I've had people say it's a hardening, actually ~ US presidential election 2016 part 9/11 never forget

i'm not sure why trump thinks that would work, both against clinton and with the public. he's not debating Bill.

really locking up the asshole vote

I'm fully for stuntcasting/attempted psyops with stuffing the front row of debates, just to see who Trump would pick as a obviously genius idea.

In Trump's mind, Gennifer Flowers is Hillary's natural rival, because that's what he thinks women think about. That's why that makes sense.

this is shaping up like an SNL sketch.

I have a question: has anyone ever sued over something said in a presidential debate? Can they? If Clinton accuses Trump of corruption (or vice versa) or if she said something like 'I wouldn't invest in one of his companies, never mind vote for him', would that leave them open to being sued?

i would imagine only if it was libel that could be proven to cause damage to his brand, which would probably have a high threshold to pass, which is why most misstatements aren't outright lies but just distorted truths.

I can't imagine anybody would do it even if it met that standard anyway, it is probably deemed 'part of the game'.

NRO World is going apeshit over the Cheryl Mills immunity.

x-post

I mean, he's very litigious. It would seem crazy for any other candidate to do so, but I don't even remotely understand Trump or his motivations.

he'd have to prove like that she said something patently false that like denied him the front cover of GQ or something. with actual damages.

would love to hear the judge tell Trump that if he wants to sue for damages, he should sue himself.

Has Trump ever won a libel action?

Melania will win against the Daily Mail if it goes to court but that's a different situation.

Trying to reconcile the relative closeness of the polls right now with this Gallup survey on various questions pertaining to "qualities and characteristics" isn't easy. Either a whole lot hinges on perceptions of health, or there's a major disconnect in some percentage of Trump's support.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/195755/debate-looms-voters-distrust-clinton-trump.aspx?g_source=Election%202016&g_medium=newsfeed&g_campaign=tiles

"I think he's unqualified, has poor judgement, can't manage things very well, isn't particularly likeable, and doesn't care about me, but I am going to vote for him."

so basically voters think they are Nancy from Oliver!

My analysis of that is kind of like "I assume his cabinet and advisers will mostly run things but he will project a strong image of America to the world and I dunno, maybe he will make good trade deals..."

But his advisers are fucking Roger Stone and his ilk so, yikes!

Through war and recession, Americans born since 9/11 have had to grow up fast, and they deserve a grown-up president.

otm

idk an infant president might be nice

not if it's a Clinton amirite

The Founders, in their infinite wisdom, foresaw the danger of infant presidents and provided the Republic with a bulwark against them in Article II, Section 1, paragraph 5. Paradoxically, they made no provisions against infantile presidents.

did the founders specify EARTH years?

this is why my new plug-in which inserts "earth" before every use of "years" is going to be such a hit and eliminate so much confusion

A question froma bemused nonamerican... Why, given the apparent obvious criminality of some things Trump has done (bribes etc), is there no police investigation going on? Or is there one happening but not much reported on?

Justice is bifurcated, if you haven't seen the statue. It's a woman with a blindfold that's pulled down on one eye giving a wink to rich people.

New York's Attorney General is investigating Trump University, that's ongoing. There may be others.
The federal US Attorneys may have cases in the wings, like going after the Trump Foundation for the alleged bribe of the Florida AG.
While calling for a grand jury against a candidate and/or his or her family during the lead up to an election isn't strictly prohibited (at least as far as I know), it does seem like something that ought to be avoided for the sake of democracy. Plenty of time after November to determine whether crimes have been committed and if the state wants to bring a case.

Tomobot, that's so myopic. After November, Trump might well be the face of the State. We all saw how well that worked with Berlusconi. Delaying justice, or even allowing electoral considerations to get in the way, is actually anti-democratic. Avoiding prosecuting Trump 'for the sake of democracy' is a bizarre stance to take. Why should anyone who has the power/money/name-recognition to get on a party ticket be granted a stay of justice? If anything, they should be more heavily scrutinized.

It's not like I don't understand that indicting Trump could be seen as political. It's just that viewing it as such reflects a disbelief in the legitimacy of the state (which Trump supporters definitely have). Reinforcing that view is a terrible idea.

If the incumbent admin was Republican, you think it would be valuable for them to start holding grand juries and pressing charges against the Clinton camp? Let's think about that for eight seconds or so.

State AGs can press on at will. For the federal Attorney General, who is appointed by the sitting President, to start pressing cases on one candidate or the other sets a terrible precedent.

Just because Trump is the nominee of our other political party doesn't make him the exact equivalent of the other... he can go as low as he wants and no matter what he's always equal to the person on the other side. That type-of thinking shows an incredibly serious flaw in our political system.

It doesn't set a bad precedent. Like have a basic understanding of legal fictions for a second (or eight): the whole system is legitimized by its supposed impartiality. And frankly, it mostly works that way as well. Also, nobody's talking about the federal AG: it's NY state where he's violated charity laws, Florida where he bribed Pam Bondi. Sure I'd advise the federal gov to be careful if they pursued charges, but I'm also not concerned with what's necessarily a good idea politically -- I can say with certain that not pursuing legal action because someone is a candidate is not healthy vis-a-vis the interests or perceptions of democracy, which is what you said. Like, does it get easier if he's elected? It doesn't.

To wit: if there's a breach of the law the feds should pursue it. Nobody except a bunch of useless people that already decry federal power/legitimacy (i.e. Trump voters) are going to give a shit.

All I'm saying is that the federal case in Florida is probably going to be delayed until after the election and that's for a good reason.
Nobody is taking the position that the laws shouldn't be enforced. JFC.

well 'after November' rankled me. that's exactly the potential problem.

The opposite of that is the potential problem I'm trying to get you to understand. The USAG has tremendous latitude to bring cases, including completely frivolous bullshit. They don't want to have that power unnecessarily curtailed by Congress, so they don't exercise it in ways that could be construed as partisan, and anything you do in at this point in an election is going to be construed as partisan. It's all game theory shit, really, and it's not unreasonable.

It's weird to me that he has gotten away with not paying his bills in full.

That's all about creditors not having the resources or the inclination to go after him for it. It's worked for him for decades.
Matters of contract are for the civil justice system, mostly, not criminal.

I know but still -- it's essentially stealing. A family friend knew someone who built bookshelves at one of his properties in the 90s and was paid a fraction of what they agreed on. He does this all the time, often to independent contractors who would never have agreed to these lower rates he pays.

Ppl could have literally lost their businesses due to this lost income. Maybe some have.

a rich business person not honoring the terms of a contract and banking on the victim not being able to afford or muster the energy to fight it, you don't say....

people have definitely lost their small businesses because they got ripped off by Trump. That's been reported on. It just hasn't had a lot of legs, because again, dog bites man.

instead of suing him, they should just spraypaint dicks on all of his properties

I don't know, to me the precedential concern isn't being seen as being political even though you're prosecuting for a legitimate reason (and obviously they'd be careful) it's the chilling effect of not pursuing charges due to fears re: public perception or congress. In the three possible scenarios: 1) trump gets hit with charges now; 2) trump wins; 3) trump loses, it's more political to hit him once Clinton's in power (i.e. revenge) and not going to happen if he wins. It used to be being elected protected you from prosecution -- you're arguing that immunity should extend to candidates as well.

Again, never said anything about immunity from prosecution. And for having called me myopic I think you may have lost sight of the fact that we have one of these things every four years and the incumbent isn't always on the same side as you.

I'm struck with the parallels between Berlusconi and Trump (down to allegations of sexual misconduct with minors). Small solace that our legal system is somewhat less corrupt, Berlusconi was able to weather charges for 9 years as Prime Minister.

On the Carson rerun tonight on Antenna TV, they just had this Op-Ed bit with Floyd R. Turbo protesting the idea of Puerto Rico getting statehood. If you added multiple pauses and constant restatements of the statements made, it would work as a Trump speech.

"The AG needs to press a case now because Trump might win" is saying precisely that the case should be politicized to keep Trump from being elected. It's not like a federal case is going to be past a few meetings in the office to decide staffing in eight weeks.

So tonight I was talking about Trump with a friend at a bar and "Ignition (remix)" started and I realized Trump is like R. Kelly for undecided voters: either he works on you in a way that lets you dissociate, or the disgust keeps you from considering him. But it's not a rational decision.

because it's 2:46am and this is the best possible thing i could be doing, i want to point out a small lol to be had at this little doodledoo on digby:

The NY Times endorsed Clinton but actually they're heavily promoting Trump for president. How heavily? Literally by a 2:1 margin.

Put another way, the Times believes that what Trump says and does is twice as important as what his closest rival says and does.

Think I'm kidding? If you go now (now being September 24, 2016 at 2:18 EST) to the NY Times Web site and do a word search, you will come up with

Trump: 16 mentions
Clinton: 8 mentions

2 Pictures of Trump
1 picture of Clinton

It's no wonder he's pulled even.

then you do a quick ctrl+F on digby's front page and find:

119 mentions of trump
65 mentions of clinton

grifters are good for business

identify with the aggressor