overturn an election as if it were an ordinary political issue? That should be out between 10 and 11 EDT.
The weekly summary will cover the end of Title 42 on the southern border, the start of Ukraine’s spring offensive, Turkey’s election, Elon bending his knee to Erdogan’s demands for censorship, and a few other things. That should appear sometime around noon.
The Weekly Sift 
Comments
Trump’s statements in Gollum’s voice – brilliant idea!
It’s not dubbed but the Trump-Gollum mashup has been around awhile. You are right there is an undeniable similarity – maybe they share a script writer?
https://twitter.com/realgollumtrump?s=11&t=59tlmxWlAxKN2_pSEuu6WQ
There’s a video on YouTube of Andy Serkis on Stephen Colbert’s show reading various of Trump’s Tweets — not exactly what you’re asking for, but probably the closest thing available right now.
Andy Serkis on Colbert
Rape is a crime of violence and we all even then have presumption of innocence, until proven guilty in a court of law by a jury of our peers.
We have an appeals process to make sure no lynching take place.
The Biden family and the Trump family are both as Americans protected by these constitutional rules and both at such high level of position in our government have resources to defend themselves.
Stephen Colbert managed to go right to the source to get Trump as Gollum. https://youtu.be/64mWOoj68qo