The FBI search Mar-a-Lago and the world reacted. We tried to help sort it out.
Whether or not you agree with the FBI searching Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, one thing seems clear.
You want to read about it. It's with that in mind that today's newsletter focuses on the columns we've posted after news of the search broke and the internet surged with reaction.
Our coverage spanned all of it. Let's get started.
FBI search of Trump's home is blockbuster news. Now what?
By Barbara McQuade
By any measure, the FBI’s search Monday of former President Donald Trump’s home is blockbuster news. Trump himself appeared to confirm the news when he issued a statement calling the FBI’s action a “raid,” and noted that “nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.”
This time, Trump and his critics can all agree – this is a big deal.
The FBI searching Trump's Mar-a-Lago will make him a criminal or a martyr
By EJ Montini
Trump issued a statement saying in part, “My beautiful home Mar A Lago in Palm Beach, Florida is currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents … After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid at my home was not necessary or appropriate.”
Apparently, the judge disagreed.
But we won’t know anything about what was found, if anything, or what it proves, if anything, until the justice department acts. And that could take time.
Likewise, we don’t know what it will mean for Trump until that information is released.
What seems pretty clear, however, is that the end result either will have Trump charged as a criminal or lionized as a martyr.
Meantime, expect Republicans to continue screaming louder than Jamie Lee Curtis in “Halloween.”
'Defund the FBI': Trump supporters calmly react to Mar-a-Lago search
By Rex Huppke
As news that the FBI had executed a search warrant on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort home broke, supporters of the former president reacted in the kind of calm, measured tone we’ve come to expect from the MAGA movement.
Conservative radio host Wayne Root wrote on the Trump-owned social media site Truth Social: “This is now officially Nazi Germany Gestapo meets Soviet Union KGB.”
Indeed, the Nazis and the KGB were famous for following proper legal channels and showing probable cause to obtain search warrants before conducting orderly and sanctioned searches of other people’s property.
FBI search may help Trump politically. And backfire on Democrats.
By Ingrid Jacques
The Democrats just gave former President Donald Trump another excuse to rally his troops.
People on both sides of the political aisle are losing their minds over Monday’s FBI search on Trump’s Florida home at the Mar-a-Lago resort.
Yet, at this point we still know little about what led to the warrant and what may have been recovered, although it's reportedly tied to classified documents Trump might have taken with him from the White house.
This won’t stop the breathless speculation and giddiness on the left that perhaps this time this will be what makes the former president go away.
Good luck with that.
FBI search of Trump's home was cathartic, but it's still early
By Carli Pierson
The new development in the story of "Donald Trump as President" gives me hope that something may finally come from an investigation because an FBI search of a former president's residence is no small thing.
I, along with many other progressives, independents and some conservatives have long had enough with the former reality-TV-star-turned-president (turned probable insurrectionist). Seeing posts about Trump's rambling statement on the FBI search at his home and resort in Palm Beach, Florida, was cathartic for my aggrieved, cynical soul. For multiple reasons, I had decided that nothing would come of his repeated, flagrant disregard for the Constitution and federal law.
I know there's reason to celebrate, but someone has to say it: There's still a lot that can go wrong.