Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

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 .

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