Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old entrepreneur running for the Republican presidential nomination, has initiated a war against what he views as an outdated, establishment foreign policy. He is deeply skeptical of NATO. He wants to swiftly end the war in Ukraine, detach Russia from China, and compel Taiwan to defend itself without America. He also proposed reducing American financial aid to Israel, a stance long considered politically impossible on the right, before saying he would do so only with Israel’s approval. This week, Ramaswamy attempted to justify such stands with an essay in The American Conservative called “A Viable Realism and Revival Doctrine.”

Invoking Presidents George Washington, James Monroe, and Richard Nixon—whom Ramaswamy has called “the most underappreciated president of our modern history in this country, probably in all of American history”—the article appears to be an effort to lend coherence and gravitas to Ramaswamy’s worldview. It also seems to be an attempt to counter the attack by former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley that he has “no foreign policy experience, and it shows.” In the article, Ramaswamy promises to restore American national pride and identity after decades of feckless liberal internationalist and neoconservative policies. “We will be Uncle Sucker no more,” he writes.

[David A. Graham: Ramaswamy and the rest]

It would be foolish to underestimate Ramaswamy, who has vaulted past many of his detractors to become a breakout star in the GOP primary. And at a moment when Republican support for the war in Ukraine is plummeting, his call for retrenchment, much like Donald Trump’s denunciation of the Iraq War in 2016, is perfectly pitched to appeal to the party’s nationalist wing. But just how realistic and viable is his vision?

The truth is that Ramaswamy is slapping the realist brand onto a hodgepodge of policy proposals that are divorced from reality. Realism is about a number of things—the balance of power, national interests, spheres of influence—but one thing it is not about is wishful thinking. Yet that is what Ramaswamy is peddling. His vision is no less dogmatic than the neoconservatism he professes to despise, substituting the belief that America should intervene everywhere with the conviction that it shouldn’t intervene anywhere. And his proposals almost seem calculated to injure, not promote, American interests.

Like more than a few Republicans these days, Ramaswamy is obsessed with China, which he depicts as the locus of evil in the world, and cavalier about Russia, which stands accused of perpetrating war crimes in the heart of Europe. He does not explain how China’s current troubles—a faltering economy, an aging population, grave environmental problems—can be reconciled with his portrait of a totalitarian power about to turn a new generation of Americans, as he averred in a speech at the Nixon library, into “a bunch of Chinese serfs.”

[Read: Vivek Ramaswamy’s truth]

Ramaswamy’s demagoguery about China is reminiscent of the apprehensions voiced by American conservatives after World War II, when the GOP contained an “Asia First” wing, led by Senator Robert A. Taft and others who disparaged American aid to Europe and claimed, improbably, that American military supplies to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek would allow him to easily topple the communist dictatorship on the mainland. Ramaswamy seems to want to avert a conflict with Beijing, but his truculent calls for confronting China would render a fresh world war more, not less, probable.

In his American Conservative essay, Ramaswamy lauds Nixon as the president whose foreign policy he most admires. “He got us out of Vietnam,” Ramaswamy writes. Not exactly. As president, Nixon embarked upon the policy of “Vietnamization” to reduce American troops, but he needlessly expanded the war with a secret bombing campaign against Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge, led by the genocidal Pol Pot, ended up coming to power in 1975. No less addled is Ramaswamy’s grasp of the history of Nixon’s opening to China. He announces that, as president, he would carry out a new version of what Nixon accomplished in 1972 by traveling to China—visiting Moscow in 2025 to create peace with Russia and then “elevate [it] as a strategic check on China’s designs in East Asia.” But Nixon never sought to isolate the Soviet Union; he sought to create a stable equilibrium among the three countries, pursuing what he and Henry Kissinger called “triangular diplomacy.” In addition, Nixon and Kissinger hoped that a web of economic ties between America and the Soviet Union would constrain its propensity to expand abroad—the very approach that Ramaswamy now condemns when it comes to long-standing American policy toward China.

Declaring that “Putin is the new Mao,” Ramaswamy claims that he will be able to woo the Russian leader away from China. He proposes to bow to Russian suzerainty over the territories it controls in eastern Ukraine and oppose Ukrainian membership in NATO “in exchange for Russia exiting its military alliance with China.” But as others have noted, those two countries do not have a military alliance. In any case, Putin has repeatedly displayed no interest in serious peace negotiations over Ukraine, a country that he remains wholly intent on reducing to the status of an imperial Russian colony.

[David Frum: The next U.S. president will need to defeat isolationism]

Like Trump before him, Ramaswamy tries to disguise his apparent animus toward democratic countries by scorning what he maintains is Western Europe’s piddling military spending. But Central and Western Europe’s military outlays reached $345 billion last year, almost 30 percent higher than they were a decade ago. The obstacle to real reform, we are told, is an ossified NATO bureaucracy that is pushing liberal internationalist missions whenever and wherever it can. Ramaswamy claims that he would transform NATO into a “strictly defensive military alliance”—as though it were an imperialist power marauding around the world looking for wars to wage.

Ramaswamy’s candidacy has exposed real rifts within the GOP over foreign policy. The Wall Street Journal denounced him for seeking to sell out Ukraine, and National Review asked whether “he’s auditioning for a geopolitical game show instead of the presidency of the United States.” To some extent, his comments can be dismissed as bluster. But he and his fellow self-proclaimed realists—a cluster of activists and thinkers at places such as The American Conservative, the Claremont Institute, and the Heritage Foundation—are responding to a genuine, if dismaying, phenomenon in the American electorate. No one is trying to exploit it more audaciously than Ramaswamy, who continues to offer chimerical promises about restoring America’s national identity. We now know better than to disregard such salesmen.

Many Israelis are repulsed, too. But unless they acknowledge their state's apartheid policies, nothing will change.

No one wants to appear before a judge as a criminal defendant. But court is a particularly inhospitable place for Donald Trump, who conceptualizes the value of truth only in terms of whether it is convenient to him. His approach to the world is paradigmatic of what the late philosopher Harry Frankfurt defined as bullshit: Trump doesn’t merely obscure the truth through strategic lies, but rather speaks “without any regard for how things really are.” This is at odds with the nature of law, a system carefully designed to evaluate arguments on the basis of something other than because I say so. The bullshitter is fundamentally, as Frankfurt writes, “trying to get away with something”—while law establishes meaning and imposes consequence.

The upcoming trials of Trump—in Manhattan; Atlanta; South Florida; and Washington, D.C.—will not be the first time he encounters this dynamic. His claims of 2020 election fraud floundered before judges, resulting in a series of almost unmitigated losses. In one ruling that censured and fined a team of Trump-aligned lawyers who had pursued spurious fraud allegations, a federal judge in Michigan made the point bluntly. “While there are many arenas—including print, television, and social media—where protestations, conjecture, and speculation may be advanced,” she wrote, “such expressions are neither permitted nor welcomed in a court of law.”

But only now is Trump himself appearing as a criminal defendant, stripped of the authority and protections of the presidency, before judges with the power to impose a prison sentence. The very first paragraph of the Georgia indictment marks this shift in power. Contrary to everything that Trump has tried so desperately to prove, the indictment asserts that “Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3, 2020”—and then actively sought to subvert it.

[David A. Graham: The Georgia indictment offers the whole picture]

Although Trump loves to file lawsuits against those who have supposedly wronged him, the courtroom has never been his home turf. Records from depositions over the years show him to be sullen and impatient while under oath, like a middle schooler stuck in detention. Timothy L. O’Brien, a journalist whom Trump unsuccessfully sued for libel in 2006, recalled in Bloomberg that his lawyers forced Trump to acknowledge that he had lied over the years about a range of topics. Trump has seemed similarly ill at ease during his arraignments. When the magistrate judge presiding over his arraignment in the January 6 case asked whether he understood that the conditions of his release required that he commit no more crimes, he assented almost in a whisper.

All of this has been a cause for celebration among Trump’s opponents—because the charges against him are warranted and arguably overdue, but also for a different reason. The next year of American politics will be a twin drama unlike anything the nation has seen before, played out in the courtroom and on the campaign trail, often at the same time. Among Democrats, the potential interplay of these storylines has produced a profound hope: Judicial power, they anticipate, may scuttle Trump’s chances of retaking the presidency, and finally solve the political problem of Donald Trump once and for all.

It has become conventional wisdom that nothing can hurt Trump’s standing in the polls. But his legal jeopardy could, in fact, have political consequences. At least some proportion of Republicans and independents are already paying attention to Trump’s courtroom travails, and reassessing their prior beliefs. A recent report by the political-science collaborative Bright Line Watch found that, following the Mar-a-Lago classified-documents indictment in June, the number of voters in each group who believed that Trump had committed a crime in his handling of classified information jumped by 10 percentage points or more (to 25 and 46 percent, respectively).

And despite Trump’s effort to frame January 6 as an expression of mass discontent by the American people, the insurrection has never been popular: Extremist candidates who ran on a platform of election denial in the 2022 midterms performed remarkably poorly in swing states. Ongoing criminal proceedings that remind Americans again and again of Trump’s culpability for the insurrection—among his other alleged crimes—seem unlikely to boost his popularity with persuadable voters. If he appears diminished or uncertain in court, even the enthusiasm of the MAGA faithful might conceivably wane.

[Quinta Jurecic: The triumph of the January 6 committee]

Above all of this looms the possibility of a conviction before Election Day, which has no doubt inspired many Democratic fantasies. If Trump is found guilty of any of the crimes of which he now stands accused, a recent poll shows, almost half of Republicans say they would not cast their vote for him.

But that outcome is only one possibility, and it does not appear to be the most likely.

Americans who oppose Trump—and, more to the point, who wish he would disappear as a political force—have repeatedly sought saviors in legal institutions. The early Trump years saw the lionization of Special Counsel Robert Mueller as a white knight and (bewilderingly) a sex symbol. Later, public affection turned toward the unassuming civil servants who testified against Trump during his first impeachment, projecting an old-school devotion to the truth that contrasted with Trump’s gleeful cynicism. Today, Mueller’s successors—particularly Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading the Georgia prosecution—are the subjects of their own adoring memes and merchandise. One coffee mug available for purchase features Smith’s face and the text Somebody’s Gonna Get Jacked Up!

Perhaps this time will be different. With Trump out of office, Smith hasn’t been limited, as Mueller was, by the Justice Department’s internal guidance prohibiting the indictment of a sitting chief executive. Willis, a state prosecutor, operates outside the federal government’s constraints. And neither Bill Barr nor Republican senators can stand between Trump and a jury.

The indictments against Trump have unfolded in ascending order of moral and political importance. In April, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, announced charges for Trump’s alleged involvement in a hush-money scheme that began in advance of the 2016 election. In June came Smith’s indictment of Trump in Florida, over the ex-president’s hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Two months later, the special counsel unveiled charges against Trump for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Willis’s indictment in Georgia quickly followed, employing the state’s racketeering statute to allege a widespread scheme to subvert the vote in favor of Trump. (He has pleaded not guilty in the first three cases and, as of this writing, was awaiting arraignment in Georgia. The Trump campaign released a statement calling the latest indictment “bogus.”)

But each case has its own set of complexities. The New York one is weighed down by a puzzling backstory—of charges considered, not pursued, and finally taken up after all—that leaves Bragg’s office open to accusations of a politically motivated prosecution. The indictment in Florida seems relatively open-and-shut as a factual matter, but difficult to prosecute because it involves classified documents not meant to be widely shared, along with a jury pool that is relatively sympathetic to Trump and a judge who has already contorted the law in Trump’s favor. In the January 6 case, based in Washington, D.C., the sheer singularity of the insurrection means that the legal theories marshaled by the special counsel’s office are untested. The sweeping scope of the Georgia indictment—which involves 19 defendants and 41 criminal counts—may lead to practical headaches and delays as the case proceeds.

Trump’s army of lawyers will be ready to kick up dust and frustrate each prosecution. As of July, a political-action committee affiliated with Trump had spent about $40 million on legal fees to defend him and his allies. The strategy is clear: delay. Trump has promised to file a motion to move the January 6 proceedings out of Washington, worked regularly to stretch out ordinary deadlines in that case, and tried (unsuccessfully) to move the New York case from state to federal court. The longer Trump can draw out the proceedings, the more likely he is to make it through the Republican primaries and the general election without being dragged down by a conviction. At that point, a victorious Trump could simply wait until his inauguration, then demand that the Justice Department scrap the federal cases against him. Even if a conviction happens before Americans go to the polls, Trump is almost certain to appeal, hoping to strand any verdict in purgatory as voters decide whom to support.

Currently, the court schedule is set to coincide with the 2024 Republican primaries. The Manhattan trial, for now, is scheduled to begin in March. In the Mar-a-Lago case, Judge Aileen Cannon has set a May trial date—though the proceedings will likely be pushed back. In the January 6 case, Smith has asked for a lightning-fast trial date just after New Year’s; in Georgia, Willis has requested a trial date in early March. But still, what little time is left before next November is rapidly slipping away. In all likelihood, voters will have to decide how to cast their ballot before the trials conclude.

The pileup of four trials in multiple jurisdictions would be chaotic even if the defendant were not a skillful demagogue running for president. There’s no formal process through which judges and prosecutors can coordinate parallel trials, and that confusion could lead to scheduling mishaps and dueling prosecutorial strategies that risk undercutting one another. For instance, if a witness is granted immunity to testify against Trump in one case, then charged by a different prosecutor in another, their testimony in the first case might be used against them in the second, and so they might be reluctant to talk.

In each of the jurisdictions, defendants are generally required to sit in court during trial, though judges might make exceptions. This entirely ordinary restriction will, to some, look politically motivated if Trump is not allowed to skip out for campaign rallies, though conversely, Trump’s absence might not sit well with jurors who themselves may wish to be elsewhere. All in all, it may be hard to shake the appearance of a traveling legal circus.

Attacking the people responsible for holding him to account is one of Trump’s specialties. Throughout the course of their respective investigations, Trump has smeared Bragg (who is Black) as an “animal,” Willis (who is also Black) as “racist,” and Smith as “deranged.” Just days after the January 6 case was assigned to Judge Tanya Chutkan, Trump was already complaining on his social-media site, Truth Social, that “THERE IS NO WAY I CAN GET A FAIR TRIAL” with Chutkan presiding (in the January 6 cases she has handled, she has evinced little sympathy for the rioters). Anything that goes wrong for Trump during the proceedings seems destined to be the subject of a late-night Truth Social post or a wrathful digression from the rally stage.

However damning the cases against Trump, they will matter to voters only if they hear accurate accounts of them from a trusted news source. Following each of Trump’s indictments to date, Fox News has run segment after segment on his persecution. A New York Times /Siena College poll released in July, after the first two indictments, found that zero percent of Trump’s loyal MAGA base—about 37 percent of Republicans—believes he committed serious federal crimes.

And beyond the MAGA core? A recent CBS News poll showed that 59 percent of Americans and 83 percent of self-described non-MAGA Republicans believe the investigations and indictments against Trump are, at least in part, attempts to stop him politically. Trump and his surrogates will take every opportunity to stoke that belief, and the effect of those efforts must be balanced against the hits Trump will take from being on trial. Recent poll numbers show Trump running very close to President Joe Biden even after multiple indictments—a fairly astonishing achievement for someone who is credibly accused of attempting a coup against the government that he’s now campaigning to lead.

The law can do a great deal. But the justice system is only one institution of many, and it can’t be fully separated from the broader ecosystem of cultural and political pathologies that brought the country to this situation in the first place.

After Robert Mueller chose not to press for an indictment of Trump on obstruction charges, because of Justice Department guidance on presidential immunity, the liberal and center-right commentariat soured on the special counsel, declaring him to have failed. If some Americans now expect Fani Willis or Jack Smith to disappear the problem of Donald Trump—and the authoritarian movement he leads—they will very likely be disappointed once again. Which wouldn’t matter so much if serial disappointment in legal institutions—he just keeps getting away with it—didn’t encourage despair, cynicism, and nihilism. These are exactly the sentiments that autocrats hope to engender. They would be particularly dangerous attitudes during a second Trump term, when public outrage will be needed to galvanize civil servants to resist abuses of power—and they must be resisted.

Trump’s trials are perhaps best seen as one part of a much larger legal landscape. The Justice Department’s prosecutions of rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6 seem to have held extremist groups back from attempting other riots or acts of mass intimidation, even though Trump has called for protests as his indictments have rained down. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently announced criminal charges alleging that more than a dozen Republicans acted as “fake electors” in an effort to steal the 2020 election for Trump—and as a result, would-be accomplices in Trump’s further plots may be less inclined to risk their own freedom to help the candidate out. Likewise, some of those lawyers who worked to overturn the 2020 vote have now been indicted in Georgia and face potential disbarment—which could cause other attorneys to hold back from future schemes.

[Alan Z. Rozenshtein: The First Amendment is no defense for Trump’s alleged crimes]

This is a vision of accountability as deterrence, achieved piece by piece. Even if Trump wins a second term, these efforts will complicate his drive for absolute authority. And no matter the political fallout, the criminal prosecutions of Trump are themselves inherently valuable. When Trump’s opponents declare that “no one is above the law,” they’re asserting a bedrock principle of American society, and the very act of doing so helps keep that principle alive.

None of this settles what may happen on Election Day, of course, or in the days that follow. But nor would a conviction. If a majority of voters in a handful of swing states decide they want to elect a president convicted of serious state and federal crimes, the courts can’t prevent them from doing so.

Such a result would lead to perhaps the most exaggerated disjunction yet between American law and politics: the matter of what to do with a felonious chief executive. If federal charges are the problem, Trump seems certain to try to grant himself a pardon—a move that would raise constitutional questions left unsettled since Watergate. In the case of state-level conviction, though, President Trump would have no such power. Could it be that he might end up serving his second term from a Georgia prison?

The question isn’t absurd, and yet there’s no obvious answer to how that would work in practice. The best way of dealing with such a problem is as maddeningly, impossibly straightforward as it always has been: Don’t elect this man in the first place.

This article appears in the October 2023 print edition with the headline “Trump on Trial.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Forget the ides of March. Beware the first week of March.

At a hearing this morning in Washington, D.C., Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that former President Donald Trump’s federal trial for attempting to subvert the 2020 election will begin on March 4, 2024, with jury selection. The following day, March 5, is Super Tuesday, the day when the greatest number of delegates in the Republican primary is up for grabs.

That means that Trump could become the presumptive GOP nominee in the 2024 presidential election at the same time as his lawyers are in court for his trial for seeking to steal the last election. Neither political scientists nor legal scholars have really anticipated such a scenario, so no technical term exists to describe it, but I can suggest one: a huge mess.

[David A. Graham: Trump attempted a brazen, dead-serious attack on American democracy]

Chutkan’s date is two months later than what Special Counsel Jack Smith had requested, but it’s more than two years earlier than April 2026, the timing proposed by Trump’s defense attorneys. Smith obtained the indictment, which charges Trump with four felonies, earlier this month. The charges include conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights, but they all relate to Trump’s months-long attempt to stay in office despite losing to Joe Biden, culminating in the January 6 insurrection.

Today’s hearing gave a preview of the chippy and contentious trial ahead. Chutkan wasted no time in dismissing the Trump team’s argument that he cannot go on trial during the midst of an election campaign. “Setting a trial date does not depend and should not depend on a defendant’s personal and professional obligations,” she said. “Mr. Trump, like any defendant, will have to make the trial date work, regardless of his schedule.” Against complaints that the case was unusually complex, she noted that it involves a single defendant and, despite its historic nature, doesn’t seem all that sprawling.

Trump’s defense attorney John Lauro fiercely argued against the prosecution’s schedule, drawing a warning from Chutkan to “take the temperature down.” He called Smith’s proposal “a request for a show trial, not a speedy trial,” and protested the judge’s ultimate decision. “This man’s liberty and life is at stake, and he deserves adequate representation! He’s no different than any American!” Lauro said. The prosecutor Molly Gaston, meanwhile, mocked Lauro’s argument, noting that Trump’s attorneys had previously called the case a “regurgitation” of the House January 6 committee’s work.

[David A. Graham: The criminal-justice system and the election are not going to get along]

The March 4 date could still slip. Lauro said he would file a motion to dismiss the case and others arguing that Trump enjoyed executive immunity or was being subjected to selective prosecution. But the schedule as it stands now presents an interesting strategic dilemma for Trump: Does he attempt to delay further and risk pushing the trial into the general-election campaign season? Or does he prefer to get it over with and either reap the benefits of an acquittal or have more time to spin a conviction?

One common thread through all four of Trump’s felony indictments is that he has claimed that they are “election interference” on the part of Democrats who want to hobble his attempt to return to office. This is a doubly ironic claim, given that in this case Trump is literally charged with attempting to thwart the will of voters. It is a demand that he be handled with kid gloves while doing his own dirty work with the gloves off.

Yet the Super Tuesday confluence also points to a second irony: Some evidence suggests that the indictments are actually helping Trump, at least in the Republican primary. Since his legal troubles began to ramp up, so has his standing in polling. My colleague Russell Berman notes that this may be overstated, and a real trial, much less conviction, might start to hurt him. But a trial that starts in the thick of the GOP primary might not be the worst thing for Trump. It will mean that most Republican voters won’t get a chance to see the case against him before they cast a vote, but will ensure a chance for him to raise a fuss (and funds) about it.

[Read: What the polls may be getting wrong about Trump]

The bizarre calculus here shows how, as I wrote in May, the political and criminal-justice systems are not only not designed to work together, but are in fact constructed to pretend the other doesn’t exist. Chutkan’s ruling guarantees that the fact of the trial itself, and not just the substance of the charges against Trump, will be a central element of the Republican primary. The only safe prediction for how that might play out is chaos.

No one alive has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. For months, if not years, many people have expected a reprise of the 2020 election, a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.

But that hasn’t prevented a crowded primary. On the GOP side, more than a dozen candidates are ostensibly vying for the nomination. Donald Trump’s lead appears prohibitive, but then again, no candidate has ever won his party’s nomination while facing four (so far) separate felony indictments. (Then again, no one has ever lost his party’s nomination while facing four separate felony indictments either.) Ron DeSantis has not budged from his position as the leading challenger to Trump, but his support has weakened, encouraging a large field of Republicans who are hoping for a lucky break, a Trump collapse, a VP nomination, or maybe just some fun travel and a cable-news contract down the road.

[David A. Graham: The first debate is Ramaswamy and the rest]

On the other side, Democratic hesitations about a second Biden term have either receded or dissolved into resignation that he’s running. But his age and the general lukewarm feeling among some voters has ensured that a decent-size shadow field still exists, just waiting in case Biden bows out for some reason. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also running, ostensibly as a Democrat, but while employing Republican consultants and espousing fairly right-wing views. Even so, he has hit double digits in some polls.

Behind all this, the possibility of a serious third-party bid, led by either the group No Labels or some other candidate, continues to linger. It adds up to a race that is simple on the surface but strangely confusing just below it. This guide to the candidates—who’s in, who’s out, and who’s somewhere in between—serves as a road map to navigate that. It will be updated as the campaign develops, so check in regularly.

REPUBLICANS (Joe Raedle / Getty) Donald Trump

Who is he?
You know him and you love him. Or hate him. Probably not much in between.

Is he running?
Yes. Trump announced his bid to return to the White House at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022.

Why does he want to run?
Revenge, boredom, rivalry, fear of prosecution, long-standing psychological hang-ups.

[Read: Trump begins the ‘retribution’ tour]

Who wants him to run?
A big tranche of the GOP is still all in on Trump, but it’s a little hard to tell how big. Polling shows that his support among Republicans is all over the place, but he’s clearly not a prohibitive front-runner.

Can he win the nomination?
Yes, but past results are no guarantee of future success.

What else do we know?
More than we could possibly want to.

(Joe Raedle / Getty) Ron DeSantis

Who is he?
The second-term governor of Florida, DeSantis was previously a U.S. representative.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his run in a trainwreck of an appearance with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces on May 24.

Why does he want to run?
DeSantis offers the prospect of a synthesis of Trump-style culture war and bullying and the conservative politics of the early-2010s Republican Party.

Who wants him to run?
From the advent of his campaign, DeSantis presented the prospect of a candidate with Trump’s policies but no Trump. But his fading polling suggests that not many Republicans are interested.

[From the March 2023 issue: How did America’s weirdest, most freedom-obsessed state fall for an authoritarian governor?]

Can he win the nomination?
He doesn’t look like the Trump-toppler today that he did several months ago, but it’s possible.

(Roy Rochlin / Getty) Nikki Haley

Who is she?
Haley, the daughter of immigrants, was governor of South Carolina and then ambassador to the United Nations under Trump.

Is she running?
Yes. She announced her campaign on February 14, saying, “Time for a new generation.”

Why does she want to run?
Haley has tried to steer a path that distances herself from Trump—pointing out his unpopularity—without openly attacking him. She may also be the leading foreign-policy hawk in the field.

[Sarah Isgur: What Nikki Haley can learn from Carly Fiorina]

Who wants her to run?
Haley has lagged behind the first tier of candidates, but her strong performance in the first debate could help her.

Can she win the nomination?
Dubious.

(Dylan Hollingsworth / Bloomberg / Getty) Vivek Ramaswamy

Who is he?
A 38-year-old biotech millionaire with a sparkling résumé (Harvard, then Yale Law, where he became friends with Senator J. D. Vance), Ramaswamy has recently become prominent as a crusader against “wokeism” and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on February 21.

Why does he want to run?
“We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis,” Ramaswamy said in a somewhat-hectoring launch video. “Faith, patriotism, and hard work have disappeared, only to be replaced by new secular religions like COVIDism, climatism, and gender ideology.”

Who wants him to run?
Ramaswamy has come from nearly nowhere to poll surprisingly well—in national polls, he’s currently third (if distantly so) behind Trump and DeSantis, and he dominated the first debate.

Can he win the nomination?
Probably not. Ramaswamy no longer seems like a mere curiosity, but his slick shtick and questionable pronouncements will remain a drag on him.

(Alex Wong / Getty) Asa Hutchinson

Who is he?
Hutchinson, the formerly longtime member of Congress, just finished a stint as governor of Arkansas.

Is he running?
Yes. Hutchinson announced on April 2 that he is running. It would have been funnier to announce a day earlier, though.

Why does he want to run?
At one time, Hutchinson was a right-wing Republican—he was one of the managers of Bill Clinton’s impeachment—but as the party has changed, he finds himself closer to the center. He’s been very critical of Trump, saying that Trump disqualified himself with his attempts to steal the 2020 election. Hutchinson is also unique in the field for having called on Trump to drop out over his indictment in New York.

Who wants him to run?
Old-school, very conservative Republicans who also detest Trump.

Can he win the nomination?
Unlikely.

(David Becker / The Washington Post / Getty) Tim Scott

Who is he?
A South Carolinian, Scott is the only Black Republican senator.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign in North Charleston, South Carolina, on May 22.

Why does he want to run?
Unlike some of the others on this list, Scott doesn’t telegraph his ambition quite so plainly, but he’s built a record as a solid Republican. He was aligned with Trump, but never sycophantically attached.

Who wants him to run?
Scott’s Senate colleagues adore him. John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate minority whip, is his first highish-profile endorsement. As DeSantis stumbles, he’s gotten some attention as a possible likable Trump alternative.

Can he win the nomination?
Scott is solidly in the second tier; he’s perpetually said to be on the verge of breaking out but never quite there.

(Megan Varner / Getty) Mike Pence

Who is he?
The former vice president, he also served as the governor of Indiana and a U.S. representative.

Is he running?
Yes. He formally launched his campaign on June 7 with a video and an event in Iowa.

Why does he want to run?
Pence has long harbored White House dreams, and he has a strong conservative-Christian political agenda. His launch video is heavy on clichés and light on specifics beyond promising a kinder face for the Trump agenda.

Who wants him to run?
Conservative Christians, rabbit lovers, but not very many people overall.

[Read: Nobody likes Mike Pence]

Can he win the nomination?
It’s hard to see it happening.

(Ida Mae Astute / Getty) Chris Christie

Who is he?
What a journey this guy has had, from U.S. attorney to respected governor of New Jersey to traffic-jam laughingstock to Trump sidekick to Trump critic. Whew.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on June 6 in New Hampshire.

Why does he want to run?
Anyone who runs for president once and loses wants to run again—especially if he thinks the guy who beat him is an idiot, as Christie clearly thinks about Trump. Moreover, he seems agitated to see other Republicans trying to run without criticizing Trump.

Who wants him to run?
Trump-skeptical donors, liberal pundits.

Can he win the nomination?
Highly doubtful.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Doug Burgum

Who is he?
Do you even pay attention to politics? Nah, just kidding. A self-made software billionaire, Burgum’s serving his second term as the governor of North Dakota.

Is he running?
Apparently! He formally
launched his campaign on June 7 in Fargo.

Why does he want to run?
It’s tough to tell. His campaign-announcement video focuses so much on North Dakota that it seems more like a reelection push. He told a state newspaper that he thinks the “silent majority” of Americans wants candidates who aren’t on the extremes. (A wealthy outsider targeting the silent majority? Where have we heard that before?) He also really wants more domestic oil production.

Who wants him to run?
Lots of people expected a governor from the Dakotas to be a candidate in 2024, but they were looking at Kristi Noem of South Dakota. Burgum is very popular at home—he won more than three-quarters of the vote in 2020—but that still amounts to fewer people than the population of Toledo, Ohio.

Can he win the nomination?
“There’s a value to being underestimated all the time,” he has said. “That’s a competitive advantage.” But it’s even better to have a chance, which he doesn’t.

What else do we know?
He’s giving people $20 gift cards in return for donating to his campaign.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Will Hurd

Who is he?
A former CIA officer, Hurd served three terms in the House representing a San Antonio–area district.

Is he running?
Yes. Hurd announced his campaign on June 22.

Why does he want to run?
Hurd says he has “commonsense” ideas and he is “pissed” that elected officials are dividing Americans. He’s also been an outspoken Trump critic.

Who wants him to run?
As a moderate, youngish Black Republican and someone who cares about defense, he is the sort of candidate whom the party establishment seemed to desire after the now-discarded 2012 GOP autopsy.

Can he win the nomination?
No.

(Mandel Ngan / Getty) Francis Suarez

Who is he?
Suarez is the popular second-term mayor of Miami and the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Is he running?
Yes. He kicked off his campaign on June 15.

Why does he want to run?
Suarez touts his youth—he’s 45—and said in October 2022, “I’m someone who believes in a positive aspirational message. I’m someone who has a track record of success and a formula for success.” He’s also someone who voted against the Republican Ron DeSantis in the 2018 governor’s race and did not vote for Trump in 2020.

Who wants him to run?
Is there really room for another moderate-ish Republican in the race? Suarez reports that Trump said he was the “hottest politician in America after him,” but the former president is himself running, and with DeSantis a presumptive candidate, Suarez is an underdog in his home state.

Can he win the nomination?
Suarez’s only real hope was making the first debate and then having a great night. But he didn’t make the first debate.

(Drew Angerer / Getty) Larry Hogan

Who is he?
Hogan left office this year after serving two terms as governor of Maryland.

Is he running?
No. Hogan ruled himself out on March 5, saying he was worried that too large a field would help Trump win the nomination once more, but he is rumored as a potential No Labels candidate.

Why did he want to run?
Hogan argued that his experience of governing a very blue state as a Republican is a model: “We’ve been really successful outside of Washington, where everything appears to be broken and nothing but divisiveness and dysfunction.” He’s also a vocal critic of Trump.

Who wanted him to run?
Moderate, business-friendly “Never Trump” Republicans love Hogan.

Could he have won the nomination?
No.

(John Locher / AP) Chris Sununu

Who is he?
The governor of New Hampshire, he’s the little brother of former Senator John E. Sununu and the son of former White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.

Is he running?
No. On June 5, after weighing a campaign, he announced he would not run. Warning about the dangers of a Trump reprise, he said, “Every candidate needs to understand the responsibility of getting out and getting out quickly if it’s not working.” Points for taking his own advice!

Why did he want to run?
Sununu seems disgusted by a lot of Washington politics and saw his success in New Hampshire, a purple-blue state, as a model for small-government conservatism. He is also a prominent Trump critic.

Who wanted him to run?
Trump-skeptical Republicans, old-school conservatives.

Could he have won the nomination?
No.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Mike Pompeo

Who is he?
Pompeo, a former member of Congress, led the CIA and was secretary of state under Trump.

Is he running?
No. On April 14, Pompeo announced he wasn’t running. “This is not that time or that moment for me to seek elected office again,” he said.

Why did he want to run?
Pompeo has always been ambitious, and he seems to think he can combine MAGA proximity with a hawkish foreign-policy approach.

Who wanted him to run?
That’s not entirely clear.

Could he have won the nomination?
Maybe, but probably not.

(Misha Friedman / Getty) Glenn Youngkin

Who is he?
Youngkin, the former CEO of the private-equity Carlyle Group, was elected governor of Virginia in 2021.

Is he running?
Probably not. He said on May 1 that he wasn’t running “this year.” But he seems to be rethinking that as Ron DeSantis’s campaign sputters.

Why does he want to run?
Youngkin is a bit of a cipher; he ran largely on education issues, and has sought to tighten abortion laws in Virginia, so far to no avail.

Who wants him to run?
Rupert Murdoch, reportedly.

Can he win the nomination?
Certainly not if he isn’t running.

(Sam Wolfe / Bloomberg / Getty) Mike Rogers

Who is he?
Rogers is a congressman from Alabam—wait, no, sorry, that’s the other Representative Mike Rogers. This one is from Michigan and retired in 2015. He was previously an FBI agent and was head of the Intelligence Committee while on Capitol Hill.

Is he running?
He is thinking about it and has formed a group with the suitably vague name “Lead America,” but he’s been quiet for long enough that we can assume no, at least for practical purposes.

Why does he want to run?
He laid out some unassailably broad ideas for a campaign in an interview with Fox News, including a focus on innovation and civic education, but it’s hard to tell what exactly the goal is here. “This is not a vanity project for me,” he added, which, okay, sure.

Who wants him to run?
“I think the Trump, Trump-lite lane is pretty crowded,” he told Fox. “The lane that is not talking about Trump, that is talking about solutions and the way forward and what the real challenges we face—I just don’t find a lot of people in that lane.” Which, again, okay?

Can he win the nomination?
Nope.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Larry Elder

Who is he?
A longtime conservative radio host and columnist, he ran as a Republican in the unsuccessful 2021 attempt to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Is he running?
Allegedly, yes. He announced his campaign on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on April 20. He’s barely been heard from since.

Why does he want to run?
Glad you asked! “America is in decline, but this decline is not inevitable,” he tweeted. “We can enter a new American Golden Age, but we must choose a leader who can bring us there. That’s why I’m running for President.” We don’t have any idea what that means either.

Who wants him to run?
Impossible to say at this stage, but deep-blue California is a tough launching pad for any conservative, especially an unseasoned candidate. This recall campaign also dredged up various unflattering information about his past.

Can he win the nomination?
Having missed out on the first debate, any hope Elder had is gone.

(Todd Williamson / Getty) Rick Perry

Who is he?
Perry was a three-term governor of Texas before serving as energy secretary under Donald Trump. He’s also run for president three times: in 2012, 2016, and … I forget the third one. Oops.

Is he running?
Oh, right! The third one is 2024, maybe. He told CNN in May that he’s considering a run. Nothing’s been heard since.

Why does he want to run?
He didn’t say, but he’s struggled to articulate much of a compelling case to Republican voters beyond the fact that he’s from Texas, he looks good in a suit, and he wants to be president, gosh darn it.

Who wants him to run?
Probably no one. As Mike Pompeo already discovered, there’s not much of a market for a run-of-the-mill former Trump Cabinet member in the primary—especially one who had such a forgettable turn as secretary, mostly remembered for being dragged peripherally into both the first Trump impeachment and election subversion.

Can he win the nomination?
The third time would not be a charm.

(Joe Raedle / Getty) Rick Scott

Who is he?
Before his current gig as a U.S. senator from Florida, Scott was governor and chief executive of a health-care company that committed massive Medicare fraud.

Is he running?
The New York Times says he’s considering it, though an aide said Scott is running for reelection to the Senate. He’d be the fourth Floridian in the race.

Why does he want to run?
A Scott campaign would raise a fascinating question: What if you took Trump’s pose and ideology, but removed all the charisma and, instead of promising to protect popular entitlement programs, aimed to demolish them?

Who wants him to run?
Not Mitch McConnell.

Can he win the nomination?
lol

DEMOCRATS (Joshua Roberts / Getty) Joe Biden

Who is he?
After decades of trying, Biden is the president of the United States.

Is he running?
Yes. Biden formally announced his run on April 25.

Why does he want to run?
Biden’s slogan is apparently “Let’s finish the job.” He centered his launch video on the theme of freedom, but underlying all of this is his apparent belief that he may be the only person who can defeat Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup.

[Read: The case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden]

Who wants him to run?
There’s the catch. Some prominent Democrats support his bid for a second term, but voters have consistently told pollsters that they don’t want him to run again.

Can he win the nomination?
Barring unforeseen catastrophe, yes. No incumbent president has lost the nomination in the modern era, and Biden has pushed through changes to the Democratic-primary process that make him an even more prohibitive favorite.

What else do we know?
Biden is already the oldest person to be elected president and to serve as president, so a second term would set more records.

(Bill Clark / Getty) Dean Phillips

Who is he?
Phillips, a mildly unorthodox and interesting figure, is a Minnesota moderate serving his third term in the House.

Is he running?
Probably not. In an August 21 interview, he said he was unlikely to run, but would encourage other Democrats to do so. He had said in July that he was considering it.

Why does he want to run?
Phillips, who at 54 passes for young in politics, has been publicly critical of superannuated Democrats sticking around too long, and he says Biden is too old to run again.

Who wants him to run?
Although it’s true that many Democrats think Biden is too old, that doesn’t mean they’re willing to do anything about it—or that Phillips is the man they want to replace him. Although Phillips claims he has “been overwhelmed with outreach and encouragement,” this looks more like a messaging move than a serious sprint at the moment.

Can he win the nomination?
Not in 2024.

What else do we know?
His grandmother was “Dear Abby.”

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty) Kamala Harris

Who is she?
Harris is the vice president of the United States.

Is she running?
No, but if Biden were to bow out, she’d be the immediate favorite.

Why does she want to run?
One problem with her 2020 presidential campaign was the lack of a clear answer to this question. Perhaps running on the Biden-Harris legacy would help fill in the blank.

Who wants her to run?
Some Democrats are excited about the prospect of nominating a woman of color, but generally Harris’s struggles as a candidate and in defining a role for herself (in the admittedly impossible position of VP) have resulted in nervousness about her as a standard-bearer.

Can she win the nomination?
Not right now.

(Matthew Cavanaugh / Getty) Pete Buttigieg

Who is he?
Mayor Pete is Secretary Pete now, overseeing the Department of Transportation.

Is he running?
No, but he would also be a likely candidate if Biden stepped away.

Why does he want to run?
Just as he was four years ago, Buttigieg is a young, ambitious politician with a moderate, technocratic vision of government.

Who wants him to run?
Buttigieg’s fans are passionate, and Biden showed that moderates remain a force in the party.

Can he win the nomination?
Not at this moment.

(Scott Olson / Getty) Bernie Sanders

Who is he?
The senator from Vermont is changeless, ageless, ever the same.

Is he running?
No, but if Biden dropped out, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t seriously consider another go. A top adviser even says so.

Why does he want to run?
Sanders still wants to tax billionaires, level the economic playing field, and push a left-wing platform.

Who wants him to run?
Sanders continues to have the strong support of a large portion of the Democratic electorate, especially younger voters.

Can he win the nomination?
Two consecutive tries have shown that he’s formidable, but can’t close. Maybe the third time’s the charm?

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty) Gretchen Whitmer

Who is she?
Whitmer cruised to a second term as governor of Michigan in 2022.

Is she running?
No.

Why would she want to run?
It’s a little early to know, but her reelection campaign focused on abortion rights.

Who wants her to run?
Whitmer would check a lot of boxes for Democrats. She’s a fresh face, she’s a woman, and she’s proved she can win in the upper Midwest against a MAGA candidate.

Can she win the nomination?
Not if she isn’t running.

(Lucas Jackson / Reuters) Marianne Williamson

Who is she?
If you don’t know Williamson from her popular writing on spirituality, then you surely remember her somewhat woo-woo Democratic bid in 2020.

Is she running?
Yes. Williamson announced her campaign on March 4 in D.C.

Why does she want to run?
“It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear,” she said at her campaign launch. She has also said that she wants to give voters a choice. “The question I ask myself is not ‘What is my path to victory?’ My question is ‘What is my path to radical truth-telling?’ There are some things that need to be said in this country.”

Who wants her to run?
Williamson has her fans, but she doesn’t have a clear political constituency. Also, her campaign is perpetually falling part.

Can she win the nomination?
Nah.

(Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune / Getty) J. B. Pritzker

Who is he?
The governor of Illinois is both a scion of a wealthy family and a “nomadic warrior.”

Is he running?
No.

Why does he want to run?
After years of unfulfilled interest in elected office, Pritzker has established himself as a muscular proponent of progressivism in a Democratic stronghold.

Who wants him to run?
Improbably for a billionaire, Pritzker has become a darling of the Sanders-style left, as well as a memelord.

Can he win the nomination?
Not now.

(Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune / Getty) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Who is he?
The son of a presidential candidate, the nephew of another, and the nephew of a president, Kennedy is a longtime environmental activist and also a chronic crank.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his run on April 19.

Why does he want to run?
Running for president is a family tradition—hell, he wouldn’t even be the first Kennedy to primary a sitting Democrat. He’s running a campaign arranged around his esoteric combination of left-wing interests (the environment, drug prices) and right-wing causes (vaccine skepticism, anger about social-media “deplatforming”), but tending toward extremely dark places.

Who wants him to run?
Despite his bizarre beliefs, he’s polling in double digits against Biden—though as he has gotten deeper into anti-Semitism and conspiracies, Semafor has deemed his boomlet over.

Can he win the nomination?
Not the Democratic one.

THIRD-PARTY AND INDEPENDENT (Tom Williams / Getty) Joe Manchin

Who is he?
A Democratic U.S. senator and former governor of West Virginia, he was the pivotal centrist vote for the first two years of Joe Biden’s term. I’ve described him as “a middle-of-the-road guy with good electoral instincts, decent intentions, and bad ideas.”

Is he running?
It’s very hard to tell how serious he is. He has visited Iowa, and is being courted by No Labels, the nonpartisan centrist organization, to carry its banner. He’s shown no signs of running, and would stand no chance, in the Democratic primary.

Why does he want to run?
Manchin would arguably have less power as a third-party president than he does as a crucial swing senator, but he faces perhaps the hardest reelection campaign of his life in 2024, as the last Democrat standing in a now solidly Republican state. He also periodically seems personally piqued at Biden and the Democrats over slights perceived or real.

Who wants him to run?
No Labels would love to have someone like him, a high-profile figure who’s willing to buck his party and has policies that would appeal to voters from either party. It’s hard to imagine he’d have much of an organic base of support, but Democrats are terrified he’d siphon off enough votes to hand Trump or another Republican the win in a three-way race.

Can he win?
“Make no mistake, I will win any race I enter,” he said in April. If that is true, do not expect to see him in the presidential race.

(Frederick M. Brown / Getty) Cornel West

Who is he?
West is a philosopher, a theologian, a professor, a preacher, a gadfly, a progressive activist, an actor, a spoken-word recording-artist, an author … and we’re probably missing a few.

Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on the People’s Party ticket on June 5.

Why does he want to run?
“In these bleak times, I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for president of the United States,” he said in his announcement video. West is a fierce leftist who has described Trump as a “neo-fascist” and Biden as a “milquetoast neoliberal.”

Who wants him to run?
West was a high-profile backer of Bernie Sanders, and it’s easy to imagine him winning over some of Sanders’s fervent fans. The People’s Party is relatively new and unproven, and doesn’t have much of a base of its own.

Can he win?
Let’s hear from Brother West: “Do we have what it takes? We shall see,” he said. “But some of us are going to go down fighting, go down swinging, with style and a smile.” Sounds like a no, but it should be a lively, entertaining campaign.

Donald Trump dropped in for a photo op in Georgia last night—not the usual kibbitz on the hustings for a former president, but a killer visual to end the week with: a mug shot.

And just like that, Trump was restored to his accustomed place in the Republican dogpile: everywhere. It was hard to look away, even if you wanted to. Former presidents do not go and get fingerprinted and mug-shotted and perp-walked every day, even the one former president who takes his arraignments in gift packs of four.

Clichés are always bad, and sometimes quite wrong, but the conceit that this would be a “split screen” week for the Republican campaign—eight GOP debaters on one screen, Trump’s co-defendants getting processed on the other—was spectacularly amiss from the start. One screen this week would blot out all of the rest.

[Read: Magical thinking in Milwaukee]

Yes, Wednesday’s debate yielded a few enduring images—including Chris Christie, Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley all fixing simultaneous stink eyes upon Vivek Ramaswamy, as if they were about to stab him with their pens. But those moments unquestionably pale next to what emanated last night from Fulton County. Trump’s mug shot, probably the most anticipated in history, seems destined to also be the most analyzed and disseminated.

You can assume that the subject, a figure of uncommon vanity, obsessed like hell over his bureaucratic close-up. How should he pose? For what aura should he strive? Tough guy, defiant, or wounded pup? Would make-up be allowed? Thumbs-ups or no?

Trump had come and gone from the Fulton County Jail by about 8 p.m. on the East Coast. Roughly 95 percent of Americans—or at least a sampling of hyper-online individuals in my feed—furiously began refreshing social media to see if the image was out yet. There were a few fakeouts and some inspired memes. Trump’s recorded weight—215 pounds—became a topic for discussion. It was widely doubted.

Finally, around 8:40 p.m, the mug shot landed. Trump’s hair and eyebrows were more feathered than usual, like he had brushed them out. Lips were pursed, eyes stern and severe, his brow zig-zagging like lightning. The former president looked like the Grinch—the Grinch Who Stole Georgia (or tried).

[David A. Graham: The Georgia indictment offers the whole picture]

One thing that seemed clear from the other co-defendant processings this week is that the deep-state wise guy who’s in charge of the booking shots at this notorious Atlanta jail is not much interested in customer service. The alleged lawbreakers have appeared, for the most part, shaken and disoriented. The lighting in the photos is awful; a harsh shine beats down over the side of each defendant’s forehead. The lawyer John Eastman seems confused; Mark Meadows, kind of sedated; a smiling Sidney Powell looks under-slept (and bonkers); Rudy Giuliani delivered the perfect “after” image to view alongside his Time “Person of the Year” cover from 2001.

Trump’s photo offers a rough visage, formidable and extremely serious—which is what I assume he was going for. He made an effort here. It paid off. He gave his haters nothing in the ballpark of vulnerability. At 9:38 p.m., he tweeted out the image with a link to his campaign website and a message: “NEVER SURRENDER!”

Each defendant’s photo, including Trump’s, is imprinted with a prominent Fulton County Sheriff’s Office badge in the top left corner. The logo carries a subtle but powerful message: Don’t even think about portraying this as anything but a dark, singular, and deeply unpleasant occasion. This is no place for joyriders or dilettantes or Instagram peacocks. You can post bail and leave, for now, but you don’t want to come back, trust us. Take a whiff and remember it.

[Quinta Jurecic: Trump discovers that some things are actually illegal]

No doubt, Trump will. He does not like places that are “not nice.” He is sensitive to germs and smells. “There have been ongoing problems with overcrowding in the [Fulton County] jail, along with violence, overflowing toilets and faulty air conditioning,” The Washington Post reported last week.

But at least Trump was spared the spin room in Milwaukee.

For the record, Ramaswamy dominated that particular halitosis hall after Wednesday night’s debate. He kept darting from one late-night interview to the next, big-man-on-the-stage that he was. “I gotta keep moving, gotta keep moving,” Ramaswamy announced as he glad-handed his way through the sweaty scene. At one point, he approached a CNN camera where host Dana Bash was preparing to interview North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. Ramaswamy tapped Bash on the shoulder, and Bash lit up, recognizing this sleeker vessel that had drifted into precious airspace. She seized her moment, as Ramaswamy had earlier, securing the peppy capitalist after an awkward back-and-forth with the governor.

“I gotta keep moving,” Ramaswamy said again as someone tried to grab him away from Bash’s camera setup. This was his big night. Everyone was watching him, and he seemed determined to savor it all before midnight struck. Trump would be back and inescapable again soon enough.

Last night’s GOP presidential debate featured eight candidates, none of them named Donald Trump, but it was the former president who won the night. His aggregate lead in the national polls is titanic—he is more than 40 points ahead of the fast-fading Ron DeSantis—and nothing that happened on the debate stage in Milwaukee will change that.

Those who watched the debate will, for a few hours anyway, remember certain moments, good and bad, and take away certain impressions, positive and negative.

For my part, I thought two former governors, Nikki Haley and Chris Christie, were the most impressive. Haley was particularly strong on foreign policy, lacerating Vivek Ramaswamy for his stances on Ukraine (hand it over to Russia), Israel (cut funding), and China (abandon Taiwan). “You don’t do that to friends,” the former United Nations ambassador said, attacking his stance on Israel. “What you do instead is you have the backs of your friends.” She added, “You have no foreign-policy experience, and it shows!” Haley also called out Republicans for promising in campaigns to cut spending and then, when in power—especially during the Trump presidency—increasing it.

[David A. Graham: Ramaswamy and the rest]

Christie is the most skilled debater in the field, authentic and quick on his feet, and his willingness to call out Trump for his corruption and to defend former Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to buckle under Trump’s pressure to steal the 2020 election stood out. So too did his moving account of the atrocities he witnessed while visiting Kyiv earlier this month. But Christie suffered the most from Trump’s absence, because he is clearly the most equipped to dismantle Trump.

I agree with my colleague David A. Graham: For the tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, “the debate was his coming-out party. He was, if not definitively the winner of the debate, clearly the main character.” Ramaswamy is young, glib, shallow, and cynical—a shape-shifter and performance artist who appeals to MAGA world. He is Trump’s most reliable defender in the field; he presented himself as the heir apparent of the 77-year-old former president. After the debate, Donald Trump Jr. called Ramaswamy the “standout” performer. My hunch is that of all the candidates, he helped himself the most. Watch for his poll numbers to rise.  

Pence was something of a presence on the debate stage, at times feisty and on the attack; the problem is that he often comes across as sanctimonious. DeSantis, Florida’s governor, proved once again that he is a mediocre political talent, delivering scripted lines in a scripted manner. He has a remarkable ability to come across as a thoroughly unlikable and perennially angry human being.

For Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the debate was a lost opportunity. There was talk going into the debate that his stock was on the rise; that will end after this debate, during which he didn’t say anything memorable. And both Asa Hutchinson, former governor of Arkansas, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum were nonfactors.

If this debate had been held late last year or earlier this year, everyone would have ganged up on DeSantis. That the other candidates for the most part ignored him underscores how much his campaign is stumbling. He’s hardly worth attacking. Among the most striking political developments this year is that Trump’s lead has continued to balloon; almost as striking is that no other candidate has become a credible challenger.

Last night’s debate also underscored that what sells in the GOP these days is a dark view of America. That has certainly been a hallmark of Trump’s rhetoric, including his “American carnage” inaugural address, which over the years has only grown more cataclysmic. But he’s not alone. The No. 2 and 3 candidates in the polls, DeSantis and Ramaswamy, share Trump’s grim view of the United States, portraying it as under siege from all sides

In an exchange with Pence, who was trying to strike a Reaganesque tone of optimism, Ramaswamy said, “Some others like you on this stage may have a ‘It’s morning in America’ speech. It’s not morning in America. We live in a dark moment, and we have to confront the fact that we’re in an internal sort of cold cultural civil war.” According to Ramaswamy, this is a time when “family, faith, patriotism, hard work have all disappeared.”

This outlook has resonance in the GOP. It’s why, if one cites positive empirical trends in America—improvements in some areas of the economy; a steep drop in violent crime and murder so far this year, according to preliminary data (in Trump’s final year in office, the homicide rate increased by nearly 30 percent); a decades-long drop in the number of abortions (which increased during the Trump presidency)—the reaction from many on the right is agitation. They have a psychological investment in a dark narrative, the view that we’re in an existential struggle, which helps justify their militancy.

[Read: Magical thinking in Milwaukee]

But perhaps the most revealing moment of last night’s debate came from Christie responding to whether he would support Trump if he was convicted of crimes. “Here’s the bottom line,” he said. “Someone’s got to stop normalizing this conduct, okay? Now, whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of president of the United States.” Christie, in response to boos from the audience, said, “You know, this is the great thing about this country: Booing is allowed, but it doesn’t change the truth.” This elicited a fresh cascade of boos; the audience became raucous, enraged that Christie would say we should stop normalizing the conduct of the most corrupt and lawless president in American history.

Tonight, Trump will be booked in Fulton County, Georgia, for his role in attempting to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential-election results. It’s his fourth indictment; he faces 91 felony counts. That’s four more indictments and 91 more felony counts than all the previous presidents in American history combined. Trump was also found liable earlier this year for sexual abuse. Yet for Republican voters, saying this conduct shouldn’t be normalized is delivering fighting words.

The reason is simple: Trump is a revered figure among the GOP base. He is also a political colossus in the Republican Party; no candidate has ever lost the nomination of his party with a polling lead like his. And after Trump is fingerprinted and weighed, and likely has a mug shot taken, at the Rice Street Jail, he is going to be viewed even more favorably by many Republicans. He is, for them, a martyred saint.

“Any time you have a pack of dogs chasing you down and you’re willing to stand firm and fight, you’re going to get my vote,” a Trump supporter who lives in Polk County, Florida, told The New York Times.

“The indictments are honestly making my support even stronger,” a 51-year-old Trump supporter from Kentucky told that paper. “They’ve weaponized our entire government against people like us. Every time he gets indicted, it’s driving tens of thousands more of us to the polls.”

These kinds of responses are what you’d expect to see in a cult, not a political party. But today’s Republican Party has become cultlike, with Donald Trump the leader. We saw that once again during the debate in Milwaukee. He was physically absent but there in spirit. This is not normal, and any country that treats it as such will, in the words of Lincoln, “die by suicide.”

In their first presidential debate last night, Republicans staged their own version of Tom Stoppard’s classic play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Stoppard’s story focuses on the titular two characters, who are minor figures in Hamlet. The playwright recounts the Hamlet story from their peripheral perspective, as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern wait and wander, distant from the real action. For much of the play’s three acts, they strain for even glimpses of the man at the center of the tale, Prince Hamlet.

The eight GOP candidates onstage last night often seemed like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, with their words largely stripped of meaning by the absence of the central protagonist in their drama.

The debate had plenty of heat, flashes of genuine anger, and revealing policy disputes. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has often seemed a secondary player in this race, delivered a forceful performance—particularly in rebutting the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy on policy toward Ukraine—that made her the most vivid figure onstage to many Republicans.

But all that sound and fury fundamentally lacked relevance to the central story in the GOP race: whether anyone can dent former President Donald Trump’s massive lead over the field. At times, it seemed as if the other candidates had lost sight of the fact that it is Trump, not the motormouthed Ramaswamy, who is 40 points or more ahead of all of them in national polls.

“Trump is the big winner,” the Republican consultant Alex Conant told me after the debate. “Nobody made an argument about why they would be a better nominee than Donald Trump. They didn’t even begin to make that argument.”

There were plausible reasons the candidates focused so little on the man they are trying to overtake. The Fox News moderators did not ask specifically about Trump’s legal troubles until an hour into the debate, instead focusing on discussions about the economy, climate change, and abortion. Ramaswamy seemed to be daring the other candidates to smack him down by repeatedly attacking not only their policies but their motivations. “I’m the only person on this stage who isn’t bought and paid for,” he insisted at one point. Loud booing from the audience almost anytime someone criticized Trump may also have discouraged anyone from targeting him too often.

But it was more than the debate’s immediate circumstances that explained the field’s decision to minimize direct confrontation with Trump. That choice merely extended the strategy most have followed throughout this campaign, which in turn has replicated the deferential approach most of Trump’s rivals took during the 2016 race.

[David A. Graham: Ramaswamy and the rest]

Haley took the most direct shot at the former president on policy, criticizing him from the right for increasing the national debt so much during his tenure; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis jabbed Trump too—though not by name—for supporting lockdowns early in the pandemic. Yet these exchanges were overshadowed by the refusal of any of the contenders, apart from former Governors Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, to object to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election or his role in sparking the January 6 insurrection. All of them except Hutchinson and Christie raised their hand to indicate they would support Trump as the GOP presidential nominee even if he is convicted of a crime before the election.

To Conant, all of this seemed reminiscent of the 2016 campaign, when Trump’s rivals seemed reluctant to attack him in the hope that he would somehow collapse on his own. “Their strategy is wrong,” Conant said. “He’s going to be the nominee unless somebody can capture the support of Republicans who are open to an alternative. And nobody even tried to do that tonight.”

David Kochel, an Iowa-based Republican consultant, wasn’t as critical. But he agreed that the field displayed little urgency about its biggest imperative: dislodging from Trump some of the voters now swelling his big lead in the polls. “What this race needs is to start focusing in on [the question of] ‘Trump or the future, which is it?’” Kochel told me. “I’m not sure we saw enough of that” last night.

The failure to more directly address the elephant in the room, or what Bret Baier, a co-moderator, called “the elephant not in the room,” undoubtedly muted the debate’s potential impact on the race. Nonetheless, the evening might provide a tailwind to some of the contenders, and a headwind to others.

The consensus among Republicans I spoke with after the debate was that Haley made a more compelling impression than the other seven candidates onstage. Her best moment came when she lacerated Ramaswamy for calling to end U.S. support to Ukraine, a move she said would essentially surrender the country to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “You are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country,” she told Ramaswamy. “You have no foreign-policy experience, and it shows.”

The debate “lifted Nikki Haley as one of the prime alternatives for the people who are worried that Trump carries too much baggage to get elected,” the veteran GOP pollster Whit Ayres told me last night. “She gutted Ramaswamay.”

Ramaswamy forced himself into the center of the conversation for much of the night, making unequivocal conservative declarations such as “The climate agenda is a hoax,” and categorical attacks on the rest of the candidates as corrupt career politicians.

Yet the evening showed why he may not advance any further than other outsider candidates in earlier GOP races, like Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann in 2012. His choice to emulate Trump as an agent of chaos surely thrilled the GOP voters most alienated from the party leadership. But Ramaswamy’s disruptive behavior and tendency toward absolutist positions that he could not effectively defend seemed likely to lower his ultimate ceiling of support. He appeared to simultaneously deepen but narrow his potential audience.

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina also had a difficult night, though less by commission than omission. In his first turn on such a big stage, he simply failed to make much of an imprint; the evening underscored the limitations of his campaign message beyond his personal story of rising from poverty. “I forgot he was even there,” Kochel said. “Maybe nice guys finish last; I don’t know. He disappeared.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence, by contrast, was as animated as he’s been in a public forum. That was true both when he was making the case for an almost pre-Trumpian policy agenda that reprised priorities associated with Ronald Reagan and when he was defending his actions on January 6.

DeSantis, who seemed slightly overcaffeinated at the outset, didn’t disappear, but he didn’t fill Trump’s shoes as the focal point of the debate either. The other candidates devoted little effort to criticizing or contrasting with him. To Conant, that was a sign they consider him a fading ember: “No reason to risk losing a back-and-forth with a dead man,” Conant said. Others thought that although DeSantis did not stand out, he didn’t make any mistakes and may have succeeded in reminding more conservative voters why they liked him so much before his unsteady first months as a presidential candidate.

Christie in turn may have connected effectively with the relatively thin slice of GOP voters irrevocably hostile to Trump. That may constitute only 10 to 15 percent of the GOP electorate nationally, but it represents much more than that in New Hampshire, where Christie could prove formidable, Ayres told me.

But it won’t matter much which candidate slightly improved, or diminished, their position if they all remain so far behind Trump. Ayres believes materially weakening Trump in the GOP race may be beyond the capacity of any of his rivals; the only force that might bring him back within their reach, Ayres told me, is if his trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election commences before the voting advances too far next year and damages his image among more Republican voters.

In a Republican context, Ayres said, “The only institutions that have the ability to bring him back to Earth are not political institutions; they are judicial institutions.”

Kochel, who attended the debate, pointed out that the loud disapproval from the crowd at any mention of Trump’s legal troubles accurately reflected the desire of most GOP voters to bury the issue. “A lot of the base right now collectively has their hands up over their ears and are going ‘La-la-la,’” Kochel said. The problem for the party, though, is that while Republican partisans may not want to deal with the electoral implications of nominating a candidate facing 91 criminal charges, “general-election voters are going to deliver a verdict on all of this even if a jury doesn’t.”

[David A. Graham: What people keep missing about Ron DeSantis]

Apart from Christie and Hutchinson, the candidates on the stage seemed no more eager than the audience to address Trump’s actions. While all of them agreed Pence did the right thing on January 6 by refusing Trump’s demands to reject the election results, none except those two and Pence himself suggested Trump did something wrong in pressuring his vice president. Nor did the others find fault in anything else Trump did to subvert the 2020 result.

The final act of Stoppard’s play finds Rosencrantz and Guildenstern drifting toward a doom that neither understands, nor can summon the will to escape. In their caution and timidity, the Republicans distantly chasing Trump don’t look much different.

By this stage in the presidential campaign, much has been made of the severely conservative politics of Ron DeSantis. Voters have also become well acquainted with what a clumsy campaigner he is. But those two facts have perhaps eclipsed a third essential characteristic of the Florida governor: the astonishing sweep of his (apparently legal) corruption. DeSantis has demonstrated a prolific ability to use the power of government to raise money and reap other perks while working to shield that behavior from public view.

“I could sell golf for $50k this morning,” one DeSantis aide wrote to others in 2019, in an email obtained by The Washington Post and published over the weekend. It was part of a broader strategy: Once DeSantis took office, his aides made a list of 40 lobbyists with a goal of raising millions for the governor’s political-action committee and other funds. For the golf scheme, the idea was to get a lobbyist to shell out, using his client’s cash, to play a round with DeSantis and his wife, Casey. Experts told the Post that the arrangement was legal under Florida law. DeSantis was aware of the plan and updated on its progress.

[David A. Graham: The queasy liberal schadenfreude of watching Trump wreck DeSantis]

“It’s about getting your phone calls returned and having the ability to make asks,” one lobbyist told the Post. “You want to engender access and goodwill with the governor.” A DeSantis campaign spokesperson, meanwhile, told the paper that “donors never have and never will dictate policy for Ron DeSantis—just ask Disney.”

But everyone already understood that most big donations are about buying access, even if it’s admirably blunt for one of the participants to say so on the record, albeit anonymously. During the 2016 GOP presidential primary, Donald Trump was even more transparent, explaining his past donations to Democrats including Hillary Clinton. “Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding, and she came to my wedding,” he said at one debate. “She had no choice, because I gave to a foundation.” This frankness gave Trump credibility with some voters when he promised to “drain the swamp” of unethical behavior in Washington, though it should really have served as a warning about how he would operate in office.

DeSantis has promised to be a president like Trump but without the drama, and he has apparently learned from the former president how to use his office for personal benefit. As NBC News uncovered this spring, some members of the state administration hit up lobbyists for donations to DeSantis’s presidential campaign. Once again, this is probably legal—as long as the staffers weren’t using state resources or time on the clock to make the requests. Yet it’s also extremely sketchy. As one lobbyist pointed out, DeSantis will remain governor even if he doesn’t become president, so lobbyists have to maintain their access, especially because DeSantis has proved he’s willing to punish any perceived disloyalty.

Don’t cry for the poor lobbyists, who are writing checks out of client cash, and don’t cry for the clients, who are paying the lobbyists to get access in order to get what they want from the state government. The victims here are constituents who don’t have the money to drop on 18 holes with the governor and first lady. But not only is the public shut out of whatever the benefits of the spending are; DeSantis has done his best to make sure they can’t even know who’s doing the spending and on what.

One way he’s done this is to structure his political operation to obscure the spending. Someone paid for DeSantis’s flop of a trip to Europe, but good luck figuring out who. As Politico reported, DeSantis’s office said no taxpayer money went to the trip. But neither his PAC nor the state party disclosed any expenses related to the travel. DeSantis’s campaign has relied heavily on charter jets, many times with unclear funding. The New York Times was able to trace some of the tab to (surprise!) Florida lobbyists, but in other cases found that the funding was hidden from view by a nonprofit organization established to pay for them. (Now, with DeSantis’s campaign reeling, donors have become annoyed about all the expensive air travel.)

When clever loopholes in existing law don’t present themselves, DeSantis has changed the law. In May, DeSantis got the state legislature to pass a law that hides travel-related records from the public. “The law applies retroactively and would cover his extensive use of state planes throughout his time as governor. It would also cover records related to visitors to the governor’s mansion, opponents said,” CNN reported. Florida has long been a model for the nation on transparency laws, but DeSantis has worked to weaken such provisions.

[David A. Graham: How a purple state got a bright red sheen]

The campaign-finance system in the U.S. makes nearly every candidate for major office complicit, willing or not, in a distortion of democratic values through implied, and sometimes explicit, peddling of access. Even though DeSantis has been particularly zealous in embracing the possibilities, that hasn’t received the same sort of scrutiny that his campaign tactics or feud with Disney have. It should, though. Even if none of it is illegal, as so far appears to be the case, it is a form of corruption beyond even the normally grubby standards.

DeSantis’s aggressive approach on campaign finance is consistent with his embrace, as governor, of what I’ve called “total politics,” seeking to use the most aggressive methods available under law, precedent or prudence be damned. As with DeSantis’s record of conservative achievement as governor, one wouldn’t expect him to be able to translate all the same methods to Washington were he president. Federal laws are different from state laws, and Congress is not so easily bullied as a Republican-dominated, term-limited state legislature.

But his unethical approach here is likely a model for how he might approach the presidency. Perhaps no one should be surprised that Florida would produce such a swamp creature.

Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to convert the federal prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden into a special counsel ensures that Democrats will be fielding uncomfortable questions throughout the 2024 presidential campaign. They would do well to think before they speak. Asked one such question in a television interview in May, President Joe Biden insisted, “My son’s done nothing wrong.”

But is that true?

It now seems quite likely that Hunter Biden has violated one or more U.S. laws. And that’s not all the wrong he has done. There is a difference between what is technically illegal and what is wrong.

Some context may help explain the chasm that has opened up between the two—the gulf between what most ordinary Americans understand as corruption and the mincing definition that reigns in the professional spheres of politics, the law, and big business.

Since 1987, and most recently in May of this year, a series of Supreme Court cases has relentlessly narrowed the legal definition of corruption. This is the body whose cavalier attitude toward its own ethics has disenchanted many Americans. The Court has whittled down what was once our right to the “honest services” of our public servants to a rule outlawing only the trade of “official acts” performed as part of government duties for money or material gifts. Then the Court chipped away at what counts as an “official act.” Pressuring subordinates or hosting an official lunch? Closing traffic lanes on the busiest bridge in the United States to pursue a political vendetta? In decision after decision, each of these was disqualified.

Almost as stunning as the facts of these cases has been the unanimity of the votes. After John Paul Stevens’s stinging dissent in the first of this series, McNally v. United States, all of the Court’s liberal justices have joined in every decision. Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the 2010 opinion in the case of Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling that limited the honest-services law (which applied to business executives as well as government employees) to bribery and kickback schemes only.

This jurisprudence, as a federal prosecutor once remarked to me, has “made it so only bad criminals can be convicted.” He didn’t mean perpetrators of terrible corruption. He meant perpetrators who are hopelessly incompetent.

[Franklin Foer: Trump thinks he’s found Biden’s greatest vulnerability]

Thanks in part to the Court, a breeding ground has thus opened for activity that does not count as illegal but is wrong. Much of Hunter Biden’s professional life seems to have played out in this arena. That verdict leaps from the pages of his former business associate Devon Archer’s recent testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

Let’s start with the bare fact of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that put Archer and Hunter Biden on its board of directors. It did so in the spring of 2014, shortly after the Maidan Revolution toppled the government of Viktor Yanukovych—“a man whose corruption had to be seen to be believed,” as The Guardian later put it. Burisma’s owner was Mykola Zlochevsky, who had been Yanukovych’s minister for natural resources. Zlochevsky had been a target of investigation by Ukraine’s top prosecutor since 2012, for suspected money laundering and self-dealing at Burisma. Some months after the ouster of his former boss, Zlochevsky fled Ukraine. (Ukrainian authorities have effectively suspended their investigation because they were unable to determine his whereabouts.)

I have studied how corruption works in fossil-fuel-rich countries of this ilk and have repeatedly noticed the role of energy or natural-resources ministers. The petroleum minister in Nigeria when I was working there, for example, has been implicated and found liable in multiple bribery schemes. In 2013, the country’s central-bank governor provided evidence to the Senate that close to $1 billion a month in oil revenues had disappeared before reaching the federal treasury.

Other characters, alongside the Ukrainian oil-ministry oligarch, should also have raised red flags for Joe Biden, who was at the time the U.S. vice president—and had just taken on the task for the Obama administration of pressing Ukraine to tackle its endemic corruption. Archer himself is one such character. He was sentenced last year for the crimes of fraud and conspiracy in an unrelated $60 million scheme that launched in early 2014—right about the time that he and Hunter joined Burisma.

Among Archer’s associates was Yelena Baturina, who was the richest woman in Russia and had recently done real-estate business with a company founded by Archer and Hunter Biden. She was married to a former mayor of Moscow named Yuriy Luzhkov, whom the U.S. ambassador to Russia described in a 2010 leaked cable as sitting atop a “pyramid” of corruption and criminal behavior during his time in office. Also in the circle, per Archer’s testimony, was his “good friend” Karim Massimov, who served as intelligence chief and prime minister under Kazakhstan’s notoriously corrupt dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and was investigated in connection with suspected bribery involving both a U.K.-listed Kazakh minerals company and the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus. (Massimov was not charged in either case but was arrested for treason in Kazakhstan in 2022, and received an 18-year sentence earlier this year.)

[Richard V. Reeves: The shame deficit]

Archer’s descriptions of the associates’ activities illustrate what I have found to be the typical modus operandi of such networks. His own corporate holdings, as well as those in which Hunter Biden had a stake, were subdivided and recombined in a dizzying array of similarly named entities that makes any attempt to trace money flows exceedingly difficult. The principals looked outside Europe, the U.S., and Singapore for markets “that were less sensitive,” Archer explained, to public scrutiny of questionable business practices—such as Kazakhstan. “It was pretty wild,” he bragged, citing a hastily assembled lucrative drilling project. “We pulled off a lot.”

According to Archer’s testimony, Massimov and Baturina were among the people present at one of the dinners to which Hunter Biden invited his father; at other gatherings, Hunter would put his dad on speakerphone. Nothing substantive was discussed, Archer testified. But that’s not the point.

The point emerges in the awkward way that the questioners and their witness seemed to talk past each other. Republicans tried to make the Bidens’ behavior fit the narrow definition of corruption under U.S. law, while Archer was candidly describing how it actually works.

Asked whether Hunter might have been explicitly “using his dad [to] add value in the eyes of Burisma officials,” Archer explained the impact of nonverbal signaling. “He would not be so overt,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious if you’re, you know … the son of a vice president.”

I spent a decade in a country where this sort of signaling was the primary mode of communication among members of a corrupt ruling elite. I watched Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai send opposing messages to separate audiences during a single speech in 2010. To his international backers, he spelled out his willingness to tackle corruption by calling for new legislation (calculated to appeal to wordy Westerners who love drafting laws). To members of his network, Karzai indicated his intent to keep providing protection by sharing the platform with two notorious warlords, members of his cabinet who were involved in drug trafficking and spiriting away millions of dollars in national revenue.

That Afghanistan experience makes plain to me what was wrong about the Bidens’ behavior, even if it wasn’t illegal. There is absolutely no evidence that Joe Biden, as vice president, changed any aspect of U.S. foreign policy to benefit Burisma or any of its principals. But Hunter Biden’s position on that board of directors served to undermine the very U.S. anti-corruption policy his father was promoting. As George Kent, who then headed the U.S. embassy’s anti-corruption effort in Kyiv, put it in a classified cable:

Hunter’s presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine, b/c Ukrainians heard one message from us then saw another set of behavior, with the family association with a known corrupt figure.

To Ukrainian oligarchs, in other words, the U.S. seemed to be sending the same type of conflicting messages Karzai sent: statements for the benefit of a Western audience and nonverbal signaling that conveyed Washington’s real meaning.

“People send signals,” Archer told the House committee. “And those signals are basically used as currency.” Then came his chilling assessment: “And that’s kind of how a lot of D.C. operators and foreign tycoons … work.”

This assessment does not put Kazakhstan or Yanukovych’s Ukraine in a positive light; it puts Washington in a negative one. Archer was saying that our system has come to operate much the same way theirs does. Is that what we want?

[David A. Graham: The Biden White House is following an ugly Trump precedent]

Biden was supposed to be different. Yet his unconditional public support for everything his son has done serves to sanitize and reinforce a business model that provides image-laundering services for foreign kleptocrats and monetizes access to power—or the appearance of such access. For a president and a political party whose brand stresses integrity, that’s a self-inflicted wound.

As tenderly as a father may love his struggling son, the president can do better than parrot the “nothing wrong” chorus. When controversy over Hunter Biden’s work for Burisma erupted during the 2020 presidential campaign, I expressed the hope that his father would use his moral and potential future executive authority to curb that business model. He still can.

Biden can send several clear signals. He should state, as other Democrats have, that not even his son is above the law. He should never again participate in an occasion that Hunter might use to impress his business associates. And he should push for legislation that would close some of the loopholes that Supreme Court decisions have blown in U.S. anti-corruption laws.

As the barrage of discomforting questions intensifies, Biden and his party’s best defense is to take a stand not only for what is legal but also for what is right. Blurring the lines and sending double messages will only add to their difficulties. Worse, it will breed more corruption in our politics.