Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

otm

I have been a news-centric human for half a century. I went to journalism school! I have yet to get a useful piece of information from a television show. And I don't _think_ I have ever had my mind changed or my opinion shaped by a television show, but perhaps I am wrong about that and am flattering myself.

re the combing of evidence - the guy hires people whose literal job it is to cover his tracks, so due diligence has to be a little more assiduous if the law is to be applied equitably

More like "combover" of evidence amirite

I teach and still practice a bit of journalism yet Willie Geist makes me weak.

TRUMP'S LAWYERS: "Whatever you do, don't piss off the judge."

TRUMP: pic.twitter.com/ksaPl7h98Y

— StrictlyChristo 🇺🇦🌻 (@StrictlyChristo) March 31, 2023

Last word OTM

I thought he misspelled “appalling” at first but now I get it.

He’s doing that thing where he distills an entire sentence down into one heavily emphasized word

Guy who is deeply hated by 55% of voters: “what are the chances that someone hates me?!?”

This was an entrance question at Wharton but somehow he skated his way through the admissions process

lol donnie trump is gonna get put down like a dog baby

im gonna be the trumps going to jail and it will solve all of our problems guy itt, it really needs really needs it

ty for yr service

cant wait to see donlad trump in chains!

it could actually happen tho

it's more than his base though. i would never dream of voting for trump in a million years but when i read these words in the nytimes it smells of "guy searching for a way to indict trump" not "rule of law being upheld."

I think they're basically one and the same. I mean it's not as though, say, it was Ted Cruz who won in 2016, who was later found to have paid off a porn star and now 7 years later got indicted for it. I think that is something that would probably provoke the reaction some people are worried about, that left moderates would go "hey I don't like the guy but this is pretty extreme".

I'm mostly just paraphrasing Josh Mashall here but Trump is a very extreme case, he's unlike anything we've ever seen in American politics. While the election was going on his dumb "university" was in the process of being exposed as a total fraud, he was on tape bragging about being a sexual predator (while also having a dozen rape allegations being investigated), and he was also actively trying to get Russia to release dirt on Hillary Clinton. As President the dude was committing crime constantly - he forced foreign diplomats to stay at his hotel at insane prices and extorting the President of Ukraine were 2 big examples. Even stuff that was technically legal also felt like a massive abuse of the system, such as using something like $100,000,000 of taxpayer money to go golfing at his resort twice a week. When he lost the election he committed even more serious crimes, trying to extort Georgia to "find" votes, inciting an insurrection, and stealing classified documents for (apparently?) no real reason. If we decide as a country not just to let this slide but to also just treat this dude as just another politician, then we don't really have a country, we have a dictatorship. I don't care if this is like the Al Capone thing, where he's a massive criminal and you just get him on taxes. I don't think anyone on the left does either. He's a crook and everyone knows it.

idk if trump is exactly extreme if anything his crimes are smalltime compared to typical presidential behavior, but he did fail to understand how to play the game, you have to color inside the lines to maintain presidential privilege, for instance obama bailing out wall st and happily just letting them carry on with business as usual afterwards gets him a couple mil for a speech immediately upon retirement and the law doesnt care, id say what trump is more is heterodox in behavior and rhetoric if not underlying politics, which is how he became president in the first place insulting orthodox washington etc

it's more than his base though. i would never dream of voting for trump in a million years but when i read these words in the nytimes it smells of "guy searching for a way to indict trump" not "rule of law being upheld."

george bush did war crimes and so forth you get the picture xp self

xp yes otm exactly, it’s real smalltime shit compared to the usual crimes of the office, but that’s who he is!

he couldnt not be himself god bless

of those things you mention only the possession of top secret documents strikes me as clearly criminal. but is clouded by the issue of other pols also being found to have classified stuff in their archives. others are not crimes at all (if you replace "dirt" with "information" there's nothing actually wrong with seeking information on your opponent whereever you can find it). other things on your list point to a diseased mind much more than to criminality. i think there has been a growing awareness of trump's mental instability, even among former advocates, and they've been looking elsewhere for leadership. this case seems to want to halt that trend and throw the spotlight back on trump, and all indications are that it's very weak sauce. remains to be seen what happens but i don't get good vibes.

i think there has been a growing awareness of trump's mental instability, even among former advocates, and they've been looking elsewhere for leadership.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/29/fox-poll-trump-desantis-00089593

Your concern trolling is appreciated, though.

of those things you mention only the possession of top secret documents strikes me as clearly criminal.

Grow up and say what your real problem is.

my problem, such as it is, is that i would dearly like for the democratic candidate to win the next election.

I mean look at the guy's Hannity interview - Hannity is constantly saying stuff like "oh you wouldn't do this, you didn't mean it like that, this isn't you..." and then Trump would immediately go "no, I have the right to do that, it's not wrong, I can take anything I want, it's called presidential privelege, it all belongs to me". I would posit that if you let *that* guy run for President again, you don't really have a rule of law.

and yes I know Dubya and (to a lesser extent) Obama committed crimes in office, and that in some sense they were a bit more serious, but I would say that's only because Trump is not a very smart or savvy criminal. I mean the dude straight up tried to steal a presidential election in broad daylight. That's pretty serious. I shudder to think what he would have done had we gotten into some kind of foreign conflict. If 9/11 happened on his watch I feel like we would've wound up with something somehow much worse than what we actually got.

of those things you mention only the possession of top secret documents strikes me as clearly criminal.

his phone call with Raffensperger seems pretty blatantly illegal to me

yeah I'm confused. TSF: are you arguing that Trump hasn't committed any crimes during his political career, or that none of the current cases against him are legit (but there are other cases that would be)?

Something something martyr Trump red tidal wave will crush us* all

*¯\_(ツ)_/¯

others are not crimes at all (if you replace "dirt" with "information" there's nothing actually wrong with seeking information on your opponent whereever you can find it).

not true! there is actually a pretty well defined way you can and can't do this! he literally withheld foreign aid to Ukraine (who were invaded the next year!) because they weren't giving him information on Hunter Biden! he's on tape pressuring election officials in Georgia to make up votes for him! lets say he actually succeeded and intimiated enough governors in swing states into "finding missing votes"....would you think it was a crime then?

and yes I know Dubya and (to a lesser extent) Obama committed crimes in office, and that in some sense they were a bit more serious,

all three were involved in egregious war crimes, there's no reason to rank them on the 'serious crime' scale

if you replace "dirt" with "information" there's nothing actually wrong with seeking information on your opponent whereever you can find it

if you replace "dirt" with "information" there's nothing actually wrong with seeking information on your opponent whereever you can find it

if you replace "dirt" with "information" there's nothing actually wrong with seeking information on your opponent whereever you can find it

my problem, such as it is, is that i would dearly like for the democratic candidate to win the next election.

― Thus Sang Freud,

Have you not paid attention to what happened in 2018, 2022, and, uh, 2020? I'm a queer man living in fucking Florida and you're the one worried about exciting the MAGAs?

i mean what bush did was much worse it does deserve to be said xp

also yeah trump attempting a coup does rise above smalltime

Reveal Your Uncool Legal Beliefs Here.

xp it was a smalltime type coup though, you know Cheney would have done it professionally!

yea the conception and execution deeply were flawed but nevertheless

wait, the dirt on hillary thing wasn't the ukraine thing. those were two different things.

Have you not paid attention to what happened in 2018, 2022, and, uh, 2020?

yes we've been scraping by. we narrowly pulled out a victory against the craziest candiate of all time! baby steps. but i'd like to keep things headed in the right direction. this seems to me like a big backwards step.

Indicting him for a crime is a step in the right direction.

i agree its good

we'll see.

i mean what bush did was much worse it does deserve to be said xp

― lag∞n, Saturday, April 1, 2023 11:00 AM (seven minutes ago)

yeah I rethought that after posting tbh; Obama and Trump (war) crimes obvs descend from Bush's actions. plus there's a level of zeal to the W administration's criminal activities that outpaces the others. that said, they all did grotesquely immoral shit

yes we've been scraping by. we narrowly pulled out a victory against the craziest candiate of all time

It was the first time an incumbent lost since 1992, in an era where things are so polarized that that only a handful of states decide every election

idk if trump is exactly extreme if anything his crimes are smalltime compared to typical presidential behavior, but he did fail to understand how to play the game, you have to color inside the lines to maintain presidential privilege, for instance obama bailing out wall st and happily just letting them carry on with business as usual afterwards gets him a couple mil for a speech immediately upon retirement and the law doesnt care, id say what trump is more is heterodox in behavior and rhetoric if not underlying politics, which is how he became president in the first place insulting orthodox washington etc

― lag∞n, Saturday, April 1, 2023 9:41 AM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I agree with this but I don't really like the framing because it plays into that common GOP idea that people just don't like Trump because he's an outsider, he's mean on Twitter, he's abrasive and "speaks his mind" or whatever. Trump was very clear about wanting to turn America into a dictatorship in which he was the king. He very much wanted to transform the American political system into one in which a Democrat could never win again. He was explicit about using state violence to accomplish this and even directed the National Guard to tear gas BLM protestors. He got his supporters to ransack the Capitol building and refused to call them off even as the violence was unfolding. He talked shit about every single one of our allies and bragged about how well he got along with Putin and Kim Jong Un. So I think in the broad sense Trump is much more dangerous than his predecessors, the difference is overthrowing a major nation is a lot harder than fucking shit up in the Middle East. By the way just in case I'm unclear on this I think Dubya deserved to go to Guantanamo.

TSF, we keep posting evidence, you respond, "I dunno, I got vibes, man."

By the way just in case I'm unclear on this I think Dubya deserved to go to Guantanamo.

Then Obama couldn't have closed it!