‘Trump-Biden 2.0’ will be nothing like the first clash in 2020 which occurred during COVID lockdowns, a shuttered economy, and days before the announcement of a vaccine.

This time around the presidential racetrack President Joe Biden also has a record as president, and while his age (and what seems to be an increasing infirmity that contrasts badly with the energy of former President Trump) is issue number one in the minds of many voters —Democrats, Independents and Republicans—the next tranche of issues are the open southern border, the impacts of three plus years of inflation on groceries, gas and housing, crime and support for Israel in its war with Hamas.  All four favor the former president over the current one.

Two events are certain to impact the campaign as well. Trump will name a running mate. I have written before: I hope it is a veteran like Senator Tom Cotton, Senator Joni Ernst, or former Secretary of State Pompeo. I also hope Trump issues a list of appointees who will serve in the most important Cabinet positions though not necessarily with specificity as to job —say Pompeo back to State or to Defense, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to CIA, former Ambassador to Germany and acting DNI Rick Grennell and former National Security Advisor Ambassador Robert O’Brien to some combination of Secretary of State, Chief of Staff or National Security Advisor, Senator Tom Cotton to Defense or Justice, former State Department Spokesperson Morgan Ortagus to the U.N. or the Department of Homeland Security and many more.

Such a list would operate like Trump’s 2016 list of potential Supreme Court Nominees, and would reassure a crucial segment of the voting public about the national security team and provide sharp contrasts with Team Biden. The choice at the top is going to drive the election but swing states could depend on small percentages of votes so key personnel decisions could help in critical states.

But one other huge development is certain to occur between now and November: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Trump which is scheduled to commence this month. The merits off this phase of the ‘lawfare’ being waged against Trump are in my view, and the views of many others like respected former Southern District of New York Prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, well known: They stink.

It is a rank political prosecution built off an alleged misdemeanor which was never prosecuted and for which the statute of limitations had passed but which Bragg resurrected via resort to a fable: that the alleged payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels by Michael Cohen somehow can be bootstrapped into 34 felony charges.

This is ‘count stacking’ of the sort that drives defendants and their counsel crazy when they see it and which is usually condemned as an abuse of criminal process —unless an observer really, really, really hates the defendant. Then it is applauded as a necessarily evil means to the good end.

‘Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime’ was the infamous boast of Stalin’s Chief Secret Police Lavrentiy Beria. Manipulating the criminal justice system to take out political opponents is the stuff of the most corrupt regimes in history and of tyrants and juntas. This is the category for Bragg’s stunt.

I find it hard to imagine Trump can get a fair trial in Manhattan, and the odds before D.A. Bragg and the judge start tossing prospective jurors aren’t great. Overall in New York City four years ago Biden received 2,321,759 votes, 76%, to Trump’s 691,682 votes, or 23%. Hillary Clinton 79% did better, winning 79% of the vote in Gotham to Trump’s 18% in 2016.

Add in the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2017 and the non-stop and one-sided campaign of vilification against Trump by the stacked and manipulative House Select Committee on January 6 —the first and only such ‘committee’ in the House’s history that was engineered to replicate a Kangaroo Court of the worst sort— and the potential jurors willing to head Trump’s case with an open mind falls even more.

Even should 34 convictions result and a significant sentence handed down. however, this soon-to-open rival of any Broadway spectacle or New York City circus holds the very real prospect of adding jet fuel to Trump’s campaign, even as it did to his primary romp.

‘Trust the people’ was a saying of which Winston Churchill was very fond. It applies here. Not only will the McCarthys of the world —serious former prosecutors who have never been huge fans of Trump but who also have enormous respect for the rule of law— be speaking out daily about the abuse of process here, so too will every defendant who ever felt wronged by a prosecutor be thinking that what is happening to Trump is just what happened to them. Which demographic is most often associated with overcharging and prosecutorial misconduct? African American males? NBC’s Steve Kornacki has confirmed for me that Trump is always polling better with this crucial demographic in the upcoming election than any Republican since 1968.

On National Public Radio’s Morning Edition yesterday I pronounced myself an ‘outlier’ on the Manhattan case. I think this prosecution will almost inevitably help Trump’s campaign. Contrary voices have counseled me that it will be weeks of the Access Hollywood tape recycled again and again and again, with Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels on the stand and Trump seated and unable to speak, glowering all the while. Expect a ridiculous gag order to restrict the former president. Expect a huge sentence.

And expect an even bigger backlash against this abuse of the criminal justice system. Trust the people.

Democrats and the Left generally wagered everything on getting Trump renominated and combing that with ‘lawfare’ to handicap him in the general election. Thus far it has got them a 9-0 thrashing in the United States Supreme Court on the Colorado Supreme Court absurd decision and the tawdry display of Fanni Willis and Nathan Wade in Georgia.

‘The best laid plans of mice and men….’ occurs to many minds. When the dust settles on Election 2024 and a former president pulls a Grover Cleveland in the 21rst century, one of the people to thank will be Alvin Bragg. 

Hugh Hewitt is one of the country’s leading journalists of the center-right. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990, and it is today syndicated to hundreds of stations and outlets across the country every Monday through Friday morning. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and this column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his forty years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio show today.

By a strange process of transformation, Joe Biden has become Jimmy Carter.

Everything he touches turns into a crisis.

Like Carter, Biden has presided over an inflationary economy, spiking interest rates, shortages of essential goods, and danger and disaster abroad.

Carter offered the world Christian meekness and no ‘inordinate fear of communism.’

The world responded with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the agonizing hostage crisis in Iran.

Biden’s self-inflicted rout from Afghanistan was followed by the release of $6 billion to the religious mafia that rules Iran.

In return, the Iranian regime has encouraged its proxies to kill American soldiers and attack American warships.

The most important way in which Biden resembles Carter is this: Voters have made up their minds about him.

They think he’s a loser, and they want him gone.

That’s true even of Democrats, a majority of whom think he’s too old and dotty to stick around for a second term.

Biden is a loser.

If 2024 were a normal presidential election, Donald Trump would beat him like a drum.

Nikki Haley would beat him.

Spongebob Squarepants would beat him.

Yet these are not normal times, and there’s a high degree of probability that Biden will be re-elected.

Unlike Carter, who really was the Democratic front man, Biden is a sock puppet for an institutional conglomerate that exercises enormous influence over our national politics, our government, and our culture.

The elites who inhabit these institutions like to speak of the arrangement as ‘Our Democracy,’ which roughly translates into ‘given our obvious moral and intellectual superiority, we must be allowed to govern in perpetuity.’

They have the tools to make it happen, too — wearing the appropriate masks and disguises, they often impersonate the popular will.

I’m not talking about Trump’s complaint that he was robbed at the polls in 2020, a sterile controversy best passed over in silence.

The options available to Our Democracy are, in reality, far more tentacular and oppressive than crude ballot-stuffing.

It can, for example, take a lie and make it echo and thunder for years, like the half-million news articles published about Trump’s supposed criminal collusion with Russia.

Or it can take the truth and bury it so deep that it has suffocated to death by the time some determined soul unearths it — think Hunter Biden.

How is this done?

Well, here is a partial roster of the institutions Our Democracy controls at the moment: the White House, half of Congress, the federal bureaucracy, the scientific establishment and expert class in general, the old prestige media, the new digital media (minus Twitter/X), the universities, the arts and entertainment world, and famous corporations from Coca-Cola to Nike.

When these gigantic entities synchronize their voices, the chorus is so deafening little else can be heard within the information sphere.

And when they withdraw their attention — as they have from Americans left behind in Afghanistan or taken hostage by Hamas — it’s as if it never happened.

What does Our Democracy want?

Its representatives spout magnificent nonsense about justice, diversity, and inclusion.

They comprise the college of cardinals of the church of identity and ecology, and are therefore authorized to smite you, as an infidel, with their righteous condemnations.

But the soul of Our Democracy is will to power.

The point of control is control.

The measure of success is the number of Americans placed in a position of dependence to the elite class.

More immediately, the objective is the permanent dominance of the Democratic Party, political home and bastion of that class.

Thus when Hunter Biden, son of the Democratic presidential candidate, abandoned a laptop crammed with all sorts of scandalous material, Our Democracy conscripted 51 intelligence executives, who surely knew better, to dismiss it all as a Russian ‘hack.’

And behold, there was no laptop.

And when Trump, a Republican president, speculated about COVID-19 having started with a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China, Our Democracy dragooned five scientists, several of whom had speculated along the same lines as Trump, to author a ‘study’ contradicting him and themselves.

Suddenly, blaming China betrayed a racist predisposition.

Opposition to Our Democracy can never be legitimate.

Consequently, Trump, the likely Republican candidate, must always be a moral impossibility — a ‘dictator,’ an ‘authoritarian,’ a Mussolini from the fascist heartland of Queens.

Listen to The New York Times, Atlantic, Politico: Trump isn’t merely a bad candidate — he’s beyond the pale.

The harsher the attacks, however, the higher Trump seems to climb: to the horror of the elites, he’s presently trouncing Biden in most opinion polls.

So he must be disposed of somehow.

He must be prosecuted in heavily Democratic venues and indicted, not once or twice but 91 times.

And just in case, his name must be removed from the ballot: the ideal election under Our Democracy is a choice of one.

Fear and loathing of Trump is a defining feature of elite sensibility, but any politician who threatens Biden’s re-election will get the same treatment. Robert Kennedy, Jr., who is making a third-party bid, has been called ‘vile’ and ‘racist.’

The No Labels group, which is considering fielding a candidate, has been accused of ‘brain-breaking logic’ that promotes ‘less democracy.’

Nikki Haley has so far been spared because she is thought to weaken Trump.

The moment she endangers Biden, we can be sure that The New York Times will reveal her participation in a sex trafficking ring or possibly ritual cannibalism.

Nobody is so insignificant as to avoid the tentacles of the conglomerate.

Only in this sense is Our Democracy truly democratic: all of us, high and low, are given our marching orders, which we defy at our peril.

Parents of schoolchildren who dissented from the identity creed have been treated like domestic terrorists.

Participants at the pro-Trump Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol building were prosecuted as subversives and punished with long prison sentences.

Other critics have been subjected to harassment from federal agencies like the IRS and the FBI.

A convoluted censorship apparatus was erected at the start of the pandemic, eventually giving the White House control over what was allowed to be said on all the major digital platforms.

The FBI, faithful servant of the system, stood guard over forbidden speech: unorthodox opinions about the virus at first, but soon, inevitably, the ban spread to topics that favored Trump and the Republicans, identity heresy, Ukraine war criticism, mockery of the Biden administration — pretty much everything the First Amendment was enacted to protect.

Censorship bureaucrats devised a bizarre jargon of control: ‘misinformation’ meant error, ‘disinformation’ meant deliberate falsehood, and ‘malinformation’ was truth Our Democracy found unacceptable.

Without warrant or warning, millions of posts by ordinary Americans were taken down.

Some of those posters were permanently silenced.

Trumpist websites were arbitrarily ‘deplatformed.’

Nothing like it had been seen in our country since John Adams rubbed his hands with glee over the Alien and Sedition Acts.

One might have expected members of the entity formerly known as ‘the press’ to investigate the abuses and raise the alarm.

That idea is too retro for words, literally.

Today, the great organs of the news media are happy to serve as attack dogs of the elite class and obedient apologists of institutional power.

Our Democracy aims to dominate the information sphere — as things now stand, it can speak loudly to everyone, while its opponents, shoved into an informational ghetto, speak mostly to themselves.

This is the array of forces standing behind the doddering, stupefied figure of Joe Biden, eager to foist him on American voters.

Our Democracy is the true candidate and ultimate question to be settled by the 2024 election.

It is battling mightily, with every weapon available, to destroy Trump and other obstacles to its continued rule.

Sooner or later, I imagine, it will succeed.

The wisdom of Ecclesiastes tells us that the fight does not go to the strong — but a political analyst would be crazy to bet any other way.

Is it possible to identify a glimmer of optimism somewhere in this bleak landscape?

I can think of two strategic vulnerabilities that should trouble Our Democracy.

One is the massive unpopularity of its policy positions.

Large majorities of Americans of all races and political leanings question the sanity of open borders, for example, and believe that merit rather than grievance should determine outcomes.

If the 2024 election is fought on the merits of the case, the Democrats lose big.

The second vulnerability is Biden’s obvious and extraordinary unfitness to stay on as president.

The report by Special Counsel Robert Hur, which characterized the president as ‘an elderly man with poor memory,’ was official confirmation of what we can plainly see with our own eyes.

Old age is terminal: there’s no fixing Biden, and there’s no clear way out of this mess for the Democrats.

If he clings to power, he will continue to decline physically and politically, opening the door to a Republican victory in 2024 — in the person, it may be, of the dreaded Trump.

If Biden turns down a second term at this late hour, his vice president, Kamala Harris, would be the natural heir to the party leadership, but she’s even more unpopular than he is.

With Harris as candidate, defeat would be virtually certain.

If a free-for-all erupts over the top spot, either because Biden has offered to abdicate or because the paladins of Our Democracy wish to shove him aside, the internal trauma to the Democratic Party would probably prove fatal, regardless of who the winner might be.

The Democratic establishment is solid but brittle.

Once it crumbles, the agents of chaos will be in command, as they have been for some time in the Republican Party.

To my mind, these are low-probability events, as the elites realize how much they stand to lose and will huddle in a conformist herd for protection.

Fortunately, however, history is not a mathematical proposition — and one can always hope.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, endorsed former President Donald Trump to be the Republican presidential nominee on Wednesday, becoming the final member of the Senate GOP leadership conference to do so. 

‘We must beat Joe Biden and get this country back on track,’ Ernst wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday. ‘Donald Trump has my support.’

Ernst’s endorsement comes a day after Trump swept nearly 1,000 Super Tuesday delegations, inching closer to securing his spot as the GOP presidential front runner in November. Trump’s only primary opponent, Nikki Haley, suspended her presidential campaign on Wednesday morning.

Last month, Ernst criticized Trump’s use of the word ‘hostages’ to describe his supporters who were arrested for their involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’

Host Kristen Welker asked Ernst if she was bothered by Trump’s description of the Jan. 6 prisoners.

‘It does in this context because we do have American hostages that are being held against their will all around the globe, and especially if you look at the innocents that were attacked and kidnapped on Oct. 7,’ Ernst responded. ‘We are approaching nearly 100 days. These are people that have been taken. They’re held in tunnels with terrorists, they are being tortured, they have been raped, they have been denied medication. So, equating the two, there is no comparison.’

Ernst later said in the interview she would not be opposed to pardoning those who were involved on Jan. 6 and that it would be at the president’s discretion. 

Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has refused to comment over the last few months on whether he would endorse the former president, also endorsed Trump on Wednesday. 

‘It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support,’ McConnell said in a statement. 

He continued: ‘During his Presidency, we worked together to accomplish great things for the American people including tax reform that supercharged our economy and a generational change of our federal judiciary, most importantly, the Supreme Court.’

More GOP lawmakers in both chambers are rallying behind former President Donald Trump. Over 100 House Republicans and over two dozen Senate Republicans have endorsed the former president. 

Fox News’ Lawrence Richard contributed to this report. 

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case on April 25. 

The Supreme Court last week agreed it would review whether Trump has immunity from prosecution in Smith’s case and said it would fast-track the appeal. 

A ruling from the high court is expected by late June. 

Trump’s criminal trial has been put on hold pending resolution on the matter. 

Trump and his legal team, in requesting the Supreme Court review the issue of presidential immunity, said that ‘if the prosecution of a President is upheld, such prosecutions will recur and become increasingly common, ushering in destructive cycles of recrimination.’ 

‘Criminal prosecution, with its greater stigma and more severe penalties, imposes a far greater ‘personal vulnerability’ on the President than any civil penalty,’ the request states. ‘The threat of future criminal prosecution by a politically opposed Administration will overshadow every future President’s official acts — especially the most politically controversial decisions.’

Trump’s request states that the president’s ‘political opponents will seek to influence and control his or her decisions via effective extortion or blackmail with the threat, explicit or implicit, of indictment by a future, hostile Administration, for acts that do not warrant any such prosecution.’

Smith charged the former president with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Those charges stemmed from Smith’s investigation into whether Trump was involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and any alleged interference in the 2020 election result.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges in August.

This will be the second time this term the Supreme Court will hear a case involving the presumed Republican presidential nominee. 

On Monday, the Supreme Court sided unanimously with the 2024 GOP frontrunner in his challenge to Colorado’s attempt to kick him off the 2024 primary ballot. 

The high court ruled in favor of Trump’s arguments in the case, which will impact the status of efforts in several other states to remove the likely GOP nominee from their respective ballots. 

The court considered for the first time the meaning and reach of Article 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars former officeholders who ‘engaged in insurrection’ from holding public office again. Challenges have been filed to remove Trump from the 2024 ballot in over 30 states.

In reacting to that ruling on Monday, Trump shifted his sights to the issue of presidential immunity. 

‘A great win for America. Very, very important!’ Trump told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview Monday morning. 

‘Equally important for our country will be the decision that they will soon make on immunity for a president — without which, the presidency would be relegated to nothing more than a ceremonial position, which is far from what the founders intended,’ Trump told Fox News Digital. ‘No president would be able to properly and effectively function without complete and total immunity.’ 

He added, ‘Our country would be put at great risk.’ 

Fox News’ Shannon Bream and Bill Mears contributed to this report. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson launched a fundraising hub in an effort to grow the Republicans’ majority in the House of Representatives in 2024 following former President Trump’s near-sweep of critical Super Tuesday primary contests. 

The Trump victories prompted former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to suspend her presidential campaign Wednesday morning. 

In a video first obtained by Fox News Digital on Wednesday afternoon, the House speaker congratulated Trump and declared the former president the GOP nominee. 

‘Congratulations to President Donald Trump on now winning primary victories across our country!’ Johnson, R-La., said in a statement. ‘President Trump is our nominee and the American people are ready to return to secure borders, economic prosperity, and peace through strength we experienced under his leadership.’ 

Johnson said he looks forward ‘to working together to retake the White House and grow our majority in Congress.’

‘When we grow this majority and when President Trump is returned to the White House – I’m convinced all those things are going to happen – we’re going to do a 180-degree turn,’ Johnson said. 

Johnson introduced a new website, growthemajority.com, which details ‘three reasons why the 2024 election is critical.’ 

‘1. The GOP House majority is one of the smallest majorities in American history,’ the website states. ‘We only have a razor-thin advantage over Democrats. That means we have to defend EVERY seat we have and gain more to be in a position to reverse the chaos caused by the Biden administration.’ 

Next, the website states that if Republicans ‘don’t win in 2024, open borders, amnesty, and voting rights for millions of illegal immigrants will be a top priority for Democrats.’ 

And the third point on the website said: ‘If the Democrats have their way, 2024 may be the last chance to win a majority in both legislative chambers for DECADES.’ 

‘The battle to defend and expand our House majority begins right here, right now,’ the website states, asking voters to donate. ‘We can’t afford to lose this time around.’ 

The website requests visitors donate ‘$20.24’ in an effort to ‘expand the majority in 2024.’ It also gives other more traditional donation amounts, and an ‘other’ section. 

The website launch comes after Johnson spent Presidents Day last month with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The two discussed the 2024 election cycle. 

‘Speaker Johnson met with President Trump in Florida on Monday to discuss growing the majority and securing Republican victories up and down the ballot in November,’ Johnson campaign spokesman Greg Steele told Fox News Digital on Feb. 20. 

Attending the meeting with Johnson was Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the House GOP’s campaign arm. They were in Florida for the House GOP leadership’s annual retreat.

House Republican leaders have made an unprecedented show of unity around Trump as he seeks the GOP nomination for president.

Johnson endorsed Trump for president in November last year, days after he won the speaker’s gavel.

Fox News Digital’s Liz Elkind contributed to this report.