You'll have to excuse us for thinking that this week's momentous events were all the direct result of a lost opportunity. For all the people who are grumbling that Donald Trump should have been criminally charged with trying to subvert American democracy and the will of the people a lot earlier than now -- which, by the way, now includes Trump himself complaining that it should have happened earlier -- let's place the real blame where it belongs: on Mitch McConnell and all the other cowardly Republican senators who voted with Trump in his second impeachment trial. If McConnell and nine more GOP senators had stood firm and done the right thing back then -- mere days after the January 6th insurrection attempt -- then we simply would not be where we are now.

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Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, was arraigned today in a federal courtroom on some very serious felony charges. The most striking thing about today's events, however, was how routine they have now become. This is (depending on how you count them) either the third such indictment of Trump or the fourth (I would say third, as the previous court filing was merely a superseded indictment that beefed up his second indictment, so the two should really be seen as only one). And Trump could have one more serious indictment and arraignment in his very near future, in Fulton County, Georgia. As with just about everything to do with Trump's presidency, this is all unprecedented. But it's also becoming routine.

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Nothing is ever completely inevitable in politics, because there is always the possibility of some outside event completely turning the political world on its head. But it's getting harder and harder to use any other word to describe Donald Trump's run for the Republican presidential nomination. The only real big chance this has of changing will come during the debates, but even that has to be seen as a real longshot, at this point. After all, Trump may not even show up for the debates, since he has such an enormous and very comfortable lead in the polls and since precisely zero of his challengers has made any sort of splash with the Republican electorate to date. And if he does show up and debate his opponents, Trump will use the same playground-bully style he always does, and the crowd will eat it up with a spoon. Trump is perhaps not completely inevitable, but he is certainly approaching inevitability.

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As the ghost of Richard Nixon might have warned Donald Trump: "It's not the crime, it's the cover up." While the political world was all breathlessly awaiting a new Trump indictment over the failed January 6th insurrection attempt, the special counsel surprised everyone by superseding his first indictment instead -- the one dealing with Trump's refusal to return national security documents which were not his. And it was a bombshell.

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I begin today by apologizing for getting ahead of the calendar, as the official "Silly Season" hasn't quite kicked off in Washington yet. Congress has yet to scarper off on their annual five- or six-week vacation (with full pay, courtesy of American taxpayers), so we have yet to hit the real dog days of summer in D.C.

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One month from now, the first Republican presidential debate will take place. What will happen there is anyone's guess at the moment, but what is already assuredly true is that every candidate not named "Donald Trump" has to see the first debate (and the ones that will follow) as absolutely critical for their chances of success. Bottling lighting at a debate is likely going to be the only way any of them can stand out in any way, and the only chance any of them (excepting perhaps Ron DeSantis) will have of creating a surge of support in the polls.

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We do try to resist the urge (we really do!), but this week it was impossible to focus on just about anything else in politics other than the tsunami of bad legal news for Donald Trump. Remember how Trump dominated each and every news cycle for over four years? Those days are back, sadly enough, and will likely continue (at some degree of intensity or another) for the foreseeable future. He is the quintessential car wreck towards which we all must dutifully rubberneck, so here we go....

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Donald Trump might need a bigger henhouse soon, as more and more of his legal chickens keep coming home to roost. After a very long two years of a whole lot of nothing happening (at least publicly), all of a sudden there is so much prosecutorial news it's hard to even keep track of it all. So I thought it'd be worth doing a rundown of all Trump's legal woes, as things stand right now (barring any further breaking news today).

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The nation celebrated its 247th birthday this year, leaving only three more to go until the second-biggest celebration of our lifetime (as we still personally remember the ushering in the bicentennial in Washington D.C.). But since it was a short week, what with Independence Day falling on a Tuesday, we are hoping this will be a short column (for once). Well, short-ish at any rate. We are cautiously optimistic.

Cautious optimism is a good place to start, actually. We stumbled across an interesting paper from two Democratic strategists (Celinda Lake and Mike Lux) which confidently states: "All the elements are in place for a big Democratic victory in 2024," and predicts that the "trifecta" of winning the House back, holding the Senate and keeping Joe Biden in the White House is well within grasp.

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It has long been a Hollywood maxim: "There is no such thing as bad press." To movie stars, it doesn't really matter why you get your name in the papers, because it puts your name in front of the public, whether for good or bad. The worst tragedy for a Hollywood star is being forgotten by the public, to put this another way. So it doesn't matter what gets you in the news -- a scandal, a real stinkeroo of a movie, whatever -- it reminds everyone who you are and creates the magical "buzz," which means you stand a higher chance of getting better roles in the future.

We seem now to have reached the point where this maxim is true in politics as well, at least for some people. News that would previously have been not just bad but downright disqualifying in the past now boosts your name recognition and actually builds support among your party's base. This is becoming more and more frequent in the age of Trump, as more and more politicians learn how to capitalize on the phenomenon.

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