Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

I mean look at the guy's Hannity interview - Hannity is constantly saying stuff like "oh you wouldn't do this, you didn't mean it like that, this isn't you..." and then Trump would immediately go "no, I have the right to do that, it's not wrong, I can take anything I want, it's called presidential privelege, it all belongs to me". I would posit that if you let *that* guy run for President again, you don't really have a rule of law.

and yes I know Dubya and (to a lesser extent) Obama committed crimes in office, and that in some sense they were a bit more serious, but I would say that's only because Trump is not a very smart or savvy criminal. I mean the dude straight up tried to steal a presidential election in broad daylight. That's pretty serious. I shudder to think what he would have done had we gotten into some kind of foreign conflict. If 9/11 happened on his watch I feel like we would've wound up with something somehow much worse than what we actually got.

of those things you mention only the possession of top secret documents strikes me as clearly criminal.

his phone call with Raffensperger seems pretty blatantly illegal to me

yeah I'm confused. TSF: are you arguing that Trump hasn't committed any crimes during his political career, or that none of the current cases against him are legit (but there are other cases that would be)?

Something something martyr Trump red tidal wave will crush us* all

*¯\_(ツ)_/¯

others are not crimes at all (if you replace "dirt" with "information" there's nothing actually wrong with seeking information on your opponent whereever you can find it).

not true! there is actually a pretty well defined way you can and can't do this! he literally withheld foreign aid to Ukraine (who were invaded the next year!) because they weren't giving him information on Hunter Biden! he's on tape pressuring election officials in Georgia to make up votes for him! lets say he actually succeeded and intimiated enough governors in swing states into "finding missing votes"....would you think it was a crime then?

and yes I know Dubya and (to a lesser extent) Obama committed crimes in office, and that in some sense they were a bit more serious,

all three were involved in egregious war crimes, there's no reason to rank them on the 'serious crime' scale

if you replace "dirt" with "information" there's nothing actually wrong with seeking information on your opponent whereever you can find it

if you replace "dirt" with "information" there's nothing actually wrong with seeking information on your opponent whereever you can find it

if you replace "dirt" with "information" there's nothing actually wrong with seeking information on your opponent whereever you can find it

my problem, such as it is, is that i would dearly like for the democratic candidate to win the next election.

― Thus Sang Freud,

Have you not paid attention to what happened in 2018, 2022, and, uh, 2020? I'm a queer man living in fucking Florida and you're the one worried about exciting the MAGAs?

i mean what bush did was much worse it does deserve to be said xp

also yeah trump attempting a coup does rise above smalltime

Reveal Your Uncool Legal Beliefs Here.

xp it was a smalltime type coup though, you know Cheney would have done it professionally!

yea the conception and execution deeply were flawed but nevertheless

wait, the dirt on hillary thing wasn't the ukraine thing. those were two different things.

Have you not paid attention to what happened in 2018, 2022, and, uh, 2020?

yes we've been scraping by. we narrowly pulled out a victory against the craziest candiate of all time! baby steps. but i'd like to keep things headed in the right direction. this seems to me like a big backwards step.

Indicting him for a crime is a step in the right direction.

i agree its good

we'll see.

i mean what bush did was much worse it does deserve to be said xp

― lag∞n, Saturday, April 1, 2023 11:00 AM (seven minutes ago)

yeah I rethought that after posting tbh; Obama and Trump (war) crimes obvs descend from Bush's actions. plus there's a level of zeal to the W administration's criminal activities that outpaces the others. that said, they all did grotesquely immoral shit

yes we've been scraping by. we narrowly pulled out a victory against the craziest candiate of all time

It was the first time an incumbent lost since 1992, in an era where things are so polarized that that only a handful of states decide every election

idk if trump is exactly extreme if anything his crimes are smalltime compared to typical presidential behavior, but he did fail to understand how to play the game, you have to color inside the lines to maintain presidential privilege, for instance obama bailing out wall st and happily just letting them carry on with business as usual afterwards gets him a couple mil for a speech immediately upon retirement and the law doesnt care, id say what trump is more is heterodox in behavior and rhetoric if not underlying politics, which is how he became president in the first place insulting orthodox washington etc

― lag∞n, Saturday, April 1, 2023 9:41 AM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I agree with this but I don't really like the framing because it plays into that common GOP idea that people just don't like Trump because he's an outsider, he's mean on Twitter, he's abrasive and "speaks his mind" or whatever. Trump was very clear about wanting to turn America into a dictatorship in which he was the king. He very much wanted to transform the American political system into one in which a Democrat could never win again. He was explicit about using state violence to accomplish this and even directed the National Guard to tear gas BLM protestors. He got his supporters to ransack the Capitol building and refused to call them off even as the violence was unfolding. He talked shit about every single one of our allies and bragged about how well he got along with Putin and Kim Jong Un. So I think in the broad sense Trump is much more dangerous than his predecessors, the difference is overthrowing a major nation is a lot harder than fucking shit up in the Middle East. By the way just in case I'm unclear on this I think Dubya deserved to go to Guantanamo.

TSF, we keep posting evidence, you respond, "I dunno, I got vibes, man."

By the way just in case I'm unclear on this I think Dubya deserved to go to Guantanamo.

Then Obama couldn't have closed it!

not sure i've noticed the evidence. evidence of what? i've seen a lot of invective flying fast and furious.

and again I really don't wanna minimize the tragedy of the Bush administration but when it comes to how a country ought to handle the crimes of its rulers, a ruler who is trying to overthrow the very foundations of its country is the sort of thing that a nation, by definition, needs to take more seriously than anything else.

the evidence that Trump's base is shrinking xpost

i guess i'm not necessarily talking about his base? like, i think the something that looks like vengeance could cut a wider swath through right-leaning voters?

and your evidence of this happening is:

i can't have evidence of the future. man you guys are rough.

STOP CONCERN TROLLING WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU

FP'd

I agree with this but I don't really like the framing because it plays into that common GOP idea that people just don't like Trump because he's an outsider, he's mean on Twitter, he's abrasive and "speaks his mind" or whatever.

― frogbs, Saturday, April 1, 2023 11:18 AM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it is kinda true tho, you can see it in democrats pining for the days of respectable republicans like ronald reagan, trump just as they saysaid the quiet part loud

He very much wanted to transform the American political system into one in which a Democrat could never win again. He was explicit about using state violence to accomplish this and even directed the National Guard to tear gas BLM protestors.

― frogbs, Saturday, April 1, 2023 11:18 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i mean this is just regular stuff

He got his supporters to ransack the Capitol building and refused to call them off even as the violence was unfolding. He talked shit about every single one of our allies and bragged about how well he got along with Putin and Kim Jong Un. So I think in the broad sense Trump is much more dangerous than his predecessors, the difference is overthrowing a major nation is a lot harder than fucking shit up in the Middle East. By the way just in case I'm unclear on this I think Dubya deserved to go to Guantanamo.

― frogbs, Saturday, April 1, 2023 11:18 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

and this is counter productive to the conservative project

tho i would agree that saying the quite part loud is indeed dangerous and has unleashed all sorts of nasty forces

and prob needless to say i would rather have almost anyone with their finger on the button besides him

i guess i'm not necessarily talking about his base? like, i think the something that looks like vengeance could cut a wider swath through right-leaning voters?

Aha! You are New York Times journalist Peter Baker! What do I win?

So I think in the broad sense Trump is much more dangerous than his predecessors, the difference is overthrowing a major nation is a lot harder than fucking shit up in the Middle East.

I don't really have the energy for this convo, but this kind of thinking is why people justifiably hate americans

STOP CONCERN TROLLING WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU

― obsidian crocogolem (sleeve), Saturday, April 1, 2023 11:29 AM bookmarkflaglink

Otm

Well again I’ll stress that GWBs administration was way more tragic and terrible but had Trump won in 2000 and had to manage 9/11 and the wars that were brewing I think he actually would’ve handled it much worse.

idk attacking iraq was really some shit

it is kinda true tho, you can see it in democrats pining for the days of respectable republicans like ronald reagan, trump just as they saysaid the quiet part loud

― lag∞n, Saturday, April 1, 2023 10:32 AM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sure and those Dems obviously suck. But I think with Reagan and GWB though there was never the threat that they’d try to illegally seize power and attempt a coup if they lost re-election, with Trump it was something everyone saw coming from the start. In terms of “what kind of crimes should a nation not allow from its leaders” I’d imagine this sort of thing is right up top.

The consequences of the Bush admin for global security and peace are worse than those of the Trump administration. However, Trump is a career criminal and unhinged lunatic who belongs in jail.

These are just independent facts. They can both be true.

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 .