This is the big White House Correspondents Dinner weekend, but somehow our invitation was either lost in the mail or otherwise overlooked. So we'll have to watch the clips later, like everyone else.

This was a pretty momentous week in politics, as President Joe Biden announced his re-election bid, Donald Trump's rape court case got underway, and Kevin McCarthy was actually able to corral his various factions to vote for a bill that Democrats will use as fodder in the upcoming congressional campaigns. So let's get right to it all, shall we?

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Unless things change in a major way, America seems headed for a repeat election in 2024. President Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee, while Donald Trump will carry the banner for the Republicans. There are plenty of interesting things about such a rematch (such as the fact that Trump will be the first ex-president to run again in a very long time), but the most interesting thing currently is that most of the public simply does not want to see this rematch. They would prefer a different matchup, for various reasons. But they may get Biden-versus-Trump anyway.

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It looks like it's going to be a very cable news sort of week this week. Today two prominent cable news personalities lost their jobs, for different reasons. Most of the astonishment this generated in the media world is likely to be overshadowed tomorrow by two developments in the presidential race. President Joe Biden is rumored to have picked tomorrow to formally announce his candidacy for re-election -- four years to the day after he announced last time. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is going to go on trial in New York -- which could prove to be the first of many times he'll have to defend himself in court. So it's going to be a pretty momentous week all around on cable news, that's my guess at any rate.

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We admit using that subtitle dates us in a way, since we are indeed old enough to remember the popular song of the same name -- but we couldn't resist, since this week started out with Fox News caving at the last possible moment as a civil defamation trial was set to begin against them. First the trial was delayed a day and then came the bombshell news that Fox had settled with Dominion Voting Systems for a jaw-dropping $787.5 million. To state the patently obvious, you don't settle a case you fully expect to win. Fox knew it was in danger of not just losing the case (Dominion had sued for $1.6 billion, a little more than twice what Fox settled for) but having the network's dirty laundry exposed in even more painful fashion than it already had been (through releases of internal communications between executives and network personalities that were already embarrassing enough). Fox was indeed on the run, to the tune of over three-quarters of a billion dollars.

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There have been two legal developments this week which might go a long way toward proving that creating a business model out of peddling lies to unsuspecting people is maybe not the best plan of action -- unless, of course, your name happens to be Donald Trump. Trump is the king of all election-denying grifters, and so far nobody's scratched his Teflon coating -- although even Trump may eventually have to face some sort of music for monetizing falsehoods. One of the things the special counsel investigating Trump is reportedly looking into is how Trump made pitches to donors big and small between the 2020 election and January 6th. Trump raised a lot of money promising that it would be used to fight to "Stop The Steal," but he never actually created such a fund. But for the time being at least, Trump has been able to skate away from any consequences for gaslighting his supporters. This is now no longer true for others who jumped on the stolen-election bandwagon. Both Fox News and Mike Lindell are now having to pay for their lies, and this could just be the start of both of them -- and others -- having to cough up to pay for the damage they have done.

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There's a new reality in American politics, and one political party is reaping the benefits of it while the other is trapped in a downward spiral of ever-increasing extremism. Some Republicans are beginning to understand the power of the sleeping giant they have awoken, but there's really no easy way out from the conundrum they have created for themselves. Abortion is going to be a potent political issue for at least the next few elections, and Republicans' only answer so far is to double down, triple down, or quadruple down on forcing the most extreme positions they can come up with on as many of the American people as they possibly can.

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Today's Republican Party is not just the Party of Trump, it also is now the Party of Trumpism -- or to put it in plainer terms: authoritarianism. "We're going to do whatever we want to do, because we can" seems to be the new rallying slogan for Republicans. Never mind what the public thinks or wants, never mind the possible political backlash, it's just going to be full steam ahead for as long as they can get away with it.

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As I write this, America is in an extended intermission between Act 1 and Act 2 of today's political drama. Donald Trump has surrendered himself to the New York authorities, been arraigned, been charged with 34 felonies, and been released. He is currently en route to Florida, where he will later give a speech and/or press conference from his own golf resort.

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Donald Trump's typographical mistakes were already legendary. But up until now, none have truly been as historic as the one he posted immediately after a New York grand jury indicted a former United States president for the first time in American history [bizarre capitalization in original, of course]: "These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America...." Um, well, yes... the grand jury just indicated that Donald Trump was worthy of indictment.

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It hasn't happened quite yet, but I predict there's about to be a geographic shift in the political media's attention. Their focus for the next few weeks might head south in a rather literal fashion, down the coast from New York City to Fulton County, Georgia. Which could wind up being a good thing, in the end.

I can make this prediction because I've been closely watching both grand juries which are reportedly poised to indict Donald Trump. There are also two big federal cases waiting in the wings as well, but the state-level investigations seem to be getting closer to an actual indictment than the federal ones (although the federal ones also seem to be entering their final phases, to be fair).

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