Tiber727
6d ago
I can't say I agree with your specific interpretation of Trump regarding China. Trump has been pretty insistent that having a trade deficit is bad and wanting to use tariffs as a way to bring manufacturing back. He's been pretty aggressive in trying to tariff China until China flexes that they have similar leverage on us.
Tiber727
7d ago
I've heard the mockery about wearing shoes inside a few times now, but I don't get it. About the only time I really wear shoes inside is when I'm going in and out repeatedly. It's not really something Americans do all the time, and it's not like we stomp through mud and dog shit and then think it's perfectly fine to wear them inside.
Tiber727
8d ago
I'd argue that China wins first by having a lot of resources, cheap labor, and a government that is, all commentary aside, stable. They were willing to accept large amounts of pollution to establish themselves. Western stockholders were happy to kill their golden goose to get their money this quarter.
Tiber727
14d ago
Oh please. Russia has a long history of invading their neighbors under flimsy pretenses and taking effective control over the area for decades. They started on Ukraine in 2014 with Crimea, spent the entirety of 2014-2022 destabilizing the eastern region using plainclothed soldiers and separatist puppets, played "mediator" to try to force Ukraine to stop interfering with the separatists, and finally amped up to war when Ukraine didn't sit by and let the separatists break the agreements while they abide by them.
Trump had 4 years to take a shot at it as well. He sent some weapons, but otherwise was more interested in getting Ukraine to investigate Hunter.
Tiber727
19d ago
Pretty much agreed. He always had the power to cancel executive orders, rhetoric aside. Canceling pardons is another matter.
Agreed that if someone used Biden's autopen without his knowledge or consent, that would be invalid. The issue is burden of proof. I would imagine that if Trump actually tried to challenge it, it would be assumed Biden signed it unless Trump has proof to the contrary. That strikes me as consistent with the Supreme Court's ruling of absolute immunity for core Presidential acts and privileged communications.
Tiber727
23d ago
Yes, but that's still Trump's problem. Them not doing their job does not grant Trump authority to do it for them. Which is why a big part of every President's job is to get enough of Congress aligned with him, or vice versa. Trump is trying to skip that step and do everything through the executive, which results in a circus in the courts.
Tiber727
23d ago
Literally every administration has to contend with the opposing party making it difficult to enact their agenda. Trump has been gifted with a majority of all three branches greater than most administrations ever get. And Republicans have opted for a line where, rather than the legislative branch approving things, the executive simply creates its own mandates while the legislative passively allows him to.
Tiber727
23d ago
I would imagine on The Motte you could make an effort post about what people would consider a morally acceptable line for either starting revolution or committing political assassinations in a completely abstract sense. Though that does invite people to come up with "hypothetical" scenarios that are thinly-veiled parallels to actual American events.
I am pretty confident you could come up with an explanation which is consistent with non-criminal intent.
There's a reason why criminal prosecutions use the standard "beyond a reasonable doubt." One can always create an explanation how the murder weapon ended up in their possession if they're motivated enough. The stories just end up more and more absurd.
I think they should not be prosecuted unless there is a strong bi-partisan consensus in favor of doing so. Yes, this means that some presidents will get away with wrongdoing. But I think the alternative is worse.
I don't. I don't entirely trust my own party to convict one of their own, and I don't trust the opposing at all. And I think the feeling is mutual. Hell, McConnell hates Trump's guts and reportedly wanted to impeach Trump over J6, but argued that the courts were the right venue since he was leaving office. Why? Because reportedly he thought he could have his cake and eat it too by getting Democrats to punish him and say he had nothing to do with it.
I'd rather live in a world where politicians fear the consequences of their actions than one they don't, even if that power is sometimes misused.
Tiber727
27d ago
I think you're right that a partisan would not accept the opposing side's arguments. I mean, my strongest argument was that they found literal rooms full of boxes that seemed to have been actively moved around after spending a year and a half getting the run around. Hell, I didn't even mention the audio recording of him showing classified docs and saying he didn't declassify them because the last time I brought it up The Motte said it was just him trying to impress people by claiming to show them "classified docs."
But then we end up in an impasse anyway. Say you genuinely believe the opposing President committed a massive crime. Are you actually going to sit on your hands and do nothing because the opposing party will call it lawfare? That to me sounds like just another way for democracy to die.
Tiber727
27d ago
As far as I can find, he largely didn't respond for most of 2021. This is the most detailed that I can find covering 2021 (section IV). All I can find of his response was a claim in September that all he had was 12 boxes of news clippings.
After the raid, he claims that during that time:
"I had boxes. I want[ed] to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don't want to hand that over to NARA yet. And I was very busy as you've sort of seen,"
Tiber727
28d ago
Sure, but extrapolating from that line of reasoning these alleged events wouldn't make sense.
January 17, 2022: Trump turns over 15 boxes to the National Archives. According to the indictment, Nauta and another Trump employee load them into Nauta’s car and take them to a commercial truck for delivery to the agency.
Feb. 10, 2022: Trump’s Save America PAC releases a statement insisting the return of the documents had been “routine” and “no big deal.” Trump insists the “papers were given easily and without conflict and on a very friendly basis,” and adds, “It was a great honor to work with” the National Archives “to help formally preserve the Trump Legacy.”
May 23, 2022: Trump’s lawyers advise him to comply with the subpoena, but Trump balks, telling them, “I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes.” Prosecutors, citing notes from one of the lawyers, say Trump wondered aloud about dodging the subpoena, asking his counsel, “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” and ”isn’t it better if there are no documents?”
June 2, 2022: One of Trump’s lawyers returns to Mar-a-Lago to search boxes in the storage room and finds 38 additional classified documents — five documents marked confidential, 16 marked secret and 17 marked top secret. After the search, prosecutors say, Trump asks: “Did you find anything? ... Is it bad? Good?” and makes a plucking motion that the lawyer takes to mean that he should take out anything “really bad” before turning over the papers. ...Prior to the search, prosecutors say, Trump had Nauta move 64 boxes from the storage room to his residence. Of those, 30 were moved back to the storage room, leaving 34 boxes in Trump’s residence and out of the lawyer’s sight.
June 8, 2023: A grand jury in Miami indicts Trump and Nauta. Trump announces the indictment on his Truth Social platform, calling it “a DARK DAY for the United States of America.” In a video post, he says, “I’m innocent and we will prove that very, very soundly and hopefully very quickly.”
If we assume that Trump believed he had every right to own these documents, wouldn't he have responded to the May 6th 2021 request to turn over documents with, "Yes, I took the documents. No I don't need to return them because I declassified them and have every right to keep them." Trump is generally pretty fucking brazen when he thinks he's in the right.
Tiber727
28d ago
Their claim was that while they were handling the documents they added the papers since there were several boxes haphazardly organized and they wanted a cover letter to keep track of which documents went together, and if you were doing that you'd need to mark them confidential. Then they forgot to remove them when taking pictures. That first sentence seems sensible to me as something you would need to do. The second yes I get is extremely suspicious.
Because quite frankly we have the timeline of events and it involves a year and a half of trying to get Trump to turn over everything. Unless the media and government are making up literally everything, if even half of what was claimed is true it would be plenty to damn anyone else. You can speculate all you want that they would have tried to prosecute Trump if he had cooperated, and hypotheticals are unfalsifiable so I could never disprove that. But the thing is, I don't have to. There are so many things stacked against Trump regarding this issue that even if it were 100% true that Smith staged a falsified photo op intentionally my conclusion would be that Smith is corrupt and did something completely pointless because Trump blatantly tried to hide classified docs. The only facts required to establish the latter is true are that he was asked to return the docs and that a year and a half later they were still finding boxes of documents that would be pretty damn hard to genuinely miss. And Trump's defense wasn't contesting that.
Tiber727
28d ago
From the Clinton investigation:
Of course, that was Clinton, and I understand the assignment is that many here will say it's because she's a Democrat. Mike Pence cooperated with the search and no charges were brought. Here's a good read about some of the details of prosecution related to John Bolton, though I suppose it depends on if you're willing to believe it.
Looking back, it might be less a gentleman's agreement and more that prosecutors have typically been relying on proving intent. And if you can prove that you've given them several warnings and chances that would clear that bar.
Tiber727
28d ago
I don't know if this is true or not, but, assuming it's true, and assuming that there was a desire to pursue a lawfare attack against him, he could have been charged for what took place between January 20 and May 5. Agreed?
I did cite my source, and the government thought they had enough of a case that they brought it to court. Though that saga ended because they waited long enough that Judge Cannon arguably dragged the case until right before the election then tossed it under questionable circumstances.
He technically could have been charged for what took place before May 5th. On that I am agreed. However, I argue that there is in fact a gentleman's agreement for high ranking government officials to not prosecute over classified materials. And that gentleman's agreement is that if they tell you to return classified documents and you do, then nothing happens to you. My argument is that unlike Hillary or Biden, Trump tried to fuck with them when they tried to retrieve the documents. My argument is that the classified documents case wasn't lawfare because it wasn't primarily about hating Trump because he makes Democrats mad, it was Trump violating the gentleman's agreement and finding out what happens when you fuck around with three-letter agencies for a year and a half.
Tiber727
28d ago
I'm defining lawfare as trials motivated by animosity or political advantage, and sincere belief that the guilty should be punished is nonexistent or virtually nonexistent. Any disagreement with that?
Ignoring the shield counts if the reason you are doing so is the desire to bring harm to a specific person. I would even say that lawfare against a politician tautologically requires ignoring that shield. Trump has not exactly demonstrated any strong belief in OpSec in any other situation, between his own administration and storage of confidential documents.
Both Letitia and Trump campaigned on arresting a political opponent, and Letitia's admitting of that seems to be the main point where everyone agrees the mortgage fraud case against Trump was lawfare. The main point of distinction among other people in this thread seems to be that Trump abandoned his attempt after getting into office, which I argue that he probably would have gone through with had he not had the problem with his staff not following orders.
Tiber727
28d ago
Using personal communication methods for government business is a widespread problem. Several members of Trump's cabinet did similar.
In Trump's case, he was asked on May 6th, 2021 to return classified documents. The raid happened on Aug 8, 2022. Trump wasn't being changed for his insecure practices. He was being charged for allegedly spending a year and a half actively stonewalling the government trying to recover all of the documents.
Tiber727
28d ago
Is that your point?
Close to it. During Trump's first term, he fought to get Sessions out because A) Sessions recused himself from testifying in Trump's defense during the Russia investigation and B) Trump wanted Sessions to engage in lawfare against Clinton and Sessions refused. Erik Siebert resigned allegedly because he refused to go after Letitia. I am saying that if lawfare results in this kind of staff turnover that also doesn't suggest tit-for-tat lawfare is going to be a recurring theme. I'll grant you that 2 cases out of 3 is low sample size to draw conclusions.
Except that his analysis appears to be incorrect, at least according to the text of the US Code and a set of pattern jury instructions I found.
Yes I saw that as well. I don't know that your argument is a slam dunk, though I'm not dismissing it either.
Unless he's willing to post information which would allow his credentials to be confirmed, I wouldn't put much stock in it.
I'm not that jaded that I expect people to dox themselves before I believe them. Rov has been around a while and talks like he knows what he's talking about. That's usually fine for me until someone posts in a way that sets off bullshit detectors.
Tiber727
28d ago
I'm saying attorneys like winning cases because their professional record is the cases they have won. One of the problems with lawfare is by its very nature it's based on going after someone you hate rather than someone who provably committed a crime. If you are a DOJ employee and your boss tells you to find something to stick John Smith with, you may refuse because there's nothing to stick Smith with. Tit-for-tat lawfare is limited by the DOJ's willingness to be put in shitty situations to appease their boss.
With Letitia, I am reading the other thread with interest. I have a bit of passing knowledge of law, but I'm not going to presume to tell the Motte how I think that will go when The Motte includes actual lawyers. Rov_Scam has an interesting analysis. That said, I was pointing out the the Letitia case is not the only example of lawfare going on right now.
Tiber727
29d ago
I will die on the hill that, execution aside, that was probably always the direction Daenerys was going in. I think Martin was dropping a lot of hints throughout the series that she was unstable and vindictive, while cleverly always making her the good guy because all her reasons for being vindictive that we had seen were for good reasons against bad people.
Tiber727
29d ago
There's also the part where lawfare works better when the target of it actually commits a crime. It's admittedly early to tell, but Comey's trial might not go so well for the administration.
A prosecutor's job is to score a conviction. Imagine you're a prosecutor, and your boss tells you you're required to stand in front of a judge being berated because the point was just to harass a guy.
Tiber727
29d ago
While a lot of Trump's supporters wanted to see Clinton, Comey and a lot of other senior Democrats prosecuted, Trump notably did not do this in his first term.
Trump 1 was plagued with people who didn't want to do what Trump said. He fought with Sessions trying to get him to do it and gave up after managing to get Sessions out. He said on Nov 2, 2017
“Hopefully they are doing something,” Trump said of the Justice Department probing Clinton during a radio interview with host Larry O’Connor on Washington’s WMAL. “At some point maybe we’re going to all have it out.”
“The saddest thing is, because I’m the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved in the Justice Department. I am not supposed to be involved in the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing and I’m very frustrated by it,” he continued.
Tiber727
30d ago
IIRC, there were two main points of contention.
First was the allegation that Trump was working with Russia, if not formally then in a "friendly nod" sort of way. There was the whole "Russia, if you're listening" comments which he claims was a joke but the left did not take as a joke.
Second was that Trump tried to have Hillary prosecuted but gave up after a drawn-out fight with Sessions that ended in his termination. Source 1. Source 2 (pdf page 319, page 107 of the report).
Tiber727
30d ago
As someone with only a casual interest in Star Wars and who hasn't read the EU, I once idly thought about what I would have done if TFA were mine to make. Personally, I'd try and go more into what the Dark Side of the Force actually is. The first trilogy implied that the Force had a will and was trying to rid itself of its dark side. I would start with the idea that the Dark Side also possessed a will and was trying to engineer its own return. Keep Kylo Ren as powerful but insecure, and show us force ghosts of the Sith corrupting him.
I was going to reply to Soteriologian with somewhat similar. The right phrases it to sometimes sound like a white man will never be hired again. The left will claim this is all made up and point to some really specific stats like programming being overwhelmingly men (women don't even try to go into programming at nearly the same levels) or X% of a field is still white men (even though many got the job before DEI initiatives ramped up). But there definitely is a finger on the scales towards non white man. Success is a spectrum, not a binary. The geniuses of any generation can succeed against a headwind. But for those who are around average talent to somewhat above average, having the resources to get off the ground can be huge. Hollow Knight was made by a handful of people, but in order to do that they need a stable job with time to spare to work on personal projects.
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