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Remember that the post-2020 US election Time article "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election"? Somewhere between a victory lap and credit-claiming at a time it was generally thought Trump's political prospects were dead, it was a rare look behind the scenes of retroactively-admitted coordinated political obstruction and shaping efforts.
It was also the article with the memorable distinction of-
Well, the New York Times on Sunday published a more pre-emptive form of democratic fortification: The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started.
The article in short is a look at different wings of the Democratic Party apparatus, and steps they are taking in anticipation of a Trump victory to foil the predicted efforts of the 2025 Project. Some of these fears seem a good deal less grounded than others- Trump has been an abortion moderate such that it's hard to see why a Democratic governor would need to stock years of abortion supplies in a state warehouse beyond political theater- but then the article is quite likely a form of political theater. As far as election-year advertising goes, it's both a 'here are all the horrible things that could happen' fear campaign-
-with the ACLU specifically focusing on four areas of potential lawfare-
-but all with a back-edge 'but we thwarted him before and can do it again' of tribal-protection promise.
Not necessarily optimistic, but a 'we will fight for you' solidarity / call for support framing.
While there is the occasional (potentially deliberate) amusing word choice in ways that anyone who has used the term the Cathedral might appreciate-
The core strategies include the following, none of which are particularly surprising but which are good to see identified clearly in advance:
-Passing executive actions in the Biden administration before certain timelines so that Trump can't immediately revert them
-Litigation waves to tie things in court, with recruitment of sympathetic plaintiffs with likely standing already occuring
-Implicitly by virtue of the acknowledged past strategies and current participants, more protests
-More explicitly legal preparations to prevent/limit federal intervention in protests
-A national-scale counter-ICE network to disrupt immigration raids
-Pre-emptively doing self-auditing of activist group finances in preparation of politically motivated IRS scrutiny
-Various state-based nullification theory application (such as 'inter-state commerce doesn't apply to FDA if I already have the goods in-state')
-Use of Never-Trump 'ex-Republicans' groups as part of the Democratic network, especially the Principles First organization.
(Principles First was a Never Trump wing of the Republican Party associated with Liz Cheney that started in 2022 during the anti-Trump former Republican establishment's efforts to reassert control / torpedo Trump's post-presidential prospects by cooperating with the Democrat-led impeachment trial. Since then, and her fall from the Republican Party, it's been casting itself as an alternative to CPAC. Interestingly it also works in concert with Ranked Choice voting lobbying. (In the US, ranked choice voting is often, but not always, associated with the Democratic Party, at least in the sense of pushing for it in Red / Purple, but not Blue, states.)
None of this is unique, unusual, or dangerous. Leftist NGOs and Democratic governors/AGs preparing for a potential second term of Trump. Sinister-sounding quotes like "controlling the flow of information" and "democracy-proofing our institutions" but nothing actually out of the ordinary in terms of real actions. I'll remind you that the vast majority of the actual escalation has come from Republicans. Remember J6? Remember "the election was stolen!!!" 70% of Republicans still believe that crap.
Trump will try some hamfisted executive orders, which will get massacred in the courts like much of his EO's did in his first term. He'll declare victory anyways, and the base will love him because they desire the appearance of "owning the libs" more than any actual substantive policy changes.
Where are the republicans inventing new legal theories to prosecute their political opponents? Where are the republicans forcing businesses to boycott their opponents organizations? Where are the republicans using partisan organizations assessments of their ideological opposites as a justification to enact a domestic spying program?
Lawyers arguing in new ways to new situations is just standard legal practice, e.g. when Trump's lawyers argued the presidency is not "an officeholder of the United States".
The origin of the Trump-Russia investigation is shrouded in bias, just like the investigation into Biden's son was. But in both cases it was clear that there were actual problems there. Not problems that reached up to the highest level, but problems nonetheless.
I'm not a fan of plenty of the things Dems have done in regards to their woke crusade, but in terms of concrete escalation, storming the capital and trying to overturn a legitimate election due to being sore losers was far worse and more blatant.
Democrats stormed the White House and laid siege to multiple federal buildings way before January 6th. The capitol riot could probably be considered a de-escalation since they didn't burn the Capitol building to the ground.
What are you talking about? When did Democrats ever storm the White House? I vaguely recall "sieging" federal buildings during the 2020 protests, but when did major left leaders ever support such violent measures?
The fact that you're unaware of this rather says alot of how the media propagates some things and stifles others.
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The direct comparison to J6 I can think of is in 2017, when there was a "DisruptJ20" movement, where the stated goal was:
And
Undermine the peaceful transition of power? Doesn't that sound like Insurrection? What happened to these hardened insurrectionists?
Ah, so nothing serious. But hey, at least they didn't storm the Capitol Building!
In 2020, protestors surrounded the White House and tried to break down the barriers. Trump and his family had to hide in a bunker:
At least they didn't succeed? Is that the metric we're going to use? Because then the J6 protestors should be off the hook, because they ultimately failed to do anything significant. I guess they just had the wrong amount of success, just enough to break down a barricade, not enough to break down America.
And that's leaving out all the other protests that have happened on Capital hill, some violent, some peaceful. Kids crowding congressional offices to protest Climate Change, the Kaunavaugh confirmation protests, etc. And even that is leaving out all the protests inside various state's Capitol Buildings.
Do Democrat leaders support violent action against federal buildings, such as the Oregon courthouse siege? Yes they do! Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler was among the rioters laying siege and Nancy Pelosi tweeted in support of the protestors (and against the government officials trying to resist them). If you don't remember much of what happened there, or maybe your news sources weren't reporting on it, Winston Marshall has a good 15 minute video here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jNoxpP5Jhvo
I'm not a fan of what happened on Jan 6th. I posted in the motte that week something to the effect of, "I'm a conservative and I'm glad that Ashley Babbit was killed." But I would place it in the same realm of the riots and protests of the above, not some unique evil that members of the Republican Party have perpetrated.
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The current Vice President of the United States shilled for bail funds to get rioters out of jail (and incidentally got someone killed when a murderer was also bailed out using those funds). Congressional leaders encouraged mobbing and harassment of Trump administration staffers. The Biden DOJ made sure to exercise "prosecutorial discretion" to refrain from prosecuting criminal harassment of justices at their private residences over the leak of the Dobbs decision, after the Senate Majority leader threatened justices by name, stating that "I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price."
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Other than the direction of media hysteria, it’s pretty similar to the protestors who stormed congress trying to stop the legitimate confirmation of a Supreme Court justice. Nor, as an aside, did Trump or any other ranking Republican tell them to do it; Trump actually told them to go home.
‘Muh J6’ is a convenient rhetorical point for democrats to try to paint Trump as some sort of special danger, but it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
The SCOTUS protestors had nowhere near anywhere near the level of support for their actions. Some leftists may have supported their cause (rejecting Kavanaugh), but no major political figure egged them on for their methods. For contrast, Trump egged on J6, and only stopped supporting it once he realized it was a PR disaster. He also still claims the 2020 election was stolen.
My point isn't to prove that the Democrats are justified in anything they do, it's to argue against Rightists who are chugging the negative-partisanship Koolaid by the gallon, pointing at Leftist transgressions, some real, many exaggerated, and pretending the Right isn't doing stuff that's on-par or even worse.
Trump did not support J6. He started trying to dissuade his supporters as soon as it became clear they were breaching the capital. ‘Muh J6’ is absolutely a narrative, and it’s a narrative that is 1) false and 2) serves a specific purpose of framing the rise in negative partisanship/democratic backsliding as being mostly the right’s fault. Factually, domestic spying and targeting the opposition as major features of democrat’s regimes is something that dates to the Obama admin; the current round is an escalation of an existing trend and not a new idea, or a response to changing circumstances in 2020 or 2021.
And he is allowed to believe this. It’s not an offense against democracy to believe that a particular election was badly administered or rigged. It’s not one to claim that, even if you happen to be wrong(as Trump is; even if Georgia or Michigan was stolen, he’s been running out the Bailey so hard that it doesn’t become a truth). Democrats make shit up about red states not being democracies constantly, and have for years and years, rather than admit that they’re just genuinely less popular.
Domestic spying dates back to at least the J Edgar Hoover days, a lot of the modern stuff is pretty weak and tame all things considered, though that doesn't make it right. I don't think it's really too relevant here though.
Your narrative about Trump and J6 seems false to me. Narrative is tricky to pin down of course, so beyond narrative, many of the actual words you are repeating are objectively untrue. And I will prove it. And I never want to hear this again, quite frankly.
I'm not even going to go into the hearsay too much, nor even planning before J6 by some smaller groups. These are at least the basic facts: The last few sentences of Trump's long speech ending a bit after 1pm talk about how he wants people to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol to give the weaker Republicans some "pride and boldness", to make their voices heard, and how the country is at risk. Allegedly (this is a bit unclear) he wanted to go too (he said things like "let's" and "we" in the speech) but the Secret Service said no. So he goes back to the White House and watches TV for a few hours, meaning he is watching what everyone else is watching. Trump disputes this, but watching TV seems highly, highly likely given Trump's well-known habits, though it's possible he missed a bit of the earliest stuff. He then tweets out a replay of the speech. At any rate, police lines are getting pushed back and in retreat since at least the 1:30 range, they are broken up in the 2-2:30 range and a lockdown is declared. In terms of TV, it seems most channels were broadcasting speeches right up until a little after 2 when both parts of congress went into recess and the aforementioned lockdowns started. Right in that time frame (2:24 pm) Trump tweets out a tweet saying Pence doesn't have courage to protect the country. Evacuations are starting in this same time frame of House, Pence, Pelosi, etc. and also in that same timeframe we get the first people breaking into the building. In the end we know many lawmakers only missed some rioters by a matter of minutes. So the Pence tweet is kind of right as things are going down, but some TV coverage has been varied, though it seems clear that by this point most channels have been showing some sort of breach. For reference, here is the CBS coverage that day. I can't find the whole Fox coverage but at least one clip from 2:39pm included the same footage and understanding of events.
So 2:38, now it's pretty blatantly obvious on TV that shit is going down, you can see Trump tweets:
You claimed:
This is clearly wrong. Notice what words do not appear at all in the tweet: go home, stop, don't do this; nothing of the sort. Just "hey be peaceful". That's not the same thing.
To be clear, what exactly is on TV at the time? CBS shows at 2:30 protesters in the building, (though a breach was clearly first shown and noted at 2:20), and some live video of them wandering around one of the rooms, maybe the Rotunda? Most of the video available is of course of the people outside because that's where the camera crews are. TV watchers already know Pence is being evacuated. Big chevrons and titles on screen clearly say the Capitol has been breached. The anchors are saying very clearly whoa, no one is supposed to be in there. It's hard to know how peaceful/violent the protests are because no cameras other than I guess the one (presumably live feed?) inside. A bit later of course we get some reports of some shots fired (Ashli Babbitt) and then on TV over the next hour or so we see a mixture of videos and photos of people arrested, other video of lawmakers with gas masks, others of barricades in the House, etc. They get McCarthy on the phone for a bit, reports are mixed. Though McCarthy does say: "From what I know and what I was able to view, I know people are being hurt" (later interview on CBS, he expressed the same in a 3:05 interview live on Fox News). Worth noting however, that this isn't broadcast to CBS at least until about 20 minutes later. During all this time, we can clearly see on TV that people are inside the Capitol, though there are still some crowds outside.
3:13pm shortly after McCarthy is on TV via call-in, Trump tweets again:
Notice, again, nothing about going home here! Sure, there's a call against violence, especially not against cops. There's no "dissuading" going on here. Clearly he's aware that at least something is happening. There's scattered TV reports about maybe this is going to turn into an occupation, some noise about maybe the National Guard is going to show up, etc. It's again very obvious that at least some protesters are in the building.
Trump doesn't tweet anything else in the whole time. He doesn't start recording a video message about how they should "go home in peace" until 4pm.
So in summary: You could plausibly claim Trump didn't want violence, you can plausibly claim a fair amount of things. But it's very clear that Trump certainly didn't try very hard at all to dissuade any of this from happening. He called for the march, and for someone who was bragging on TV all the time about how he would send the National Guard to inner cities because of violence, "when the looting starts the shooting starts" and things of that nature, it is painfully clear that he did not have anything like that sort of reaction, and certainly wasn't on the phone calling (remember he IS the president at the moment!) for troops or a strong response or anything of the sort. We don't know many specifics about Trump and Meadows that afternoon, but according to Meadows' texts (chief of staff, usually is in close contact with the President constantly) he both had been texted extensively about how messed up things are and was in contact with the President at least as early as 2:53, so as of the 3:13 tweet we can reasonably assume they were aware of the substance of what was going on. Making the "I didn't know" defense completely indefensible.
Furthermore, it's very clear in several places that Trump wanted Pence to take a very specific action on January 6th and said as much. That's not a general feeling about things being rigged. It's a clear advocacy for not certifying!
His words were "PEACEFULLY make your voice heard" -- I don't get the feeling that you know/care too much about the actual facts here.
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Not, strictly speaking, about the Cavanaugh disaster, but there's no shortage of left-aligned public misbehavior to choose from during the Trump years:
"If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere." Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)
"This is my call to action, here. Please don't just come here and go home, go to the Hill today. Get up and please get in the face of some congresspeople." Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)
"You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That's why I believe if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or Senate, that's when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength." Hillary Clinton
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Yeah so new that Justice Story had a view on it…. Story really was a helluva a legal mind as an aside.
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Sorry, that one goes back to the debates around the adoption of the 14th amendment. It is not new at all.
It's a novel argument because whether the president is an "officer" hadn't come up in this context. If you disagree with this, feel free to cite the court case that specifically argues this point in an identical context.
You're effectively arguing that lawyers should never be allowed to make new arguments even if the situation is different.
It came up in exactly that context in the debates on the 14th amendment.
I dug up some facts and brought the receipts. In the Colorado court that heard this play out, their decision you can see starting at the bottom of page 95.
It indicates that exactly once when the Amendment was first debated in Congress (not yet law) the issue was briefly mentioned. Mentioned as in we have literally only this one tiny and brief exchange. From the section summarizing the key points made in the Colorado case:
So the brief worry was that Davis, as an insurrectionist, was obviously barred from running for most offices, but maybe he could run for President only? Morrill thought no, he was barred from basically everything including President.
No other court cases, legal opinions, or even history is cited. Meaning they couldn't find anything else. There's other arguments too both for and against listed in the decision, but overall the decision says there is "scant evidence" and most of the other arguments have to do with the text of the Constitution in other places.
So yeah. In my opinion, if a legal theory is mentioned exactly once, and back in 1866, it is for most practical purposes "novel". It's not novel in the sense that literally not a single person ever had ever thought about the concept (clearly at least two people had, if extremely briefly), but certainly was novel in the sense that we had gone 150 years and no one had ever brought it up again as such.
It might also bear noting, when it comes to novelty, that this conversation formed a legal theory (if you can even call it a theory, it's not like they went into big detail) claiming the President WAS in fact an officer. Trump's team did not advance this theory! They advanced the opposite! It wasn't even the same claim! So it wasn't so much a "legal theory" as "one person worried about it once 150+ years ago and then decided it wasn't a big worry". And then over a century later someone came out and claimed the opposite thing. Sounds pretty novel to me!
Edits: last paragraph.
Senator Johnson: But this amendment does not go far enough. I suppose the framers of the amendment thought it was necessary to provide for such an exigency. I do not see but that any one of these gentlemen may be elected President or Vice President of the United States, and why did you omit to exclude them? I do not understand them to be excluded from the privilege of holding the two highest offices in the gift of the nation. No man is to be a Senator or Representative or an elector for President or Vice President
Senator Morrill: Let me call the Senator's attention to the words "or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States."
Senator Johnson: Perhaps I am wrong as to the exclusion from the Presidency; no doubt I am; but I was misled by noticing the specific exclusion in the case of Senators and Representatives.
So Johnson brought up the theory, Morrill denied it, and Johnson chose not to argue further. But I didn't say the theory was accepted then; I said it wasn't novel. It's not novel.
Jefferson Davis was not involved. Jefferson Davis was disqualified by the fact that he was a Senator before he joined the confederacy; it is true that if the Presidency was not an "office" he would not have been disqualified from running for President, but nobody was worried about that; they were worried about him re-entering the Senate. Nor was anyone worried about some rebel President or Vice President running for office, for the simple reason that there weren't any.
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Please link the court case.
I don't have to dance to your tune. The debates on the 14th amendment were (obviously) prior to any court case involving it.
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