Lock him up

Jonathan Chait:

....Kevin McCarthy, the highest-ranking Republican leader, depicts the charges as a personal plot by Joe Biden — “It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him” — and a “grave injustice.” Trump’s leading Republican opponent denounces the charges as “political bias” and “the weaponization of federal law enforcement.”

What is distinctive about these remarks is how little fear these leaders have of embarrassment by the facts. They are dismissing out of hand an indictment they have not seen, the known contours of which suggest persistent criminal misconduct. 

Trump, according to news reports, repeatedly defied orders to return classified documents, repeatedly lied about what he held, and appears to have engaged in a cover-up, evidence of which may include surveillance-camera footage, potential testimony by his underlings, and a recording of Trump contradicting his best legal defense. 

Trump’s attorney confirmed he is facing seven criminal counts, including conspiracy.

A reasonably healthy party might give its indicted leader some benefit of the doubt, while calling for judgment to be withheld before he has his day in court. But Republicans correctly understand that their party will consider Trump an innocent martyr regardless. 

The sickness of the Republican Party as it is presently constituted is that there is no conceivable set of facts that would permit it to acknowledge Trump’s guilt.

What has brought the party to this point is the convergence of its decades-long descent into paranoia with its idiosyncratic embrace of a career criminal....

See also Kevin Drum: Donald Trump and his obsession with “my boxes.”

Rob's comment:

The idea that Biden is behind the Trump indictment is crude bullshit that only the fringe of even the Repugnant Party can actually believe. Clearly no one but Trump himself is responsible for his problems. 

Biden and Democrats don't have to do anything but enjoy the spectacle of Trump and the Republican Party's self-induced political implosion.