When you hear a Republican member of Congress or one of Trump’s lawyers or a Fox News talking head say it wasn’t a coincidence that Trump just so happened to be indicted on the same day that the full House Oversight Committee got to see the FBI document detailing some Ukrainian criminal’s tip that Joe Biden took a $5 million bribe in 2015 or whenever to get some sort of policy concession you might, very understandably, be inclined to dismiss such talk as pure fantasy and just more of the usual deluded solipsism from a party that have worked hard to make it their brand.
You would be wrong though. It’s not a coincidence at all as very-recently-former Trump defense lawyer asserted Friday morning hours before he was (probably) fired. Trump was indicted while the Biden “scandal” was “heating up” precisely because Republicans and the MAGA media universe heated it up in anticipation of him facing charges for the very real crime of stealing classified documents from the White House and refusing to comply with a lawful subpoena for their return.
Scorching hot take right? Chris Cilliza’s probably mad he didn’t come up with it first. To be less simplistic and naive however, we can try to parse out how much of it was a “coincidence” and how much of it was a coincidence. Take the example of when CNN fired Don Lemon less than an hour after Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, the timing of it was not at all a coincidence. CNN wanted to bury the defenestration of one of their top guys as much as they possibly could and what else would’ve worked better than just after Fox News fired their top propagandist? That Fox and CNN had both been separately plotting to fire their respective “talent” was the actual coincidence.
We can’t prove it, but the timing is strong enough circumstantial evidence that one could operate under that assumption, if it was something that actually mattered enough to keep pressing the point. Like if we were deranged enough to allege there was some sort of “collusion” between Fox and CNN to mutually minimize the damage of the respective firings we would do very well to make the timing the center of that very pointless and stupid conspiracy theory.
Which brings us to now. You can safely assume that at some point since Thursday evening some asshole MAGA troll on some asshole site definitely wrote something to the effect of “You CANNOT prove to me that Jack Smith did not decide to indict Trump after he found out the House GOP saw that Biden bribery document the FBI was trying to hide,” which, no shit, it’s very hard to prove a negative and the fanboys sure love negativity – in the boolean and in the general sense of the word.
It’s nonsense that’s not worth your time arguing with some angry incel over it. However it does raise an interesting counter-negative: Can anyone prove to us that James Comer and Fox News wouldn’t be pushing all this stupid bullshit about Biden if Trump wasn’t in trouble now?
Of freaking course they would be investigating Biden and making shit up about him even if Trump was not facing trial on 73 felony charges in two separate jurisdictions with more likely to be in the pipe while he’s still the leading contender for the 2024 GOP nomination. There is no chance there would not be some sort of investigation into Biden right now if Trump retired in 2021 and Ron DeSantis or Tim Scott had the primary to themselves because that’s what Republicans and Fox News and all the rest of the right wing propaganda industrial complex do for a living.
The real reason the timing is “not a coincidence” is this: In that alternate universe, the Fox-GOP-Breitbart axis almost certainly have the time and bandwidth and the focus to build out a far more compelling and politically effective narrative. They turn the Afghanistan withdrawal into Benghazi. They exploit Biden’s classified documents fuckup alone, in a vacuum, without Trump. They sharpen the Hunter Biden “IRS whistleblower” story into a potent attack. Something, anything, better than this recycled “Burisma” shit that voters learned to ignore more than three years ago after Trump got impeached for the first time. A storyline that they’re giving time to develop in 2024 and not rushing out in a state of absolutely frantic, pants-pissing panic as the actual law closes in on their Orange Messiah like they are now. They can’t stand up for Donald on the facts or the law, so the best defense they have is an incredibly slapdash, shitty offense against Biden. No coincidence in that.
Oh and Trump’s arraignment is the day before his 77th birthday. That’s a fun coincidence, right?