How Many Obama Arrest Threats Does It Take to Change a Storyline?
We don’t know yet, but Trump seems keen to find out.
Among the various silly and dangerous things House Republicans are doing these days—about which more below—perhaps the silliest is trying to rename the opera theater inside the Kennedy Center after Melania Trump. Rep. Mike Simpson, who introduced the idea into an appropriations bill that passed out of committee Tuesday, said it was “an excellent way to recognize her appreciation of the arts.” We look forward to the debut of Ave Melania in the fall. Happy Wednesday.
Presidential Immunity for Me, Not for Thee
by Andrew Egger
Yesterday, the president of the United States announced that one of his predecessors was guilty of treason, and said the time had come for him to suffer the appropriate punishment.
“After what they did to me, whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. Obama, Trump said, had “tried to steal the election” from him in 2016. “Look, he’s guilty. It’s not a question. . . . This was treason, this was every word you can think of.”1
As Will Sommer noted this week, this comes on the heels of a series of Truth Social posts by Trump depicting AI-generated fantasies of Obama being dragged out of the Oval Office by law enforcement, among other things. It’s quite the declaration. You might expect it to be big news.2 And yet it faded into the background almost at once. How far through the looking glass are we, that this sort of thing reads to so many as a “dog bites man” story?
In making these claims, Trump was referring to a report released last week by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who alleged that Obama and his allies carried out a “treasonous conspiracy” and a “years-long coup” against Trump in the closing days of Obama’s presidency by overseeing an intelligence investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The report, as we’ve written, is beneath contempt, so fanciful and deceptive that it’s hard to imagine it wasn’t deliberately designed to mislead. Our Cathy Young vivisected it in an excellent article this week, as did Will Saletan in a video; we don't need to recapitulate their arguments here.
Instead, I wanted to focus briefly on two elements of Trump’s reaction to the report.
Think back to last summer, when it was Trump who was having a little bit of trouble with the law. With federal charges bearing down on him over his attempt to steal the 2020 election and his post-term mishandling of national security documents, Trump developed a sudden deep interest in constitutional law. In post after post, for a period of months, Trump demanded that the Supreme Court give him a bulletproof cloak against prosecution in the form of a new doctrine of presidential immunity. “WITHOUT PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY,” he wrote in one representative post, “IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR A PRESIDENT TO PROPERLY FUNCTION, PUTTING THE UNITED STATES IN GREAT AND EVERLASTING DANGER!” There are oodles of others.
To which you will recall the Supreme Court responded: Sir, you’re making some great points. The immunity doctrine the Court handed down last year protected presidents from post-term criminal prosecution for most “official acts.”
Even if Trump’s accusations that Obama illegally tried to invalidate his election victory were accurate—and again, they are not—there is zero question that Obama’s oversight of the intelligence community’s Trump-Russia investigation constituted an official act. Going by his own repeated statements, Trump should thus believe Obama to be immune from prosecution. But of course this is not how Trump’s mind works. To him, “presidential immunity” doesn’t exist to shield presidents in general. It exists to shield him.
The other amazing thing is the specific charge that Obama’s supposed actions constituted treason. This is, of course, notable in part because a possible penalty for treason is death. But treason is more than just a really, really bad crime. It’s a direct attack on the United States as such—a crime of working not just against Americans, but against Americaitself.
Why does Trump believe actions Obama supposedly took to undermine his 2016 campaign constituted treason? Simply because Trump, in his megalomania, can conceive of no difference between the interests of the nation and his own personal interests. That he wasn’t even president yet in late 2016 is no matter. In his own mind, like many autocrats before him, Trump was already the state.
Release All the Files
by William Kristol
Donald Trump’s 2003 birthday note to his pal Jeffrey Epstein has been public for almost a week. It’s damning.
The good news for Trump is that the missive has done what damage it’s going to do. He has claimed the card is a hoax. That argument isn’t intellectually plausible or politically compelling. What would be politically compelling is if Trump were to order the release of the files. Why not? If the birthday note were the worst thing for Trump in the Epstein files, why wouldn’t he now take the popular position that all the files should be made public? That would change the dynamic of the scandal. He’d be able to move on, in a way that he can’t do now when he’s having to argue that the card isn’t authentic, or argue that the Obama and Biden administration doctored the still hidden files, or argue that President Obama is guilty of treason.
Of course, there’s an obvious reason Trump isn’t taking the path of making the files public: He knows there is material in them more damning for him than the birthday note. Trump's continued commitment to the coverup only makes sense if there's something even worse about Trump in the Epstein files.
The political damage of the ongoing coverup is real. That’s why Speaker Mike Johnson is recessing the House early rather than trying to force his members to vote against resolutions for releasing the files.
Johnson explained Monday that, “We need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing.” In other words, he wants to give the administration time over the recess to organize a more effective coverup, perhaps by striking a deal with Ghislaine Maxwell.
The next six weeks will probably make or break the coverup. If Congress returns and Trump’s efforts at distraction haven’t worked, or if he hasn’t arranged some sort of deal with Maxwell, or if he hasn’t succeeded in having Pam Bondi and Kash Patel “discover” the files have been doctored by Biden and Obama, or if Bondi and Patel haven’t managed to purge the files of whatever is terrifying him, then he could lose political control of the situation. Republicans will return in September and vote to release the files. The coverup will become even more of a political burden for Trump and the Republicans in the fall.
This means we have to keep an eagle eye on what Trump and Bondi and Patel are up to over the next six weeks. And we need to encourage patriots within the government to keep us apprised of what nefarious schemes might be underway.
The message from those of us in opposition about the coverup is also important. It shouldn’t be “Release the Epstein files that mention Trump.” It should be “Release all the files.”
The Epstein affair is a genuine scandal that reaches beyond Trump. It’s the story of a shameful coverup of horrible crimes on behalf of our political, social, and financial elites. The worst sexual predator of recent decades was close to two U.S. presidents—and to countless others in positions of power, wealth, and celebrity. In the face of such corruption and elite self-protection, the principled opposition must favor releasing all the files, exposing all the facts, without regard to who benefits.
So: If well-known Democrats get hurt by the files’ release? Tough. If the Biden and Obama and Bush administrations all get criticized for not doing enough to bring justice to Epstein’s victims and accountability to his associates? Tough. If life becomes awkward for some establishment big shots? Tough.
In fact, good. Releasing the files would be good for the sake of basic justice and accountability. But it would also be good for the Democratic party. Yes, that party should go into the 2026 and 2028 elections as the party of responsible governance and the defender of democratic institutions. But it should also go into those elections as the party of righteous popular anger at terrible elite behavior and its indefensible coverup.
Democrats have been struggling for a message. Here’s one, from a great liberal reformer of a century ago—a progressive Republican who became a Democrat in 1912, and who wrote a famous article in 1913 entitled “What Publicity Can Do.” Three years before his nomination to the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis argued that “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”
So it is, and so it would be today. Let the sunlight in. Let the sunlight in on Republican and Democratic crimes alike. Release ALL the Epstein files.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Mehdi Hasan: Jubilee “Debate” Left Me Speechless… At Bulwark+Takes, MEHDI HASAN joins TIM MILLER in his first interview post his Jubilee debate experience, where he faced off against 20 young members of the far right—some of whom were openly fascist—and was left speechless.
The Threat to Free Speech in Trump’s Unprecedented Wall Street Journal Suit… On the merits, this defamation case should be winnable for the newspaper. But the chilling effect is real and dangerous, observes KIM WEHLE.
We Are Fumbling the Fight Against AIDS… At The Breakdown, JONATHAN COHN reports that Senate Republicans saved some PEPFAR funding at the last moment—but Trump has already heavily damaged the program.
MAGA Was Cooked in a Lab… On Just Between Us, JVL joins MONA CHAREN to discuss the next steps in Epstein story, whether inflation will damage Trump as it did Biden, the cultural and economic pessimism gripping the country despite historic prosperity, and warnings about Trump-era tariffs and rule-of-law erosion undermining America's long-term economic stability and global leadership.
Canceling ‘The Late Show’: Business or Politics? On this week’s episode of Across the Movie Aisle, the SONNY BUNCH, ALYSSA ROSENBERG, and PETER SUDERMAN discussed the cancellation of The Late Show. Is this move being motivated by politics or the declining economic prospects of linear TV more broadly?
Restrained Cyberpunk Visions of Grief… Jayson Greene’s novel poses fascinating questions about AI, but its deeper interest is in exploring the reality of loss, writes BILL COBERLY.
Quick Hits
BOVE-ING FORWARD: There’s Trump judges, and then there’s Trump judges. Emil Bove is a man who spent several career-making turns working to force the world into alignment with how Donald Trump felt it ought to be—first as his criminal defense attorney, then as one of his most reliable toadies at the Department of Justice.3 Right now, the Senate is deciding whether to reward Bove for this work by putting him on a federal appeals court for the rest of his life. Yesterday, they inched toward “absolutely we should,” voting 50-48 to proceed with his nomination. Only one Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted no. Sen. Susan Collins voted yes but said she will oppose Bove’s confirmation on final passage. Unless two more join her, that won’t be enough to sink him.
OLYMPIC CHANGES: In recent years, the national and international bodies that oversee the Olympics have tried to sidestep raging debates over trans athletes’ eligibility to participate in various events, deferring to the individual judgments of the governing bodies of games’ various individual sports. Now, that’s changing: the U.S. Olympic Committee quietly announced this week that it would work “to ensure that women have a fair and safe competition environment consistent with Executive Order 14201.”
Donald Trump signed the order in question, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” back in February. Its primary target was collegiate athletics: It threatened Title IX action against the NCAA, which barred trans women from participating in its women’s sports competitions the following day. But it also called for the International Olympic Committee to amend its eligibility standards to ensure that “eligibility for participation in women’s sporting events is determined according to sex and not gender identity or testosterone reduction.”
Although it cowed the NCAA instantly, the White House didn’t have as much leverage to twist the arm of the U.S. Olympic Committee, which isn’t subject to Title IX enforcement and receives no federal funding. It is, however, a federally chartered organization—which ultimately meant, as Committee CEO Sarah Hirschland and President Gene Sykes put it in a letter to Team USA obtained by NBC News, that “we have an obligation to comply with federal expectations.”
THE HIGH ROAD, AT ANY COST: Senate Republicans did great damage to the trust necessary for bipartisan dealmaking when they passed a rescission package this month reversing billions of dollars in agreed-on spending, but Democrats still seem reluctant to acknowledge that opposition, not cooperation, is the order of the day. Yesterday, most of the caucus lined up to help Republicans overcome an early procedural hurdle on a “minibus” government funding bill, with the Senate voting 90-8 to move forward with consideration of the package. Here’s Politico:
Though Democrats helped overcome Tuesday’s hurdle, they aren’t committed yet to helping pass the bill. . . . And as lawmakers stare down the Sept. 30 government shutdown cliff in just 10 weeks, fiscal conservatives and the White House are again calling for Republicans to abandon funding negotiations with Democrats.
Ahead of the procedural vote Tuesday, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer praised the Senate’s veterans funding bill as containing “some important steps to reverse a number of the awful cuts” posed by the Department of Government Efficiency and White House budget director Russ Vought.
But Schumer also warned Republicans not to bank on automatically having Democratic votes to pass the bill, adding: “We will see how the floor process evolves here on the floor. Given Republicans’ recent actions undermining bipartisan appropriations, nothing is guaranteed.”
Cheap Shots
In case his message wasn’t clear, the president added, “So that’s really the things you should be talking about.”
One person who thought it was notable enough for a rare public rebuke was Obama himself. “Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of the White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one,” Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said in a statement. “Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”
A whistleblower last month accused Bove of openly proposing that they defy court orders at the Justice Department.
“After what they did to me, whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. Obama, Trump said, had “tried to steal the election” from him in 2016. “Look, he’s guilty. It’s not a question. . . . This was treason, this was every word you can think of.”¹
No. This is embarrassingly wrong -- no small achievement from this small-minded grossly immature man with such an expansive track record of extreme distortions of the truth. The easiest response to this reckless charge is also the most obvious one: January 6, 2021. That is what treason looks like. And he wears it well.
Also Common Sense 101: the more the current chief executive tries to spin and deflect away from Epstein, with any tactic he possibly can think of, the more he telegraphs the clear message that he has something big to hide and will go to any length to keep it under wraps. Nobody tries this hard to distance himself from something unless he feels that it is an imminent danger to him and his standing. What is it? Keep asking. Keep pushing for answers. Keep digging for the truth. The taxpayers have a right to know exactly what kind of person they are employing to do the people's business, and why each day a little more the people's business is becoming less important to him than it is to take care of his own business.
I guess that's the difference between MAGA and me. If Trump, Obama, and Clinton are all legitimately in the Epstein files, I want the book thrown at them all.