Trump Part 16

[Hook]

that's definitely the right (as in sensible) perspective. i'm appalled that there isn't an uproar over relatively straight-forward things like trump co-conspirator in a crime already having been being convicted for it i know it may have to wait (because of silly precedent), but if i had to bet, it would be on a pardon or something like that to avoid embarrassment to the nation.

If Trump is still in office in 2024, and succeeded by another Republican, a pardon for federal crimes would definitely be in the cards. But even if a Dem wins in 2020 or 2024, a pardon might still happen. Not necessarily to save the country from the embarrassment, but more as a bargaining chip for gaining congressional support from moderate Republicans.

This makes me think back to Obama’s first term, and his decision not prosecute Bush and the CIA for torture. Of course it would been the morally correct thing to do. But Obama knew he needed congressional support to stem the financial bleeding, install new regulations, pass healthcare reform, and so on. So he decided to turn a blind eye to those crimes, and instead “look forward”.

Of course, once Trump is a private citizen again, he could always be indicted for state-level crimes.

 

[avole]

Given that there are only a handful of people contributing to thiis thread who can actually vote in the US elections, as in voting, it is interesting to see that they are also easily have the most balanced viewpoints with often the most useful information, while the most strident ostensibly anti-establishment proto revolutionaries can do no more than yell from the rooftops their often unsupported opinions.

Trump is hopefolly an aberration in a system that has promoted good and evil in equal measure. Most people are would be happy were he to lose the next election, not whether he were indicted or not. The same cannot be said for Putin, who has ensured his position through kowtowing to the oligarchs, thus neatly fomenting corruption and the rule of wealth in Russia. He has reacted to Trump’s tearing up of treaties not by being a statesman but by a policy of rearming and and redeploying nuclear weapons. He is far more dangerous than Trump , Kim and Xi Jinping, yet I see little about him coming from the erstwhile revolutionaries.

I hope Amercan democracy can survive the Trump/Putin axis. Not so sure whether any of us can the other options.

 

[vuk]

This makes me think back to Obama’s first term, and his decision not prosecute Bush and the CIA for torture. Of course it would been the morally correct thing to do. But Obama knew he needed congressional support to stem the financial bleeding, install new regulations, pass healthcare reform, and so on. So he decided to turn a blind eye to those crimes, and instead “look forward”.

it was certainly not my intention to make you think of that particular political corruption as an excuse for further corruption. your depiction makes it seem as if obama had only the 2 choices you defined. if , instead, he appealed to the people, like idiot trump seems to be able to do over and over again, maybe he would have found enough enthusiasm to overcome his right-wing inclinations.

have you not seen the footage of obama in michael moore's latest film?

 

[Tony L]

don''t mean to berate you, but this is sort of like an outsider trying to follow the intricate politics of brexit on the basis of casual reading of newspaper articles.

Whereas you, with hours watching Russia Today, various vacuous YouTube echo chambers and hanging on every word of Trump shill Julian Assange think you are informed?! LOL!

PS For clarity: I just want the report making public so we can *all* see it. The key aim in all of this is to maximise damage to Trump and the Republican Party, and I am certain that report contains much that can do that. I never had your “intellectual” ambiguity and even willingness to get behind Trump as a ‘disrupter’ (yes, we all remember you preferring him to Clinton, you can’t erase stupidity like that!). My desire has only ever been to purge the Whitehouse of an obvious white supremacist, popularist borderline fascist con-artist. I have no time at all for the ‘Putin propaganda games’ you and MaxFlinn are playing. This is not a complex choice. Let’s see exactly what Mueller has found and act on it.

 

[Marky-Mark]

For some, grief has replaced anger. They grew up thinking that leaders were culled from a group of smarter, dedicated and honorable people, even if there were always exceptions and some stinkers got in. We were told the stinkers deserved representation too, and this was OK because we felt the most dedicated and intellectually honest public servants would steer the ship sensibly with a compass of shared values. And increasingly, we're shown this is a fukkton of horseshit, because none of these people share our better values. None. They're driven almost entirely by wealth, power and greed --same as it ever was. They're the personification of our worst impulses.

If there's one positive to Trump being the proverbial straw that breaks the will of the thinking electorate and throws open a curtain exposing the absolute debauchery of our ruling classes, it's that it signals an epoch in the annals of human understanding that collectively we're simply not all that as a species, and ultimately deserve what we get ... as unfortunate as that is.

 

[maxflinn]

Agree. We forget all the outrageous things that have happened. Trump asked Comey, one on one, to go easy on Flynn, remember? Trump fired Comey, and admitted it was his idea and told RUSSIANS he figured it would make the whole Russia thing go away, remember? Trump drafts Don Jrs pooh pooh statement about the Trump Tower meeting, that is immediately blown away by Jr himself in his I love it emails, remember? Mueller indicts Russians for election interference, and Trump immediately says I don’t believe it, because I believe the strong Putin, remember?

I think the only reason Mueller has stopped is because he won’t indict a sitting president. The Pres is clearly dirty, and there’s no reason Mueller won’t have the dirt. By the ton.

I'd say even Trump supporters would, even if privately, say that they believe Trump to be corrupt, or dirty, if you like. Most US politicians are, and one might posit that there are plenty of dirty real estate/property developers around too. I think such a forensic investigation into his affairs as Mueller's inquiry would surely find some evidence of Trump corruption, illegality etc.

If so it'll be interesting to see what is done about it given Mueller's remit was to try to find evidence of Trump/Putin collusion re the 2016 election, not evidence of unrelated corruption/illegality on Trump's part. I wonder if, given his position he's required by law to make public any such non-collusion-related findings, assuming they involve criminality/illegality.

I notice that Barr has came out and said that Mueller was not hindered in any aspect of his investigation into potential Trump/Russia election-related collusion. So I think he should have found any evidence, should it exist.

As I said; I doubt there is any because I think the whole Russiagate thing was an elaborate hoax. I'll be very surprised if this isn't the case.

We will soon know..

 

[Marky-Mark]

I think the report will contain just enough to keep the spectacle of a totally inept, morally bankrupt and graft-ridden political system interesting enough for the media wing to enthrall the small minority of drama-addicted twitter brains to blather on until the next election cycle while nothing substantive gets done, and all while climate change, economic recession, and poverty climb right up our collective ass.

 

[maxflinn]

 

[Hook]

it was certainly not my intention to make you think of that particular political corruption as an excuse for further corruption. your depiction makes it seem as if obama had only the 2 choices you defined. if , instead, he appealed to the people, like idiot trump seems to be able to do over and over again, maybe he would have found enough enthusiasm to overcome his right-wing inclinations.

have you not seen the footage of obama in michael moore's latest film?

That's ok, vuk, I thought of the analogy all on my own.

My only point was that in politics, practicality almost always wins out over other concerns. As a hypothetical, let's say that Bernie wins in 2020. He would face a lot of pressure from the left to "do the right thing" and indict Trump on any and all federal charges. But IMO, even if he does not pardon Trump, he would still instruct his AG to ignore (or at least slow walk) any prosecution, and especially if he thought he was only a few moderate congressional votes away from passing, for example, Medicare for all.

As far as Obama goes, I think we both can agree he was a centrist who angered both the left and right. And yes, I do think that his decision to prosecute Bush was binary: either he did, or he didn't. An "appeal to the people" would have simply divided the country during a time of financial crisis. Fox would have spun it as 100% partisan revenge. It would have hardened opposition from Republicans, and could also have cost him support from right-leaning Dems. It could have easily prevented Obama from accomplishing anything during his first term.

Understand I am not making an ethical judgement here. I am not saying that ignoring Bush's war crimes was the right thing to do. I am just trying to place that decision in an historical context, and use it as a predictor for the behavior of future presidents.

 

[matthewr]

Indeed. I sincerely hope the Dems are able to get this into the public domain as I’m still expecting it to be damning.

I would caution against that as the report might well be very narrowly focused on existing indictments for a number of reasons. A lot of it almost certainly gets into counterintelligence areas and we may well see a reversion to standard DOJ policy on dealing with decisions not to indict after the appalling way Clinton was treated.

 

[matthewr]

I think the only reason Mueller has stopped is because he won’t indict a sitting president. The Pres is clearly dirty, and there’s no reason Mueller won’t have the dirt. By the ton.

Except there are a large number of seemingly indictable people other then the president (Jared, Ivanka, etc.) Also don't forget the relatively high bar to an indictment (even more so in such a politically charged case) and that we might never see evidence against people where the evidence does not rise to the level of intictment.

 

[Marky-Mark]

If the number of sacrificial lambs frog-marched after the financial crisis is any indication, Trump will break ground on a K street hotel complex by 2025.

 

[vuk]

As far as Obama goes, I think we both can agree he was a centrist who angered both the left and right. And yes, I do think that his decision to prosecute Bush was binary: either he did, or he didn't. An "appeal to the people" would have simply divided the country during a time of financial crisis. Fox would have spun it as 100% partisan revenge. It would have hardened opposition from Republicans, and could also have cost him support from right-leaning Dems. It could have easily prevented Obama from accomplishing anything during his first term.

hook.

i was actually thinking of his pathetic reaction to the flint water crisis (which is still not over). the normalization and rationalization of war crimes in the USA happened well before obama.

 

[Yank]

Of course, once Trump is a private citizen again, he could always be indicted for state-level crimes.

If Trump survives this and is re-elected, he'll be 78-79 years old when his successor is sworn in, January 2025. And the Presidency tends to age a man more than normal civilian life. He's likely to have at least one major health crisis before then, especially being a Type-A personality. Nature could take care of that problem before the legal system.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

If Trump survives this and is re-elected, he'll be 78-79 years old when his successor is sworn in, January 2025. And the Presidency tends to age a man more than normal civilian life. He's likely to have at least one major health crisis before then, especially being a Type-A personality. Nature could take care of that problem before the legal system.

That would be a shame. I'd like to see him die in jail, not in the considerable comfort of his own home.

 

[Yank]

That would be a shame. I'd like to see him die in jail, not in the considerable comfort of his own home.

One way or the other, I just hope to someday be able to piss on his grave.

 

[Hook]

hook.

i was actually thinking of his pathetic reaction to the flint water crisis (which is still not over). the normalization and rationalization of war crimes in the USA happened well before obama.

I agree with both of your points, but let’s not forget who created the Flint water crisis to begin with. The crisis occurred from April 2014 to October 2015 when Flint was switched to river water that had high levels of lead. This change was made by Republican-appointed financial managers who decided this was a good way to save the bankrupt city some money. The state’s Republican governor didn’t declare a state of emergency until January 2016, nearly three months after finally taking Flint off of the contaminated river water!

That said, overall, the US does not have a good track record of responding quickly or adequately to problems in cities with large African-American populations.

 

[Marky-Mark]

What part of slavery is giving us the most trouble today? Or the massacre of an indigenous people while while taking their lands? Or invading sovereign nations just because? Or less than 1% of the population holding 90% of the nation's wealth? Or a social media system predicated on narcissism whereby handing out crumbs of self-esteem in the form of up-votes creates virtually indentured servants to an endless system of retail exploitation? I could go on but it's time to get on my bike and suck some wind!

 

[Seanm]

That's ok, vuk, I thought of the analogy all on my own.

My only point was that in politics, practicality almost always wins out over other concerns. As a hypothetical, let's say that Bernie wins in 2020. He would face a lot of pressure from the left to "do the right thing" and indict Trump on any and all federal charges. But IMO, even if he does not pardon Trump, he would still instruct his AG to ignore (or at least slow walk) any prosecution, and especially if he thought he was only a few moderate congressional votes away from passing, for example, Medicare for all.

As far as Obama goes, I think we both can agree he was a centrist who angered both the left and right. And yes, I do think that his decision to prosecute Bush was binary: either he did, or he didn't. An "appeal to the people" would have simply divided the country during a time of financial crisis. Fox would have spun it as 100% partisan revenge. It would have hardened opposition from Republicans, and could also have cost him support from right-leaning Dems. It could have easily prevented Obama from accomplishing anything during his first term.

Understand I am not making an ethical judgement here. I am not saying that ignoring Bush's war crimes was the right thing to do. I am just trying to place that decision in an historical context, and use it as a predictor for the behavior of future presidents.

I’d like to think that the Dems will have learned the lesson of the Obama years that the only way to deal with Republicans is to beat them into the ground. It’s not reasonable at this late stage to expect them to be reasonable.

Obama damned by his own supporters here. Extraordinary stuff. I just can’t imagine Bernie being this naive:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/the-obama-boys

 

[mykel]

One way or the other, I just hope to someday be able to piss on his grave.

I would not spend the effort to cross the road to piss on him if he were on fire.
The worms can have him, just hope his corpse does not salt the earth.