Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

you work with what youve got

It’s not very good, but the talking point has been established. pic.twitter.com/VB5svffL7z

— Seth Cotlar (@SethCotlar) August 12, 2022

ok lol I'd missed the part about him making this a felony: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/10/trump-fbi-search-surveillance-law/

If Trump is found to have violated federal law in removing and retaining classified documents without authorization, he could be convicted of a felony punishable by five years in prison. And that conviction would be a felony carrying that punishment because of a law signed by President Donald Trump.

Not sure you just wanna be admitting it like this

New Trump statement just dropped:

He heard that his predecessor, who may or may not be a radical Islamic terrorist, kept "lots" of classified nuclear documents. pic.twitter.com/T3scYJcv6o

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) August 12, 2022

18 months after trump leaves:

"Hey can you pull me the file on the nuclear gizmo?"

"sure. hmmm, shit!"

"what's up?"

"folder is empty... wait, there's some old french fries at the bottom?"

"...are they moldy?"

"no, but how-"

"mcdonalds"

Guys 33 million pages seems way worse! That’s a lot more boxes just sitting on Martha’s Vineyard!

wow that's like 3 copies of infinite jest

as a side note, the 33 million documents to which you will see many references in the coming days are documents set aside for the Obama presidential library. they are not boxes of documents that Obama is personally holding on to at his private residence.

Wow, if the FBI has waited 1,999 days to get those nuclear documents back from Obama then they're worse at their jobs than I thought. Sad!

this is literally the "The Kennedys did it too" defense

I just googled and there’s even more nuclear documents on the web, Wikipedia alone- tons on nuclear

snitch

Fox News is also going with the sweet innocent baby angle

Fox's Sean Duffy floats a new Trump raid talking point -- Trump didn't pack the boxes from the White House, so he doesn't know what's in them.

"Do you think that he went through the boxes at Mar-a-Lago? Do you think he knows what he had in those boxes? I don’t think he did." pic.twitter.com/UZOOXbtx8c

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) August 12, 2022

the famously legitimate didnt know i was committing a crime defense

Melania told him they were Christmas decorations! You know, we say 'Merry Christmas' again...

the famous I accidentally stole nuclear secrets defense

do we actually know they included launch codes? or is launch codes sort of a shorthand for "detailed operational plans" or something?

we dont know what was in there all nuclear stuff of which there is tons is default classified and cannot be declassified by the president is my understanding based on reading a few articles and many tweets over the last couple days

word is now that these may be the NOC lists, which is the thing Tom Cruise stole in Mission Impossible lol

Anyone consider that maybe Trump just wanted to make nuclear weapons?

For the moment, I'm just gonna pretend that we live in the world where this shit actually produces results instead of the world where he once again eludes any semblance of consequence before stealing the 2024 election and establishing the Trump dynasty of god emperors.

i think it could go either way

The predictability is so tiring..

"I didn't do it, it's a witch hunt"... "Well it was planted, you see"... "OBAMA DID IT TOO"

I wonder if he is going to try to retroactively declare Mar- a - Lago as a presidential library and claim anyone could have made an appointment to see the “nuclear”.

opening a library in Florida is also a felony though

Actual photo of the Obama Presidential Library
https://www.mlive.com/resizer/D5R-Xho4kC1djylNedt11omxbww=/1280x0/smart/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/advancelocal/5ALCNB6YR5CBVL6Y6IT5AGKJPU.JPG

2017!

https://www.theonion.com/mar-a-lago-assistant-manager-wondering-if-anyone-coming-1819579801

The Very. First. Issue. Of Spy. 1986. pic.twitter.com/yGEMKwxjoZ

— David Kamp (@MrKamp) August 12, 2022

Actual Politico subhead:

Republicans who days ago were near-united in blasting the Justice Department are allowing that nuclear weapons-related materials at Mar-a-Lago might be problematic.

he loves nuclear its one of his things

Actual WaPo head:

Event venues (like Trump’s Mar-a-Lago) are not good places to store nuclear secrets

they should be stored at Hobby Lobby

everything is problematic these days, I'll bet DOD even put trigger warnings on these specs for advanced weapons systems

I wouldn't put it past Trump to steal nuclear documents and store them at his resort just to own the libs. "Boo hoo, snowflakes!"

why are you so determined to find a million reasons to let him off the hook for this?

This story is lol, but I'm going to guess everyone will have forgotten about it in three weeks (except perhaps as a right-wing talking point).

Probably because they will have discovered something even worse. Anyway, he's totally on the hook for this (whatever this turns out to be, exactly). But it is completely in character for Trump to commit a major crime for the stupidest reason possible, vs some sort of ambitious "I'm going to smuggle these nuclear secrets out of the White House and sell them to the Saudis for billions!" scheme. He's such a fuck-up. So it's kind of like the Trump version of Occam's Razor: what is the stupidest possible reason for him to commit a crime?

xxpost Because he was the President, and if he wants to be the President of the New Breakaway Republic of Flexas he has to bring Nuclear with him. What's a country without Nuclear? It's like when you leave one job for another, you don't leave all that experience behind.

“I can tell you that there are a number of things that fall under the umbrella of nuclear weapons, but that are not necessarily things that are truly classified. Many of them you can find on your own phone,” said Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Other members invoked the 2017 congressional baseball shooting and, yet again, the Hillary Clinton email scandal.

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) asked: “Was it nuclear? Was it ― heck, maybe it was aliens. That’s the point. We don’t know. We are asking them to tell us.”

Heck, we don't know. It might have been Melania's famous goulash recipe.

Because Trump hasn't been convicted in court yet that means he is innocent and must be released

heck, maybe it was aliens

that's the point.

more importantly, he says he is innocent. guilty people don't say that.

guys I want to remind u of something

~innocent until PROVEN guilty~

ergo

if he has not been proven guilty in a court of law

that means he is innocent

and legally

that means he can no longer be investigated

Regular reminder to the Biden administration and the DOJ that much of the public will judge how severe Trump's misconduct is based on how severe the consequences he will face are, not the other way around!

— Michael Tae Sweeney (@mtsw) August 12, 2022

"the power of positive thinking" case for the prosecution

he's like the ultimate 1-dimensional chess player. his big scheme to squeeze Ukraine for dirt on the Bidens was just to call Zelensky up on the phone and say it outright while like 50 different people were listening. i would be shocked if there were any plan at play in his mind beyond some variation of "having this stuff makes me feel cool"

It's kind of a shame, the one person reckless and wild enough to release secret proof of aliens also turned out to be the one imbecile so intellectually incurious he probably didn't bother to look. He probably just did the top-secret archives equivalent of googling himself all day.

xpost The way I heard it put yesterday was that the DOJ is playing chess but he is eating checkers. Might have to credit Jennifer fuckin' Rubin for that one.

agents left this behind

https://khristore.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/s-l1600-17.jpg

Breaking on WSJ: FBI removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked as Top Secret, as well as information about the President of France, binders of photos, a handwritten note and an executive grant of clemency for Roger Stone.

— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) August 12, 2022

BTW, it's one hour before deadline and nothing has been released/revealed yet. Probably because of the audit.