Donald Trump

[stylofone]

Stormy Daniels is a bit of a sideshow. The documents case is important, but not as significant as this one. The Georgia interference is also a biggie, so there's still more to come. Jan 6 was a coup attempt. The disturbing events in coup-blighted Niger come to mind. The generals' supporters displaying Russian flags remind me of Trump's toadying to Putin.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-amer ... 5dq30.html

[pipbarber]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... 0-election

This is a good article that explores the implications of Trump's trials and his presidential campaign. The take away is that there is so much grey, so much is unprecedented, it's next to impossible to be certain of anything. His polling doesn't seem to be impacted, and in some cases it seems to be improving, and he's obviously running on a persecution platform.

Politically, just as he has done after his other two indictments, Trump is likely to seize on the charges and try to spin them to his advantage. “They’re not indicting me, they’re indicting you. I just happen to be standing in the way,” he said in Pennsylvania last weekend. “Every time the radical left Democrats, Marxists, communists and fascists indict me, I consider it actually a great badge of honor … Because I’m being indicted for you.”

Utter nonsense of course but a solid foundation for a campaign, especially given that Trump doesn't actually stand for anything other than his own fame and fortune. In this sense, these trials are a political godsend for him.

As the article points out, any guilty verdict will be appealed right up to the supreme court (and they're a hardly a reliable mob) and will likely take years. It's probable that they won't prevent him from running in the election, and that's a good thing, in my opinion. The only way to get rid of Trump is for him to be smashed in a general election, not that that would be the end of US proto-fascism, which will just focus on a different leader after Trump has gone. But i'm doubtful he'll be 'smashed' in a general election, he could even win it.

Such is the surreal post fact world we inhabit. My fear, as usual, is that the Dems are not entirely operating in this new world but are sitting back in their comfortable lounge chairs clinking wine glasses over how marvelous the 20th century is. In many ways Trump embodies his time and place on a level the Democrats can only dream about. For a sane politics of the left to be in place, there would be one singular focus and that is climate change and it's implications politically, socially and economically and the Democrats are miles off that.

[Irrev-Black]

Silly orange bully has made threat against legal person who knows what "actionable" means.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-05/ ... /102693572

[two dogs]

I subscribe to the Lincoln Project's YouTube channel, and I was quite amused by their most recent one!

[stylofone]

Ah yes, leadership, uniting the country, good sportsmanship and decency. And from Donald Trump, the absolute opposite.

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/soccer/tru ... 5dujg.html

[Irrev-Black]

I am still supplied with some information from the X-cretion Formerly Known As Birdsite.

This outstanding piece showed up:

Jack Hopkins
@thejackhopkins
Donald Trump is in very poor health. How do I know? He is 77 years old. He’s overweight. He has a horrible diet, and has had for decades. He doesn’t exercise. He’s was the least fit President in at least the last seventy years. Having genetics on your side is wonderful (if, in fact he does) but it will not protect you indefinitely from decades of poor lifestyle choices. It ALWAYS catches up to you.

Having a crackpot, shade-tree “physician” like Ronny Jackson give you a bogus “all is good!” physical report, only fools your cult members. Your cells can never be fooled.

If Donald Trump makes it through the next couple of years without a major health event or illness, I would be very surprised. The stress, which includes running out of money-even other peoples money-and possibly seeing Trump Org. be dissolved, along with having his lies fall apart inside of a courtroom, in front of the entire world, will all take it’s toll. It’s already taking its toll.

The collapse of Donald Trump has been set in motion. The financial collapse. Emotional collapse. Physical collapse. Mental collapse. It’s already happening. You can see it. You can feel it. You can smell it.

This week, Donald was snared in what I call the “Chutkan Trap.” From it, there is no escape. He’s met his match. Everything he’s ever done, and every lie he’s ever told….has played a role in bringing him to this moment.
A moment that will be the only thing that’s remembered about him one hundred years from now: that he was a hollow joke of a man, humiliated in front of the entire world….and shown to always have been a scared little boy inside of an adults body.

He always wanted to be in the public eye. But them again, he was always in control of how. His days of control are over. Other people now control his life. Two of them are black women. Poetic.

In a courtroom, he will have no control. He will be controlled, though.

Keep these things in mind. This is his reality now. It’s gorgeously delicious. Savor every moment of it. You’ve earned it. You deserve it.
2:25 PM · Aug 13, 2023

While the writer omits the threat of Trump's fellow-travelers and the multitude of equally-pointy heads waiting their turn, he does make a case for Trumpenshardyfroydy.

[pipbarber]

Yes, but as you point out, the Trumpenshardyfroydy is all very soothing until we think of who is likely to take the wheel if the orange turd drops dead in the next 15 months.

But we shouldn't deny ourselves simple pleasures, and Trumps demise fits the category.

[Irrev-Black]

Of course, legal opinion seems to mean little in the captured state of America.

Two conservative law professors who are active members of the Federalist Society have determined that Donald Trump is ineligible to be president again, as a Constitutional provision (Section 3 of the 14th Amendment) bars anyone "engaged in insurrection" from holding office.

This conclusion comes after professors William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas studied the issue for more than a year. "When we started out, neither of us was sure what the answer was," explained Professor Baude, via The New York Times. "People were talking about this provision of the Constitution. We thought: 'We're constitutional scholars, and this is an important constitutional question. We ought to figure out what's really going on here.' And the more we dug into it, the more we realized that we had something to add."

Although their extensive, detailed findings will be published in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review next year, Baude offers their study's conclusion in a nutshell: "Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6."

https://boingboing.net/2023/08/11/donal ... ssors.html

[Irrev-Black]

Trump may have more front than a big department store, but what of the next-level co-conspirators?

Somebody's bound to do some pre-emptive testifyin'...

Teri Kanefield
@Teri_Kanefield@law-and-politics.online

Who goes under the bus?

While social media is shouting Do Something Now and Lock Him Up each time Trump does something unhinged, special counsel’s office has a different idea.

Evidently someone at Rolling Stone has contacts inside Trump’s orbits because they keep coming out with interesting stuff.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... 234806292/

Where there are multiple potential defendants, and they start getting worried, they may employ the "Please don't put me in jail; put the other guy in jail" strategy.

1/
I've called this the moment defendants start pointing the finger at each other.

The DOJ strategy seems to be this: Indict Trump alone to get to trial quickly.

This will pressure on the co-conspirators who haven’t yet been charged and might like to avoid it. (They’re like, “OMG they really indicted Trump!)

Suddenly these unindicted co-conspirators feel very vulnerable.

As we all learned from the Godfather, the way to get the mob boss is for a highly-placed insider turns on the boss.

2/

Evidently last summer, Trump (thinking like a mob boss) was asking which of his advisors were most likely to “crack” under pressure from the feds.

Are there signs of cracking?

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/p ... 234806292/

[pipbarber]

The prosecution are currently looking under every rock in America in search of an impartial jury member.