Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

It's more to do with this theme park talk after that a link to that testimony was dropped yesterday.

you guys should see some of the other stuff hes done

Guys your stale zings aren’t as important as maybe discussing the literal trial against him now, if you’re not interested then you’re free not to comment, but we’re also free to look at how eager people were to change the subject when that testimony was posted, and draw our own conclusions.

I can speak only for myself, I didn't mean to change the subject, the crosstalk is just sometimes hard to keep up with. I don't think anyone is interested in minimizing his egregious behavior, I just have zero hope that anything resembling justice will come of this latest trial.

no ones changing subject lol get a grip

Justice would be him getting eaten by rabid jackals.

im pretty sure im the one who hates him the most and understands how bad he is

Yeah whatever you’re so irony poisoned it doesn’t matter, I get it

xp Marla?

Dud

yes everyone who isnt behaving according to you thread rules must be poisoned ok

It is pretty easy to get jaded when this motherfucker does quite literally whatever the hell he wants and suffers absolutely no consequences.

If what you're getting from these posts is "these ppl think we don't know Trump is bad" you're very much missing the point.

mamy xposts

lagoon, friend, you’re being an asshole

xp Thanks for the explainer.

lagoon, friend, you’re being an asshole

― slai gorgeous-alexander (m bison), Thursday, April 27, 2023 5:13 PM (thirty-seven seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

nope sorry im drawing the line here feel free to message me if you want to talk more

That was directed at lagoon, not you jim.

xpost

Peace

If what you're getting from these posts is "these ppl think we don't know Trump is bad" you're very much missing the point.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, April 27, 2023 5:12 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

what exactly is the point here i looked back and i cant even follow the thread tbh

the important thing is to immediately assume bad faith

I just wanted to post about what he did to E Jean and how sad it made me that it affected her life so entirely. I don’t care if he goes to prison for it — I care that we never forget who he is and it’s also worth remembering how brave a person has to be to take him on publicly. E Jean Carroll had a pretty good life going and then this asshead came along in her 50s and assaulted her. Just wtf. That’s all.

yeah its awful, hes awful, i hope she and others hes harmed can find some relief

It's extraordinary both legally and financially that E. Jean Carroll could bring this claim at all. A lot of mountains had to be moved to bring this to trial. Her testimony is harrowing and 100% credible.

Amanda Marcotte: https://www.salon.com/2023/04/27/e-jean-carroll-rape-trial-full-misogny/

Reading about this trial it’s the same old pattern that repeats over centuries cos it works. Trump’s lawyer is constantly picking holes, knowing that he doesn’t have to completely demolish the story (which he can’t) and just suggesting lack of credibility is enough, which usually it is. Women lie, they’re motivated by money, they do contradictory things, it doesn’t matter that my client is as prolific a liar as you’ll meet, what about her, what did she do. It goes from what he did to what she did, and there honestly is a point where these strategies are so well known, and yet people still fucking fall for them. Misogyny is so pervasive. I can’t imagine a number in the world large enough to persuade me to bring a trial against this man, let alone for this, if I was in her shoes. I imagine she must live in constant fear and although her transcripts read as calm, she’s had a lot of time to think about it and it’s just what happened. I wish her well but I fear the worst.

yeah i hope she wins a gets some money at least but the risk of bringing the suit is pretty big, like im sure shes effectively in hiding now and prob will be for a while

That article BrianB posted about the misogyny defense makes a good point about framing.

"The misogyny defense attempts to shift the frame from "did he do it?" to "isn't she annoying by making a fuss over this?" So many of us have been conditioned to dismiss women's voices that the misogyny defense still, in 2023, has a whole lot of power."

I wonder if Trump is gonna even make an appearance in the courtroom

If he doesn't, that will speak volumes to the jury

He won't. It's part of the (flawed) strategy to subliminally suggest that E. Jean isn't someone worth listening to.

E. Jean Carroll expressed that she wanted her day in court and to tell her story. So that's her goal. I get it. Not everyone wants that but I think it's important to accept that being heard and seen is what E. Jean Carroll wants out of it.

It was heartbreaking to hear that, of the 2 friends E. Jean Carroll told about the rape at the time, one friend told E. Jean to go to the police (Lisa Birnbach - respect to her) and the other told her not to bother. Just shows you how powerful and internalized the misogynistic culture of victim blaming and shaming is.

I think not going to the police is tough because it’s not so much internalised misogyny so much as structural. Will the police take a person seriously? Will they leave a rape kit on the shelf? Will the person have to relive the experience and tell the story again and again while the police ask intrusive and painful questions?

One of the reasons rape and sexual assault are so underreported is due to structural disinterest; it’s not that people don’t know they should go to the police but it’s more like, on the balance of probabilities will my life become worse as a result of this?

I would never recommend someone didn’t report, but I’d also entirely understand why they didn’t.

Thanks for posting what I was going to post, gyac— there are plenty of reasons why people don’t go to the police in sexual assault cases, not all of them have to do with internalized misogyny and shame.

She also mentioned in her testimony that she felt a lot of shame and confusion over putting herself in that situation in first place, and that may have led to her reluctance to report

it's pretty chilling stuff: one minute they were laughing and joking, the next he was shoving her against the dressing room wall... like the flick of a switch. Dude's a psycho

Internalised misogyny does play a part - felicity is not wrong about that. But societal failures at prosecution are incredibly damaging and are probably one of the clearest examples of structural misogyny. NB I am not saying only women are raped, they are the majority of victims in most reporting but in general the number of unreported cases is so large, it is impossible to know.

To circle back to Trump, this means that there are certainly other people out there who have so far chosen not to come forward. Maybe this testimony will encourage them, but they may also see the reaction and decide to stay silent.

Which, yknow, as someone who is abolition minded and very much ACAB, I also understand why people report, but think that it is up to the person who was assaulted. Some people want accountability processes and community acknowledgment and etc, and that’s also fine.

my understanding is EJC's boss at the time was friends with trump and she was certain she would be fired on top of everything else had she gone public with the story

This just happened… pic.twitter.com/fQLVkSxP8c

— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) April 27, 2023

When your nieces and nephews make you eat CiCi’s Pizza for lunch.

the man does not know the first thing about the clean and jerk

To be clear I was talking about E. Jean Carroll's self blaming in her particular case and how much she felt herself to blame that she put herself in a position where it could happen in the first place.

And if you are a media personality and at some level you report to (serial sexual assaulter) Roger Ailes and even your successful women friends are telling you not to bother reporting it because of who the rapist is, that's the product of not just structural indifference but a very specific calculus that must be made against a tightly controlled system of enabling and oppressing women that comes from the very top of society.

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-rape-accuser-e-jean-200640059.html

xxxp

Yes, that makes sense. A lot of people struggle with exactly that. And yes, excellent point re Ailes.

OJ Simpson evaded criminal charges, but lost in the civil case - and never really escaped that ruling

I know monetary damages won't affect Trump much (he probably has abuse allegations insurance, for all we know), but the judgment of a jury definitely will

There are exactly zero Trump fans itt as far as I can tell. But the point is well taken that we could focus a bit more on him being a rapist who has ruined the lives of real human people, plus a raging racist. Not just a comic book bad guy with bad taste in decor.

Like, sure, there are a thousand reasons to hate this fuckin guy, he's really hateable. But let's also listen to voices directing our attention to those most harmed. It isn't about his ugly hair or
stupid ties. It's about the people he hurts with his callous behavior, which is part and parcel with his casually cruel politics. It's all related.

if you want to talk about something go ahead engage the conversation, the sort of meta thread monitoring approach isnt really good for much imho

also the conversation as to whether its ok to goof on horrible people is so tiresome, its ok goofin is fine

anyway trumps out there quoting lenin while were debating thread policing

Trump quotes Vladimir Lenin, a Communist tyrant, while continuing to deny outcome of 2020 election pic.twitter.com/kV5fDh5NVl

— Based Barry (@BasedBarryFan) April 27, 2023

I think the issue is that Trump is a comedian. A lot of the clowning is self-clowning, he’s in on it, and he uses it to his advantage. Sartre, not Leneen, was the best at understanding guys like him:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

He is doing a schtick. The more people focus on Donald Trump the character the less they can envision Donald Trump the rapist. I think he is in control of the performance and his absurdity almost always bounces to his advantage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snRlPpAZMuo

i dont think theres much of a dichotomy between those two aspects its all in the schtick, as the saying goes the cruelty is the point xp

I think if you really think about what you just said up there about literal rape being part of a schtick, you might reconsider.

And I don't know if the point of the schtick is the cruelty. More likely the point of the schtick is distraction.

treeship's quote reminds me of this Toni Morrison quote and this Paris Review article about the triple violence of the KKK joke:

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.” — Toni Morrison

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2020/07/02/the-pain-of-the-kkk-joke/

Just positing here that while I am sympathetic to felicity’s point, there is also the fact that nothing has harmed Trump so far— nothing. All of us know this and are tired of it, and some of us might resort to dunking on the sadistic morherfucker because that
‘s all we have against him that we know can stick.