Washington Post: “Two weeks in, the first criminal trial of a former president has been personally taxing for Trump and disruptive to his campaign.”
“Despite efforts to schedule dinners where donors, friends and world leaders join him, Trump’s moods are worse on trial days, according to several people close to him. The former president is accustomed to near-daily rounds of golf, ‘constant stimulation’ and cheers when he enters and exits a room at Mar-a-Lago, they said. Instead, he is now reporting four days a week for mundane court arguments and long stretches without permission to check his phone.”
“Trump has done his best to turn his trial into an extension of his 2024 campaign… But the indictments that once helped Trump lock down the GOP nomination by firing up his base have become a serious constraint in the general election and thrust the domineering candidate into an unusually humbling position.”
“I want to start by wishing my wife Melania a very happy birthday. It would be nice to be with her, but I’m at a courthouse for a rigged trial.” — Donald Trump, walking into the courthouse. Trump is literally in court because he was unfaithful to Melania.
Donald Trump suggested someone is purposely keeping him a “freezing” courtroom for his hush money criminal trial. Said Trump: “We have another day in court, in a freezing courthouse. It’s very cold in there, on purpose I believe.”
“The lawyer for Donald Trump who on Friday led the cross-examination of David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer and first witness in the trial, used confrontational questioning to try to catch Mr. Pecker in contradictions,” the New York Times reports.
“But that strategy, which led to a tense exchange in the Lower Manhattan courtroom, did not seem to pay off. Mr. Pecker repeatedly rejected characterizations and questions posed by the lawyer, Emil Bove, and resisted the suggestion that he had not been forthright in earlier testimony.”
Politico: David Pecker gave prosecutors just what they were looking for in Trump hush money testimony.
“Donald Trump is a thrice-married man accused of covering up a sex scandal with a porn star after the world heard him brag about grabbing women by their genitals,” the New York Times reports.
“But when Mr. Trump’s lawyers introduced him to a jury at his Manhattan criminal trial this week, they dwelt on a different dimension: ‘He’s a husband. He’s a father. And he’s a person, just like you and just like me.’”
“That half-hour opening statement encapsulated the former president’s influence over his lawyers and their strategy. It reflected specific input from Mr. Trump, people with knowledge of the matter said, and it echoed his absolutist approach to his first criminal trial.”
“And while defendants often offer feedback to their lawyers, this particular hands-on client could hamstring them.”
“This week, one presidential candidate has called the other a loser, made fun of him for selling Bibles, and even poked fun at his hair,” the New York Times reports.
“That kind of taunting is generally more within the purview of former President Donald J. Trump, whose insults are so voluminous and so often absurd that they have been cataloged by the hundreds. But lately, the barbs have been coming from President Biden, who once would only refer to Mr. Trump as ‘the former guy.’”
“Gone are the days of calling Mr. Trump ‘my predecessor.’”
President Biden is doing a live interview with Howard Stern on Sirius XM.
Years ago this would be considered risky. But Stern — a reformed “shock jock” — really wants to see Donald Trump defeated.
Adam Serwer: “Trump’s legal argument is a path to dictatorship. That is not an exaggeration: His legal theory is that presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for official acts. Under this theory, a sitting president could violate the law with impunity, whether that is serving unlimited terms or assassinating any potential political opponents, unless the Senate impeaches and convicts the president. Yet a legislature would be strongly disinclined to impeach, much less convict, a president who could murder all of them with total immunity because he did so as an official act. The same scenario applies to the Supreme Court, which would probably not rule against a chief executive who could assassinate them and get away with it.”
“The conservative justices have, over the years, seen harbingers of tyranny in union organizing, environmental regulations, civil-rights laws, and universal-health-care plans. When confronted with a legal theory that establishes actual tyranny, they were simply intrigued. As long as Donald Trump is the standard-bearer for the Republicans, every institution they control will contort itself in his image in an effort to protect him.”
“After Arizona became the fourth state to bring charges against fake electors involved in the Trump campaign’s alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election Wednesday night, eyes turned to the three remaining states where the effort took place: New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin,” the Arizona Republic reports.
“Officials in New Mexico and Pennsylvania have said they are unlikely to prosecute Trump allies who sent documents to then-Vice President Mike Pence purporting to certify Trump won the election in their state, because those fake electors placed certain limits on their claims. That leaves Wisconsin as the state most likely still to pursue charges.”
Following the indictment of Donald Trump’s allies over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Arizona, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer told Margaret Hoover that those efforts came “quite close” to succeeding. Said Richer: “I think we put ourselves in a pretty perilous situation.”
“Fifty-three people who tried to keep former President Donald Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election have now been criminally charged,” the New York Times reports. “The indictments have been brought in four swing states that will be crucial to the upcoming election.”
“The Supreme Court’s conservatives often accuse liberals of inventing provisions nowhere to be found in the Constitution. Now, the fingers are pointed in the other direction,” Politico reports.
“At the attention-grabbing arguments this week over Donald Trump’s claim of sweeping presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, the six-member conservative bloc seemed largely unconcerned by a key flaw in Trump’s theory: Nothing in the Constitution explicitly mentions the concept of presidential immunity.”
Greg Sargent: “J. Michael Luttig sees two potential outcomes from Thursday’s Supreme Court arguments. Both are grim for our democracy.”
“In the end, if it fails completely, it’s because we destroyed our democracy on our own, isn’t it?” — Justice Sonia Sotomayor, during oral argument in Trump v. United States.
Wall Street Journal: “U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Putin likely didn’t order Navalny to be killed at the notoriously brutal prison camp in February, a finding that deepens the mystery about the circumstances of his death.”
“The assessment doesn’t dispute Putin’s culpability for Navalny’s death, but rather finds he probably didn’t order it at that moment. The finding is broadly accepted within the intelligence community and shared by several agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department’s intelligence unit.”
Bloomberg: “Senate Republicans are girding for a demand by Donald Trump to undo the chamber’s filibuster traditions in order to advance his agenda if he returns to the White House.”
“But any attempt to eject that rule would face staunch opposition from the vast majority of Senate Republicans, who in interviews ruled out doing away with the super-majority threshold in the event they regain the majority in November.”
“Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Hungary from May 8 to 10 as part of a trip to Europe,” Bloomberg reports. “Prime Minister Viktor Orban is seeking to expand economic ties with China, including by broadening Hungary’s participation in the Belt and Road Initiative to include further rail modernization projects as well as the financing of a new crude pipeline connecting it with Serbia.”
“President Biden, seeking to capitalize on a week of favorable political developments, plans to announce on Thursday that his administration will provide up to $6.1 billion in grants to Micron Technology, the latest federal award intended to shore up the nation’s domestic supply of semiconductors,” the New York Times reports.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) admitted to killing her dog in her new book, The Guardian reports.
“She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything ‘difficult, messy and ugly’ if it simply needs to be done.” Since Trump hates dogs, this puts her at the top of the VP list.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) defended killing a 14-month old puppy, which she wrote about in her forthcoming book: “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm.”
Playbook: “But read the story, and it sure sounds more like animal cruelty…”
“We’re not sure who the heck advised Noem on this book. But whatever hell Mitt Romney endured as a presidential candidate in 2012 for driving with the family dog on the roof of his car, expect Noem to face even more outrage from the many Americans, across ideological and party lines, who will be left totally appalled by the killing of animals out of what seems to be little more than annoyance.”
“Five years ago, Britain’s Conservative Party scored a landslide victory in a general election that contained outlines of a realignment in that nation’s politics. Today, those same Conservatives appear headed for one of their worst defeats in a generation, an unraveling of a once-proud party that has come with astonishing swiftness,” the Washington Post reports.
“The decline and fall of the Conservatives is the story of a political party that has become exhausted and inward-looking after more than a decade in power. Not unlike the Republican Party in the United States, it is riven by factionalism, stained by scandal and judged by many voters as incapable of dealing with the country’s problems — all amplified by a whipsawing series of leadership changes.”
“The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday voted to restore ‘net neutrality’ rules that prevent broadband internet providers such as Comcast and Verizon from favoring some sites and apps over others,” the AP reports. “The move effectively reinstates a net neutrality order the commission first issued in 2015 during the Obama administration. In 2017, under then-President Donald Trump, the FCC repealed those rules.”
“A federal judge has temporarily blocked a Montana law that appeared to require people to cancel any previous voter registrations before signing up to vote in the state, or risk facing felony charges,” the AP reports.
“Lawmakers in Alabama passed legislation that could lead to the prosecution of librarians under the state’s obscenity law for providing minors with ‘harmful’ materials,” The Hill reports.
“All charges have been declined against the 57 people arrested in connection to the Wednesday pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas,” the Austin American-Statesman reports.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN the U.S. has seen evidence of Chinese attempts to “influence and arguably interfere” with the upcoming U.S. elections, despite an earlier commitment from leader Xi Jinping not to do so.
“A key member of the National Rifle Association and ally of former President Donald Trump is pitching Donald Trump Jr. to take over for former NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“No major American presidential candidate has talked like he now does at his rallies — not Richard Nixon, not George Wallace, not even Donald Trump himself,” the New York Times reports.
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