What's Really Going On to Prop Up Donald Trump: A Look Behind the Curtains

Iowa AG Bird has some questions to answer - and some receipts she needs to show for her part in it

What’s really going on with Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird’s absurd trip to New York City to sit in a courtroom and watch the trial of the only ex-president ever charged with multiple felonies?

There is a lot going on. Some of it is frantic. None of it is pretty.

First, why the influx of Republicans to the courtroom to watch the Trump trial? The place is harder to get tickets to these days than Broadway’s hottest hit, but not because there is anything there worth seeing.

• It’s become the new audition studio for Trump vice-president wannabes. They recognize that policy chops, political savvy, or the ability to actually govern - wait is that even still a thing in Republican circles? - no longer matter. Trump values one thing and one thing alone, the same thing every mafia don and every fascist dictator values: personal loyalty to him.

  That Bird believes she believes in a group that needs to audition for vice president, or anything else in a - God forbid new Trump administration - is both sad and laughable.

• It’s a measure of how much trouble Republicans know Trump is in now. They know his legal position is precarious, to put it mildly. They also know they are stuck with him as their nominee and that they, themselves, are too far “in the soup” with him at this point to get out. For them, there is no turning back from him.

  The best they can do is put lip stick on this pig and pretend it looks pretty as it dances in its pink tutu.

  In essence Republicans have two options:

  • (1) delay, which the Republican Trump appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, who is hearing the stolen secret documents case in Florida, is doing all she can to bring about; and

  • (2) to simply put on a show - to “will” an acquittal. To paraphrase Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, they are shutting their eyes, clicking the heels of their ruby red slippers, and saying over and over: “There’s no place like acquittal. There’s no place like acquittal.” That’s pretty much their best hope at this point.

    So many Republican US House members flocked to New York on Thursday that the U.S. House Oversight Committee had to move its planned Thursday morning session on yet another Republican stunt - finding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for not giving Republicans raw, investigative tapes - to a special Thursday night session.

    Please note: with apologies to all the actual circuses, Republican political circus stunts are literally stacking up on top of each other, forcing one to be rescheduled to make room for another.

• This is also an example of something political strategists call “changing the channel.” When politicians get pounded by an issue they have no credible response to, they often work frantically to “change the channel.” That means simply getting people to focus on - and talk about - something else, anything else.

  Guess what we’re talking about this week? The swarm of Republicans packing a New York court room to “support Donald Trump” and to “denounce the case against him.”

  Guess what we’re not talking about this week? And here’s where the real rubber starts to hit the road. Remember a couple of weeks ago when journalists started noticing the permanent absence in the courtroom of former First Lady Melania Trump, former First Daughters Ivanka Trump and Tiffany Trump, and two of his three sons? My guess is Trump noticed journalists noticing. He heard them asking - “What’s up with that? Even the immediate families of mass murderers usually show up at trials to lend moral support to the defendant.

  It clearly doesn’t work that way in the Trump family.

  So he put the call out for “extras” to fill the seats.

  This is pure speculation on my part, but I think the final straw might have come when Florida Republicans gifted Trump’s youngest son Barron with an at-large Republican delegate slot so he could vote for his Dad’s nomination for president at the national convention this summer. All he had to do was show up and vote. Through his mother - nice touch, Barron - he declined the opportunity to do so.

  Not a good look for a man who would like Americans to believe he’s a family man, especially when he’s in the middle of a cheating with a porn star hush money scandal.

  The mobs of Republican elected officials - including the Speaker of the House - are conducting an urgent holding action. It’s designed to keep the base from “spooking,” as they call it in cattle country. They know they are in trouble and that they are one lightning bolt away from from a stampede - Republican voters scattering to the hills - when they realize the extent to which Trump has been abandoned by his own family or when the guilty verdicts start rolling in.

  That urgent holding action, by the way, is not really for Trump’s benefit. It is for their own political benefit. How would you like to be on the ballot and have your “herd” disappears over night?

• It’s surprising to see Iowa’s AG willing to put herself in the middle of all that sad and sorry nonsense, but that is what she decided to do. Her “loyalty” to Trump apparently outweighs the need she feels to actually stay in Iowa and do her job, rather than jetting off to New York City for a political stunt.

  Having made that decision, however, she now has plenty for which she needs to answer:

  • When pressed, Bird finally admitted the trip was political, but her office claimed the Republican Attorney Generals Association paid for it. OK. That ought to be easy enough to prove. Show us the receipt. Show us the paper trail for that payment. Because I’m guessing they paid for it only after questions were raised by Iowa reporters. Not before. I might be wrong. But there is an easy way to prove her assertion is right. Show us the receipt and show us the paper trail.

  • Even though she was in New York on a work day, she says she was “off the clock.” So, she claims she wasn’t paid by taxpayers that day. So called “vacation days” are notorious for never being publicly documented. It seems especially important to document this one, and to account for it differently than usual. There is an easy way to do that too. Bird should reimburse tax payers for the amount of time she was “off the clock” and dispense with the vacation day nonsense. Show us the cancelled check, Madam Attorney General. Sorry, but if you are using vacation days that are part of your compensation from the state of Iowa for your job as Attorney General, you’re still “on the clock.”

  • Finally, the biggest thing of all she needs to explain is how on Earth do she and her fellow Republicans not think this courtroom packing isn’t an attempt to influence a sitting jury? Jury tampering is a crime. Why do they believe their attacks on the judge, witnesses and entire trial - their crazy lies in front of the microphones outside the courtroom that Donald Trump is a persecuted victim and a hounded man - are not attempts to corrupt the trial and justice itself?

    Surely an Attorney General knows better. Surely she we would not allow any such behavior in or outside an Iowa courtroom where her office was trying a case. She’d object, and so should we.

    Bird’s comments outside the courtroom were especially egregious. Citing her “background as a prosecutor” no less, she asserted that what she saw in Trump’s courtroom was a “travesty.” No specifics. No evidence to back up her claim.

    She was wasn’t dealing in facts. She was painting with a broad brush slathered in propaganda and lies. In the age of Trump, that’s apparently what Republicans with ambition do to get ahead in their party.

    Of course, she blamed all of Trump’s trouble in that courtroom on President Biden - who has nothing to do with the case, even on paper. It’s being prosecuted by the state of New York.

    Bird’s main concern seemed to be that Trump was there at all. He should be out campaigning! Really? He is being tried in that courtroom on 34 felony indictments. After being indicted by a state grand jury composed of private citizens. Trump’s peers. All of the jurors were vetted by lawyers from both the defense and prosecution and determined to be impartial through the legal process of voir dire, a process used to ensure the impartiality of every jury.

    Even former presidents are accountable to the law. Or does Bird have a different system in mind?

    I once said the way Iowa Republicans are going, the state is going to have to establish a Department of Political Stunts, just to keep them all straight.

    With the history of lawsuits lost by the administrations of Governors Terry Branstad, and Kim Reynolds for their illegal actions, I actually think what Iowa might now need as long as Republicans keep running the state is a Department of Corruption . At least maybe it could keep the corrupt acts and stunts from stepping on each other when being scheduled.

    “Barry Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains” is published as part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative (IWC), which links thoughtful readers with some of the best writers, thinkers, and reporters write about topics important to Iowa and beyond.

    Sample a few IWC columns from the list below. Please consider subscribing to at least several of them. The Iowa Writers Collaborative “Round Up” is a good one to try. It’s a Sunday morning preview/round up of all the new IWC columns for the week, each just a click away.

    Both free and paid subscriptions are available to each publication. Your subscriptions - both free and paid - and your comments, are what keep the IWC going. No IWC column accepts paid advertising. We’re independent and we expand the availability of news, opinion, commentary and even poetry well beyond what is available from traditional media, which remains an important part of our media mix, of course.

    Browse away, and please subscribe to a few or many:

    Nicole Baart: This Stays Here, Sioux Center

    Ray Young Bear: From Red Earth Drive, Meskwaki Settlement

    Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights

    Tory Brecht: Brecht’s Beat, Quad Cities

    Dartanyan L. Brown: My Integrated Live, Des Moines

    Jane Burns, The Crossover, Des Moines

    Dave Busiek, Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines

    Iowa Writers Collaborative, Roundup

    Steph C: It Was Never a Dress, Johnston

    Art Cullen, Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake

    Suzanna de Baca, Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley

    Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County

    Randy Evans: Stray Thoughts, Des Moines via Bloomfield

    Daniel P. Finney, Paragraph Stacker, Des Moines

    Arnold Garson: Second Thoughts, Okoboji and Sioux Falls

    Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji

    Fern Kupfer and Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames

    Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines

    Rob Gray's Area: Rob Gray’s Area, Ankeny

    Become Inspired...Nik Heftman, Iowa

    Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilla

    Iowa Capital Dispatch, an alliance with IWC

    Black Iowa News: Dana James, Iowa

    Chris Jones: Chris’s Substack, Iowa City

    Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo

    Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey

    Letters From Iowans, Iowa

    Darcy Maulsby: Keepin’ It Rural, Calhoun County

    Hola Iowa: Iowa 

    Alison McGaughey: The Inquisitive Quad Citizen, Quad Cities

    Kurtis Meyer: Showing Up, St. Ansgar

    Vicki Minor: Relatively Minor, Winterset

    Wini Moranville: Wini’s Food Stories, Des Moines

    Jeff Morrison: Between Two Rivers, Cedar Rapids

    Kyle Munson: Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines

    Jane Nguyen: The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines

    John Naughton: My Life in Color, Des Moines