Jack Smith, You’re Fired! Welcoming a ‘New Political Era’ and Other Perspectives
Legal take: Hey, Jack Smith — You’re Fired!
Monday, “special counsel Jack Smith heard the line Donald Trump made famous in ‘The Apprentice’: You’re fired!” quips The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn. The line was from federal judge Aileen Cannon, as she dismissed Smith’s classified-documents case against Trump. Cannon ruled that no statute authorizes Smith’s appointment, nor was he confirmed by the Senate. As Justice Clarence Thomas has noted, this is no “trifling technicality.” The need for a statute and for the Senate’s “advice and consent” stems from the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, a reaction to the Founders’ experience with the British monarchy. Cannon’s dismissal of the case, notes McGurn, is a “win” for Trump. But if she and Thomas are right, “it’s a bigger victory for the Constitution, the American people and all future presidents.”
From the left: Welcome to a ‘New Political Era’
After “the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, a series of reversals may mark the beginning of a new political era,” marvels Matt Taibbi at Racket News. The White House OK’d Secret Service protection for RFK Jr., essentially admitting it had previously been denied “for political reasons” or “spite.” MSNBC pulled “Morning Joe,” an admission the show’s “format only holds up under something less than maximum scrutiny.” Meta lifted restrictions of Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. Dems’ lawfare games are failing. And Axios quoted a “senior House Democrat” saying, “We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.” All this might signal the “collapse” of the notion Trump is such an “existential” threat he can’t be treated as any other politician. “We appear headed for a new world.”
Election watch: GOP Gets Behind Trump’s No. 2
“Donald Trump once privately told associates that . . . the field of possible [veeps] did not include a no-brainer,” i.e, “a candidate whose appeal was so strong, so obvious, and so broad that he or she would have been a consensus pick,” recalls Byron York at the Washington Examiner. On Monday, Trump “announced his choice: Sen. J.D. Vance.” Some GOPers would’ve preferred someone with more “executive experience.” Yet “everybody supports Trump,” so “now everybody supports Vance, too.” And “Vance’s Appalachian background and Marine experience” will benefit Trump, who believes he’d “help the ticket win the crucial states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.” If Vance helps capture even one state, he’ll “very likely be the next vice president of the United States.”
Liberal: Vance Gives Dems a Shot
“A fully functional Democratic campaign might be able to make some hay” of Trump’s VP pick Sen. J.D. Vance, muses Nate Silver at the Silver Bulletin. They might treat him “as a cipher about whom little is known but who has been endorsed by right-wing groups like the authors of Project 2025.” They “had success in running against these sorts of candidates in 2022.” “The question is whether the Democratic campaign is firing on anything resembling all cylinders right now,” given that it’s “spending much of its time in a defensive posture stage-managing Biden’s appearances and fending off the intraparty revolt against him.” Yet another reason “a new Democratic ticket, with more ideological balance than the Republican one, could perhaps offer a fresher spin.”
From the right: Trump’s ‘Triply Smart’ Veep Pick
“A new bogeyman has emerged in US politics”: “James David ‘JD’ Vance,” snarks Daniel McCarthy at Spiked. Vance, 39 and now Donald Trump’s running mate, “is only half Trump’s age” and poised to be “more Trumpian than Trump – more of a populist, more right-wing and more disciplined and effective.” He’s “not a dull ‘movement’ man” and is deeply involved in “questions of the role of religion, and particularly the Catholic Church, in public life.” Vance has “attracted the most attention,” of course, as a “critic of US involvement in the war between Russia and Ukraine.” But he’s “a triply smart pick for vice-president,” because he’s “young, populist and gives the Trump movement a future.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
