What we should all really be seeing, at this point, is a drawn-out split-screen moment. Call it a "split-screen couple of weeks," maybe. However, this hasn't really been the case, for two reasons. The first is that cameras are not allowed inside the courtroom of the first criminal trial of an ex-president in American history. So even following the trial at home is a once-removed experience: following along with the New York Times liveblog (who seems to have the most comprehensive coverage of all the newsfeeds I have sampled) as they document each development in the case, whether monumental or simply mundane. Snippets of what is going on in the courtroom appear all day long, from the jousting of the lawyers and the witnesses to the reactions of the judge and jury to whether Donald Trump seems to have fallen asleep again or not. Fascinating stuff, but not exactly the same as it would have been on live television.

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When you're wrong, you're wrong. Yesterday, I was wrong. I certainly wasn't the only one in the political media to be wrong, but I've learned to admit your mistakes as they happen and try to move on.

In a surprise move today, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene forced a vote in the House of Representatives on her "motion to vacate the chair," which (if successful) would have ousted Speaker Mike Johnson from his leadership role. Only yesterday it seemed she had accepted defeat and would not be forcing the issue, but (as we said yesterday, in our defense): "With Greene, you never really know what she'll do next...."

Today, Greene decided to perform her stunt even knowing full well it was going to fail. And it did fail -- spectacularly. A preliminary vote was held on a motion to "table" (or "ignore," essentially) Greene's motion. If the preliminary vote had failed, the House would have then moved to vote on Greene's motion to vacate the chair. But the preliminary vote was overwhelmingly in favor of ignoring Greene and for keeping Johnson as speaker. In the end, only 11 Republicans voted against Johnson, which is not much of an uprising. The final tally was 359 to 43, with 196 Republicans voting to table the motion along with a whopping 163 Democrats. Only 32 Democrats voted against tabling the motion, while seven Democrats merely voted: "Present."

This is absolutely unprecedented, it bears mentioning. A majority of the House Democrats just voted to save a Republican speaker. Without their support, Johnson would have faced the same fate that befell Kevin McCarthy last year -- the first time a speaker had ever been deposed.

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And so Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene's doomed attempt to take down yet another Republican House speaker appears to have ended with a whimper, not a bang. After meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson twice (both yesterday and today), she appears to have backed off -- at least for the foreseeable future. With Greene, you never really know what she'll do next, but at least for the time being she appears to have been talked out of forcing her "motion to vacate the chair" onto the House floor this week.

Perhaps it was because the measure was guaranteed to fail... perhaps it was because Johnson gave her some sort of secret quid pro quo in their meetings... but the safe money is on: "perhaps it was because Donald Trump is against the idea and reportedly called her up this weekend to tell her not to." Trump carries the most weight in any Republican-on-Republican battle, and he has come down squarely on the side of Johnson (which was somewhat of a surprise). This means Greene moving forward would not please Trump at all, but instead possibly incur his wrath -- which is the one thing that virtually every current Republican politician now fears the most.

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It's always impossible to know, when Donald Trump settles on a new worldview, whether he actually believes it is reality, or whether he's fully conscious of gaslighting everyone with a made-up story that just conveniently always makes himself out to be the good guy (who never does anything wrong). Gaslighting seems the obvious answer, but Trump seems to buy into his own fantasies so deeply (see: the 2020 election results) that you have to wonder how attached he is to the reality that everyone else lives in. But we'll just leave any diagnosis to trained mental health professionals, because whether he actually believes his gaslighting or not is kind of irrelevant to the rest of us. And in the past few months, Trump has developed a new mental construct where the issue of abortion is, as he put it in a recent interview, "not that big of an issue" any more.

Obviously, Trump would prefer abortion to be "not that big of an issue," because unlike many hardcore anti-abortion Republicans, Trump has realized that it can be a real loser at the ballot box. After seeing Draconian abortion laws voted down directly by voters and seeing extremist forced-birth Republican candidates lose otherwise-winnable elections, Trump has been trying to get the Republican Party to somehow just sort of move on from the entire thing.

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Again, we open with a joke or two. From last weekend's White House Correspondents' Dinner, President Joe Biden got off a few good burns on the man he's running against:

The 2024 election is in full swing. And yes, age is an issue. I'm a grown man running against a six-year-old.

Age is the only thing we have in common. My vice president actually endorses me.

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Today President Joe Biden gave a short address on the spreading campus protests and violence over the war in Gaza. In doing so, he had an awfully fine line to walk, since both the Palestinians and the Israelis have valid views and political positions that are worth respecting. So he tried to thread this needle very carefully in his prepared statement.

But instead of commenting at length on Biden's remarks, today I am just going to present them unedited. Personally, I have not written about the situation in Gaza, Israel, or on American college campuses because I find I can sympathize with both sides' arguments to some degree or another. Which translates to: "I don't have anything profound to add to the conversation either way." Perhaps this is a cop-out, but the way I see it is that both sides certainly have a point -- but also that neither side is completely blameless.

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So here we go again. Is the threat real, or it is just some furious grandstanding? When dealing with the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, it's always impossible to tell....

Representative Greene gave a little press conference this morning where she threatened to make good on her "motion to vacate the chair"... next week. In case you haven't been following this particular soap opera, here's where things stand as of now:

M.T.G. has been threatening to force the House of Representatives to hold a no-confidence vote on Speaker Mike Johnson, pretty much ever since he took office. Johnson, upon taking the speakership, was in far too weak of a position within his own caucus to demand a change to the rule that the previous Republican speaker (Kevin McCarthy) had rashly agreed to -- which states that any one member can force the House to hold such an "M.T.V." vote at any time. As we saw last year, when McCarthy was ousted (the first speaker in U.S. history to ever be deposed), this is no idle threat. Greene has used this threat as her own personal Sword of Damocles to threaten Johnson not to do anything she didn't want him to do. Which is mostly: "getting anything at all actually done in the House -- especially if it involves Democrats." Johnson has actually bowed to reality (or, to put it another way: "done a responsible leadership job in a divided Congress") several times now, to avoid disaster on must-pass bills. He has incurred the wrath of Greene each time. A month and a half ago, when Johnson passed the budget bills with Democratic help, Greene actually did file a motion-to-vacate measure. But she did so in a parliamentary way that didn't actually force the vote. So it has just sat there dormant until now.

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[Irreverent editorial/karmic observation: One can't help but wonder why this story couldn't have broken ten days ago... on 4/20....]

Today it was confirmed that the federal government is finally going to officially retreat in fighting the War On Weed. The feds are backing down, for the first time in modern history. The Department of Justice is recommending moving marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act to Schedule III, after a required period of public commentary. It is not a complete capitulation in the War On Weed, but it is indeed a historic step in the right direction -- and the first one ever taken. So while this is not the end of the road for the pro-legalization activists, it is an enormous milestone and should be celebrated (even as only a partial victory).

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I have to apologize, because there will be no new column today. I didn't even have time to put together a re-run column either, sorry!

I had outside appointments today that sprang up unexpectedly, but (conveniently-enough) the Trump trial in New York City was also on a hiatus today, so at least I didn't miss anything under the big circus tent.

Regular (new!) columns will resume tomorrow, I promise, and mea culpa for just posting this quick note today.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

This week was supposed to begin (for us, since we measure weeks from Friday to Friday) with a Donald Trump rally in North Carolina last Saturday. After being cooped up in a courtroom all week listening to the lawyers haggle over jury selection, Trump was going to hit the campaign trail again to bask in the glow of adulation from his MAGA faithful (even the Proud Boys showed up!). That was the plan, at any rate.

But then the rally had to be cancelled at the last minute...

[...wait for it...]

...due to stormy weather.

[pause for rimshot]

We do apologize for that, but we thought it was worth starting off with some humor, after a particularly dry and seemingly-endless week of courtroom proceedings. Also, political humor is about to hit the spotlight this weekend, with the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner (also known locally as the "Nerd Prom"), so we thought we'd get in on the fun early.

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