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Trump is calling for the arrest and trial of six Democrat lawmakers who posted a video telling the intelligence community not to follow unlawful orders,. The video claims that the current administration is threatening democracy and the constitution, and that the military "must refuse illegal orders."
Trump also apparently had another post that just said, "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH."
This is the first time I have genuinely increased the probability of a real civil war breaking out, this is an absolutely terrifying escalation by both sides. While the Democrats were hinting extremely obviously that the military / intelligence community should basically pull off a coup, I also think that Trump hinting back that they should be executed is way beyond the pale.
Hopefully we're still in nothing ever happens land? I for one do not want to live through a civil war.
I can't even tell who is baiting whom anymore.
This one reads like Trump rising to some sort of obvious bait, yet the Dems are getting further and further out over their skis with this whole "threatening Democracy" thing.
As far as I can tell, we just had an election held that produced winners that were not favorable to Trump, and there was not a single attempt to overturn those outcomes or halt the election or otherwise interfere in it.
Adding on the pleas to get the military to act in some very under-specified way and its genuinely annoying at this point to have to deal with the constant superposition of "Trump is literally inches away from becoming supreme leader of a fascist state unless we act NOW" and "by 'act now', we really just mean 'vote for Dems in the next election like a good citizen.'"
I dunno, Trump has actual reasons to be concerned about seditious behavior given how much as been revealed in just the past month about Dems (up to and including Barack Obama?) worked to hamstring him.
He's gone after Comey and Brennan using the standard, established criminal justice process, he didn't have them assassinated in their beds in the middle of the night.
But its also kinda incoherent to call for someone's arrest for Sedition while being the guy who is in charge of the agencies that would be arresting them.
Shit or get off the pot guys. All this sound and fury signifying nothing is just tedious.
Seems more like they're trying to urge the military not to act in a particular way.
And that way being to not follow lawful orders, which the urgers would like to insinuate are unlawful but are neither inclined to specify nor are they culpable for the consequences of a wrong judgement (though they will, of course, make much political propaganda about it).
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Sure, because he's not actually going to order their arrests. He's just bloviating in response to obvious bait. Truth Social seems to be his preferred outlet for doing so.
As mentioned, though, he HAS taken action against political enemies now, with Comey's indictment being an opening salvo.
But obviously arresting sitting congresspeople who haven't done a blatant crime is a much harder lift.
If my understanding is correct, Comey basically signed off on a witch hunt that he knew was baseless. And it wasted two to three years of the first Trump presidency.
If that is true or someone believes it to be true then he definitely should be prosecuted for that shit.
The other political opponent is that New York prosecutor (Letitia James?) that went after him for real estate fraud. It was a bogus case that lots of people are semi guilty of. He went after her for the exact same thing. It's the most tit-for-tat political retaliation ever.
Yep.
Completely irrespective of ideal political norms or even the optics of it, I have to respect how precisely targeted and proportional it is.
Given that issue, and the irregularities around the 2020 election, I'd almost just shrug it off if Trump wanted a third term.
He shouldn't get one, and not just because of the rules. But the bureaucracy effectively vetoing a President's agenda for years (with congress' tacit approval, granted) is a worse problem than a President winning an election for a third time.
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Oh, the Letitia James case. The 34 FELONIES!!! case. I've always disliked Trump, but the way his political rivals and enemies have gone after him is just ludicrous.
The solemn, po-faced repetition (which I have encountered elsewhere just recently) that he committed 34 FELONIES!!! is risible. "Okay, what did he do?" "Mortgage fraud!" "Okay, that's one crime, and the other 33?" "Mortgage fraud!"
34 charges for one offence are not at all the same as 34 different and separate crimes. Murdering one person is wrong, but it's not the same as murdering thirty-four people, but this is the equivalence they are trying to make. I'm not even sure that it is a crime as such, since Wikipedia calls it the "New York business fraud lawsuit" which sounds more like a civil than criminal case, and this bit confuses me:
So they charged him with... lying about being richer than he was in fact? And that turned into 34 FELONIES!!!!?
Or am I completely wrong and the 34 FELONIES!!! is the "paying hush money to the porn star" campaign finance case? Even so, the same applies: 34 charges for one offence not the same as 34 different offences in different crimes.
Correct. The THIRTY FOUR FELONIES was purportedly because he mislabeled the expenses in his own accounting book and thereby defrauded himself to retroactively cheat in the election that had already happened.
The mortgage fraud one was where his claimed value of a property used as collateral was different from what a partisan hack Democrat judge was willing to claim it was, and that this constituted fraud against the bank that was testifying on Trump's behalf, and therefor the state of NY was entitled to damages in the amount of the highest possible theoretical value that Trump could have benefited, multiplied by the highest theoretically possible return on investment he could have made with that difference in the intervening years (which would have been far outside the statute of limitations, but I believe they got around that changing the law for the express and exclusive purpose of Getting Trump).
Thanks for the clarification, there have been so many cases and accusations I get muddled.
I do think the 34 FELONIES thing is disingenuous because it refers to one over-arching crime. The impression it is intended to leave is that Trump has committed all these BIG SERIOUS CRIMES in a series of BIG SERIOUS CRIMES, but it's really THIS ONE CASE.
I think most people laugh at it, though.
I think the 34 FELONIES thing is disingenuous simply because the same people who insist that Donald Trump's victimless paperwork crime makes him a horrible person because the word "felony" is attached to it, routinely start massive riots on behalf of, advocate the minimum possible legal consequences for, and grant patronage to, people who commit actual acts of violence that also have the word "felony" attached to them.
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As a moderate opponent¹ of Mr Trump, I did get a 'nabbing al-Capone for tax evasion' impression from the matter....
¹Capable of understanding that not every possible criticism of him is necessarily true², and of recognising his stopped-clock moments³.
²Compare the cancellation of Bill Maher post-9/11 for pointing out that the hijackers, while irrational⁴ anti-freedom murderers, were not, in the usual sense⁵ of the term, cowards.
³Such as the Executive Order on architectural styles.
⁴For those not familiar with Mr Maher's oeuvre, he has a very dim view of organised religion.
⁵As opposed to the vague 'bad person' sense, which far too many terms for specific character flaws erode into....
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I had this thought too, but there seems to be a general pattern in the Trump administration of government via social media. Tweeting this stuff out may be the most effective way Trump has of directly communicating with US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro.
It seems to me that you and @faceh are framing this as though law and public sentiment are two distinct things, and are wondering why Trump is making appeals to public sentiment when he could simply use the law. But it is evident that the law is much weaker than legible public sentiment, even disregarding the legal mechanisms by which law emerges from public sentiment in the first place.
The current era is best understood as a massive, distributed search for ways to hurt the outgroup as badly as possible without getting in too much trouble. Coordinating public sentiment is the most effective method possible for reducing the amount of trouble one gets in when hurting the outgroup. The law is a whore, and public sentiment is the coin she trades in; if public sentiment is on-side, paper rules are no impediment at all.
Still? You can keep saying it, but that doesn't make it true. The current era is best understood as social media-induced brainrot afflicting each generation in it's own way, with zoomers doing whatever it is they do on tiktok, boomers/gen Xers schizo posting incoherently in news comments sections and millennials straddling the line. Then some idiots on the margin actually Do Something, and the rest of us are dragged through the ensuing shitstorm.
If you still believe your model has so much explanatory power, make some predictions:
Riots and political violence failed to manifest after a brainrotted zoomer killed Kirk two months ago, elections ran smoothly and the political momentum seems to be swinging away from 'Your Side.' I'll give you and @ThomasdelVasto ten to one odds that there's no civil war before the completion of the next presidential election, and I'd give you much better odds if I sat down to think about it more and actually had the money to bet on it. I'd wager that if we had some indices of political violence and economic prosperity, the former would be below 1960s/1970s level, the latter would be close to some ATH and the only way the current era is remarkable is how efficiently the internet has divided us.
But please, make your own predictions.
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Yeah very much agree here. I'm tired of Trump communicating and signaling as if he is going to take serious action, then... not doing it?! It's kind of the worst of both worlds in that it gets the opposition riled up while winning no victories for his base. I don't understand it.
I understand it as Trump doing his version of constant A/B testing to see if there's any appetite for following through.
I don't know what his negotiating stance is in this case. Dems feel comfortable speaking out against him. Boohoo. Staff the agencies with as many friendly people as possible and fire as many of the rest as possible (which means fighting the Courts, granted) so there's minimal concern about mutiny.
Just keep doing things and if the best the Dems can muster is veiled non-threats then its safe to ignore that rather than give them new sound bites.
And if its time to kick things off by actually arresting them, then cowabunga it is, I've been ready for that for years now.
I think this is basically right. In addition Trump isn’t just A/B testing the base but the Republican leadership in Washington. I would guess it’s about 50/50 or 40/60 in his favor, with a little over half of Republicans still hoping we can go back to the days of “decency” and tax cuts.
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