Trump Should Just Charge Jerome Powell with the Minnesota Shooting

Consolidate, please

Photo from Xinhua News Agency via Getty.

How to describe the rule of law under Trump? I’d say it’s a lot like this video:

That seems about right: No discernable rules, lots of people getting hurt. Each day, the administration constructs a new castle of bullshit seemingly designed to validate the most hysterical things being written in all caps on BlueSky. The administration says that Renée Good was a “domestic terrorist” and that her shooting was self-evidently justified. It argues that Jerome Powell is a career criminal on the level of Tony Soprano or possibly The Joker. And all of this is happening while Trump is amping up the weird dictator behavior, like proposing a coin with his face on both sides, planning a triumphal arch, and trying to name the Kennedy Center after himself. It’s like the Sacha Baron Cohen movie The Dictator, only not funny, like the Sacha Baron Cohen movie The Brothers Grimsby.

So, I get it: Trump is dragging us into thuggish authoritarianism just as fast as his flabby little arms will allow. He wants one standard of justice for his allies and another for his enemies. Roger that…I don’t think the signals could be any more clear — we’re basically living the “just give me a sign” joke from The Man with Two Brains. And I really don’t need more information confirming something I’ve known for a long time.

So, can we please consolidate? A modest proposal: Trump should charge Jerome Powell with the murder of Renée Good. I don’t have time to read about Trump’s efforts to steer the Good investigation to his preferred outcome and his efforts to manufacture dirt on Powell. I’m a busy man, and the NFL playoffs are on. Don’t make me experience Trump’s latest Truth Social rant and read a 4,000 word David Fahrenthold article and watch a presser by JD Vance that feels like a toddler lying about stealing a cookie while his mouth is still covered in crumbs. I get it — Trump is doing illegal shit because he’s just a thug. I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it, I get it. Why do I have to receive that message via six daily outrages when a one-and-done “omnibus outrage” would be so much more efficient?

You might think it’s ridiculous to charge Powell with a shooting when he was obviously not involved in any way. And that’s true, but it’s no more ridiculous than treating an obvious nothingburger about a federal renovation project like it’s the 9/11 plot. I get depressed imagining a person who actually believes that Trump’s investigation of Powell is an unbiased application of the law. To that person, Trump’s pursuit of enemies like James Comey and Lisa Cook on charges ranging from jaywalking to illegal leaf burning to taking a dump without a license are totally irrelevant. At the same time, they believe that Trump’s concerns about government integrity — especially as it relates to federal constructions projects — is utterly sincere. Does that person exist? If so, how do I sell NFTs to them? It’s hard to fathom anyone that credulous, but Trump’s approval rating is basically where it always is, so clearly some people are up-in-arms about possible excess in federal renovations but blasé about the president turning the justice system into his personal goon squad.

Do you know one of the main complaints about the renovation of the Federal Reserve building in DC? It’s that they used too much marble. Have you been to DC? The entire fucking town is marble. The buildings are marble, the statues are marble, it’s a miracle that the trees and squirrels aren’t marble. Meanwhile, Trump surrounds himself with marble more than Tim Burton surrounds himself with creepy goth shit. The case is laughable, so why not combine it with other dark harbingers of authoritarianism and save everyone some time?

I would favor a single, all-encompassing, Trump-doesn’t-care-about-the-rule-of-law story. I think he should charge Powell, James Comey, and Jimmy Kimmel with shooting Renée Good at the Capitol on January 6 just as she was about the access the Epstein files. Let’s see that story on the front page of The New York Times, 500 words, absolutely no more. Because none of this matters anyway — nothing will dissuade political partisans of their existing beliefs, and non-political-partisans are all watching The Pitt. So I don’t understand why I’m supposed to track six-to-ten stories every day that all functionally say the same thing.

I agree with Conan O’Brien’s recent assessment that Trump is beyond parody. It also feels like there’s nothing left to learn about him; maybe until he does something truly shocking, like publishing a book of poetry or playing a flawless rendition of Spiegel im Spiegel on the cello, every issue of The New York Times should carry the headline “MORE OF SAME”. I know that we’ve opened a dark new chapter in our nation’s history — I just can’t do anything about it. So I’d like to watch the NFL playoffs and have someone wake me up when things change.

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