Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

reagan et al were playing the long game, with great success

I’ll use an analogy which I suspect is terrible but in my uniquely American mind it makes sense. In Major League Baseball you get a harsher punishment for using steroids than you do committing acts of violence. It’s not because their worldview is that cheating at baseball is more immoral than hurting people, it’s because the league by definition has to treat it that way or else they lose credibility and trust in their product. I 100% think Bush should’ve been held accountable, and that even factoring in the COVID stuff he’s done way more harm than Trump. But as far as the rule of law is concerned, if you have a guy who is constantly committing crimes in the open and promising to abuse the rule of law to maintain permanent power, either you deal with it or you don’t actually have a rule of law at all.

Reagan made everything bad worse. In a lot of ways we're still climbing out of that wreck.

The dude should have been jailed long ago just on pure aesthetic grounds. Crimes against taste. All the other stuff is bad too, of course. A clear pattern of sexual assault, emboldening institutionalized racism, unleashing the worst possible people into corridors of power, firing up millions of troglodytes and telling them that their ugliest impulses are okay, running multiple grift-tastic businesses before, during, and after being in office... I can't keep track and neither can you.

It is very much not my job to ensure that an unimaginably hideous person gets punished for the correct things in the correct order. Al Capone was jailed for tax evasion; everyone knew he had done other bad things.

So with Trump, is it a specific phone call or hush-money payment or golf trip or whatever? Who gives a shit? I can't really be bothered to care which specific thing sticks.

Also treeship is right. There's no reason to require proportionality with other crimes done by other presidents. When I get a speeding ticket I don't get to interrogate the justice system on the grounds of who DIDN'T get a ticket on that same road on a different day, or whatever.

Someone else having committed an equivalent or worse infraction is not a very compelling legal defense. You did a thing and you got caught. Own it, beeyotch.

idk attacking iraq was really some shit

― lag∞n, Saturday, April 1, 2023 11:51 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Agree that what Bush did was worse, but since we’re talking criminal law Bush had the alibi of his act getting signed off on by Congress and the media and like 80 percent of the American people

Still amazes me how many people uncritically fell for it

The few protests I went to had counter protesters who were dumb as a box of rocks .

Some other pretty disastrous things Trump did:
- strongarmed Anthony Kennedy into retiring, setting up a conservative SC takeover we may never dig our way out of
- deluded his voters into disbelieving reality and gave a megaphone to conspiracy theories from no less a platform than the presidency
- set vaccination science and disease eradication back decades by turning his followers against medical science

SCOTUS hostile takeover probably the most damaging.

If RBG had died two months later, we might still have Roe v Wade

trump can't win re-election without drawing support from non-committed voters or without a depressed dem turnout. indicting trump is not going to make him more popular with non-committed voters. it will only energize his core base which, again, is well less than half the country.

an indicted Trump WILL energize Dem voters

indicted in multiple venues for a wide array of crimes, one hopes

hopefully this will be like when the first person steps on the dancefloor - soon it will be an indictment inferno

— Simon Reynolds (@SimonRetromania) March 30, 2023

Burn baby burn

"if we strike batters out, they're just gonna try harder to hit the ball, can't have that. Let's just walk everyone"

akm otm

Agree that what Bush did was worse, but since we’re talking criminal law Bush had the alibi of his act getting signed off on by Congress and the media and like 80 percent of the American people

― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes), Saturday, April 1, 2023 5:34 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah i think one big thing that makes it possible that trump goes to jail was that he broke manufactured consent

strongarmed Anthony Kennedy into retiring, setting up a conservative SC takeover we may never dig our way out of

Did he? I thought Kennedy willingly offered Trump his counsel, i.e. nominate Barf.

Misread that as Trump strong arming Anthony Kiedis.

Re: fostering further vaccine denialism, my mom, a retired physician, is convinced that a measles epidemic is next on the horizon, and that one will kill children.

Such a silly notion that we should not charge a criminal with crimes because

a. There are worse criminals than him

or

b. These aren't the worst crimes he has done

or

c. Do we want other people who we like more, but have had the same job as him, to also get charged with crimes?

Because

a. Yeah, and?

b. Yeah, so?

c. Sure, why not?

Don't want to get charged with crimes? Don't do crimes!

xxp Republicans want children to die- otherwise the pesky things keep growing up into young voters

Also I guarantee Trump applied some heavy mafia style leverage against Kennedy- he needed that SC justice, that was his crowning moment, that’s what gave the evangelicals the fig leaf they needed to come fully to heel.

Seriously, how does a one-term President magically get the opportunity to nominate not one, not two, but three SC justices? It doesn’t happen without some serious behind the scenes activity. And we know how he operates.

So you’re saying he killed Ginsburg.

I hate Ginsburg

To be honest, I thought it was a possibility at the time. Someone sneaking in with a pillow. Never actually believed that, but it wouldn’t have surprised me, let’s say.

I don’t think so

he killed Ginsburg

Ruthlessly.

Seriously, though, RBG was 87 years old and had been in failing health for a while. Yeah, she could have retired earlier, but hindsight does not help us

There is a whole #Resistance lib conspiracy surrounding this clip of Trump and Kennedy:

Trump says something to Justice Kennedy that shocks him. Something's up. (No sound) pic.twitter.com/qSkTu9B092

— Eleven Films (@Eleven_Films) October 8, 2018

"Do you ever find that your diaper kinda wedges up in your crack when you sit in an uncomfortable chair?"

"Logical Song? Fuck no, Breakfast In America every time."

more like "I know what you did" prob

Kennedy’s son apparently worked for Deutsche Bank which was the only bank that would lend to T.

Yep

indicted in multiple venues for a wide array of crimes, one hopes

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Saturday, April 1, 2023 12:42 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

surprised no one is talking about this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/02/trump-mar-a-lago-obstruction-classified/

do you think maybe be did something illegal? who among us ... etc.?

very sus

we frame it "nobody is above the law," they frame it "they can and will come after you too," and i think that will be a more successful framing.

― Thus Sang Freud, Saturday, April 1, 2023 3:45 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

CNN — Sixty percent of Americans approve of the indictment of former President Donald Trump, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS following the news that a New York grand jury voted to charge him in connection with hush money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. About three-quarters of Americans say politics played at least some role in the decision to indict Trump, including 52% who said it played a major role.

Independents largely line up in support of the indictment – 62% approve of it and 38% disapprove. Democrats are near universal in their support for the indictment (94% approve, including 71% who strongly approve of the indictment), with Republicans less unified in opposition (79% disapprove, with 54% strongly disapproving).

While views on the indictment are split along party lines, the poll finds that majorities across major demographic divides all approve of the decision to indict the former president. That includes gender (62% of women, 58% of men), racial and ethnic groups (82% of Black adults, 71% of Hispanic adults, 51% of White adults), generational lines (69% under age 35; 62% age 35-49; 53% age 50-64; 54% 65 or older) and educational levels (68% with college degrees, 56% with some college or less).

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/03/politics/cnn-poll-trump-indictment/index.html

lol

51% of white people a surprise

lock him up!

America: eff that guy

60% of Americans think criminals being indicted is a good thing, actually

there you go again with your facts and figures and things that actually happen in the real world rather than in my imagination

flawed poll, didn't ask people "are you now going to vote for Trump because of the bullshit indictment"

yeah I mean lets face it a bet a lot of people publicly defending him in the media actually agree with the indictment

here he comes

WATCH: Donald Trump's motorcade departs his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida as the former president heads to New York to face arraignment https://t.co/loy3kzMzbL pic.twitter.com/xzFnRSr9hN

— Bloomberg (@business) April 3, 2023

Axios -- Former President Trump has raised more than $5 million since news of his indictment broke late Thursday — over $4 million in the first 24 hours and over $1 million in the second 24 hours, a Trump official told Axios on Saturday night.

Why it matters: The donation gusher validates the view of most top Republicans that the expected indictment from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, at least in the short term, will help Trump's effort to build a formidable lead for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

By the numbers: In announcing the initial $4 million haul, Trump's campaign noted that over 25% of the donations came from first-time donors to him.

What they're saying: The campaign tells Axios that 16,000+ volunteers signed up on his website in 24 hours.