Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

Even a potential guilty verdict would not disqualify Trump’s bid for the White House, according to Anna G. Cominsky, a professor at New York Law School, or keep him from serving if he was elected.

of course you can be President while not being able to vote

at a 1000-ft level, do we want to be seen as the party that thinks it's cool if presidential elections hinge on whether or not a candidate once had consensual sex ten years ago?

countdown to not my party

Was that the only thing that happened?

but as for the democratic party, it just doesn't fucking matter what they're "seen" as. no one left of a republican is going to see the democrats like that, and republicans already refer to democrats as marxists with seemingly zero awareness of what words mean. it just doesn't matter

I want to know what changed in NY. Remember when those two top prosecutors reportedly resigned in protest when Bragg wouldn't act? And then many weeks/months later, I guess a switch got flipped and he did?

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, March 31, 2023 3:57 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

thought this was a broader investigation into the Trump org and separate from the Stormy Daniels thing

Don't know why

Trump is an indicted guy

Stormy weather

at a 1000-ft level, do we want to be seen as the party that thinks it's cool if presidential elections hinge on whether or not a candidate once had consensual sex ten years ago?

most of the charges are about business fraud:

JUST IN: Donald Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in an indictment from a Manhattan grand jury, sources say https://t.co/GMfu9870dQ

— CNN (@CNN) March 31, 2023

Of course the GOP is going to find an angle (Stormy Daniels in this case) where they think they can get a rhetorical edge. They're going to do that for anything the other side does, world without end, amen. So what?

at a 1000-ft level, do we want to be seen as the party that thinks it's cool if presidential elections hinge on whether or not a candidate once had consensual sex ten years ago?

― Thus Sang Freud, Friday, March 31, 2023 5:16 PM bookmarkflaglink

Lol GTFO with this, that's not what he was indicted for.

Can we declare a moratorium on further discussion on how bullshit the charges are until THEY'RE UNSEALED???

Lukas otm

need I remind you the 2016 election literally hinged on Anthony Weiner sexting teenagers

And emails

Tbf I don't know if there are naked people in the emails

please

peemails

at a 1000-ft level, do we want to be seen as the party that thinks it's cool if presidential elections hinge on whether or not a candidate once had consensual sex ten years ago?

The two modern Presidents this would have cost us are Trump and Bill Clinton so... yeah, cool.

I can't believe I have to point this out but the crime is the misuse of funds, not the consensual sex

do we want to be seen as the party that thinks it's cool if presidential elections hinge on whether or not a candidate once had consensual sex ten years ago?

this needs some clarification. just for starters, who are the "we" being addressed, are "we" really a "party", how do "we" as a party have the thoughts you attribute to us, and who is doing the seeing of us. Later we can get into the hermaneutics of what is cool and the whole sex aspect of your rather maze-like query.

xp There are 30+ charges to address, Stormy payment may be the absolute least of them. And agreed, until the charges are made public prognostication is useless.

will be pretty funny if theres some very bad shit in there

we being the left-leaning folks who populate ilx, and who i think it's safe to assume largely vote for democrats vice republicans. as for who is doing the seeing i think it's mostly the swing voters i have in mind -- i.e. the few who swing elections one way or another. the relatively sane ones, in particular. the ones whos party affiliations aren't etched in stone. but to escape from the maze, what i am really saying is: if all those 30 counts of fraud turn out to be misdemeanor-like efforts to hide his payment of extortion money, those relatively sane swing voters might reasonably think that's a.o.k. behavior if the alternative is yet another sordid and trivial sidetrack from actual important election issues. like, is "rule of law" in this case the be-all and end-all? i would think, rather, that ensuring trump doesn't get reelected should be the be-all and end-all. in which case (and this, seemingly, is my opinion and no one else's here, but so be it) this court case is a really, really stupid way to go about it. i could be totally proved wrong on tuesday when he reveals his airtight case, but that's the way it looks to me at the moment.

swing voters!

xp you seem to have forgotten the other court cases

You heard it here, because of swing voters laws no longer exist

i have not forgotten them. i am talking about this one in specific.

Jon Stewart said it best recently

“He could become president anyway. Fareed, we either have the rule of law or we have no rule of law,” Stewart said. “The rule of law does not take into account if that might make you a martyr to somebody.”

we certainly do not have the rule of law but its worth trying idk

The only way to guarantee no Trump presidency at this point is for him to drop dead, and no actions taken should be done so with WHAT ABOUT THE UNDECIDED VOTERS in mind

Xpost

what i am really saying is: if all those 30 counts of fraud turn out to be misdemeanor-like efforts to hide his payment of extortion money, those relatively sane swing voters might reasonably think that's a.o.k. behavior if the alternative is yet another sordid and trivial sidetrack from actual important election issues.

we have no idea what's really in those 30+ indictments. your concerns are, at this point, entirely imaginary. but I think it is a near certainty that however all this plays out, the opinions espoused on ilx will have no measurable effect of the outcome of the next US presidential election. so, rest easy.

haha well that's true, but also remember this is a public forum so if the "others" want a good view of how "we" think they just have to look here.

It's not even the job of prosecutors or a grand jury to "think of how people might vote".

Comey sure didn't care

i agree it shouldn't be, but bragg campaigned by bragging about how many times he's sued trump, so he might not meet that standard.

The only way to guarantee no Trump presidency at this point is for him to drop dead

Aside from him being dead, the best part of this would be Don Jr. trying to run and eating shit.

Next Trump Up

It should be remembered that Michael Cohen served time in jail over crimes connected with this investigation even though he was a cooperating witness. The indictments handed down against Cohen clearly implicated another "individual 1" in the same crimes (who obviously was Trump). iow, the evidence against Trump was just as compelling as that against Cohen, but the prosecutor at the time chose not to seek indictments against "individual 1", undoubtedly because the criminal was the chief executive of the US government. If anything about this case was driven solely by "politics" that qualifies, and it tilted in Trump's favor.

Can anyone even slightly open to the idea of voting for a second dose of Donald Trump as president be described as "relatively sane"?

unless one wants to dismiss nearly half the country as not sane. i know we joke, but calling half the country insane is not a good look. michael cohen pled to eight counts, the least of which (3 i think?) were related to the hush money.

Lol are u Matt Taibbi

does he say stuff like that? no i'm not.

unless one wants to dismiss nearly half the country as not sane. i know we joke, but calling half the country insane is not a good look.

Well, first of all, we're not talking about "nearly half the country"; we're talking about 40% (max) of registered voters, who are less than 50% of adult Americans. So we're probably actually talking about 17-20% of the population. And no, I am not joking. If they are still willing to vote for Donald Trump to be president, after having already had him as president for four years and seeing what he brought to the job (racism, corruption, incompetence, et fucking cetera), they are either insane — in the sense that maybe they're suffering from dementia or some other organic brain dysfunction — or actively evil. And it doesn't really matter which, because the practical effect is the same.

Donald Trump is not a traditional "guy whose politics I disagree with". He's a criminal and a psychopath, and if you actively support him, you're a piece of shit. And if you don't currently actively support him, but you can be convinced to vote for a criminal and a psychopath as president, you are yourself fucked in the head. This idea you seem to have about giving people the benefit of the doubt, and assuming they're reasonable and rational actors — you need to let go of that shit. We don't live in that country anymore.

I can't even imagine giving benefit of the doubt to voting for a guy who proposed a Muslim ban, then tried to enact one his first month in office

insane is the wrong framing, I'd go with 'complicit with evil' same as it ever was.

Otm

(Four horsemen amassing)

it is not hard to imagine that people might be persuaded to vote if they don't buy bragg's alleged "novel legal theory" (kristoff) and think this is a political hit job

I don't think this describes any actual people (except for uh jason whitlock)

I like how Josh Marshall is thinking about this

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/how-to-think-about-the-trump-indictments-and-find-inner-peace

are there any previous examples of voters turning out because candidates are under criminal investigation? or does this supposed phenomenon only benefit donald trump?

lol

could maybe make a case for marion barry

feel like the right overestimates how conservative the population is, they'll vote for them because they're bigots or because they love guns or just really dislike liberals, but I don't think a whole lot of them are willing to go as far as "there is a nationwide conspiracy to steal the election and throw Trump in jail". even if they say that shit sometimes I think deep down they kinda think the news is real. I mean a hell of a lot of them got vaccinated.