The 45th POTUS - Donald J. Trump

[Captain Termite]

To be clear, he’s guilty of the crime. But this was a huge mistake. Should have focused on Georgia as that car would have the opposite effect on the thin slice of undecided voters that this one will.

why cant he be guilty in both cases?

I suspect he will be found guilty in Georgia as well. The difference is that the Georgia case is a clear-cut crime and direct interference with the 2020 election. This was different, a novel legal theory with clear political motivations, and breaks a taboo that helped keep the perception that the justice system would not be used as a partisan tool to interfere in elections. Again, he was found guilty and thus is until his appeal... which will be delayed for as long as possible to cause the most possible damage to his campaign... but just think about what it looks like to ~30% of the country when their candidate cannot attend a debate or campaign because he' sitting in Rikers for a crime no one had heard of before last year. Or think about the reaction after Roe was overturned, how millions started claiming the Supreme Court was "illegitimate", but in this case the folks effected are the same ones that did January 6th. Justice the outcome was done, but was justice the process done? That's a harder sell.

I'd bet we will see Trump fall in the polls for the next couple weeks, then shoot back up once red team messaging finds footing.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but if this helps get him votes like everyone says what does that mean for the perception/taboo?

[Stickman]

Gonna have to add the list now

[Bi_3]

To be clear, he’s guilty of the crime. But this was a huge mistake. Should have focused on Georgia as that car would have the opposite effect on the thin slice of undecided voters that this one will.

why cant he be guilty in both cases?

I suspect he will be found guilty in Georgia as well. The difference is that the Georgia case is a clear-cut crime and direct interference with the 2020 election. This was different, a novel legal theory with clear political motivations, and breaks a taboo that helped keep the perception that the justice system would not be used as a partisan tool to interfere in elections. Again, he was found guilty and thus is until his appeal... which will be delayed for as long as possible to cause the most possible damage to his campaign... but just think about what it looks like to ~30% of the country when their candidate cannot attend a debate or campaign because he' sitting in Rikers for a crime no one had heard of before last year. Or think about the reaction after Roe was overturned, how millions started claiming the Supreme Court was "illegitimate", but in this case the folks effected are the same ones that did January 6th. Justice the outcome was done, but was justice the process done? That's a harder sell.

I'd bet we will see Trump fall in the polls for the next couple weeks, then shoot back up once red team messaging finds footing.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but if this helps get him votes like everyone says what does that mean for the perception/taboo?

I'm thinking about it more on how it will shape political behavior in the future than how many votes Trump gains or losses and I worry this is the kill shot for bipartisanship. The process of red states going after blue party politicians for obscure crimes (and vice versa of course) may become the status quo and magnify dysfunction just the real threats (China, Russia, Iran, etc.) are at their peaks.

[Captain Termite]

To be clear, he’s guilty of the crime. But this was a huge mistake. Should have focused on Georgia as that car would have the opposite effect on the thin slice of undecided voters that this one will.

why cant he be guilty in both cases?

I suspect he will be found guilty in Georgia as well. The difference is that the Georgia case is a clear-cut crime and direct interference with the 2020 election. This was different, a novel legal theory with clear political motivations, and breaks a taboo that helped keep the perception that the justice system would not be used as a partisan tool to interfere in elections. Again, he was found guilty and thus is until his appeal... which will be delayed for as long as possible to cause the most possible damage to his campaign... but just think about what it looks like to ~30% of the country when their candidate cannot attend a debate or campaign because he' sitting in Rikers for a crime no one had heard of before last year. Or think about the reaction after Roe was overturned, how millions started claiming the Supreme Court was "illegitimate", but in this case the folks effected are the same ones that did January 6th. Justice the outcome was done, but was justice the process done? That's a harder sell.

I'd bet we will see Trump fall in the polls for the next couple weeks, then shoot back up once red team messaging finds footing.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but if this helps get him votes like everyone says what does that mean for the perception/taboo?

I'm thinking about it more on how it will shape political behavior in the future than how many votes Trump gains or losses and I worry this is the kill shot for bipartisanship. The process of red states going after blue party politicians for obscure crimes (and vice versa of course) may become the status quo and magnify dysfunction just the real threats (China, Russia, Iran, etc.) are at their peaks.

I guess I'm asking why, in the future, will red/blue states go after opposition politicians for obscure crimes if it helps them get elected?

[Simple Torture]

[96583UP]

someone should just bare-ass fart on his pillow.

Melania already does every afternoon while he is away

[96583UP]

he’s still going to be elected.

this place is broken.

There's still hope that the stress of all this will kill him. We all need to make sure to pray for it every night.

Trumpism doesn’t die with him, Tom.

No. But they have no viable person to “carry the torch” and be as successful as he has been. Once he’s gone, MAGA will finally die back down to the fringe, alt-right club that it should’ve always been relegated to.

i agree he is uniquely charismatic the trump copies will fail his stand-up tours can’t be replicated

[Bi_3]

To be clear, he’s guilty of the crime. But this was a huge mistake. Should have focused on Georgia as that case would have the opposite effect on the thin slice of undecided voters that this one will.

why cant he be guilty in both cases?

I suspect he will be found guilty in Georgia as well. The difference is that the Georgia case is a clear-cut crime and direct interference with the 2020 election. This was different, a novel legal theory with clear political motivations, and breaks a taboo that helped keep the perception that the justice system would not be used as a partisan tool to interfere in elections. Again, he was found guilty and thus is until his appeal... which will be delayed for as long as possible to cause the most possible damage to his campaign... but just think about what it looks like to ~30% of the country when their candidate cannot attend a debate or campaign because he' sitting in Rikers for a crime no one had heard of before last year. Or think about the reaction after Roe was overturned, how millions started claiming the Supreme Court was "illegitimate", but in this case the folks effected are the same ones that did January 6th. Justice the outcome was done, but was justice the process done? That's a harder sell.

I'd bet we will see Trump fall in the polls for the next couple weeks, then shoot back up once red team messaging finds footing.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but if this helps get him votes like everyone says what does that mean for the perception/taboo?

I'm thinking about it more on how it will shape political behavior in the future than how many votes Trump gains or losses and I worry this is the kill shot for bipartisanship. The process of red states going after blue party politicians for obscure crimes (and vice versa of course) may become the status quo and magnify dysfunction just as the real threats (China, Russia, Iran, etc.) are at their peaks.

I guess I'm asking why, in the future, will red/blue states go after opposition politicians for obscure crimes if it helps them get elected?

I dont think it's fair to assert that this helps or hurts Trump's appeal at this point, but I can see how this damages the long term perception of the justice system as the media celebration dies down and folks start wondering exactly what he was convicted of, especially as it leads into the more serious and more easily understood Georgia case. The perception of an 'unjust' trial here will magnify suspicions on that one.

[B]

I worry this is the kill shot for bipartisanship.

I'm pretty sure McConnell shot bipartisanship in the face in 2010.

[Rob]

I worry this is the kill shot for bipartisanship.

I'm pretty sure McConnell shot bipartisanship in the face in 2010.

Seriously. The GOP became nothing more than the “obstruct Dems” party since the Tea Party. All it seems to take to get support on the right these days is fighting Libs. That border security/ukraine funding bill proved that even when there is rare bipartisanship, Maga will kill it. You can’t work with these people.

[Bi_3]

I found this on staunchly anti-Trump Vox (here: https://www.vox.com/politics/353111/tru ... -convicted) which does a pretty decent job of outlining the steel-man argument from the Trump side:

The case against the case against Donald Trump

Critics of the prosecution took issue with nearly every element of this case. But their most prominent arguments can be summarized as follows:

1) Trump may have falsified business records, but he did not do so with an “intent to defraud,” in the legal sense of that term. As the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy argues, the Supreme Court recently confirmed that “intent to defraud” has a very specific and narrow legal meaning: It describes the intention to deprive someone of money, property, or some other concrete good through deception.

There is no evidence that Trump falsified business records for the sake of tricking any specific individual into giving him cash. But Bragg’s office argued that, under New York state law, “intent to defraud” can refer to deliberately misleading the government or voting public.

McCarthy argues that this is much too broad: If you can commit fraud without actually trying to “steal something in which people have a concrete interest,” then “any untrue statement a candidate makes” could be prosecutable fraud, since such statements deceive voters.

2) The claim that Trump falsified business records to conceal a separate crime rests on a dubious interpretation of an obscure and arguably inapplicable law. Legal analysts (from across the political spectrum) have long argued that the shakiest part of the prosecution’s case was the claim that Trump’s fraudulent paperwork was intended to cover up another crime.

After all, there is no law against paying your ex-lover not to speak with a tabloid about your sordid liaison. The prosecution’s case rested primarily on the assertion that the payment to Daniels violated federal campaign finance law.

There are two potential objections to this: First, as David French notes in the New York Times, the Department of Justice chose not to charge Trump with violating campaign finance law by arranging Daniels’s payoff, apparently concluding that the case would be difficult to win. Yes, Cohen did plead guilty to a campaign finance violation related to the Daniels payment. But a guilty plea does not have the same weight as a jury verdict, from the standpoint of legal precedent. And in any case, Cohen’s plea did not establish Trump’s guilt in the alleged scheme.

Second, Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s office, has observed that it isn’t clear that a violation of federal law can qualify as “unlawful means” under New York state law. Before this trial, the question had simply never been adjudicated.

To its credit, Bragg’s office anticipated this problem, and argued that Trump not only promoted his own election through federal campaign finance violations, but also through other unlawful means, such as the falsification of separate business records and violations of tax law. But the validity of these supplementary charges is contested.

More fundamentally, some legal scholars argue that New York’s law against promoting a candidate’s election through unlawful means is preempted by federal law. “Federal election law, generally speaking, preempts state election law when it comes to a governing of federal elections, except there are exceptions whereby certain state election laws can come into play,” Jerry H. Goldfeder, a campaign finance lawyer, told CNN last year.

3) There is little evidence that Trump knew he had violated campaign finance laws, let alone that he knowingly tried to conceal having done so. Donald Trump does not have a reputation for being highly fluent in the details of public policy or the legal niceties of the political system.

As National Review’s McCarthy argues, “there is not a shred of evidence that Trump was even thinking about FECA (the Federal Election Campaign Act) in 2016-17, much less willfully transgressing it — which, to establish, prosecutors need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump was aware of a legal duty to comply with FECA’s contribution limits and reporting requirements, yet intentionally violated them.”

4) Even if Trump were guilty, the statute of limitations on his offense has already expired. The statute of limitations on misdemeanor business records falsification is two years; for the felony version, it’s five years.

Trump committed his alleged offense in 2017. But New York law holds that the clock on its statute of limitations stops when a defendant is “continuously” outside of the state. Therefore, it is plausible that the years Trump spent primarily in the White House and Mar-a-Lago do not count against the clock.

Still, even under this interpretation, Syracuse University law professor Gregory Germain argues that two years have certainly passed since Trump allegedly falsified records related to his hush money payment. In Germain’s view, it “is not clear whether the felony can stand when the misdemeanor is time barred” because the “felony statute requires showing that the misdemeanor was committed, since the felony is really a penalty enhancement on the misdemeanor.”

5) The prosecution was blatantly politically motivated, and the judge was politically biased. Finally, the prosecution’s skeptics point to all of its case’s dubious elements — and then to the surrounding political context — and argue that Trump has been politically persecuted. As former federal prosecutor Elie Honig notes in New York magazine, Alvin Bragg ran for district attorney on a promise to indict Donald Trump. And the judge in Trump’s trial, Juan Merchan, donated to “a pro-Biden, anti-Trump political operation,” in violation of a rule barring New York judges from contributing to political campaigns, according to Honig.

And there is indeed some evidence that Trump’s prosecution was highly selective. No state prosecutor has ever cited federal election laws as a predicate state crime. The Manhattan DA hardly ever brings cases in which the sole charge concerns the falsification of business records. And the statute prohibiting conspiracies to promote a person’s election through unlawful means has almost never been used: According to an analysis from the Washington Post, since 2000, no judge issued a single legal opinion concerning the statute until Trump’s trial began last year.

Another interesting thread is here:

[96583UP]

he got a tiny peepee tho

[Peeps]

he got a tiny peepee tho

if that were a crime id be on death row

[B]

he got a tiny peepee tho

if that were a crime id be on death row

It's a slippery slope, Peeps.

[Bi_3]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/05/politics ... index.html

[E.H. Ruddock]

He’ll be our next president. I’d bet money on it

[tommy]

He’ll be our next president. I’d bet money on it

It certainly feels that way.

[96583UP]

only because mainstream media likes clickbait

independents not gonna gamble on felon trump

women who want abortion rights not gonna vote for trump

these polls this far out are meaningless

just focus on your prostate health and everything else will take care of itself

[Stickman]

From Dave A's FB page

[Stickman]

Trump tells rally-goers not to die in searing Vegas heat: ‘I don’t care about you, I just want your vote’