Opinion | Donald Trump’s Big Mess

Gail Collins: Bret, before we get to Donald Trump’s big mess — how many times have I said that? Well, before we get to you-know-who, one minute on the smoke that filled the city last week. Were you in town?

Bret Stephens: I was. For a few hours there, the Manhattan sky looked like something out of “Apocalypse Now” or “Blade Runner.”

Gail: When I was outdoors, with a mask on, I was tempted to stop some of the young people walking past and apologize for having screwed up their future with global warming. Joe Biden’s trying hard to deal with this, but his plans aren’t nearly enough given the scope of the problem.

We need, among many, many things, to end tax breaks for fossil fuel production. Is it fair to complain that Republican resistance to the very idea of climate change is a huge culprit here?

Bret: You’re asking whether it’s fair to complain that Republicans are causing forest fires in Canada, a country that’s been governed by Justin Trudeau and his left-of-center coalition for the past eight years?

Gail: We can certainly bemoan Canada’s ineptitude in timber management, but this is hardly the only place where we’ve seen a mess of forest fires in the last few years.

Admit it. Climate change is a stupendous global crisis and everybody has to join together to fight it.

Bret: I was being just a tad flip, Gail: You know I had a Damascene — or Greenlandic — conversion last year.

That said, we can’t wait for China and India to wean themselves off coal to find an effective solution to the remediable problem of forest fires. The answer is good forest management, particularly by doing more to remove dead trees and use controlled burns — something, as The Times reported last week, Canada doesn’t do nearly enough of. This is why Western states run by Democrats are now looking at states like Florida, Georgia and other areas in the Southeast for tips on how to avoid giant fires.

But speaking of forest fires, shall we get to that latest Trump indictment?

Gail: We’re obviously in history-making territory — first former president indicted in a criminal case brought by the federal government. And this one, which involves trying to stash away official papers he’d been told were government property, is certainly a classic Trump combination of shocking and stupid.

Bret: Or sinister and self-serving. I’m still not sure.

Gail: Wow, the pictures of those boxes of classified documents piled up around the toilet …

Bret: Really puts a new spin on the term “anal retentive.”

Gail: I did sorta hope we’d start the cosmic Trump prosecutions with one of the other big charges — trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election by pressing the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” more votes and encouraging the Jan. 6 insurrection do seem more … important.

You?

Bret: Three thoughts, Gail. The first is that Jack Smith, the special counsel, has produced irrefutable proof that Trump knew that he possessed, as the former president himself put it, “secret information” that he could have declassified when he was in office but didn’t. That may be about as close to a slam dunk, legally speaking, as we’re ever going to get in a case like this.

Gail: True, but I want shockingly terrible besides terribly illegal. Go on.

Bret: The second thought is that a special counsel appointed by President Biden’s attorney general is bringing a criminal case against the president’s presumptive opponent in next year’s election. To many Republicans, this will smack of a bald attempt to politicize justice and criminalize politics — the very thing Trump was accused of doing in his first impeachment. Trump will surely use this to his political advantage and, as the writer Damon Linker noted in a perceptive guest essay last week, will probably see his primary poll numbers jump yet again.

Gail: Yeah, at least temporarily.

Bret: The third thought comes from a tweet by the conservative writer Erick Erickson: “Take the crime out of it — do you really want to put a man back in the White House who shows off highly classified military documents to randos?”

Gail: Reasonable conclusion. Yet most of Trump’s would-be Republican opponents are dodging this whole, deeply startling, issue. Or pretending it’s a Democratic plot.

Bret: Pathetic. As usual.

Gail: Your fave Nikki Haley attacked the Justice Department for “prosecutorial overreach, double standards and vendetta politics.” And no candidate apart from Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, was willing to really say — gee, this is the kind of thing we want to avoid in our nominee.

Explain, please …

Bret: You get the sense that most of these Republican Lilliputians are running to be Trump’s veep pick or his pet rock. Or they’re trying to ingratiate themselves with Trump’s base and to present themselves as a slightly more responsible version of the 45th president, which is like trying to sell a fentanyl addict on the merits of pot gummies.

The only Republicans in the race who seem to have gotten it right are Christie and Hutchinson. They understand that the way to beat Trump is to go after him hammer-and-tongs.

Gail: Where does that leave you? Holding out hope for Chris Christie? I must confess it’s hard to imagine Hutchinson as any kind of contender.

Bret: I respect his willingness to stand up clearly and strongly against Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election.

Gail: Sounds good — and the last time I looked, Hutchinson was doing at least as well as, um, Ted Cruz.

Does the need for big money worry you? It’s impressive to be a super-successful business person, but I’m not sure it’s as important as, say, running a state the way so many of the Republican candidates have.

Bret: I was extremely enthusiastic about the prospect of a Mike Bloomberg presidency. Generally speaking, I prefer politicians who make their money before going into politics, the way Bloomberg did, as opposed to politicians who trade on their celebrity to make money after being in politics, the way the Clintons did.

But back to Christie: Don’t be surprised if his campaign catches fire. People will be more than willing to forgive Bridgegate or his lackluster second term as governor if he can make things interesting in the G.O.P. contest. Which, merely by opening his mouth, he definitely can.

Gail: Bret, I have to admit I will be surprised. But I would love, love to see Christie qualify for the Republican debate in August. Think there’s a chance?

Bret: All Christie needs is one percent support in three polls, 40,000 campaign contributors, and a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee, along with some other stipulations. I think he’ll manage that. The bigger question is whether Trump will agree to the final requirement — something he refused to do in 2016.

Gail: You know, I was wondering that about Christie too, since he’s said he wouldn’t support Trump as the nominee. My cynical view is that anybody will get into the debate who wants to, which means that Christie — if he can meet the other requirements — will be there even if he has to fudge a bit. And that Trump will dodge the whole event no matter what the rules are.

Bret: To do another town hall on the Collapsing News Network?

Gail: Which would leave me with the hope of spending the dog days of summer watching Christie take on Ron DeSantis ….

Bret: Something tells me he’ll be more circumspect about going hard against the Florida governor, just in case DeSantis becomes president and he wants the job of attorney general.

Gail: Eww.

Bret: Can we get back to CNN for a moment? Big news last week with the departure of its ill-starred president, Chris Licht. Any advice for whoever succeeds him?

Gail: Well, there’s the rule that you shouldn’t go into a big interview with the assumption that you’re so charming that any writer who’s hanging out with you will just want to be pals.

Bret: Much less give that reporter a sense of your workout routine. Gives a whole new meaning to the truism, “Never let them see you sweat.”

Gail: But on a more cosmic level, Bret, I worry and wonder all the time about the future of the media in a wireless world. Very hard to make money doing critical chores like covering state and local government. Or even just pursuing hard news.

Crossing fingers that the next CNN head will find a way to attract a big audience in search of serious reporting.

You?

Bret: I’m rooting for the network to return to its hard-news roots. Licht had the right idea, he just went about it badly. Instead of losing a lot of weight and getting rid of people, he should have taken another piece of timeless advice: “Leave the gun, take the cannolis” — as in, eat more, fire less.

Gail: Wow, think that’ll work for the presidential candidates wandering around Iowa summer fairs?

Bret: Everyone in Iowa ought to know “The Godfather” by heart. It’s the state where most presidential hopes go to die.