Donald Trump's evolving excuses over the Mar-A-Lago raid have reached the absurd
Donald Trump sounds increasingly like Bart Simpson.
For those of you who are still defending Donald Trump, I would politely ask you to do one thing: in every instance in the rest of this essay, please replace "Trump" with "Obama" or "Clinton". Then ask yourself if you would still consider that defense to be logical and realistic.
I'm going to start by pointing out the obvious - people that are innocent don't normally change their excuse/reason for doing something.
In every situation in your life where you accused someone of something and they give you a shotgun blast of excuses, many of them that contradict each other, you would be a fool if you didn't automatically suspect that you were being lied to.
A shotgun blast of excuses is the exact method of defense that Trump and his supporters have turned to, just like Jan. 6. "When it started as an Antifa operation, then it was the FBI, and then it was really just a bunch of tourists, and then it was a bunch of people that were misunderstood."
Some of those excuses have already been proven lies.
1)
"Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” he moaned, adding that, “After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.”
Like most things associated with President Trump, nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. However, everything he said after that is a lie.
Trump was subpoenaed back in June, when he turned over boxes and boxes of confidential documents that he wasn't supposed to have even then. Still he failed to turn over everything, at this late stage, and the FBI had video evidence that top secret documents were being taken and moved. The logical conclusion is that Trump was fully aware of the top secret document (his lawyer signed an affidavit that Trump had turned over everything), and was therefore obstructing justice.
1a)
“A raid is supposed to be a last resort,” Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz derped on Newsmax
That's not a thing.
2)
Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, who expressed disgust that the FBI would send in agents because Donald Trump “in effect checked out books too long from the archivist.”
At what other time will you ever here a Republican that top secret documents just aren't important?
3 and 3a)
Last week saw a couple of news cycles in which MAGAworld suggested that the FBI had planted evidence on poor, innocent Donald Trump, while the man himself screeched that “President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified. How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots!”
It's quite a leap to on one hand say "the FBI is planting evidence" (a claim of which no one has bothered to try and back up) while at the very same time tell people that he'd "declassified those top secret documents". Since holding declassified documents isn't a crime that I am aware of, why would the FBI plant document that are legal to have?
Secondly, Barack Hussein Obama did NOT keep 33 million pages of documents. They were in the hands of the National Archives just like they should have been.
But let's examine this further. Let's say for a moment that Mr. Hussein actually had broken the law. Is Trump telling us that he was only breaking the law because Obama broke the law?
Points for creativity, all! But in fact, the National Archives’ failed effort to get back the purloined documents, some of which were highly classified, was followed by multiple Justice Department subpoenas that Trump similarly ignored. As CNN reported Thursday, Trump’s lawyers even showed the head of the Justice Department’s Counter Intelligence Division multiple improperly retained documents in June and then refused to give back anything that wasn’t marked top secret or higher. Which didn’t stop at least one of those lawyers signing a declaration that all classified documents had been returned, according to the New York Times.
4)
Trump’s lackey Kash Patel was duly dispatched to Fox (obvs) to insist that his boss had already declassified all the documents in question before leaving the White House — which doesn’t account for his failure to return them, or his failure to mention this declassification to anyone else before pocketing the papers and vamoosing to the golf course. Then disgraced former journalist John Solomon read out a statement from Trump purporting that all products taken to the private residence were presumptively deemed declassified. Because it’s fun to say crazy shit on teevee!
First of all, there is a process to declassifying documents. That process includes marking the documents as declassified and making them available to the public. and if they are top secret, then other people have to sign off on declassifying the documents.
But let's say that all Trump had to do was declassify them in his mind. You know he's not the president anymore, right? If all President Trump has to do to declassify them is to do it in his mind, then all President Biden would have to do to reclassify them is to do it in his mind.
5)
“Oh, great! It has just been learned that the FBI, in its now famous raid of Mar-a-Lago, took boxes of privileged ‘attorney-client’ material, and also ‘executive’ privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken,” Trump arglebargled. “By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken.”
Which makes complete sense if you pretend that the FBI isn’t part of the executive branch. There’s also the minor matter that any documents covered by executive privilege are inherently government property and belong at the National Archives.
Nothing else to add other than Trump is no longer president.
“By Monday, the New York Times will be running a story about how Trump had the Ark of the Covenant.”
- Dave Gainor, because this is funny? Or because Dave thinks Trump is a Nazi?
And then there is a crazy sh*t that the MAGA crowd believes.
6-9)
the hogwash offered up Tuesday by Anna Perez, a host for right-wing media outlet Real America’s Voice, who uttered a QAnon-style monologue, falsely claiming the search was a conspiracy to prevent Trump from carrying out a (nonexistent) plan to expose criminals serving in government.
How exactly is that supposed to work? Is this all part of the non-existent draining of a swamp two years after Trump left office?
Another Real America’s Voice host, right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, claimed Thursday that the FBI “occupied Trump’s home – a military occupation.”
Need I remind people that the FBI is NOT the military?
The former President’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump delivered an impressive variety of claptrap in a single sentence, saying on Fox on Tuesday that the searchers were “a bunch of people unannounced breaking into your home like this and taking whatever they want for themselves.”
Lara is unfamiliar with how search warrants work.
Republican Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House minority whip, went on Fox on Thursday and said that “it concerns everybody if you see some agents go rogue.”
The Chief of the FBI was appointed by Trump, and of course, no evidence was given to back up this claim.
"When somebody begins to concoct lies like this, it shows a real level of desperation.”
- warmonger and Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton
Some Trump supporters are falling back to calling this another Russiagate, but that dog no longer hunts.
But Trump confidantes who spoke to The Independent on condition of anonymity say there are important differences between this latest dispute with the Department of Justice and Mr Trump’s previous brushes with accountability, such as his first impeachment and the Justice Department probe into his 2016 campaign’s alleged links to the Russian government....
For one, Mr Trump is no longer surrounded by the top-tier lawyers who represented him throughout his presidency as both government lawyers and as his personal attorneys.
“This [the series of excuses and claims of planted evidence] is for the court of public opinion, it has nothing to do with his legal situation,” said one former Trump campaign and administration official.
“He's not even lined up with the best legal team to defend him in this situation. He's run through all the attorneys who would take one for him,” they said.Another ex-White House aide who still has regular contact with Mr Trump and people in his inner circle told The Independent that the ex-president is to some extent in denial about his possible legal exposure.
And let's not forget that there couldn't be classified documents there because Washington would never wait 18 months to ask for them.
In fact the DOJ had been trying to get them back for a very long time. That's the point.
The biggest difference between Russiagate and this scandal, is that Russiagate was a scandal in search of evidence.
This is evidence in search of motive.
"Do you take home documents marked special access?"
"No."@RepMikeTurner says he does not take home documents marked special access like the documents the FBI says were seized from Trump's home, but argues that we don't know if they were classified appropriately. @CNNSotu pic.twitter.com/IvFOSmXQ7W
— CNN (@CNN) August 14, 2022
Comments
Is this why?
Flashback to 2019
Then 2 months ago
The Club
And Trump has been expelled.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Calling Dumbbell's Advocate, report to the green room
Trump is obviously an incompetent who thinks he can get away with anything - because in America people like him always have. He's just too damn lazy about it.
I'm reminded of Touch Of Evil and the O.J. trial. Touch Of Evil was a movie where Orson Welles played a border sheriff who framed a (probably) guilty man so easily he got into the habit of it. As for O.J. my answer to the "it would require like 140 people to all conspire to the exact same testimony" argument is that all of those 140 people work together every day. Their jobs depend on them reinforcing each other absolutely, and to that point anything they said was automatically believed, no matter how absurd. It doesn't matter that O.J. was clearly guilty - no one wanted to bother to prove it. No one thought he had to. In banana republics prosecutors don't have to do their job, all they have to do is what they're told.
On to Biden since 1973
Not sure I get your O.J analogy
My take on that wasn't that there was nobody that wanted to prove his guilt -- there were plenty -- but that it seemed near impossible to me that in LA County a jury of his peers would convict him. Thus, shortly after his arrest, the best I projected a prosecution could obtain would be a hung jury. Not a significantly different outcome from what the inept prosecution and circus trial produced. IOW, he was always going to get away with it.
No comprende on the OJ.
Now L.A. county is huge. And that case may have taken a decisive turn at the outset, when the D.A. decided to change the venue of the court proceedings from predominantly white Santa Monica, normally the place the trial would be held as it's closest to the killings (Brentwood), to downtown L.A. where minority group representation in the jury pool would be much greater. The DA said the SM court just couldn't handle a case of this media magnitude.
A non-decision --
because, 1) the LA County Courthouse in Santa Monica doesn't hold criminal trials and 2) if it did, the defense would have filed for and received a change in venue.
I don't think so.
Several reasons have been given for the change of venue, per the DA at the time Gil Garcetti. One, the SM Courthouse had been damaged in the Jan '94 earthquake, and second that a new space to handle big media cases had just been built at the courtroom downtown. Of those 2, I recall hearing mainly or only the 2d one. Probably a 3d reason was a factor: convenience for the prosecution in having the trial in a court much closer to their offices downtown. https://nypost.com/2016/04/10/former-da-gil-garcetti-i-never-wanted-marc...
But there is likely another key factor largely unspoken: trying a black man, and a famous one, in front of a mostly white jury in SM would have make a conviction more likely and made it more likely there could be citywide rioting as with the Rodney King case just a few yrs earlier.
On your #2
it's my understanding that it was the prosecution which initially filed for a change in venue. But regardless of who filed first, the DA was in favor of moving it from SM to downtown LA.
Interesting…
Maybe if Obama had been accused of collusion with Russia for his entire term and was impeached twice on bogus charges I’d have the same reaction to the raid I do now. If this information is true and Garland waited weeks to sign the warrant then to me this just looks like a continuation of Russia Russia. But if I’m wrong I’ll admit it. On top of the drawn out 1/6 investigation and the left media writing daily about Trump Trump Trump it just looks fishy to me.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Should have done a Rove
or Clinton. If caught could then have had the records destroyed before authorities could take a look at it.
As we don't know the contents of the seized files, way to soon to conclude anything. The National Archives has reason(s) to believe that the files should have been in its custody and has been working to the best of its ability to obtain them. Trump's team has been working with the National Archives on this matter and turned over a large number of files in June with Trump's attorney claiming that they have turned everything in. That claim appears not to be true.
Can't get around the fact that 1) Trump took files from the WH that belonged to the National Archives (and hasn't offered any reason for doing so) 2) resisted turning them in 3) didn't fully comply with the subpoena. The classification of the files reluctantly turned over and seized remains to be disclosed.
If Trump were half as clever as he thinks he is, he would have set up this conflict as an election campaign stunt. As it is, looks to me as if he took files that he wanted to remain hidden.
That's an unusual take
My take is that he was afraid to do the raid because the political fallout could crush him.
But not to do the raid,
could later make him look like Loretta Lynch and James Comey.
Yes, MG knew
what a huge deal it would be to search an ex president's home, and particularly dicey with this ex-prez and his armed followers. Not surprising he took his time to make a decision, owing largely to his cautious nature. He might also in that time have been hoping that discussions w Trump lawyers would produce the desired result w/o the warrant.
At every stage MG's actions are going to be nitpicked, so probably better, he thinks, to go about things "with all deliberate speed".
This is not good
What if Obama fans were doing this?
And shitlibs protested at Supreme Court justices houses
@
after Roe was canceled. I don’t condone it from either side and I don’t understand why your comment was directed at me. Both sides are being manipulated into doing something stupid so that the parasite class can crack down on dissent. I’m in favor of peaceful protests, but even they are met with brutal force anymore. I think if people really want to get the parasite's attention then a silent general strike is in order. No one spends money on anything but essential items and people stay home from work. Any violence is what they want to happen.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
I don't see
a both-sides equivalency. The protests in front of or in the vicinity of justices' homes have been peaceful, and they tend to be harmless except for the occasional noise. The right and the MAGAists, well-armed, much more so than the left, tends to be violent.
Scotus usually are well walled off from the public, in their ivory tower, but a small group of them, 5-6, can create law, usually out of thin air, that adversely affects many millions of lives. The FBI in this instance peacefully carried out a lawful warrant that affected one person's feelings.
The First Amendment allowing peaceful protest still seems to be alive. Scotus should not be above the law in having to live with the public exercising its rights provided they remain peaceful.
Trump always lies
He is a walking talking lying Donald doll. Trump lies when he doesn't have to it is so hard-wired into his OS. But yeah, the shotgun scattergun gish gallop response is usually a big tip-off.
This pic below is funny if real, no reason to doubt it, except it came off the intertubes...
They better have gotten the real deal shit on Trump, because if they didn't, they just elected him. Or else he will have to have one of those Clintonesque accidentes...
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
I am, of course, curious to know what
...the missing documents pertain to. The general topics, not the "secret" information.. Because my instincts tell me that herein lies a very important and revealing algorithm.
Trump already knew everything that the "missing" documents contained. The classified documents could have been produced at any point in the Nation's history. Trump had full access to all of this "secret" information throughout the four years that he was President. Theoretically, he could have arranged to make a copy of any classified document that he believed contained evidence of the subversive actions that were taken against him. As a matter of fact, I seem to recall hints dropped that he did just that, in one case pertaining to an incident in Ukraine that took place around the time that he became President.
In fact, I would be incredulous to learn that Trump did not make copies of the classified documents he found that contained incriminating evidence about the conspiracies he believed were carried out to invalidate his candidacy or to undermine his presidency. He would have certainly stored those extra copies away from himself. He could have also declassified those documents, but perhaps he did not, for strategic reasons. However whether they were classified or not, he certainly would not want to hold on to them, which might risk invalidating them.
I am perplexed that there were original classified documents he refused to return. Now that is illogical. He could request to see them again, if he wished to. Furthermore, for those documents that he declassified, there would be NO reason to keep the originals, which belong in the Archive, since he could make copies for himself. According to what I have read, government insiders have said that there were issues with some of the documents on Trump's de-classification list, which he apparently filed. In some documents, there was a desire to add further redactions. In one case, reviewers believed that declassification could be a problem for an ongoing project.
The obvious problem that I see would arise if Trump removed an original document from the Archive, and he neither list it on the declassified list, nor did he returne it to the Archive. Some news outlets are reporting i a way that suggests that this is the case with all the documents in question. Law enforcement has behaved as though they were told that this type of theft had taken place.
Last night, members of the Trump family complained that the former President's passports were stolen by the FBI. Nora O'Donnell immediately filed a special report, insisting that the FBI did not take Trump's passports. The DOJ still won't show their search list, but they have announced that the FBI had accidentally taken Trump's passports, which are being returned.
That's sort of how the news media works in the US. No one knows the whole story. And you can concoct any kind of narrative you like in a 24 hour news cycle, because no one admits or corrects their mistakes and the national corporate media has no accountability at all:
1. Trump's family is screeching complaints in social media.
2. The FBI stole everything in sight whether it was on the warrant or not.
3. The DOJ is walking back their overreach and blaming it on the FBI.
As I said before, regardless of where the Kabuki goes, I am really only interested in the topics of the documents that have been designated "stolen." Everything else is a distraction, in my view.
IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"
One article I posted here about the documents
was that they pertained to who was involved in cooking up Russia gate against Trump and that he wanted to release them to the public, but as long as Durham was conducting his investigation into the players he couldn’t do it. It’s why Durham dragged out the investigation for so long. I have no idea what essay that was in. Who knows if that was accurate or not?
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
I suspect that they
either pertained to his hypothetical enemies list WRT Russiagate, or were kept to provide blackmail material against the government itself in case it got too uppity. "Nice little nuclear warhead design you got there; it'd be a shame if it got into the wrong hands, now wouldn't it?".
We'll never know. But if it was the latter: it looks like his bluff didn't work, and I suspect that the grief he would get for it will be real. And not necessarily timed to a campaign cycle...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Yeah, imagine Trump
doing something "illogical". It's long been an open secret that Donald always operates by his own rules, as if he is above the law and is entitled, being Donald J. Trump, to do as he pleases. He has lawyers to get him out of jams. Like a spoiled adult kid. That is the operative "logic" at play here.
This is what Trump derangement syndrome looks like
Just make shit up and people will believe it. For gawd’s sake why have the leftist media started asking Bolton what his opinion is? This guy should be dead to the left for the rest of his life and yet here he is being treated like his opinion has any value. Oh wait he’s saying mean things about Trump. Never mind!
Yup…
Just be say mean things about Trump and the shitlibs will embrace you like their one of their own. I seriously want to understand their minds.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Hi snoopy
I think that Trump himself created 'derangement syndrome'. From the very beginning he managed to suck every bit of life out of anything rational or dignified. Wasn’t it his bizarre midnight tweets that defined and projected his madness?
I fluctuate between trying to understand those minds we wonder about, and thinking ‘fuck it’, who cares why they think the way they do, because in reality they’re just as unhinged as Trump himself.
CAN'T WE JUST IGNORE THE GUY???
Donald Trump's presidency is proof of the triumph of trash-culture over everything and anything higher and better - and this is so much of what Trump Derangement Syndrome is about, because of what this supposed-impossibility says about those who think themselves better than that. I went through this in the '000s in response to Bush, Sarah Palin, and other unworthies - why others didn't reach their threshold then, I cannot be sure.
The key is to remember that he is merely the garish maraschino cherry topping off a 40-year shit-sundae. Things were not acceptable before, and any solution that prioritizes going after Donnie-come-lately is not a solution at all. Many people find Trump refreshing precisely because he makes the talk match the walk; the TDS-set don't want to solve the problem, they just want to be jacked back into The Matrix. That is the difference, and why you see more hatred for Obama and the Clintons and such than for Trump; it may not seem rational, but it is.
It's a matter of looking past people's relative inability to wade through the morass of language, and understanding what people think. Intelligence means knowing that understanding takes precedence over being understood. If we don't operate that way, we are allowing our lessers to not only govern us, but turn us into them.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I wish we could ignore him
but the Republican base is enamored with him. Even before this raid the primary results still said that, at the very least, he was the kingmaker in the GOP.
Now he's got the lead for the 2024 nomination. Either way, ignoring him was never an option.
But also, he had broken the law. If Hillary or Obama had broken the law AND the DOJ was investigating, would you be saying "We should just ignore him/her?"
To be on the record, I think every president since Dubya should be charged with war crimes. Unfortunately, some crimes simply don't get punished.
That's not true at all. Almost everything he promised in 2016 he completely failed to deliver on. The only major thing he delivered on was tax cuts for the wealthy (remember when he was so proud of this that he was going to run for re-election on it?).
As far as I can tell, the reason why people love Trump is because he drives liberals crazy.
That's all. Not because he ever actually delivered on anything.
That much is true.
I think the MAGAists
very much enjoy that he drives the liberals crazy, and further that he occasionally uses rhetoric with his audience to suggest something more should be done and he of course will pay for any legal bills. Nervous laughter, as they are almost astonished that someone could be saying the very things out loud they have long thought about.
Overall it's not just that but that he speaks to his followers on a few issues that they are primarily juiced up about, the changing more diverse society, immigration, race. That's what "MAGA" is all about -- turning the clock back to a supposedly ideal time, a glorious period when men were men and ran the show, and women and some other folks not the right color knew their place. He's the noxiously charismatic faux-populist standard bearer for the political reaction to the major social reform events that started in the 60s. It was from listening over many years to RW radio that he learned what issues really get the right worked up.
I'm not convinced about the racism/sexism
I think liberals knee-jerk to accusations of racism and sexism.
As far as I can tell is that the MAGA crowd hates liberals to the point of absolutely losing their minds. The MAGA crowd expects absolutely nothing from their government (despite badly needing help in many cases).
But they do demand one thing and one thing alone - to cause their liberal "enemies" pain and suffering. That's all it comes down to.
Why are liberals their "enemies"? That much is more of a mystery. It seems to come from cultural slights that the right-wing media focuses on exclusively. Some rando school teacher or local politician in a city across the country may have did or said something and that's all it takes for the MAGAheads to explode in anger.
It's actually really sad when you think about it.
Extremists on the far
right find it helpful in building their movement to have a scapegoat. It revs up their base and gives them a reason to justify and re-direct their seething inner hatreds.
Re race and sexism, while I agree libs can go too far in their thinking, as extremist Donald is one who ignites hatred as passionate on the left as the worshipful love he receives from the right, it's difficult to avoid certain extreme conclusions. He is who he is and I don't deal in too much nuance in calling it as I see it. There is sufficient evidence to suggest -- as with Donald's loud overemphasis on the alleged porous southern border, and his followers' excusing Donald's well-known "hands-on" attitude towards women -- that he and his followers are working from the racist-sexist political playbook.
Another way to put it is on an Urban vs Rural basis, the Urbans being the bad guys, crime, homelessness, and all the POC who live there and create a lot of those problems, all those fancy liberal college educateds, vs the patriotic, law-abiding, clean if relatively under-educated Rurals who just want to stay away from all that and get back to a better time when those sorts of problems didn't exist.
Scapegoating, Us vs Them dividing of the country, imagining an ideal previous time when All Was Right -- these are characteristics of an authoritarian movement, usually led by a plain- and frank-speaking negatively charismatic leader who is worshipped by the flock. The GOP is now T's party, and it's an authoritarian one, actually seeking to impose One Party rule in the country with its hard partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression, and now even attempts at putting in place election selection via the state legislatures. 2024 may be far from normal times.
Mi dos centavos. YMMV
THIS is key
This is integral to why I said he makes the talk match the walk; he does that with regard to the bad things. Sure, some of them were clearly dumb enough to think he of all people would deliver the goods (and they're the more visible and audible ones by far), but I daresay many more are not at all surprised he did nothing particularly good; he just did less bad.
In hindsight, We signed onto this fate the moment we accepted "lesser-of-two-evilism" as a valid political tactic. Republicans were just our Ghosts of Christmas Yet-To-Come.
The GOP rank-and-file assume government is bad not because they don't think a benevolent, beneficent government would be a nice idea, but because that is what life has taught them - not just those alive today, but for centuries.
I cannot harp on Colin Woodard's work enough - it is NO ACCIDENT that ever since the Reagan (Counter)Revolution, the GOP strongholds have been in what Woodard has labeled "The Far West" and "The Deep South". Both of these regions fear and distrust government, but for very, very different reasons.
Far Westerners genuinely believe in freedom and small local government, and to them the government has ALWAYS been the herald and enabler of Big Business, and every evil under the sun that comes with it. It is hard to imagine them and authoritarian-left "Yankeedom" existing under the same tent.
Deep Southerners, on the other hand, are broken, their hearts and minds still Medieval. They believe the world is bad and trying anything to make it better will just make it even worse.
This is also important to understand because for everyone under the age of 40, a government that does more harm than good and never gives back anything it is allowed to take is the only government we have ever known. We have gone from conservatism - not just the GOP, but the entire notion of political conservatism itself - being stone-dead for my generation after seeing what it looked like under Bush, to being ready to embrace anything that will help us escape this real-life equivalent of "Other Mother" from Coraline (as alarmingly well-embodied by none other than Hillary Clinton). Trump's evils, on the other hand, lend themselves to a certain promising campaign slogan: "As Long As I'm In The White House, I'm Not Near YOU."
I keep thinking a "Western Strategy", where basically everyone west of Tornado Alley looks at each other and regains an appreciation for the things we have more in common with each other than with the East; we believe in freedom out here. We know it is possible. Realign California with its neighbors and away from (what seems to be in practice a somewhat exploitative relationship with) the other coast, and that could begin some real change.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Like I said; it's sad where the right-wing is today
Trotsky had the appropriate quote for this:
"If the communist Party is the party of revolutionary hope, then fascism, as a mass movement, is the party of counter-revolutionary despair."
"Politics of despair/shame"
In addition to the post-Obama rollout of what I pretty quickly pinned as a "Despair Agenda", DailyKos, back in The Good Times did indeed have a good article or two talking about the psychology of the then-Republican "politics of shame" and such that they used to take advantage of their voters.
We see the exact same thing with Achenar now, especially where resurrecting racism is concerned.
Reality in politics is determined by fiat, and the SOBs know it.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
The simple effective
solution for you would seem to be to just avoid reading a/o commenting in these type of threads. But it is a major news item worthy of discussion when a former prez has his home searched by the feds, including the illegal keeping of highly classified docs some of which could be nuclear.
And going forward there is likely to be more major news of a criminal law kind wrt DJT, so you may want to stay out of those threads if you find all this boring. Curious, did you make such objections when some here were going on about HRC's emails for the thousandth time?
It's not about boredom (exactly)
I'm saying Donald Trump is a sort of intellectual tar-baby; fighting over this is stupid, and worse still, makes one stupid.
There is a Buddhist sutra: You are what you think. Politics has become almost impossible to salvage because even talking about 40 years of kakistocracy quickly turns you into one of them.
Yes, it's very hard to avoid, which is why I persist - but what you and gjohnsit are doing is, as they say "not a good look" on either of you.
The solution, such as it is by this point, is to sustain our focus elsewhere. The rule of law entered critical condition after the coronation of a man who called the Constitution "just a goddamn piece of paper", but was finally killed not by him, but by the man who was sent in after to bring him to Justice, but instead ratified him. Now the rule of law is dead, and until some miracle can resurrect it, why even waste time watching two gangs of overhyped street-thugs chase each other around over rules neither of them believe in?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
To be clear,
I'm not here to produce a "good look" or earn style points or win a popularity contest, and in any case in a small town the heretics are always going to stand out like a sore thumb. I seek only to state my sincerely held beliefs and thoughts, try to do so in a clear enough way, and do that in an overall context of a robust discussion, not intentionally personal, on the controversies of the day that interest us that are open for an exchange.
You may find a more profitable use of your time focusing on other things, and that's fine, though what those acceptable for discussion issues are you didn't specify. But on Donald and his current predicament, there he is and there he might still be, at great risk to democracy, in a couple of years, so I don't find it unwise at all to sound the alarm as opposed to ignoring him. Yes he's an attention seeker, but he's a dangerous one, for all of us. We ignore him at our peril.
But on that note, much of the relevant terrain has been covered, and there's not much left to add as we wait for his case(s) to further develop. I do however appreciate your thoughts.
Reputations are shot
The FBI, the DOJ, the FISA court, the Dems in Congress have all lied to the American public about Trump. Russiagate was a collusion to undermine the campaign of Donald J Trump and then the presidency of the United States of America.
Trump is a real estate developer from NYC. He shamelessly self promotes and stretches the truth. He also has a few wealthy backers who are right wing ideologues and strongly influence Trump's unusual political beliefs. In all, though, he does represent the beliefs of half of the country and some 75 million people voted for him in the last election.
I think that going after an ex president like this by raiding his home is a really bad idea. All of these documents are in a gray area, because as President he had unlimited authority to do whatever he wanted with them. What happens when his term is up? Again a gray area having to do with the National Archives, which needs to be worked out in a process. Certainly calling this criminal activity is a stretch beyond belief.
The DOJ and the FBI are way beyond having any credibility in regards to Mr. Trump.
Politically it's a disaster. The Republicans shot themselves in the foot by overturning Roe v. Wade and now the Democrats returned the favor by pawing through Melania's private undergarments and accusing the ex President of criminal activity, and issuing a blanket search warrant. I have heard that his poll numbers are way up. Did the DOJ and FBI just make Donald J.Trump the next president and secure Republican control of the Senate? Maybe.
Also, how is presidential lying ever a factor? Which president lied his way into illegal wars? Answer - pretty much all of them, except perhaps Jimmy Carter.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
Half of the country doesn't vote
So at best less than a quarter of the public voted for Trump.
Also there's no gray areas here. The laws concerning these documents are clear. Whoever told you otherwise is ignorant.
Came across
this tweet today but WaPo is behind a paywall for me
The gist of the piece is apparently T is trying to beef up his legal team, but is getting a lot of NOs in response. Not completely surprising as Donald has a tendency to want his lawyers to be ultra-loyal and engage in unethical and worse conduct on his behalf that could expose lawyers to disciplinary action including license revocation or even prison.
I have represented 2 county judges, a constable,
a chief deputy (at the time he was announcing his run or sheriff), a county commissioner, and a district attorney. Some had 1, some had as many as 7 criminal charges against them. In each case, an election was held in which they couldn't participate, and all but one of them was found not guilty on every charge. One judge had a mistrial and died before a second trial could be scheduled. None of them returned to political life.
I remain skeptical of Trump's guilt. Politics is dirty, through and through.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
We are talking about the same guy?
The same guy who ran Trump University.
The same guy who ran the Trump Foundation.
The same guy who ran the Stop The Steal fund?
Really? This guy? You are skeptical of the guilt of THIS GUY?
Yes.
n/t
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Are you in the market for a bridge?
I've got one to sell. Cheap
I suggest...
you stop with the subtle insults.
You're right
I should take a break. I've gotten emotionally involved.
Sorry about that.
I did lots of essays on the Clinton foundation
My bad this was meant for wokkamile.
and the grift they were involved in before and during her tenure as SOS. If you think democrats hands aren’t just as dirty as republicans you just don’t know about it.
Quick what’s the first thing you think of when you hear about their foundation? Is it that they give AIDS drugs to Africa because if it is it’s just one of their scams.
Seems you despise the MAGAs as much as they despise shitlibs. You can thank the PTB for dividing people into 2 camps so they don’t stop to think who their real enemies are.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Hmm, you might
want to consider that Donald himself has been rather vigorous and even determined in trying to divide the country into 2 camps. That was always his campaign strategy. Don't build on your base, just energize it.
Has the Don spent even a minute in public in the last 7 yrs telling people to be sure to treat their political opponents with respect and hear them out reasonably and rationally? Jeez, even the crook and liar Dick Nixon occasionally did that.
I see
Democrats crap doesn’t stink nor does their calling every Trump supporter neo Nazis. Got it. Only Trump is bad and all democrats wear halos. Did you hear any of Schiff's rhetoric during the Trump impeachment hearings or anything regarding Russia gate? I sure did. Pelosi…."….." all true statements I guess.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.
Heh, politics is dirty
and so obviously are the politicians who create that dirt. One might even say that in some parts of the country, courtroom politics is dirty. And trials don't always result in Truth winning out.
Your lenient attitude towards Donald is interesting if woefully misguided. But though I disagree, I will try to live up to Voltaire, if possible ...
I suggest...
as I just did with gjohnsit, that you stop with the subtle insults.
Just wanted to step in and
Just wanted to step in and point out that you can think Trump is a terrible human being (and president) and still legitimately question his guilt in this matter. And it's the fault of the CIA doj fbi, et al that people feel that way. I've learned when it comes to trump, best wait until some real info comes out to decide.
If it was easy, everyone would do it.