GOD GIVEN: Donald Trump made a triumphant entrance at the Republican National Convention last night with a heavily bandaged right ear from his near assassination. Trump was somewhat subdued, not the fully confident showman of his usual appearances. 

  Trump didn’t do his dance to the Village People or give his characteristic smirk. He appeared emotional. “I saw a man who knows he got a second lease on life,” Kellyanne Conway said on Fox News.

  But Trump’s survival has convinced many of his followers that not only is he God’s choice for president, but that God saved him from an assassin’s bullet. They see it as “Divine intervention.” Expect Trump to use that in the coming months.

THROWN OUT:  Only hours before the opening of the convention, the Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon in Florida ruled that the entire secret documents case against the former president should be thrown out because the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith had violated the appointments clause of the Constitution.

  The decision overshadowed Trump’s later announcement that he chose Ohio Sen. JD Vance for his running mate.

  Cannon said Smith’s appointment needed to be confirmed by the Senate or the President. Her ruling is sure to be appealed on a question that has repeatedly been decided in favor of the Justice Department going back to the days of President Richard Nixon.

  Her decision could be an opening for Smith to ask for Cannon’s removal from the case.

  Trump is accused in this case of holding onto a trove of sensitive state secrets after he left office and then refusing to give them back and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them.

  Cannon said there was no federal statute governing the appointment of special counsels, which has been the practice in major cases for decades. She argued that allowing special counsels to operate under the authority and control of the attorney general was a violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers.  Special counsels have always been appointed and operated under the statutory authority of the attorney general.

  Cannon’s rulings have already delayed the documents case beyond the November election. This could end up in the Supreme Court where Justice Clarence Thomas, for one, has already expressed doubt about the appointment and authority of special counsels.

HILLBILLY CANDIDATE: Trump’s vice presidential pick, JD Vance, is the author of the wildly popular “Hillbilly Elegy,” the memoir about a poor Appalachian family that moved to Ohio to climb the social and economic ladder. He is a former Marine and graduate of Yale Law School elected to the Senate in his first run in 2022.

  At 39, Vance is half Donald Trump’s age.

  Vance in a way represents the classic Trump Republican, the disaffected white American angry about the direction of the country who once would have been a loyal Democrat. Vance is a former critic of Trump who once called Trump a “moral disaster” and possibly “America’s Hitler.” Now he has converted to the faith.  But there’s nothing like the whiff of power to change a political mind.

 Among his positions, Vance opposes any further American military aid to Ukraine, saying it’s a waste of money.

  Vance opposes abortion rights, even in cases of incest or rape, with exceptions for the mother’s life.

  On immigration ,he once made a political ad in which he said, “Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans, with more illegal drugs and more Democrat voters pouring into this country.”

 Vance says he doubts that climate change is real, a position he changed when he started to court Trump to be picked for running mate.  Vance also says the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, which would be a required belief for him to be Trump’s running mate.

CONVENTIONAL: The lead speaker in the Republican convention last night was Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who quickly established that ignorance, lies, and intolerance are at the core of the current Republican party. In a short speech it wasn’t long before she denounced transsexual people and declared that “there are only two sexes.” 

  Greene said, “They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday.”

  The lineup was heavy on Black and Hispanic speakers as the Republicans make a play for the minority vote.  CNN analyst Van Jones dismissed the Black speaker sas “People who talk about Black people but not to Black people.”

FAILURE: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted the obvious yesterday that the shooting of Donald Trump at his Pennsylvania political rally was a “failure” of security.

  At least one video taken by a bystander shows the shooter, Thomas Crooks, crawling into firing position on a rooftop and spectators calling to security officers.  Video shows spectators warning security at least 117 seconds before the first shots.

  Crooks fired from outside the Secret Service perimeter and the Service has said local police were responsible for checking outside that building. Reports say one cop had climbed a ladder to the roof and retreated when Crooks pointed his rifle at him moments before opening fire at Trump.

THE SPIN RACK:  The temperature in Washington DC is expected to hit 102 today as brutal heat sits on the east Coast. About 100 million people are under heat alerts from Florida to Maine. — California wildfires so far have burned about 20 times the acreage as burned at the same time last year. 

BELOW THE FOLD: The Republican convention started with a sour note last night. Not with a bad speech or a security incident, but with the singing of the National Anthem by the “Great Lakes Adult and Teen Challenge” choir. It was enough to make you eager for an appearance by Lee Greenwood.

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