F**king Mondays: Trump Hurts Trump, Cage Fight Distractions, And DeSantis Ends His Campaign?

by Ben Cohen

Welcome to “F**cking Mondays” The Banter’s most popular (and sweary) column! Here are the stories we’re watching:

Jordan Peterson: Conspiracy adjacent

Jordan Peterson had to think very carefully about how to respond to Donald Trump’s latest indictment. No rational person could read the charges filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith and conclude that Trump was innocent or the victim of a witch hunt. The evidence is simply too overwhelming. Smith’s indictment lays out in excruciating detail Trump’s attempts to defraud the United States by illegally interfering in the 2020 election, obstructing congressional electoral vote counting, and trying to stop American citizens from having their votes counted.

Given the once serious intellectual from Canada has transformed himself into a full time American culture warrior, Peterson had to come up with something to satiate his Alt Right followers. So instead of talking about the merits of the case, he came up with this:

It couldn’t be that the huge volume and diverse nature of the charges are because Trump committed a huge volume and diverse nature of crimes. Instead it has to be a tightly coordinated, Deep State conspiracy aimed at taking out President Biden’s major political rival. Peterson doesn’t say the latter part out loud of course, but that’s the inference.

This week Peterson is doing a podcast with British comedian and fellow American culture warrior Russell Brand where the two millionaires will no doubt discuss this elitist Democratic plot to destroy Trump, forcefully vaccinate the public, and turn your kids trans etc, etc. This will be a huge boon for their respective Youtube numbers, but another crisis for public health and political discourse. We’re offering a cash prize for anyone sadistic enough to listen and fact check the whole episode for us…

Cage fight conspiracy

You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that the proposed cage match between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg is a giant corporate psyop. Via the AP:

Elon Musk says his potential in-person fight with Mark Zuckerberg would be streamed on his social media site X, formerly known as Twitter.

The two tech billionaires seemingly agreed to a “cage match” face-off in late June. Zuckerberg is actually trained in mixed martial arts, and the CEO of Facebook’s parent company Meta posted about completing his first jiu jitsu tournament earlier this year.

“Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on X,” Musk wrote in a post Sunday on the platform. “All proceeds will go to charity for veterans.”

On his Threads social media account, Zuckerberg responded: “Shouldn’t we use a more reliable platform that can actually raise money for charity?”

No need to worry about these billionaires harvesting your data, manipulating public opinion, and providing fertile ground for conspiracy theorists, child pornographers, Russian trolls and antivaxxers on their platforms. Forget about their role in the upcoming election that will determine the fate of democracy in America, or how they will cover Russia’s continued assault on Ukraine and the potential unraveling of Europe. Let’s watch these bros fight in a cage instead!

Trump hurts Trump

One reason why Democrats should feel confident going into 2024 is Trump’s extraordinary ability to self destruct. If you were heading into a criminal trial where your former VP could potentially be a key witness against you, the last thing you’d do is publicly attack them. But Trump is, well, an idiot, so that is exactly what he has been doing (via Truth Social):

Trump was referring to Pence’s statement last week that the “anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States,” and the indictment itself that quoted Trump telling Pence that “you’re too honest” when he refused to block Biden’s win.

Trump still appears to believe that he has the power and authority of the presidency, so can say or do whatever he wants. He can’t and the judge, Tanya Chutkan, is letting him know this in no uncertain terms. Unlike the trial in Florida for mishandling classified documents where Trump landed the friendliest judge imaginable, Chutkan is Trump’s worst nightmare. Reported the Post:

Chutkan has been the toughest sentencing judge on the D.C. federal court for Jan. 6 defendants, according to a Washington Post database. Through mid-June, Chutkan sentenced every one of the 31 defendants to have come before her to at least some jail or prison time. She has exceeded prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations nine times and granted them 14 times, while court-wide, judges have sentenced below government recommendation about 80 percent of the time.

When you combine the self-evident nature of the case, the likelihood of a reasonable jury, and a no-nonsense judge, the odds of Trump going to jail are pretty damn good.

Ron DeSantis drops the needle

Key to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s success for 2024 is threading an incredibly difficult needle between the deranged world of MAGA fantasy and reality. DeSantis knows he cannot alienate MAGA Republicans because they now make up 80% of the GOP. He also can’t entirely detach himself from reality because he a) doesn’t have Trump’s charisma to pull it off, and b) has a general election to think about where facts and evidence still matter.

Unfortunately for DeSantis, he made a crucial error this past week:

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida clearly stated in a new interview that Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 election, diverging from the orthodoxy of most Republican voters as the former president’s struggling G.O.P. rivals test out new lines of attack against him.

“Of course he lost,” Mr. DeSantis said in an interview with NBC News published on Monday. “Joe Biden’s the president.”

Say goodbye to the White House Ron. It was fun while it lasted.

See you next week!

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