Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

that's the spirit

It would have happened with Nixon but for the pardon.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Tuesday, March 21, 2023 2:21 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe who knows but they took care of it, regardless trump doesnt have that luxury

my question is why are all these defeatist voices showing up today, when the only source of the exact day of the supposed indictment was Trump himself. we believe him now?

like, he wasn't the source that an indictment was going to happen. he was the source that stipulated it'd happen on Tuesday.

like Trump adopting such an abrasive, unlikeable persona really paid off. his supporters/sycophants can just say "you're only doing this because you hate him!" and it's not totally false. people do really fucking hate him. and not in the same way they hated Dubya

my question is why are all these defeatist voices showing up today

hey now I've been camp "nothing important will happen" for a while

The only consequence he is likely to face is his own death, which I hope will be protracted and full of suffering.

like the more realistic reaction here is, he will be indicted, but the charges won't be that heavy, and he's not going to serve any time for these particular charges, but probably pay some huge fine or something.

other charges in the pipeline are more serious, but dude isn't like going to be lifting weights in prison any time soon.

indicting him seems pretty doable from where we are now, bringing home a conviction tho idk an actual trump criminal trial would be such a shitstorm lol, mb theyll let him plead out for a slap on the wrist go home with a conviction of a president in their pocket

The main thing I'm tracking is that the only establishment people out there talking about an indictment being political or divisive are GOP ghouls whose jobs depend upon Trump's fortunes. Are there centrist columnists decrying the arrest of a former President? I don't know. Seems like if he was really going to avoid indictment here there'd be all these retired politicians talking about decency and moderation.

Stevie, you appear to be ascribing power to people who have exactly zero amount of power

Like, there is utterly no way my posting "it won't happen" on ILX has any bearing on what does or doesn't happen in the world.

And: being indicted (which is actually possible, even likely) is not the same thing as being arrested (which is what Trump claimed).

I maintain that the only reason he said he would be "arrested" is so that he can claim victory when it does not happen. He has preemptively cast anything short of a cuffed perp-walk as a victory.

It is the most rudimentary PR: manage expectations such that you can spin things so that you look like a winner no matter what happens.

i mean yea, it definitely seems more likely that he will than he wont, but even still it seems meaningless. he'll pay a 50k fine and fundraise 500k off the persecution complex

Let's all show decency and moderation toward the man who took large dumps on the national rug.

how much money do u think his followers have left

They haven't maxed out their credit cards yet . . . unless they didn't uncheck that little "automatically renew" box.

I'm sure whatever happened was his attorneys told him he was likely to be indicted between Monday and Wednesday, and Trump, being a complete moron, jumped to the conclusion that he was being arrested on Tuesday. Because of course he doesn't know the difference between an arrest and an indictment, or an arrest and coming in for arraignment. And yeah, assuming the pending charges are what we assume them to be, they're pretty minor, in the scheme of things, and will not result in any significant punishment. But the stuff down the line (Georgia and classified docs) could, as could the fraud case in progress, as could the Jean Carroll case, as could etc.. He'll never see the inside of a a cell, but this deep pile of prosecutions isn't doing him any favors.

but does the doubtless earned cynicism not translate into adverse force against the possibility of something happening?

this deep pile of prosecutions isn't doing him any favors

I dunno, seems like a lot of people were trying to forget him and move past him. Including people who voted for him twice.

Him being prosecuted / persecuted puts him back in the headlines, which is where he wants to be. The MAGAheads (who might have drifted into irrelevance) are all fired up again, due to the lawfare against their orange god.

he doesn't know the difference between an arrest and an indictment, or an arrest and coming in for arraignment

Josh otm. His red-hat brigade knows even less about how the world works. Hence, a PR coup for the Donald no matter what happens. Or doesn't happen.

I don't buy the whole "prosecution helps him, actually" line of thinking

yeah it's absurd and I am FPing everyone who says it

Yeah, prosecution might get him back on the front pages, but it doesn't earn him any new support. Just makes fans of his extralegal shenanigans that much more frenzied.

I don't think it helps him either but it's true that Trump has a spell over such a wide swath of the Republican base which makes it real difficult for any consequences to happen. Like, the man could very well be elected president again next year. But if DeSantis actually manages to convert the Trump people and becomes the nominee I think what lagoon said is probably otm, once he's completely out of power nobody's gonna be loyal to him

_but does the doubtless earned cynicism not translate into adverse force against the possibility of something happening?_


Stevie if any of us had this power I doubt we’d be in this scenario.

unless it's a clown car field, you have to get *some* votes from chamber of commerce types to win a GOP nomination. 0 votes from them is not enough. and you need them to turn out to win a national election. him being charged with a felony is not good news for him, be serious.

xp ikr like you’d waste that kind of power on that sort of shite if you had it

“Oh no, one of the thirty people who still reads ilx and is eligible to vote in America saw a post calling Biden a rapist, the race is over”

um excuse me there are like a thousand lurkers it’s a legit concern

I mean, it was an idle thought, and I'm not imagining it would have a concrete effect on voters, I was considering it more as helping build a general cynicism that saps any pressure for an indictment/prosecution to happen, and in a wider sense rather than just on ILX. It is dumb, I guess.

I don't want to feed into this BS much further, but this was pretty amusing:

Trump’s increasing insistence that he wants to be handcuffed behind his back for a perp walk appears to come from various motivations, including that he wants to project defiance in the face of what he sees as an unfair prosecution and that it would galvanize his base for his 2024 presidential campaign.

But above all, people close to Trump said, he was deeply anxious that any special arrangements – like making his first court appearance by video link or skulking into the courthouse – would make him look weak or like a loser.

...

Trump ... has told various allies over the weekend that he didn’t care if someone shot him – he would become “a martyr”. He later added that if he got shot, he would probably win the presidency in 2024, the sources said.

Win/win?

New via Insider: The Manhattan 'hush-money' grand jury has been told not to come in on Wednesday, a cancellation that comes on the brink of a possible historic indictment vote of Trump, according to two law enforcement officers.

— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) March 22, 2023

ridiculous

Trump ... has told various allies over the weekend that he didn’t care if someone shot him – he would become “a martyr”. He later added that if he got shot, he would probably win the presidency in 2024, the sources said.

this is funny

feel free to find out, Asshole

pre-emptively removing bookmark, but there can be a ton of reasons for this that have nothing to do w/ having 'cold feet', as the article insinuates, and the prosecutors legally can't tell you why the delay, but I'm sure the internet is going to clusterfuck over the fact that Bragg didn't meet Trump's self-professed indictment deadline

what if the guy Trump shot in the middle of 5th ave. was...himself?

Trump ... has told various allies over the weekend that he didn’t care if someone shot him – he would become “a martyr”. He later added that if he got shot, he would probably win the presidency in 2024, the sources said.

Someone's been watching Bob Roberts.

hopefully it's more like Bullworth

fwiw same dude is reporting that grand jury is on standby for tomorrow, Thursday. Gotta stretch this shit out, I guess ...

Trump triggering a suicide vest when the Marshals try to take him would be fun.

xp
this world turns its back on God, we must kill to join him

Wait a minute, maybe it is happening after all!!!!

Donald Trump in witness box at #ProudBoys trial. pic.twitter.com/mXqOeHBeu2

— norm_pattis (@PattisNorm) March 22, 2023

He was indicted LIKE A DOG

MAGArf

whoever owns that dog is amazingly committed to pwning the libs at every possible opportunity

Roaning the Ribs.

i would assume jurors being told not to come in might have more to do with security fears than anything else?

wonder if this is why, this thread implies something pretty major was discovered in the classified docs thing recently

BREAKING: Potential earthquake coming in Mar-a-Lago documents case. DC Circuit sets unprecedented schedule requiring Trump counsel to submit filing by midnight TONIGHT and then DOJ to reply by 6 a.m. tomorrow morning.

Did the court see evidence of national security threats?

— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) March 22, 2023

The fact that the DC Circuit ordered Trump's lawyer to testify to a grand jury about the classified documents case is in itself pretty compelling evidence that something very serious was discovered. Compelling a lawyer to breach client confidentiality is extremely rare. Whatever the outcome of this, I'm thinking most of the court's records will be sealed. We plebians won't get to see the inside scoop.

The "I'd win if I got shot" thing is def Trump remembering what happened to his old pal Bolsonaro.

MORE: Mar-a-Lago bombshell may be, in part, that Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran RECORDED and transcribed conversations, possibly between himself and Donald Trump. Corcoran has been ordered to hand over transcriptions.

There is something crucial in Corcoran’s documents or testimony.

— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) March 22, 2023

Circuit Court ruled against Trump/attorney, attorney compelled to testify against Trump:

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/3913007-appeals-court-backs-doj-forcing-trump-attorney-to-aid-documents-probe/