Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

quick q that may have a complicated a:

why don't other states prosecute trump for doing what he did in georgia? for example, pennsylvania? does it come down

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/16/trump-georgia-phone-call/

https://i.imgur.com/T4Q9Chv.png

Within days of losing the vote in Pennsylvania, Trump and his allies allegedly began pressing officials there to change that outcome by backing a slate of pro-Trump electors. The indictment points to seven calls Trump’s team made to state GOP lawmakers in late November to discuss the effort.

Rudy Giuliani, then Trump’s personal lawyer, aggressively pursued state Rep. Bryan Cutler (R), then the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, leaving him four voice mails in four days, according to the indictment. Sometimes Giuliani was joined by Jenna Ellis, another member of Trump’s legal team. Giuliani and Ellis also called Jake Corman, then the Republican president pro tempore of the state Senate. Trump called Corman separately, according to the indictment.

https://i.imgur.com/HQET58H.png

From Nov. 22, 2020, to Jan. 4, 2021, Trump and two allies each called the Arizona House speaker.

Giuliani

Trump, Giuliani and John Eastman

pressured Rusty Bowers to support

their elector scheme in Arizona.

Trump

Bowers

3 calls

Eastman

Arizona was the site of some of the earliest and largest “stop the steal” protests in the days after the election. It was also where, according to the indictment, then-state House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) rebuffed attempts by Trump and his team to reverse Biden’s win in the state.

In a call with Bowers, Trump and Giuliani raised false claims about voter fraud in the state, the indictment says, and asked if he would support their effort to appoint alternate electors from Arizona. In a second call about a month later, Trump again allegedly brought up the elector scheme. Bowers pushed back, according to the indictment, telling Trump, “I voted for you. I worked for you. I campaigned for you. I just won’t do anything illegal for you.”

Still, Trump’s team continued to hound him. Days before the Capitol riot, lawyer John Eastman, an architect of the brazen legal strategy to keep Trump in office, called Bowers about appointing alternate electors, according to the indictment. Bowers again refused, saying it would violate his oath of office.

i guess since some of the calls referenced in the GA indictment were made to PA lawmakers, it's sort of covered already? it's just odd to me that he was very clearly interfering with the PA election and no one there seems to have done anything about it

Trump's fleets:

https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/57077b4e-d47c-4c4d-a834-cb827911a12a_1.666df0b310969192dd414c4e489736ed.jpeg?odnWidth=612&odnHeight=612&odnBg=ffffff

The recorded phone call in GA is about as "I am liveblogging my crimes" as it gets, so I think that's why.

Like few other calls where he gave a specific number of votes to "find"

Georgia gov also can't pardon which helps

Since when was it illegal to just ask questions? 100% not guilty.

I am genuinely so excited to see this exoneration report. It's gonna make Ben Carson's version of the US map look like a work of deep competence and sophistication.

It will probably be paywalled

You gotta respect Team Trump for keeping this thing under wraps for so many years, just to make sure every last detail is right, before releasing it to the public.

It would be a good trick for Trump to read us a bit of the report each day for years, and we have to wait to put him in jail until he's done.

i see that other state leaders are still talking about pressing charges, for example, the governor of arizona yesterday

https://ktar.com/story/5528616/gov-hobbs-says-arizona-should-press-charges-against-donald-trump-over-2020-election/

PHOENIX — Gov. Katie Hobbs said Tuesday that Arizona should press charges against former president Donald Trump over potential election interference in the 2020 election.

Hobbs told reporters at an event in Phoenix that Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes should follow suit with Georgia, which indicted Trump on Monday.

“Absolutely. I have been an advocate for holding folks involved in trying to overturn the will of the voters in the 2020 election accountable and this is part of that process,” Hobbs, a Democrat, said.

add to his pile of doom please

It's the T to the R to the UMP
And if you charge me three times then I'll beat all three
Crooked Dems and Sleepy Joe in all their dishonor hate me
But when the judges get to rulin they'll all exonerate me

The game is Trump tight, ain't no need for you to boo me
'Cause after its over, all you hoes gonna want to sue me

It would be a good trick for Trump to read us a bit of the report each day for years, and we have to wait to put him in jail until he's done.

he wanted to count stacks in front of an audience

when that call came out with the Georgia Secretary of State I remember a number of Twitter legal guys going "this is really bad, you don't wanna do this anywhere but especially not in Georgia" for reasons I can't really recall right now

“add to his pile of doom please”

PLEASE

Also lol Neanderthal

xp no pardons, among other issues

yeah I think a lot of left-leaning politicians are hesitant to give Trump anything he can turn into a victory and if you're in a state where the Governor leans R and he can pardon Trump, it may feel more like losing to indict him

I think all that Georgia could do to interfere in this case is attempt to dismiss the lead prosecutor but even that requires a high bar to do

I know a bunch of pundits said Trump getting impeached but not removed was a big win for him but I don't think there's any evidence that's actually the case

His big win was the absence of a devastating loss, which created just enough ambiguity in regard to his criminal activities to let him be the presumptive Republican nominee and keep the party apparatchiks securely in his pocket.

not at all. people, well-meaning and well, stupid, all seem to look incorrectly at the way he got elected in the first place. He benefitted from facing a candidate who was also historically unpopular due to her last name, Benghazi, and being investigated by the FBI, and the free coverage networks all provided him because they thought he had no chance.

the "Dems need to do soul-searching and reconnect with the Rust Belt" narrative was always a complete joke, like, sure, yes, they need to do that but it's not BECAUSE Trump won, it's because the party was out of touch even before that election. it wasn't as simple to say that's how he won and how Dems lost.

The reason he will always win tightly contested elections and not with any significant margin is that election or primary Trump is in, is like a pie. Most times, he will lose because the majority of the country hates him. He wins when other people lose pieces of their pie or there are lots of people fighting over the pie. In 2016, he was the favorite from the beginning, but he wasn't blowing other candidates away in the crowded primary. He just benefitted from no coalition forming behind a clear secondary candidate. His slice of the pie was tiny, but every Never Trump Republican's favorites were so divided amongst like 8 people that his piece was the biggest.

When Cruz finally became the last other candidate standing, he started winning a lot more delegates, but by then he had too much ground to make up (I also think he conceded too early).

by getting the nomination, his slice of the pie grew enormously merely by having the R in front of his name, and he only needed to steal a little sliver of the Independent slice, and hope that Ds gave away a little of theirs or were too full to eat it.

He achieved this through a remarkable series of lucky events, not least naive networks thinking he had no chance but giving him free, consistent publicity with the reality-show esque car-crash gawker coverage they gave him. The October surprise re: "grab em by the pussy" was mistimed and released too early, so he had time to bounce back. Comey's October surprise.

but most importantly, no political history. Hillary had a decades long track record, as did almost every other Republican candidate, whereas Trump was a wild card, so it was easier for more conservative Dems and Independents to take the risk because they were dumb and fucking naive. No different than when a minor league pitcher gets called up and initially succeeds because his opponents haven't seen game film on him and don't yet know the book on him.

the minute he took fucking office he started creating game film and people now knew exactly what he'd be like and that made him many more enemies. that began giving away a bunch of the Independent pie, had Dems fighting to take their pieces back.

So things like the impeachment give away more of his piece of the pie, it turns off Independent voters, and a tiny sliver of Republican voters, and he simply can't afford to lose votes from either because his base is too small to get him elected.

2016 was a "what's the worst that could happen?" year, now everybody fucking knows.

xpost

*every election or primary

An excellent analysis, Neanderthal.

Yeah booming post, Neanderthal.

Oh and in news that will surprise precisely no one, he never paid Giuliani or most other conspirators.

Maybe don't go to work for someone who is famous for stiffing people?

Hillary Benghazi

I've said it before, if he has a talent it is getting other people to immolate themselves for him.

He has the god-tier masochist vote locked up tight. Hurt me, daddy!

immolate themselves for free at that! it's amazing that people still fall for it.

It's like the 'stop hitting yourself' gag except they really are hitting themselves

I can't believe the leopard ate MY face wtf

lol wins

sorry but

https://i.imgur.com/6yBA7fR.png

Wait weren’t we supposed to get a very CONCLUSIVE and EXONERATING report from Trump today? Did I miss something?

I think that's Monday

Somewhere somebody is assembling that report right now, I'm sure it's going great.

one reason the report is good is because it's very long

Also Monday is the best day for truth

i REALLY like that

if Monday is the best day for truth, then i say
let the truth begin

As someone who has been following this all pretty casually, I liked this as a comparison of the federal/GA stuff:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/08/trump-indictments-jack-smith-fani-willis-themes.html

i know we already touched on it above or in the other thread, but i really hopes he comes out to announce the report standing to another 5 foot high staged pile of blank pieces of paper

Somewhere somebody is assembling that

...great health care plan

...kraken

Are there any betting pools set up for people to wager on what he will actually say/do on Monday?

i bet $15 he will say something that will later be used as evidence in one of the four different cases

uhhhh you'd have to give me massive odds on that

see, that's the part about betting that i hate

he's gonna say something really dumb.

https://y.yarn.co/a0a16a2b-c302-4101-9fd9-a77efaf2487e_text.gif