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I saw the following exchange between Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, and it made me angry. So instead of getting over it and going and doing normal things like a well adjusted adult, I decided to complain about it on the internet.
First of all, I'm at least glad to see that reality is starting to set in. Trump is going to get his nonsense "absolute immunity" claim promptly rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court. He's going to go on trial on March 4, he's going to get convicted, and he's going to go to prison. This has all been obvious for some time, and people do need to come to grips with it instead of telling themselves "it can't happen, so it won't".
But there is a stark mismatch here between the acceptance on one hand that the jury will convict Trump but the insistence on the other hand that "the charges aren't real". DC is an overwhelmingly democratic voting jurisdiction, but you would need to be cynical indeed to think there is no chance that even one Democrat juror would refuse to imprison a political opponent on obviously baseless charges. But of course, the charges are not nearly so baseless as Carlson suggests.
No, the reason that Kelly and Carlson know that Trump is going down is not because they think there is not one honest soul to be found in DC. They can have confidence Trump will lose this case because both his conduct and the law have little mystery about them. On the facts, there's little if any dispute about the actions that Trump took. On the law we have seen similar charges applied to many January 6 defendants, and it has not gone well for them. If Trump is to get similar treatment for similar conduct, he must be convicted.
Carlson and Kelly know that he's guilty and yet they pretend otherwise. Carlson rants about how outrageous it is to render people's votes meaningless, and yet when Trump is charged for conspiring to do exactly that he flatly states it's "not even a real crime". I emphasize that his contention here isn't even that Trump didn't do the awful thing he's accused of - he's saying that the things he's accused of aren't awful. This lays bare how empty and fake Carlson's feigned defence of democracy is. You can believe that it's outrageous to deprive people of their democratic rights or you can believe that conspiring to deprive people of their democratic rights isn't a "real crime", but it's incoherent to claim both.
But worst of all is the "warning" of violence. Carlson tells us that the man who incited a riot must not be punished or else we'll get more riots. This is the logic of terrorism. Give us what we want or there will be blood. Sure, he phrases it as a prediction rather than a threat and says he detests violence... but he knows full well that many of the people who might actually commit it could well be listening to him, and he knows he is fanning the flames of their resentment and putting the thought of violence in their heads. This would be irresponsible even if Carlson were sincere, but the fact that he's obviously being cynical makes it worse. This is a man who passionately hates Trump and couldn't wait for him to get kicked out of the White House - and yet here he is inventing excuses for him, pre-emptively trying to discredit the verdict he knows is coming, sanewashing Trump's "rigged election" claims, stoking anger, and telling people that violence is the inevitable response if Trump gets locked up. All, one presumes, so he can maintain his position in the GOP media ecosystem. What a worm.
Smith and Chuktan will obviously not allow themselves to be swayed by threats of violence, so we will unfortunately get to see if the dark talk turns into action. I for one hope Trump's most volatile supporters will at least recognize the truth that Carlson acknowledges - it will go extremely badly for anyone who takes it upon themselves to shed blood.
This reminds me of another person who confidently prognosticated, back in the day, that Trump would be in jail within a matter of weeks. It didn't happen.
More seriously, the tit-for-tat has set in. I see the House of Representatives have voted to proceed with impeachment inquiry against Biden. And it was all done on party lines: Republicans voting 'yes', Democrats voting 'no'.
So the lesson about using the system to get the political opponents has been learned, and the other side is deciding to play now.
Is there something serious there for Biden to answer? Who can tell, now? It's all been reduced to partisan weaponry. Before anyone starts gloating over "Trump is going to jail!", they should look at this. What's to stop multiple attempts to 'get' Biden, including persuading some state attorney to grandstand about taking a prosecution? The playbook has been set out as to how to do it.
I say normalize the office of People's Opposition to the President. If we're going to get a special prosecutor every damned time anyway and continual allegations of wrongdoing, you might as well. Seriously, from Nixon on, we are now at four out of nine Presidents with allegations of serious malfeasance that are treated seriously by at least one faction in Congress, plus additional Presidents treated as "illegitimate" along at least some lines. If the POP had existed, we presumably would have had major inquiries conducted on the extent of Reagan's involvement in various CIA schemes and Bush's approach to Iraqi intelligence. If this is just the way things are done now, let's formalize it instead of pretending that each new President is uniquely bad in some materially important way.
I agree, parliamentary systems are good.
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I was and remain of the opinion that with Contragate, Oliver North should have been shot as a traitor to the uniform.
And I'm a conservative, so that's my view on doing things that are indeed a threat to democracy.
The Trump trials are so stupid by comparison that I have to think they're vengeful partisanship. And now the Republicans are playing the same with Joe Biden. Well, thanks guys who spent four years trying to find any stick to beat the dog with when it came to Trump, instead of letting him fade back into has-been obscurity, I'm sure the nation is the better for it!
More libertarian than conservative here, but I'm with you on this one.
I still find the response of Our Nation's Leaders to Iran-Contra to be intensely surreal. The Republicans IIRC thought everything was just fine, and the Democrats were mostly upset about Ollie funneling the proceeds from the arms sales to the Nicaraguan Contras, and nobody seemed to much care that US military officers had been selling US military hardware out the back door to an enemy nation.
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Biden refused to collect interest on student loans for nearly three years, and tried to outright cancel them before the Supreme Court told him to cut it out, and then he immediately got to work on trying to do it again.
In a sane world, the President unilaterally misappropriating hundreds of billions of dollars to pay off his base would be clear grounds for impeachment and prosecution, but we don't live in that world, so I guess they're going to try to tie him to his son's shenanigans.
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I also remember that person. And you may recall that at that time I did not make those sorts of silly predictions. Judge me on my own words rather than Impassionata's, if you don't mind.
The situation is different now. We don't merely have an investigation. We have 91 felony charges. We have a trial date. We have clear and compelling evidence that he did exactly what he's alleged to have done. He's been repeatedly sanctioned for breaching bail conditions. We've already seen courts in civil cases find that he committed sexual assault, fraud, and insurrection. He's defending himself with the nonsense argument that he is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for any crime he committed as President. SCOTUS is not stalling for him. Four of his co-conspirators have already plead guilty. The walls actually are closing in.
To top it off, there's no one on Trump's side who seems to be able to offer a credible legal argument for his innocence. What we get, both from pro-Trump commentators and from Trump's own legal team, are accusations of political bias and election interference. That stuff can rile up the base but it doesn't win trials.
Even today, the truth still matters sometimes. Trump was never going to be jailed on the timeframes Impassionata suggested even if he was obviously guilty, but the reason why he wasn't jailed at all is because Trump didn't actually collude with Russia. However Trump did actually try to overturn the 2020 election. He did it openly, he did it shamelessly, and you saw it with your own two eyes.
Yes, there's a lot of noise and rancour. But underneath it there is also reality. And the reality is about as bleak for Trump as it is for George Santos and Bob Menendez.
Being fair, most of his actual defense is not going to be shown to the public, because it would be counterproductive to the job of mounting a defense, telling the public the defense’s position and strategy also tells the prosecutors and thus they can prepare to counter the theory.
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My Vibe-Analysis based opinion: if he's going to jail, he's going only if he loses the election. Jailing him before the election is suicidal, to my knowledge it doesn't actually prevent him from running, and it would actually increase his chances of winning. Convicting someone, only to lose to them would be a massive humiliation to the establishment, and I don't know if they want to roll the dice on that one.
Jailing him after he wins might work, but would also lower the legitimacy of the establishment, and might backfire, if Trump picks some lunatic for VP.
The only way this works is if you let Trump supporters hype themselves up for the campaign, beat them in an obviously fair election, and then jail the guy when everybody's deflated post-defeat.
Jailing him after he takes office doesn't work at all, since jailing him doesn't make him not President. He can pardon himself for Federal crimes and refuse to answer for State crimes (at least until and unless the Supreme Court rules against him on that point, which doesn't seem likely). Jailing him on state crimes as President-Elect might work but is even more likely to lead to violence.
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You might be right about the political implications, but despite Trumps rhetoric, it isn't Biden driving this train. The people who are driving the train seem very set on that March 4 trial date. If that ends up tanking Biden's numbers, Smith and Chuktan will shrug.
There is a semi realistic scenario where he gets convicted before the election but allowed to go free on bond pending sentencing, with the sentencing date set after the election. So if he wins he pardons himself and if he loses he gets locked up. I don't think it will happen, my bet is he gets remanded in custody, but it's not impossible.
Or pending appeal. This case is messy enough that as long as Trump keeps paying his lawyers he can tie it up in the appeals courts until the only sentence that makes sense is house arrest in his nursing home.
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I think you're drastically overestimating the integrity of these people. Maybe you're right, but it would be perfectly on-brand for the Dems to think that this is the cleanest way to ensure victory.
It's not really about integrity, I think Biden is corrupt as heck. It's more that working inside politics has led me to model these situations as having many more moving parts and actors with agency than outside observers might assume.
I do think that the Democratic political establishment pressured the DoJ to go after Trump, but it was done publicly through the Jan 6 committee rather than surreptitiously through a private conversation from Biden. I think a lot of people just kind of assume that all the different parts of the establishment work together a lot more closely and seamlessly than they actually do.
Maybe. I used to believe that too, but I think we'd see a lot more friction, on a lot more happenings of the past couple years, if they didn't.
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How so? I'm not so sure about it increasing Trump's chances of winning — I'm from Alaska; I remember what happened with Ted Stevens, and that was a much more egregious case of patent railroading.
And, indeed having him win from in jail would indeed be a problem for the establishment, but what then comes to my mind is the case of Tsar Nicholas II.
Never heard of the dude, but the reason the reaction to Trump's conviction might be worse than Steven's case, is because the knives were out for Trump for 8 years straight, to an absurd degree. It got so bad, that for all I know they got an actual case against him now, and I still think the proper response would be to vote for him, in retaliation for the circus show we've been put through.
I don't want to come off as callous, but they can kill him for all I care. The more officially, the better.
It's a story; the full investigation report is a wordy read, but it's hard to overemphasize how fucked up that case was. Looking at blogosphere discussions of the incident from before (2008) and after (mid-2009) the real revelations give a good look at the extent that early FBI leaks had managed to poison much of conservatives (even media-skeptical-by-those-times) against him, until the other shoe dropped.
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the problem is if they do kill trump then you can't vote for him. you will probably just end up accidentally voting for an establishment candidate in the end even if you try your best not to.
I don't know if that matters much. It's not like my hopes are that Trump wins and manages to fix anything, the point is to convince people that the establishment is illegitimate, and we need to build alternatives.
Why? What is "legitimacy," anyway? The difference between "Don Corleone" and "King Vito I" isn't that one has "legitimacy" and the other doesn't, it's whether or not there's a bigger, stronger "stationary bandit." Whatever group can most credibly tell you "follow this rule or I hurt you" is the government (and that's what "government" simply is).
I wish I could remember where I encountered the argument that Westerners deeply misunderstand the "Mandate of Heaven," mistaking it for a Chinese "divine right of kings" when it's really a much more materialist concept. That what it really means is that "legitimacy" follows from — is a product of — the de facto exercise of imperial power. Whoever most performs the functions of government (however badly) is the government (until someone else is actually doing it better).
…but what makes you think this is possible? Both in terms of the forces in opposition, and the qualities of the people in question?
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The problem with me believing yet another "Trump going to prison, for sure this time!" declaration, no matter who makes it, is all the wolves that have been cried as definitely in the sheepfold this time round, and yet he's still out there stumping on the campaign trail.
So what makes this time different? Maybe it is, but after all the grand declarations of treason and fascism, "he cheated on a bank loan" is rather a come-down. Particularly as it's not even the banks taking this case. What was all that about victimless crimes I see online?
I'm not trying to present him as some kind of hero of the people or as anything other than what he is, but the amount of effort poured into "he must be guilty of something we can get him on!" has been ridiculous. It's pure vengefulness and not a crusade for great justice.
I think you should probably take note of the fact that even pro-Trump voices like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly are now conceding that he will be convicted. They may not like Trump personally but they are not people who have hysterically accused Trump of every crime under the sun.
I also don't think it's much of a defence to point out that he was accused of more than just fraud, seeing as he is being prosecuted for more than just fraud. Yes, people who claimed he would be convicted of treason were being over-excitable - the Department of Justice likes to only bring cases that are slam dunks (thus their 99.6% conviction rate). But the charges he is actually facing are still very serious. His own justice department locked someone up for 9 years under some of the same Espionage Act offences he's been charged with in the documents case.
They're conceding he'll be convicted because his enemies have the timing down perfectly to meet their goals.
I mean, c'mon. It took 3 years for them to put this case together... exactly? Every hearing and trial date syncopates perfectly with the election media cycle to maximize the damage? He'll be put in jail at the perfect time for the Republicans to have to scramble behind a new candidate or make some other impossible choice?
They're confident this time is different because after 8 years of practice with this bullshit they've exhausted enough of his resources and political capital that they stand a strong chance of killing him. The guy's hawking pieces of his suit for christ's sake.
I suppose at the end of the day this is the fault of idiot boomers and marines for not picking someone other than a narcissistic piece of shit this go-round. Biden should have lost easily, but I guess we're all going to do this the hard way.
Like who, though? The current bunch of prospective candidates isn't exactly filling me with joyous expectation; out of all of them, Nikki Haley is about the only one I find tolerable, and she has a snowball in hell's chance of getting anywhere.
Remember Mitt "Mormon Theocrat Going to Implement the Handmaid's Tale in Reality" Romney? Now he may be patted on the head as a true patriot and statesman due to criticising Trump, but when he was running for the job, he was painted as Literally Hitler.
When every single nominee you got is going to be pilloried as Literally Hitler, unless they're so obviously hopeless they don't stand a chance, what do you go? Who do you go with? I never in a million years imagined Trump had a chance to win, but the amount of seething and screaming about him ever since the results of the election are demonstrating something. I'm not entirely sure what, but it involves "stop playing the gentlemanly loser game".
I've seen some argue that the answer to this is "someone who actually is Literally Hitler?" In the tale of the boy who cried "wolf," eventually a wolf arrived.
Of course, there appears to be a dearth of notable would-be wolves.
In any case, given the nature of our system, the parties, and the available candidates, I simply don't see how you "stop playing the gentlemanly loser game" without, at a minimum, abandoning electoral politics altogether.
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Nikki Haley, who would make you use your real name on the Internet? With Republicans like herm who needs Democrats?
That's silly, but it's not out of line with current thinking around hate speech, etc. Besides, nothing will ever be as monumentally stupid, to me, as po-facedly calling your censorship department "Anti-Evil Operations".
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They can’t ‘get’ Biden unless they get 67 seats in the Senate.
But the precedent has been set and is being followed, that's the rub. And there's always the courts, as we see here. Maybe Joe can't be impeached, but thanks to Hunter, he sure can be dragged through the courts on tax charges, bank charges, money charges, whatever else.
Maybe Tara Reade will find a sympathetic prosecutor to special-case this one time extend the statute of limitations for her, as E. Jean Carroll got, so that Trump could finally be "we told you he's a convicted sex offender!"
She has defected to Russia. This sharply increases my estimation of her always having been a Russian asset. I realize how absolutely bizarre that claim sounds in light of ridiculous Russia conspiracies about election-related mind control, but here we are.
It seem weird to me to use "defected" after the fall of the Soviet Union. If I decide to move to Dubai (or Tokyo or Vancouver) and renounce my US citizenship is that "defecting"? It seems like the only time the word is used is in reference to moving to Russia. Do people defect to Iran?
People defect to North Korea, that happens occasionally.
It seems to me that if she gets a Russian state pension or equivalent, she defected, otherwise she just moved for whatever reason, possibly because she’s a traumatized mentally ill woman.
I can agree with that.
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I've only heard the word "defected" when referring to soldiers, spies or government officials.
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God alone knows, that's the kind of circus we've got going on now. But at the time, why shouldn't her allegations be every bit as credible as Blasey-Ford or, if you prefer, Julie Swetnick? Instead of going "yeah that one is nuts, let's stick with the Blasey-Ford story as at least plausible", they solemnly said "Oh dear, the FBI should investigate!"
When they're holding their hands up in horror about "high school drug rape gang" then I think the backpedalling on Reade was hypocritical, to say the least.
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Assuming every Senate seat is filled, present, and voting, conviction and expulsion requires 67 votes, not 60. I don't think either party can get to 67 without either a reasonable fraction of bipartisan support or a truly enormous political upheaval (60 is difficult, but possible). In Biden's case specifically, the only way he gets expelled is if a big chunk of Democratic leadership decides to remove him; even in that case, I strongly believe they would engineer his resignation instead.
Yes, confused it with the filibuster/cloture threshold. The Democrats came closest to 60 in 1992 and 2008 I think with 58.
The Democrats got to 60 in 2008; it was part of the drama surrounding Obamacare. The first draft got 60 votes in the Senate on a vote of cloture, with Ted Kennedy supplying the 60th vote on his deathbed. A special election was held to fill Kennedy's seat after he died--not the usual process for filling a Senate vacancy, but the result of a cascade of political maneuvers and especially large amounts of irony--and Massachusetts elected Scott Brown, a Republican (!), who explicitly ran on a platform of blocking Obamacare. This caused great consternation in DC, and quite a lot of emergency brainstorming as to how to get the final package passed. The details are fascinating, if you like political/procedural trainwrecks.
Note, though, that the Democrats only got to 60 following two successive wave elections in their favor (2006 and 2008; GWB was extremely unpopular towards the end of his presidency). In the modern day, it's hard to get to 60. The Republican party should have a marginal advantage in the Senate, based on state-by-state political tilt, but they have routinely underperformed across the last several cycles.
Says who? Ted Kennedy was origunally elected un a special election after JFK vacated the seat to become president. And if there were supposedly shenanigans, why not just leave the interim appointee in place (former DNC chair Paul Kirk)?
Says me, on the basis of a vast amount of American political history, and the knowledge of what happened in Massachusetts in the 2000s. The usual process for filling a Senate vacancy is the appointment of a replacement by the Governor, and that appointment lasts until the next even-year November election. This is the well-known procedure in most states, both now and for the past several decades at a minimum. There are exceptions; they are unusual.
In 2004, Massachusetts had a Republican Governor (Mitt Romney, as it happens) and a Democrat supermajority in the state legislature (an odd combination, but not unheard of in Massachusetts). Anticipating the vacancy of John Kerry's Senate seat if he won election to the Presidency that year, the legislature amended the procedures for filling a Senate vacancy over Romney's veto, stripping him of his appointment power, and calling for a special election to fill the vacancy temporarily. As far as I'm aware, the legislature definitely had the power to do exactly that, but it was also an obvious political power play, and calling such "(legal) shenanigans" is defensible.
This power play did not pan out as expected. First, Kerry lost the Presidential election in 2004, so no Senate vacancy was had. Second, Romney was succeeded by a Democrat, Deval Patrick, in the 2006 gubernatorial election. Third, Ted Kennedy provided the next vacancy by dying in office in 2009. Shortly before his death, Kennedy persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to re-empower the Governor to appoint a temporary replacement pending the results of the special election. While Patrick could (and did) appoint a Democrat to replace Kennedy, the people of Massachusetts picked a Republican, Scott Brown, in the special election. Brown's election dropped the Democrats' Senate majority from 60 to 59, triggering the next round of drama in DC.
Had Massachusetts followed the "usual process" in filling the Kennedy vacancy, Patrick's nominee would have continued in office for several more months until the next general election in 2010, maintaining the Democrats' 60-vote Senate majority for that period. That this did not occur was the ironic result of political gamesmanship on the part of the Massachusetts state legislature.
But the shenanigans were in 2004; you seemed to imply that they were in 2010, in response to Kennedy's death.
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