ELIE MYSTAL: Yeah. So, the thing about the indictment that stands out to me is that Trump, by his own running of the mouth, ruined his best legal defense, right? Like, the defense to “I took classified documents that I wasn’t supposed to have, and didn’t give them back when you asked,” is “I was too stupid to know they were classified documents or to know what they were. Who could tell? Not me.” Like, that’s your actual best legal defense. And Trump blows that legal defense out of the water when he says — and they have him on tape saying — that he knows the documents are confidential, he knows that he’s not supposed to be showing it to whatever staffer he’s showing it to, he knows that they’re not declassified, and he knows that he can’t declassify them now because he’s no longer president.
...
ELIE MYSTAL: What I think is more problematic is the fact that the entire Republican Party continues to debase itself in service of Donald Trump and in service of that white supremacist base that Kari Lake is talking to, right? Like, as you point out, Amy, in a normal party, when one of your rivals is indicted on 37 counts of espionage, the rest of the field is like, “Hmm, maybe you should elect me and not the guy who just got indicted.” But in the modern Republican Party, they’re all
feaming, right? They’re all, like, jonesing for the next hit off of Trump’s white supremacist base, and so they can’t risk saying mean things about Trump, even though he’s just been indicted. They have to instead placate Trump even as they purport to be running against him.