Haley Warns That Trump Will Bury His Criminal Cases If They’re Not “Dealt With” Before the Election

Why is Donald Trump running for president? Is it because he feels a deep sense of duty to the American people, regardless of their political affiliation? Is it because he loves democracy? Or is it because he’s hoping to run out the clock on the four separate criminal cases against him, get reelected, and bury his legal woes? If you ask Nikki Haley, the answer is, quite obviously, option C.

Speaking to Meet the Press on Thursday, the former South Carolina governor warned that Trump’s cases must be “dealt with” before November, or he’ll never be brought to justice. “We need to know what’s going to happen before [the election], before the presidency happens, because after that, should he become president, I don’t think any of it’s going to get heard,” Haley told Kristen Welker. Haley’s comments came one day after the Supreme Court said it would consider Trump’s claims of “total immunity” in April, a gift to the ex-president that, at the very least, could put his federal insurrection trial off until after the election. Responding to Trump’s absurd claims of immunity, Haley told Welker, “I just think a president has to live according to the laws too. You don’t get complete immunity.”

Haley is, of course, not the first person to suggest that Trump will make his legal problems disappear should he win back the White House.* Last summer, then GOP presidential candidate Will Hurd said, “Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again. Donald Trump is not running for president to represent the people that voted for him in 2016 and 2020. Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.” A year prior, Rolling Stone reported that Trump had been telling confidantes that a third run for office would happen in part because he believed the many investigations against him—and the then threats of indictments—would go away if he was POTUS. According to a source who relayed Trump’s thinking to the outlet, Trump had “spoken about how when you are the president of the United States, it is tough for politically motivated prosecutors to ‘get to you.’” This person added that Trump “says when [not if] he is president again, a new Republican administration will put a stop to the [Justice Department] investigation that he views as the Biden administration working to hit him with criminal charges—or even put him and his people in prison.”

As for Haley, it would obviously be to her benefit should Trump be convicted and sentenced to prison time before November. But it would probably also be a good idea for the country too.

*To be clear, if we’re talking about pardons, Trump would only be able to pardon himself in the two federal cases against him. As for the Fulton County, Georgia, criminal case, his legal team is currently trying to dismantle it by discrediting DA Fani Willis, though it’s not clear that will work out for them. His New York State hush money case is set to go to trial March 25.

And now for something entirely different

According to a new report from The Washington Post, Joe Biden was worried that young people weren’t able to have sex during the pandemic:

In the early months of his presidency, as the pandemic dragged on with its stifling restrictions, President Biden often delivered a favorite monologue to aides: He was worried about young people’s mental health, he said. High school seniors were missing prom and graduation. He wanted to know how college students went on dates.

Specifically, Biden wondered how young people could “make love” under the circumstances, according to two aides who heard the president use that phrase multiple times during his first year in office. Biden’s fixation on loneliness among young people, the aides said, grew out of his near-daily conversations with his grandchildren.

According to the Post, the president was so worried about young people’s ability to copulate that he “brought [his] concerns to Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy, who had written a book on loneliness, and encouraged him to prioritize the issue.”

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