A Turks and Caicos judge on Friday morning issued a suspended 52-week sentence to Bryan Hagerich, who is a Pennsylvania dad of two and former pro baseball player who pleaded guilty to possessing ammunition on the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI). 

Unlike the national news media, I haven’t spent a lot of time covering the day-to-day happenings in the Donald Trump criminal trial in New York. There’s a few reasons for that. First of all, everyone (regardless of politics) already understands that the trial is a farce. It’s a criminal proceeding over an alleged bookkeeping error that was supposedly made many years ago, which harmed no one. The idea that the leading presidential candidate should be imprisoned on this basis — even if these charges were somehow proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt — is laughable. In the third world, they at least invent plausible-sounding charges before they throw political dissidents and opposition leaders in jail. But in this case, we’re left with “falsifying business records in the first degree.” It sounds like something Michael Scott would accuse one of his employees of doing. It’s laughable on its face. The other problem with going into any great detail about this case is that it risks legitimizing the proceedings. This is why CNN has panels of 25 guests every night, breaking down all of the testimony in excruciating detail. They want people to think of this trial as serious and fair — something worth analyzing at a technical level. But it’s not. There’s no reason whatsoever to accept the premise that this proceeding is anything more than a show trial, brought by a partisan prosecutor in one of the most partisan jurisdictions in the country, before a clearly unfavorable judge.  Today, however, I’m going to make an exception to my general approach to this trial. Because at this stage, it’s important to highlight what an unmitigated disaster it’s been for the Democratic Party, with less than six months to go until the election. It’s actually comical, as you’ll see in a second.  At a minimum, from a purely political perspective, this trial — and the decision to make this case the first Trump prosecution — has backfired so spectacularly that it’s been a clear net positive for Trump and his campaign. That’s why Donald Trump was able to hold a massive rally in the Bronx last night — not exactly a traditionally pro-Trump part of town. And right now it’s all but certain that this is the only criminal trial Trump will face before the election, so there’s no real hope for Democrats to salvage their strategy of using lawfare to swing the vote. The collapse of the prosecution’s case was sealed with the testimony of their star witness, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. It was always clear — as even the most partisan CNN panelists have admitted on-air — that without Cohen, there is no case. He’s the one claiming that Trump ordered him to pay hush money to a porn star to protect Trump’s campaign, and that Trump also tried to reimburse him through fake invoices for legal services. WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show There are no cameras allowed in the courtroom, because in New York, judges do everything they can to imprison presidential candidates in secret. Fortunately, we do have transcripts of the proceedings, and a handful of YouTube channels have conducted dramatic readings of Cohen’s cross-examinations by Trump’s defense team. One of those channels is called “Good Lawgic.” It’s run by a lawyer and it’s known for its legal analysis, so they’re perfect for the job. They understand how absurd Cohen’s testimony is, so they have a hard time keeping a straight face. I’ll go in chronological order throughout the testimony, so you can get a sense of how things escalated — or rather, spiraled out of control for the prosecution. Let’s start with Michael Cohen claiming that Trump’s team had secretly reimbursed him, in part, for the hush money payment. For context, Michael Cohen had previously testified that he made around $420,000 a year from the Trump organization. That was his consistent pay, year after year. But in this testimony, Cohen attempts to claim that one year, his $420,000 salary was actually a partial reimbursement for the hush money payment. Watch: Cohen says he wasn’t paid his normal salary; was paid for the loan. In case it’s not clear, everything after the re-enactors started laughing wasn’t the actual testimony. They couldn’t even get through the transcript because the claim they were reading was too absurd. Cohen’s saying that the Trump Organization didn’t pay him $420,000 because that’s what they always paid him. Instead, Cohen is claiming that during that particular year, the Trump team paid him $420,000 because they were giving him the hush money loan repayment and then doubling it, and then adding a bonus because they were feeling generous. In other words, Cohen is claiming that this secret arrangement, which allegedly involves funneling a lot of money to a porn star and then reimbursing Cohen, just so happens to add up to Cohen receiving the same pay he’d normally receive. In order to sell a story like that to the jury — a story that doesn’t make much sense — you need to have a very trustworthy, unimpeachable witness. But in the next few minutes, Cohen made it clear he’s not only untrustworthy — he’s also done something far worse than anything Donald Trump is accused of doing. Watch: This is the prosecution’s star witness admitting on the stand to willfully stealing tens of thousands of dollars from his employer, and not paying it back. By any measure, that’s a lot more serious than falsifying a business record. But New York prosecutors never had any interest in investigating Michael Cohen for that theft. Instead they gave him immunity to testify. That wasn’t because Michael Cohen had any kind of credibility prior to this trial. Even before he admitted on the stand to stealing from his employer, Cohen previously lied to both Congress and the Justice Department. Additionally, Cohen had told numerous reporters — in recorded calls, on the record — that Trump had nothing to do with the hush money payment. He admitted that during his cross-examination as well: Cohen admits Trump had nothing to do with the hush money. These are conversations that Cohen recorded, sometimes secretly, in which he affirmed again and again that Trump had nothing to do with these payments. And Cohen apparently didn’t only tell that story to reporters. A defense witness, Robert Costello, also testified that Cohen told him in 2018 that Trump “knew nothing” about the $130,000 payment he made to Stormy Daniels. Throughout the trial, Trump’s defense team outlined why Cohen has a motive to change his story and lie about Donald Trump. One of the main reasons is that he was apparently upset that Trump didn’t give him a job in the White House. Getting left on the sidelines like this seems to have caused some problems in the relationship. Earlier in the trial, Trump’s lawyers played audio tapes of Cohen saying the trial, “fills me with delight” and that he felt, “giddy with hope and laughter” imagining both Trump and his family in prison. In court, in front of the jury, Cohen essentially said the same thing. He admitted on cross-examination to saying that he wanted revenge against Donald Trump: Again, this is the man the prosecution’s case depends on. Without his testimony, they have no chance of convicting Donald Trump, even if they manage to prove the existence of falsified records. Cohen’s testimony is the link between Trump and those records. And there’s no reason to believe anything he says. In a sane jurisdiction, the judge would have issued a directed verdict by now. The case would be dismissed and the prosecutors would be sanctioned for attempting to imprison the leading candidate for president on the basis of testimony from a witness who’s clearly been discredited. But it’s not clear what will happen next, because this case is being tried in New York, with a clearly pro-prosecution judge and an electorate that overwhelmingly supported Joe Biden in the last election. Still, there are signs that there is some political diversity on the jury. During jury selection, eight jurors said they read the New York Times, while one juror said he gets his news from Truth Social. In a political show trial like this, that’s as good a sign as any that there might be a hung jury, because it’s hard to imagine a Truth Social user voting to convict Donald Trump. At the same time, the judge is doing everything he can to encourage the jury to convict. Under New York law, in order to convict Donald Trump of felony falsification of business records, the jury needs to unanimously agree that Trump falsified documents in order to conceal a separate crime. But the judge recently ruled that the jury doesn’t need to unanimously agree about what that “separate crime” was. The prosecution certainly hasn’t suggested anything. As far as I can tell, it seems like the idea is to suggest that Trump was trying to conceal some kind of campaign finance violation — which is a notoriously confusing area of law. That’s why the defense wanted to put a campaign finance law expert on the stand. But the judge prevented the defense from doing that. Instead, the judge allowed Michael Cohen to strongly imply Trump had violated campaign finance law, without explaining how. This was a predictable problem from the moment New York prosecutors unveiled their criminal complaint against Trump, which listed 34 felony counts — all of them saying Trump had concealed some other crime. But the complaint never mentioned what that other crime was. Everyone assumed the prosecution would eventually get around to explaining that part. Well, they’ve just rested their case. And still have no idea what that other crime is. Apparently the jury doesn’t have to figure it out, either. For all the talk about how Donald Trump is a “threat to the rule of law” and “democracy,” this trial is easily the single most lawless, vindictive and undemocratic prosecution that’s been brought in modern history. They’re trying to imprison the man who could very well be the next president on the basis of a crime they can’t even define, based on the testimony of a witness who admits he’s a liar who’s out for revenge. If there’s any upside, it’s that prosecutors in New York have managed to thoroughly discredit not only themselves, but every other effort to imprison Donald Trump. Thanks to Alvin Bragg, now everyone can see these prosecutions for what they are.

Joe Biden’s campaign strategy in 2024 is really puzzling. He has not been running to the middle. He has not been trying to unite the country. Biden’s campaign strategy is apparently now completely banking on people believing that Joe Biden is a sympathetic elderly man who genuinely cares about people. It’s a weird strategy, but you have to understand why Joe Biden is employing it. When it comes to presidential elections since 2008, there have been three types of elections. One: Unity Elections. Elections where the referendum was about unity. Are we going to come together as a country? Who’s the kind of person who can unify us? Two: Revolution Elections. Let’s overturn what has existed previously and completely revamp the system. Three: Cares-About-Me Elections. Elections in which the level of how much compassion the candidate supposedly has for you decides the election. 2008 was a Unity Election. Barack Obama campaigned as, “I am the great unifier. I am not black, not white, no red America, blue America. There is just America.” That was a Unity Election. We would all come together. We would end our racial conflagrations by electing a half-black president who, in his very personage, embodied the American Dream. Weirdly enough, 2020 was also a Unity Election. The 2020 election took place in the middle of massive riots and a huge controversy about COVID-19. So the question for the American people was, who can bring us together? Who can restore some sense of calm, tranquility, and social fabric? People opted for Joe Biden in that election, mainly because Donald Trump seemed to be incredibly volatile. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show So, 2008 and 2020 were about calmness and unity, although that’s not what emerged from them. A Revolution Election occurred in 2016, when the American people were deeply unhappy with the way the country was going, and they wanted a revolution. That revolution was Donald Trump.  Then, there is the Cares-About-Me Election, situations where the candidate who was perceived as most caring won. There have not been that many of these in American history, but it was the campaign Barack Obama ran in 2012. The truth was that Obama did not care about people who opposed him. Those people, for him, were bad. But he believed he had a coalition of people who had great personal and emotional connection with him, and he would drive to victory on that basis. Now, if you’re Joe Biden, what kind of election do you want 2024 to be? It’s very difficult for him to run on unity because he has not unified the country as president. Biden has been president for three years. Not only is the country not unified, but things are also far worse than when he took over. By virtually every metric, he can’t run a unity election. He also can’t run a Revolution Election. He’s not Bernie Sanders. He was elected to be a moderate and, not only that, but how do you run a Revolution Election against yourself? Revolution Elections are typically won by the non-incumbent party because you have to be overturning something. That leaves Biden with only one kind of election he can run: a Cares-About-Me Election. This is evident in Joe Biden’s tactics over the last few weeks. Virtually everything he has done is geared toward this particular line: He cares about people like you. To understand why this is a failing strategy for Biden, the nature of the past few American elections is critical to understand. The 2012 election is the election that Biden clearly wants to copy. Barack Obama, an incumbent president who won by a large number of votes in 2008, won reelection in 2012, despite losing five million votes in the popular vote from the previous election. The question is about how Obama won. It wasn’t on the basis of his policy. His policies were incredibly unpopular at the time. It turns out that by all of the available exit polling, Barack Obama beat Mitt Romney in 2012 on one metric: Who cares more about people like you? ABC News exit polling in 2012 showed Obama beat Romney by “a whopping 63 points” when it came to which candidate cared more about you. Exit polling from the Washington Post in 2016 showed the one factor where Donald Trump skunked Hillary Clinton in 2016: By 82-14, Trump demolished her on who could bring needed change. A Revolution Election. In 2020, Biden beat Trump 75-24 in who could unite the country and 68-26 on who had better judgment. Trump beat Biden 72-28 on who was a strong leader and 50-49 on “cares about people like me.” That was a sea change for the Republican Party. Better than any Republican candidate in living memory, Trump has made a significant slice of the electorate — blue-collar, white Americans — believe that he cares about people like them. A huge percentage of the electorate believes the Democratic Party has abandoned them, and Trump makes them feel connected to him. That is because he connects with them on an emotional level. When Trump is at events, he connects with people on a one-to-one level. He speaks the language they speak. But in 2020, that wasn’t enough because there was so much chaos, and the American people believed the qualities of a uniter and of good judgment were more important than those of a strong leader and one who cared about people like them.  But now, it’s 2024 and Biden has no choice — because the shift toward Trump has been so marked.  When it comes to the candidate who “has good judgment,” Biden has failed signally. He has fallen off dramatically in those categories. An April 2024 Gallup poll asked who “displays good judgment in a crisis,” and Trump won 45-40. CNN exit polling in 2020 had Biden leading Trump 68-26 in the category of good judgment. That means there has been a massive 47-point swing toward Trump. Biden has to rely on the Cares-About-Me Election because this time, the election can’t be a Revolution Election and it also can’t be a Unity Election. The big problem for him is convincing people that an 80-year-old senile man who stumbles into walls, yells at people on a regular basis, and is crotchety and nasty to people around him, cares about people like them. Does anyone look at Biden and think, “He cares about people like me”? His hand-holding routine — the sympathy limned as, “This is a man who knows what it’s like to suffer, and he’s suffered just like you suffered” — was much better 20 years ago. How many times can you drag out the Beau Biden story in the wrong context before you stop looking sympathetic and you start looking manipulative? And how do you claim that you are the party of caring when the vast majority of Americans are not happy with the situation and your strategy is to appeal to your radical base? Joe Biden is not capable of winning a Cares-About-Me Election. When you read off a teleprompter, “I care about you,” it doesn’t work.

'It really is a remarkable contrast'

'A concoction of lies that repeatedly defames President Trump'