damn....all this crying from the cult cave is terrible......same kind of support Hitler got years ago....blind allegiance to a false god
Trump lost moving on with new year go Biden
- Thread starter Allforthewifey
- Start date
Go Trump 2020
Donald Trump's Success as a Con Man, Explained by Science ...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10...
Oct 18, 2018 · In this light, we should revise our understanding of the whole idea of the “confidence man” - con man, for short. It’s usually thought that the con man finds a way to earn people’s trust ...
Why is it that Trump supporters can't see what a liar, con ...
www.quora.com
Why-is-it-that-Trump-supporters-cant-see-what-a-liar-con-man-and...
Why is it that Trump supporters can't see what a liar, con-man, and national disgrace he is? Why is it that Hillary supporters can't see what a liar, con-woman, and national disgrace she is? Why is it that Bernie supporters can't see what a liar, ...
5 Reasons Donald Trump Is A Colossal Con Artist - True ...
www.trueactivist.com/5-reasons-donald-trump-is-a-colossal-con-artist
Jun 29, 2016 · 5 Reasons Donald Trump Is A Colossal Con Artist by: Alexis Henning Posted on June 29, 2016 The “con”, short for confidence game , is anecdotally described as an elaborate scammer who uses shiny objects and a little sleight of hand to appear that he is something he is absolutely not.
3 Types of Trump Supporters, And Why They Defend Trump's ...
trump...
Why, do they defend him as a staunch truthteller after he admits he should never have retweeted a nasty picture of Heidi Cruz (“If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have sent it”)? Why does he lie every five minutes, yet receive support from his base every time? Trump’s supporters seem to break down into three camps on this score.
Trump supporters believe these 10 incredibly fake facts ...
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/trump-supporters-believe-10-incredibly-fake-facts-true
Apr 29, 2019 · In short, it may just take Trump throwing puppies into a firepit for a majority of his supporters to recognize him for the lying con man that he is. …
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-10...
Oct 18, 2018 · In this light, we should revise our understanding of the whole idea of the “confidence man” - con man, for short. It’s usually thought that the con man finds a way to earn people’s trust ...
Why is it that Trump supporters can't see what a liar, con ...
Quora
Why is it that Trump supporters can't see what a liar, con-man, and national disgrace he is? Why is it that Hillary supporters can't see what a liar, con-woman, and national disgrace she is? Why is it that Bernie supporters can't see what a liar, ...
5 Reasons Donald Trump Is A Colossal Con Artist - True ...
www.trueactivist.com/5-reasons-donald-trump-is-a-colossal-con-artist
Jun 29, 2016 · 5 Reasons Donald Trump Is A Colossal Con Artist by: Alexis Henning Posted on June 29, 2016 The “con”, short for confidence game , is anecdotally described as an elaborate scammer who uses shiny objects and a little sleight of hand to appear that he is something he is absolutely not.
3 Types of Trump Supporters, And Why They Defend Trump's ...
trump...
Why, do they defend him as a staunch truthteller after he admits he should never have retweeted a nasty picture of Heidi Cruz (“If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have sent it”)? Why does he lie every five minutes, yet receive support from his base every time? Trump’s supporters seem to break down into three camps on this score.
Trump supporters believe these 10 incredibly fake facts ...
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/04/trump-supporters-believe-10-incredibly-fake-facts-true
Apr 29, 2019 · In short, it may just take Trump throwing puppies into a firepit for a majority of his supporters to recognize him for the lying con man that he is. …
I asked a simple question not involving impeachment in any way - ya just deflect as if by instinct it seems : |
US, China sign historic phase one trade deal
The pact, which may add half a point to U.S. GDP this year, is only the initial phase of a broad agreement that Trump has said may come in as many as three sections.
I just heard it today, I have never ever been polled, they are not dependable.
You are proving to us all that your mind is deranged, Facts??? No common sense in the least. Face it today's democratic party are garbage, and as I study more about this, even starting from JFK on, in my lifetime they have been terrible.
I gave you three examples.....are you really that dense???? Oh no....you just wanted to deflect as usual when caught.
I didn't say the Supreme Court does or does not recognize Congressional subpoena power. Yet another piss poor attempt at a straw man argument.
What I did say was it wouldn't be contempt of court. The charge is contempt of congress. If you had read THE FIRST SENTENCE of the link you posted, you'd know that.....that alone speaks volumes!
You should ask your democrap buddies about Contempt of Congress since Eric Holder was charged with that after him and Obozo refused to comply with congressional subpoenas over fast and furious. If only Obozo had an R behind his name, you would be calling for his head on the impeachment platter. After all, by your "logic"
they are very accurate......they poll a certain amount of people for their opinion....problem is....from the phone......how do you know you didn't hit a far right area or a dem area
hell no!
I spent 7 years in the milatary…….to me....Russia is the enemy.....he was using them prior to win the election...he had the republican party platform changed to favor the Russians in Crimea and elsewhere..........he has given P.utin several things since being in the white house....he lied about having no involvement with them....he belittled our law enforcement and intelligence agencies and took P.utin's word over our people.....he fired and anyone that was trying to investigate him.....thought he was/is above the law and trying to be a dictator and just like last election....stay in power by any means necessary.....but he got caught.....the right and the trumptards buying anything he says or anything he wants to do....he gave Syria to Russia...to include our bases and airstrips…..willing to give Ukraine to Russia.....I could go on for a long time on all the reasons I don't like this guy.....and why some are just to stupid to see it....others don't care just willing to let him do whatever
look at what he has done to our standing in the world...most allies don't like him and are laughing at him...….we have lost all respect and credibility…..matter of fact in a recent poll.... most countries trusted Russia over the US
I am serious when I say I think he is a Russian puppet...and it will come out....but...to late?
I don't know about other Dems....but for me...it is way past just wanting him impeached...…..I think jail at least.........I really think he works for Russia....how about the money laundering for Russia...both the us and Germany have proved that...although a little shady...perfectly legal...and where is his taxes...can't show them ...for one the Russian money!.....you guys just keep your head in the sand
Last edited:
The world trusts Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping more than Trump
https://www.wral.com/donald-trump-is-less-trusted-in-the-world-than-either-vladimir...
6 days ago · The world trusts Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping more than Trump. Posted 11:54 a.m. yesterday Updated 4:22 p.m. yesterday
Donald Trump's Latest Approval Polls Released & Results ...
Donald Trump's Latest Approval Polls Released & Results Show A 2020 Blue Wave
There’s a very good reason that Donald Trump insists negative polls are “fake news” and promotes numbers by Rasmussen, who tends to inflate his numbers. A recent Gallup poll demonstrates why. Trump job approval via @Gallup: Feb. 10: 44%March 10: 39%https://t.co/C4sD1f6NUq...
bipartisanreport.com
Mar 17, 2019 · ‘The latest poll was conducted March 1-10, just after Trump’s second denuclearization summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un failed to produce an agreement. At the same time, special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election was front and center as Trump’s ...
New Trump Approval Polls Released & Numbers Show A Giant ...
August 24, 2019 - Bipartisan Report
bipartisanreport.com
Aug 24, 2019 · Donald Trump may like to brag about his poll numbers with Rasmussen, which has always issued shady and GOP-friendly results that align with no other poll results, but more accurate polls show that Trump’s support even among his base is slipping ahead of the 2020 elections. new Monmouth Poll on how Americans view Trump’s performance […]
Donald Trump is a real danger to America
Donald Trump is a braggart, a blowhard and a buffoon. He talks out of both sides of his mouth about everything from a woman’s right to choose, to nuclear weapons, international relations and national finance. He is a con artist who has hoodwinked the Republican Party . The Republican Party is stuck with him, but America is not. Those who are not taking this seriously, it will damage America for decades to come.
Donald Trump constantly brags about his “wealth.” True wealth is in living a good life and leaving a better world, not how much money and things you accumulate. Trump’s claims of personal wealth in the billions are a mile wide and an inch deep. They would quickly evaporate under the bright lights of press scrutiny. Why do you think he refuses to release his tax returns?
He is like a carnival barker who says, “step right in, everyone’s a winner.” But once inside the tent, you find a shabby space with a con game going on. A flimflam scam designed to steal your vote and lead us into a house of horrors where America loses the respect and friendship of other nations.
George W. Bush was the worst president in the modern era. He caused more problems for the world than any other president including the financial crisis of 2008, the destabilization of the Middle East and the rise of terrorism that occurred after his invasion of Iraq. Donald Trump is infinitely worse.
Trump’s naive “shoot from the hip and think about it later” approach to problems and his penchant to strike out when confronted, including the name calling and his childish histrionics will not work on the world stage. His passive-aggressive statements i.e., “I won’t call her a bimbo because that wouldn’t be nice, so I won’t say it” or “we think the judge may be a Mexican” are disgusting and infantile.
Trump thinks Vladimir Putin (a former KGB thug and murderer who as president is running the Russian economy into the ground to line both his pockets and those of his close associates) is a swell guy because he called him a genius (he did not). Putin is able to play Trump like a fiddle while causing trouble in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
He thinks that virtually any country that wants nuclear weapons should be able to have them. This would most certainly lead to terrorist groups obtaining nuclear material for a “dirty bomb” and could even cause a thermonuclear exchange between two nations. Welcome to the unthinkable.
He is willing to risk the financial stability of the entire planet by defaulting on the U.S. debt so “he can cut a better deal.” This would make the crash of 2008 look like baby’s play.
The list goes on and on. I urge all Americans to think this through as a cold calculation. You may be rightly angry with your government’s seeming inability to do the right thing for the American people, but Trump is not the answer.
Trump is a dangerous foray into ignorance and bravado. He is a racist, a demagogue and a threat to everything America stands for in the world.
Trump is a disaster for America.
Donald Trump defends Vladimir Putin and Russia, insults US
https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/trump-and-the-us-legal-system-now-face-an...
DONALD Trump has expanded on his jaw-dropping defence of Russian president Vladimir Putin in a Fox News interview. The US President’s comments, released in an excerpt ahead of the interview with ...
Donald Trump is a braggart, a blowhard and a buffoon. He talks out of both sides of his mouth about everything from a woman’s right to choose, to nuclear weapons, international relations and national finance. He is a con artist who has hoodwinked the Republican Party . The Republican Party is stuck with him, but America is not. Those who are not taking this seriously, it will damage America for decades to come.
Donald Trump constantly brags about his “wealth.” True wealth is in living a good life and leaving a better world, not how much money and things you accumulate. Trump’s claims of personal wealth in the billions are a mile wide and an inch deep. They would quickly evaporate under the bright lights of press scrutiny. Why do you think he refuses to release his tax returns?
He is like a carnival barker who says, “step right in, everyone’s a winner.” But once inside the tent, you find a shabby space with a con game going on. A flimflam scam designed to steal your vote and lead us into a house of horrors where America loses the respect and friendship of other nations.
George W. Bush was the worst president in the modern era. He caused more problems for the world than any other president including the financial crisis of 2008, the destabilization of the Middle East and the rise of terrorism that occurred after his invasion of Iraq. Donald Trump is infinitely worse.
Trump’s naive “shoot from the hip and think about it later” approach to problems and his penchant to strike out when confronted, including the name calling and his childish histrionics will not work on the world stage. His passive-aggressive statements i.e., “I won’t call her a bimbo because that wouldn’t be nice, so I won’t say it” or “we think the judge may be a Mexican” are disgusting and infantile.
Trump thinks Vladimir Putin (a former KGB thug and murderer who as president is running the Russian economy into the ground to line both his pockets and those of his close associates) is a swell guy because he called him a genius (he did not). Putin is able to play Trump like a fiddle while causing trouble in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
He thinks that virtually any country that wants nuclear weapons should be able to have them. This would most certainly lead to terrorist groups obtaining nuclear material for a “dirty bomb” and could even cause a thermonuclear exchange between two nations. Welcome to the unthinkable.
He is willing to risk the financial stability of the entire planet by defaulting on the U.S. debt so “he can cut a better deal.” This would make the crash of 2008 look like baby’s play.
The list goes on and on. I urge all Americans to think this through as a cold calculation. You may be rightly angry with your government’s seeming inability to do the right thing for the American people, but Trump is not the answer.
Trump is a dangerous foray into ignorance and bravado. He is a racist, a demagogue and a threat to everything America stands for in the world.
Trump is a disaster for America.
Donald Trump defends Vladimir Putin and Russia, insults US
https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/trump-and-the-us-legal-system-now-face-an...
DONALD Trump has expanded on his jaw-dropping defence of Russian president Vladimir Putin in a Fox News interview. The US President’s comments, released in an excerpt ahead of the interview with ...
Congress Already Has Evidence Trump Lied Under Oath to ...
www.emptywheel.net
has-evidence-trump-lied-under...
Jul 22, 2019 · Look at the Parkland *******. Look at Julie K Brown who decades later pulled the darkness of Epstein’s corruption of our legal system into the light. America’s capacity for goodness has not disappeared, but we must get our political leaders to look beyond their next donor check or whatever Nacys malfunction is.
How Does Donald Trump Keep Getting Away With It?
Hint: From Congress to the courts, people keep treating Trump like a “normal” president. It’s time to stop.
Every day, President Donald Trump or his minions say something stupid, wrong, or demonstrably false. Most days, these people threaten to take illegal actions. Some days, they make good on their lawless threats.
And yet, they are still in power. Trump, his family, and his sycophants get help from the Russians (whether willfully or not) to influence our elections; obstruct justice; engage in corrupt practices; violate constitutional principles; intimidate witnesses; ignore Congress; and lie as if “Falsehood” was their native tongue. And yet they seem to get away with all of it.
Nobody stops them. Yes, the Republican Party has shown itself to be a collection of craven hypocrites, so utterly debased from wallowing around in Trump’s filth that they can’t even remember what decency smells like. But if you’ve been paying attention, Republicans have always been like this. Just ask Merrick Garland. Our system shouldn’t be so weak that the perverse noise makings of Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham can scuttle the very concept of the rule of law.
No, Trump gets away with it not just because the Republican Party and its white-supremacist base wills it so. Trump gets away with it because the legal system insists on treating him as a “normal” president of the United States.
Presidents aren’t “normal,” of course. Their office is imbued with awesome powers. This president uses those powers in illegal, corrupt ways. We’ve had presidents who’ve tested the limits of executive authority before, but this guy acts like the limits are “fake news.” Addressing the abnormal use of incredible powers with normal processes is like trying to sop up a flood with a mop.
The clearest casualty of this oxymoronic thinking was Robert Mueller. When confronted with clear evidence that President Trump used every tool in his arsenal to try to obstruct justice, Mueller decided that the normal thing to do was: to not charge or recommend charges against the president, and instead submit his report to Trump’s handpicked guard dog masquerading as an attorney general. What did Mueller think was going to happen? Justice? These people are criminals—how many times do we have to be shocked by their willingness to take lawless action?
It’s not just Mueller, or former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, or current FBI director Christopher Wray who hide behind “the book” instead of using the book to inflict some blunt-******* justice upon this administration. Judges and justices have also insisted that Trump be treated as a normal (yet still presidential) litigant and apply normal standards to his outrageous behavior.
Don’t get me wrong: Most courts have ultimately been resistant to the idiotic legal claims Trump throws at them. His administration has been unsuccessful in court on a historic scale. His attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was stopped cold. Judges have desperately tried to end his baby-separation policy. Despite Trump and McConnell’s relentless efforts to stack the courts with Trump-friendly judges, the courts have held up pretty well so far.
But, man, are they slow. Trump attacks the rule of law at Twitter speed; courts rebuff him on a preindustrial timescale. It’s like trying to swat a maniacal wasp with a musket ball.
The nature of the legal process itself helps Trump delay reckonings even when he has no case. The law is the ultimate example of “both sides–ism”; it prides itself in putting even dumb and ridiculous arguments on equal footing with factual and rational analysis. It’s not enough to know something to be true; the law makes you prove it. It gives the other side every opportunity to argue their fanciful points. It’s the proverbial worst system, except for all the others.
In the same way a cancer takes advantage of the cell’s own reproductive machinery to infect the system, Trump is using the courts’ respect for the rule of law to destroy the rule of law.
Can Trump assert executive privilege after he’s already waived the privilege? No. Can Trump declare a national emergency to steal money not appropriated to him by Congress? No. Can he order his cabinet to ignore congressional investigations? No. Trump should lose all of these legal battles, but our court system will let him take all the time he needs to make his facially stupid arguments. And then let him appeal in search of other judges who owe their position to his benevolence.
When the Supreme Court eventually gets around to ruling “Congress is still a thing” (assuming that Chief Justice John Roberts isn’t fully comfortable with American monarchy), some institutionalist will crow, “The system worked!” Trump, meanwhile, will have committed more crimes by then. He’s running a chop shop where he reaps the profits from your car before you even realize it was stolen.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Justice doesn’t move swiftly, but it can when it perceives a unique threat to justice itself. For instance, the Richard Nixon administration sued to halt the publication of the Pentagon Papers on June 14, 1971. The Supreme Court lifted the injunction on June 30. That’s justice moving at tachyon speed. Or how about the time Nixon tried to ignore a subpoena for his tapes? The subpoena came down in April. The Supreme Court unanimously ordered Nixon to hand them over by the end of July. Nixon resigned and continued to fight for his tapes as a private citizen, where he was afforded all of the delay a normal citizen is entitled to. See, if we treat Trump like a normal criminal president, we can hold him accountable.
There are signs that some judges get that Trump is a unique threat. The Trump Organization has sued to prevent its accounting firm, Mazars USA, from complying with a congressional subpoena for some of Trump’s financial information. In an aggressive order, Judge Amit Mehta has decided to hear the case in an expedited fashion and make a ruling on the substance of the Trump Organization’s claim instead of first allowing it to engage in a lot of procedural delay.
Every judge should be acting like this. Every Trump case should be on a fast track. He’ll win some and he’ll lose some, but the sheer volume of unprecedented actions from this administration demands a unique response from the courts.
But we know that law enforcement and the courts generally won’t treat Trump as unique, and I fear that we, the people of the United States, are the ultimate problem.
What do we do that suggests we are facing a unique threat to democracy and the rule of law? Bitch and moan on Twitter? Write columns? Donate money? Vote? That’s what I do, and it’s all kind of normal, isn’t it? As I said to my wife on election night 2016: “If I make it through four years of this mom[jumper] without getting arrested, I didn’t try hard enough.” Well, it’s been three, and here I still sit behind this useless keyboard, without being so much as fingerprinted.
Everybody wants to see the “un-redacted” Mueller report, but nobody is outside of Bill Barr’s house right now demanding that he release it. Chief Justice John Roberts could be sitting right next to you as you read this, and most of you wouldn’t notice him, and those that do wouldn’t scream, “I can’t believe you voted for the Muslim ban, you accomplice to bigotry!” right in his face. The “resistance” should be near revolt, but instead we’re dithering about whether the normal process of impeachment is “worth it.”
The courts will regard Trump as a unique threat to the normal operation of government just as soon as we make the normal operation of government impossible while he reigns.
People know the start of the Frederick Douglass quote “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” But most forget how the passage ends: “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
How does Trump keep getting away with it? Because we let him.
Congress Already Has Evidence Trump Lied Under Oath to Robert Mueller | emptywheel
Congress already has evidence that Trump lied in his sworn answers about the Trump Tower Moscow deal to Mueller.
www.emptywheel.net
Jul 22, 2019 · Look at the Parkland *******. Look at Julie K Brown who decades later pulled the darkness of Epstein’s corruption of our legal system into the light. America’s capacity for goodness has not disappeared, but we must get our political leaders to look beyond their next donor check or whatever Nacys malfunction is.
How Does Donald Trump Keep Getting Away With It?
Hint: From Congress to the courts, people keep treating Trump like a “normal” president. It’s time to stop.
Every day, President Donald Trump or his minions say something stupid, wrong, or demonstrably false. Most days, these people threaten to take illegal actions. Some days, they make good on their lawless threats.
And yet, they are still in power. Trump, his family, and his sycophants get help from the Russians (whether willfully or not) to influence our elections; obstruct justice; engage in corrupt practices; violate constitutional principles; intimidate witnesses; ignore Congress; and lie as if “Falsehood” was their native tongue. And yet they seem to get away with all of it.
Nobody stops them. Yes, the Republican Party has shown itself to be a collection of craven hypocrites, so utterly debased from wallowing around in Trump’s filth that they can’t even remember what decency smells like. But if you’ve been paying attention, Republicans have always been like this. Just ask Merrick Garland. Our system shouldn’t be so weak that the perverse noise makings of Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham can scuttle the very concept of the rule of law.
No, Trump gets away with it not just because the Republican Party and its white-supremacist base wills it so. Trump gets away with it because the legal system insists on treating him as a “normal” president of the United States.
Presidents aren’t “normal,” of course. Their office is imbued with awesome powers. This president uses those powers in illegal, corrupt ways. We’ve had presidents who’ve tested the limits of executive authority before, but this guy acts like the limits are “fake news.” Addressing the abnormal use of incredible powers with normal processes is like trying to sop up a flood with a mop.
The clearest casualty of this oxymoronic thinking was Robert Mueller. When confronted with clear evidence that President Trump used every tool in his arsenal to try to obstruct justice, Mueller decided that the normal thing to do was: to not charge or recommend charges against the president, and instead submit his report to Trump’s handpicked guard dog masquerading as an attorney general. What did Mueller think was going to happen? Justice? These people are criminals—how many times do we have to be shocked by their willingness to take lawless action?
It’s not just Mueller, or former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, or current FBI director Christopher Wray who hide behind “the book” instead of using the book to inflict some blunt-******* justice upon this administration. Judges and justices have also insisted that Trump be treated as a normal (yet still presidential) litigant and apply normal standards to his outrageous behavior.
Don’t get me wrong: Most courts have ultimately been resistant to the idiotic legal claims Trump throws at them. His administration has been unsuccessful in court on a historic scale. His attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was stopped cold. Judges have desperately tried to end his baby-separation policy. Despite Trump and McConnell’s relentless efforts to stack the courts with Trump-friendly judges, the courts have held up pretty well so far.
But, man, are they slow. Trump attacks the rule of law at Twitter speed; courts rebuff him on a preindustrial timescale. It’s like trying to swat a maniacal wasp with a musket ball.
The nature of the legal process itself helps Trump delay reckonings even when he has no case. The law is the ultimate example of “both sides–ism”; it prides itself in putting even dumb and ridiculous arguments on equal footing with factual and rational analysis. It’s not enough to know something to be true; the law makes you prove it. It gives the other side every opportunity to argue their fanciful points. It’s the proverbial worst system, except for all the others.
In the same way a cancer takes advantage of the cell’s own reproductive machinery to infect the system, Trump is using the courts’ respect for the rule of law to destroy the rule of law.
Can Trump assert executive privilege after he’s already waived the privilege? No. Can Trump declare a national emergency to steal money not appropriated to him by Congress? No. Can he order his cabinet to ignore congressional investigations? No. Trump should lose all of these legal battles, but our court system will let him take all the time he needs to make his facially stupid arguments. And then let him appeal in search of other judges who owe their position to his benevolence.
When the Supreme Court eventually gets around to ruling “Congress is still a thing” (assuming that Chief Justice John Roberts isn’t fully comfortable with American monarchy), some institutionalist will crow, “The system worked!” Trump, meanwhile, will have committed more crimes by then. He’s running a chop shop where he reaps the profits from your car before you even realize it was stolen.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Justice doesn’t move swiftly, but it can when it perceives a unique threat to justice itself. For instance, the Richard Nixon administration sued to halt the publication of the Pentagon Papers on June 14, 1971. The Supreme Court lifted the injunction on June 30. That’s justice moving at tachyon speed. Or how about the time Nixon tried to ignore a subpoena for his tapes? The subpoena came down in April. The Supreme Court unanimously ordered Nixon to hand them over by the end of July. Nixon resigned and continued to fight for his tapes as a private citizen, where he was afforded all of the delay a normal citizen is entitled to. See, if we treat Trump like a normal criminal president, we can hold him accountable.
There are signs that some judges get that Trump is a unique threat. The Trump Organization has sued to prevent its accounting firm, Mazars USA, from complying with a congressional subpoena for some of Trump’s financial information. In an aggressive order, Judge Amit Mehta has decided to hear the case in an expedited fashion and make a ruling on the substance of the Trump Organization’s claim instead of first allowing it to engage in a lot of procedural delay.
Every judge should be acting like this. Every Trump case should be on a fast track. He’ll win some and he’ll lose some, but the sheer volume of unprecedented actions from this administration demands a unique response from the courts.
But we know that law enforcement and the courts generally won’t treat Trump as unique, and I fear that we, the people of the United States, are the ultimate problem.
What do we do that suggests we are facing a unique threat to democracy and the rule of law? Bitch and moan on Twitter? Write columns? Donate money? Vote? That’s what I do, and it’s all kind of normal, isn’t it? As I said to my wife on election night 2016: “If I make it through four years of this mom[jumper] without getting arrested, I didn’t try hard enough.” Well, it’s been three, and here I still sit behind this useless keyboard, without being so much as fingerprinted.
Everybody wants to see the “un-redacted” Mueller report, but nobody is outside of Bill Barr’s house right now demanding that he release it. Chief Justice John Roberts could be sitting right next to you as you read this, and most of you wouldn’t notice him, and those that do wouldn’t scream, “I can’t believe you voted for the Muslim ban, you accomplice to bigotry!” right in his face. The “resistance” should be near revolt, but instead we’re dithering about whether the normal process of impeachment is “worth it.”
The courts will regard Trump as a unique threat to the normal operation of government just as soon as we make the normal operation of government impossible while he reigns.
People know the start of the Frederick Douglass quote “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” But most forget how the passage ends: “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
How does Trump keep getting away with it? Because we let him.
Everyone should read this and at least think about it....you will see the signs are there...but really doubt most will....they like being fucking stupid!
The Trump Kleptocracy
The presidency is officially a cash grab — and a pitstop on the way to autocracy
The convictions of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen this August shined a light on the type of people Trump chooses to work with. He said he’d employ the “best people”; instead, he employed crooks.
Trump is Leading the Most Corrupt Administration in U.S ...
https://www.newsweek.com/2017/11/10/trump...
Trump is Leading the Most Corrupt Administration in U.S. History, One of First-Class Kleptocrats . By Alexander Nazaryan On 11/02/17 at 9:54 AM EDT . Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ...
Behind all the outrage, the Manafort and Cohen convictions show that Trump’s government is building an American kleptocracy. The Washington Post has described how kleptocracy, or “rule by thieves,” arises when a country’s elite begin to systematically steal from public funds on a vast scale.
This is where the United States is headed. Trump’s government is powered by people who want to see tax cuts for their own benefit, without a care for the cost to others. This runs from voters backing pro-tax-cut candidates to the upper echelons of the GOP that are complicit in what Fortune magazine is calling “the biggest wealth grab in modern history.”
Trump Tax Plan Benefits Wealthy, Including Trump - The New ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/us/politics/trump-tax-plan-wealthy-middle-class...
Sep 27, 2017 · The plan would also benefit Mr. Trump and other affluent Americans by eliminating the estate tax, which affects just a few thousand uber-wealthy families each year, and the alternative minimum tax ...
It is far from the first time a person like Trump has run a country. History may determine it was inevitable that the United States would go the way of countries like Russia, Turkey, China, and many others, electing a leader who could facilitate transferring the country’s wealth to a small number of private individuals. The thing about kleptocracy is that it doesn’t need to break the law because those doing it are writing the law—but the outcome is the same.
How many republican lawyers in congress - Answers
www.answers.com
republican_lawyers_in_congress
May 29, 2012 · Sixty percent of the U.S. Senate is lawyers. Enough said. 37.2% of the House of Representatives are lawyers. There are 81 Republican lawyers in Congress who list "lawyer…
Trump was helped to power by a conspiracy of billionaires, including Vladimir Putin and Robert Mercer. From this angle, you could argue that while the Russian attack on American democracy was partly political, it was mainly just about business. After all, the Russian government is a mafia gang for whom international politics is a business operation. By helping to power a man they helped make rich, they can weaken one of the main international obstacles to their own efforts to drain Russia of cash.
Unequal Russia: is anger stirring in the global capital of ...
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/apr/25/unequal-russia-is-anger-stirring-in...
The extent of Trump’s kleptocracy is becoming clear now, with his second proposed tax cut for the rich. The Trump government is ramping up the national debt by $1.5 trillion over 10 years while taking hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy in tax cuts for the rich. In America, around two-thirds of all stocks and mutual funds are owned by just 5 percent of the people, and any tax-cut benefits for corporations will mainly just benefit that group. It is estimated that 34 percent of Trump’s December tax cuts benefit just the top 1 percent of the country’s rich.
US national debt rises $2 trillion under President Trump
fox43.com/2019/01/04/us-national-debt-rises-2-trillion-under-president-trump/
Yet as he cuts taxes for a rich minority, Trump is also freezing public sector pay because there’s not enough money. As Forbes magazine observed:
President Trump has cancelled the pay increases for public sector workers that were due to take effect in January 2019. His reason for doing so? The tax cuts that his administration has introduced are set to create the largest fiscal deficit since the Great Recession. Now this largesse has to be paid for.
In effect, his tax bills have taken money out of the economy and primarily redistributed it to corporations, CEOs, and the super rich.
This is not about Republican political ideology, and it is not mere economic incompetence. It is bare-faced kleptocracy. For Trump, his family, and the less principled crooks around him, this presidency is but a brief window to grab as much cash as possible before being inevitably booted back out of the White House. They’re like a bunch of ******* getting the keys to the world’s biggest candy store without any adults around to supervise them.
To understand the situation with more clarity, look at Russia, which is a more advanced version of what Trump seems to be building. In 2013, the Independent reported that just 110 people held one-third of Russia’s wealth.
The story of modern Russia is that of a massive transfer of wealth from the country to a small ruling elite. According to sociologist and expert on Russia, Elisabeth Schimpfossl, “When this first post-Soviet generation passes its wealth on… it will be the single biggest transfer of assets within the smallest group of people ever to have occurred.”
Beyond the human cost of kleptocracy is the danger that progressively draining the country of money creates the sort of inequality that leads to social and political unrest.
Russia’s kleptocracy has laundered hundreds of billions of dollars out of the country over the years. Meanwhile, Putin’s latest attempt to increase the pension age means most Russian men will die before they are eligible for a state pension.
Most Russians, especially the elderly, are already living in a state of perpetual poverty. This reflects two stark realities: First, there is not enough money left in the Russian state coffers to pay pensions, and second, Russian men have a low life expectancy—arguably because the theft of its kleptocratic government means there is not enough money for health care, education, and the other things people need.
The average life expectancy in Russia is in the mid-sixties, but that’s an average many men fall short of. If all the money tied up in former state enterprises, and then in Russian oil and gas, had flowed back into a well-managed economy run by an honest and effective government, Russian life expectancy would have gone up, people would have adequate health care and education.
The same thing is now happening in the United States. Policies designed to protect the population—but which restrict businesses from making more money—are being abandoned.
Until now, the West was characterized by progress, which in a simple sense can be reflected in life expectancy. As countries become more efficient and effective, they generate more tax, and this is used to support better health care, education, and enforcement of laws that protect the population from harm.
Banning dangerous practices, such as the use of asbestos in building materials and lead in petrol, and introducing public health actions like immunization, universal health care, seatbelt laws, and smoking bans may negatively impact businesses, but it positively impacts people, which should be the point of government. People on their own cannot ******* rich and powerful corporations to stop harming them; they rely on the government to do that.
How the Trump Administration Pulled Back on Regulating ...
trump-administration-has-pulled-back-on-regulating...
The Trump administration has halted bans on toxic chemicals that are known to cause serious health threats. These moves, led by an ex-industry group executive now at the EPA, have allowed the continued use of products found to cause cancer, birth defects, and other ailments.
One of the simplest functions of any government is to ensure the people are afforded some degree of protection against the excesses of corporations and criminals, at least to the extent those excesses do not negatively impact life expectancy.
But, alarmingly, life expectancy is going down in the United States, primarily because the government is putting commercial and personal financial interests ahead of the health and well-being of its citizens.
Beyond the human cost of kleptocracy is the danger that progressively draining the country of money creates the sort of inequality that leads to social and political unrest. This results in political instability and ever-increasing authoritarianism to keep order.
U.S. income inequality at highest level in 50 years ...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-income-inequality-highest-level-50-years...
Sep 26, 2019 · — The gap between the haves and have-nots in the United States grew last year to its highest level in more than 50 years of tracking income inequality, according to Census Bureau figures.
Trump is increasingly undermining the media and law enforcement because those are the two main tools a state has to prevent kleptocracy.
The Trump Administration's Treatment Of Law Enforcement ...
law...
Jun 16, 2017 · Comey was not the first high ranking law enforcement official to be fired unexpectedly by the Trump administration. In March, Preet Bharara was fired from his position as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, even though President Trump had personally told him he would stay. Mr. Bharara oversaw a prosecutor’s office ...
As Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela have shown, kleptocrats use nationalism and populism to keep their base because they cannot use economic progress to win votes. They blame foreign governments, conspiracies, and immigrants for the failures actually caused by their own wholesale theft of the country’s assets.
They blame a biased media, foreign propaganda, and “enemies of the people,” when the news explains what is happening. Meanwhile, they counter the truth with media they control—which either doesn’t say what is happening, tells lies, or distracts people from reality. Gradually, the economy unwinds and the social problems caused by these policies collide with the diminished public services that can no longer deal with them.
'Enemy of the People': Trump's hatred of the press is for ...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/10/30/donald-trump-hatred-press-enemy...
Oct 30, 2018 · Donald Trump's hatred of the press, lies and bullying echoes dangerous regimes of the past Trump uses attacks on the media, totalitarian language, cartoonish conspiracy fictions and a …
This is how nationalism and populism become fascism.
Relaxing regulations on things that harm people puts added pressure on the health care system.
The increase in sickness reduces the performance of the economy. The resulting increase in social deprivation leads to an increase in crime. Conventional policing is underfunded and undermined by an increasingly corrupt and weakened judiciary, so laws become more draconian and policing becomes more militarized.
Trump has altered over 800 Obama-era regulations, Wilbur ...
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/13/...
Oct 13, 2017 · Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Friday that President Trump is “systematically” removing hundreds of regulations put in place by the Obama …
The kleptocratic policies continue to break things in a self-perpetuating cycle. The corrupt rich become even more rich, while the rest of the country becomes even more poor. The inequality leads to unrest, which is managed by ever more propaganda, less freedom, more control and censorship, and harsher policing.
Perpetually blaming others creates an ever-increasing need to find scapegoats, which spills over into outright attacks on minority groups or on foreign governments. We have seen this with Russia’s wars, used to distract people from local economic hardships. Turkey and Venezuela have blamed the United States, Hungary blames immigrants, and generally, every would-be dictator will blame anyone but themselves.
This is how a democracy becomes a kleptocracy, and then an autocracy, and then a dictatorship. This is how nationalism and populism become fascism.
Kleptocratic leaders become trapped in a cycle of their own making. The more wealth they amass, the worse things get for the poor, the harsher the steps they take to maintain order and power. They reach a point where they are so wealthy, and the people around them are so angry, that losing power would mean losing their wealth and, likely, their lives.
Although I doubt Trump could bring about a dictatorship like this, we are already looking at a situation where he could face criminal prosecution once he leaves office. This provides a powerful incentive for him to take more drastic measures to stay in power, weaken or corrupt the legal system that could later prosecute him, and muddy the media’s ability to report on his kleptocracy. He will probably fail, but not before he does immense damage to the United States.
The Trump Kleptocracy
The presidency is officially a cash grab — and a pitstop on the way to autocracy
The convictions of Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen this August shined a light on the type of people Trump chooses to work with. He said he’d employ the “best people”; instead, he employed crooks.
Trump is Leading the Most Corrupt Administration in U.S ...
https://www.newsweek.com/2017/11/10/trump...
Trump is Leading the Most Corrupt Administration in U.S. History, One of First-Class Kleptocrats . By Alexander Nazaryan On 11/02/17 at 9:54 AM EDT . Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ...
Behind all the outrage, the Manafort and Cohen convictions show that Trump’s government is building an American kleptocracy. The Washington Post has described how kleptocracy, or “rule by thieves,” arises when a country’s elite begin to systematically steal from public funds on a vast scale.
This is where the United States is headed. Trump’s government is powered by people who want to see tax cuts for their own benefit, without a care for the cost to others. This runs from voters backing pro-tax-cut candidates to the upper echelons of the GOP that are complicit in what Fortune magazine is calling “the biggest wealth grab in modern history.”
Trump Tax Plan Benefits Wealthy, Including Trump - The New ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/us/politics/trump-tax-plan-wealthy-middle-class...
Sep 27, 2017 · The plan would also benefit Mr. Trump and other affluent Americans by eliminating the estate tax, which affects just a few thousand uber-wealthy families each year, and the alternative minimum tax ...
It is far from the first time a person like Trump has run a country. History may determine it was inevitable that the United States would go the way of countries like Russia, Turkey, China, and many others, electing a leader who could facilitate transferring the country’s wealth to a small number of private individuals. The thing about kleptocracy is that it doesn’t need to break the law because those doing it are writing the law—but the outcome is the same.
How many republican lawyers in congress - Answers
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May 29, 2012 · Sixty percent of the U.S. Senate is lawyers. Enough said. 37.2% of the House of Representatives are lawyers. There are 81 Republican lawyers in Congress who list "lawyer…
Trump was helped to power by a conspiracy of billionaires, including Vladimir Putin and Robert Mercer. From this angle, you could argue that while the Russian attack on American democracy was partly political, it was mainly just about business. After all, the Russian government is a mafia gang for whom international politics is a business operation. By helping to power a man they helped make rich, they can weaken one of the main international obstacles to their own efforts to drain Russia of cash.
Unequal Russia: is anger stirring in the global capital of ...
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/apr/25/unequal-russia-is-anger-stirring-in...
The extent of Trump’s kleptocracy is becoming clear now, with his second proposed tax cut for the rich. The Trump government is ramping up the national debt by $1.5 trillion over 10 years while taking hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy in tax cuts for the rich. In America, around two-thirds of all stocks and mutual funds are owned by just 5 percent of the people, and any tax-cut benefits for corporations will mainly just benefit that group. It is estimated that 34 percent of Trump’s December tax cuts benefit just the top 1 percent of the country’s rich.
US national debt rises $2 trillion under President Trump
fox43.com/2019/01/04/us-national-debt-rises-2-trillion-under-president-trump/
Yet as he cuts taxes for a rich minority, Trump is also freezing public sector pay because there’s not enough money. As Forbes magazine observed:
President Trump has cancelled the pay increases for public sector workers that were due to take effect in January 2019. His reason for doing so? The tax cuts that his administration has introduced are set to create the largest fiscal deficit since the Great Recession. Now this largesse has to be paid for.
In effect, his tax bills have taken money out of the economy and primarily redistributed it to corporations, CEOs, and the super rich.
This is not about Republican political ideology, and it is not mere economic incompetence. It is bare-faced kleptocracy. For Trump, his family, and the less principled crooks around him, this presidency is but a brief window to grab as much cash as possible before being inevitably booted back out of the White House. They’re like a bunch of ******* getting the keys to the world’s biggest candy store without any adults around to supervise them.
To understand the situation with more clarity, look at Russia, which is a more advanced version of what Trump seems to be building. In 2013, the Independent reported that just 110 people held one-third of Russia’s wealth.
The story of modern Russia is that of a massive transfer of wealth from the country to a small ruling elite. According to sociologist and expert on Russia, Elisabeth Schimpfossl, “When this first post-Soviet generation passes its wealth on… it will be the single biggest transfer of assets within the smallest group of people ever to have occurred.”
Beyond the human cost of kleptocracy is the danger that progressively draining the country of money creates the sort of inequality that leads to social and political unrest.
Russia’s kleptocracy has laundered hundreds of billions of dollars out of the country over the years. Meanwhile, Putin’s latest attempt to increase the pension age means most Russian men will die before they are eligible for a state pension.
Most Russians, especially the elderly, are already living in a state of perpetual poverty. This reflects two stark realities: First, there is not enough money left in the Russian state coffers to pay pensions, and second, Russian men have a low life expectancy—arguably because the theft of its kleptocratic government means there is not enough money for health care, education, and the other things people need.
The average life expectancy in Russia is in the mid-sixties, but that’s an average many men fall short of. If all the money tied up in former state enterprises, and then in Russian oil and gas, had flowed back into a well-managed economy run by an honest and effective government, Russian life expectancy would have gone up, people would have adequate health care and education.
The same thing is now happening in the United States. Policies designed to protect the population—but which restrict businesses from making more money—are being abandoned.
Until now, the West was characterized by progress, which in a simple sense can be reflected in life expectancy. As countries become more efficient and effective, they generate more tax, and this is used to support better health care, education, and enforcement of laws that protect the population from harm.
Banning dangerous practices, such as the use of asbestos in building materials and lead in petrol, and introducing public health actions like immunization, universal health care, seatbelt laws, and smoking bans may negatively impact businesses, but it positively impacts people, which should be the point of government. People on their own cannot ******* rich and powerful corporations to stop harming them; they rely on the government to do that.
How the Trump Administration Pulled Back on Regulating ...
trump-administration-has-pulled-back-on-regulating...
The Trump administration has halted bans on toxic chemicals that are known to cause serious health threats. These moves, led by an ex-industry group executive now at the EPA, have allowed the continued use of products found to cause cancer, birth defects, and other ailments.
One of the simplest functions of any government is to ensure the people are afforded some degree of protection against the excesses of corporations and criminals, at least to the extent those excesses do not negatively impact life expectancy.
But, alarmingly, life expectancy is going down in the United States, primarily because the government is putting commercial and personal financial interests ahead of the health and well-being of its citizens.
Beyond the human cost of kleptocracy is the danger that progressively draining the country of money creates the sort of inequality that leads to social and political unrest. This results in political instability and ever-increasing authoritarianism to keep order.
U.S. income inequality at highest level in 50 years ...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-income-inequality-highest-level-50-years...
Sep 26, 2019 · — The gap between the haves and have-nots in the United States grew last year to its highest level in more than 50 years of tracking income inequality, according to Census Bureau figures.
Trump is increasingly undermining the media and law enforcement because those are the two main tools a state has to prevent kleptocracy.
The Trump Administration's Treatment Of Law Enforcement ...
law...
Jun 16, 2017 · Comey was not the first high ranking law enforcement official to be fired unexpectedly by the Trump administration. In March, Preet Bharara was fired from his position as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, even though President Trump had personally told him he would stay. Mr. Bharara oversaw a prosecutor’s office ...
As Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela have shown, kleptocrats use nationalism and populism to keep their base because they cannot use economic progress to win votes. They blame foreign governments, conspiracies, and immigrants for the failures actually caused by their own wholesale theft of the country’s assets.
They blame a biased media, foreign propaganda, and “enemies of the people,” when the news explains what is happening. Meanwhile, they counter the truth with media they control—which either doesn’t say what is happening, tells lies, or distracts people from reality. Gradually, the economy unwinds and the social problems caused by these policies collide with the diminished public services that can no longer deal with them.
'Enemy of the People': Trump's hatred of the press is for ...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/10/30/donald-trump-hatred-press-enemy...
Oct 30, 2018 · Donald Trump's hatred of the press, lies and bullying echoes dangerous regimes of the past Trump uses attacks on the media, totalitarian language, cartoonish conspiracy fictions and a …
This is how nationalism and populism become fascism.
Relaxing regulations on things that harm people puts added pressure on the health care system.
The increase in sickness reduces the performance of the economy. The resulting increase in social deprivation leads to an increase in crime. Conventional policing is underfunded and undermined by an increasingly corrupt and weakened judiciary, so laws become more draconian and policing becomes more militarized.
Trump has altered over 800 Obama-era regulations, Wilbur ...
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/13/...
Oct 13, 2017 · Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Friday that President Trump is “systematically” removing hundreds of regulations put in place by the Obama …
The kleptocratic policies continue to break things in a self-perpetuating cycle. The corrupt rich become even more rich, while the rest of the country becomes even more poor. The inequality leads to unrest, which is managed by ever more propaganda, less freedom, more control and censorship, and harsher policing.
Perpetually blaming others creates an ever-increasing need to find scapegoats, which spills over into outright attacks on minority groups or on foreign governments. We have seen this with Russia’s wars, used to distract people from local economic hardships. Turkey and Venezuela have blamed the United States, Hungary blames immigrants, and generally, every would-be dictator will blame anyone but themselves.
This is how a democracy becomes a kleptocracy, and then an autocracy, and then a dictatorship. This is how nationalism and populism become fascism.
Kleptocratic leaders become trapped in a cycle of their own making. The more wealth they amass, the worse things get for the poor, the harsher the steps they take to maintain order and power. They reach a point where they are so wealthy, and the people around them are so angry, that losing power would mean losing their wealth and, likely, their lives.
Although I doubt Trump could bring about a dictatorship like this, we are already looking at a situation where he could face criminal prosecution once he leaves office. This provides a powerful incentive for him to take more drastic measures to stay in power, weaken or corrupt the legal system that could later prosecute him, and muddy the media’s ability to report on his kleptocracy. He will probably fail, but not before he does immense damage to the United States.
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The flow sure does go
on and on and on and on
just like all the whining sore LOSER Dems
they never seem to get tired of losing or being whining bitches - I believe the country has had enough of them - we’ll find out fairly soon with the 2020 election - then they’ll prolly wail for another 4 years :|
on and on and on and on
just like all the whining sore LOSER Dems
they never seem to get tired of losing or being whining bitches - I believe the country has had enough of them - we’ll find out fairly soon with the 2020 election - then they’ll prolly wail for another 4 years :|
We let him, did we? Trump ran against Hillary Clinton and that was the best the democratic party could come up with? A witch, a liar, a dike, a *******, a traitor, a thief, and chances are the ******* behind,with her loving puppet husband Bill, an accessory to an unknown number of executions of anyone that got in their way. Now you want President Trump replaced, with who? They had and still have nothing, Biden, Warren, Sanders, O'Rourke, Harris, Booker, Castro, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Gillibrand, Coumo, Gabbard, Yang, de Blasio and others. Wow that was an impressive lineup. The People do not want any of them, to one that gets nominated will be by default. Which perfect Gem do you want?Congress Already Has Evidence Trump Lied Under Oath to ...
has-evidence-trump-lied-under...Congress Already Has Evidence Trump Lied Under Oath to Robert Mueller | emptywheel
Congress already has evidence that Trump lied in his sworn answers about the Trump Tower Moscow deal to Mueller.
Jul 22, 2019 · Look at the Parkland *******. Look at Julie K Brown who decades later pulled the darkness of Epstein’s corruption of our legal system into the light. America’s capacity for goodness has not disappeared, but we must get our political leaders to look beyond their next donor check or whatever Nacys malfunction is.
How Does Donald Trump Keep Getting Away With It?
Hint: From Congress to the courts, people keep treating Trump like a “normal” president. It’s time to stop.
Every day, President Donald Trump or his minions say something stupid, wrong, or demonstrably false. Most days, these people threaten to take illegal actions. Some days, they make good on their lawless threats.
And yet, they are still in power. Trump, his family, and his sycophants get help from the Russians (whether willfully or not) to influence our elections; obstruct justice; engage in corrupt practices; violate constitutional principles; intimidate witnesses; ignore Congress; and lie as if “Falsehood” was their native tongue. And yet they seem to get away with all of it.
Nobody stops them. Yes, the Republican Party has shown itself to be a collection of craven hypocrites, so utterly debased from wallowing around in Trump’s filth that they can’t even remember what decency smells like. But if you’ve been paying attention, Republicans have always been like this. Just ask Merrick Garland. Our system shouldn’t be so weak that the perverse noise makings of Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham can scuttle the very concept of the rule of law.
No, Trump gets away with it not just because the Republican Party and its white-supremacist base wills it so. Trump gets away with it because the legal system insists on treating him as a “normal” president of the United States.
Presidents aren’t “normal,” of course. Their office is imbued with awesome powers. This president uses those powers in illegal, corrupt ways. We’ve had presidents who’ve tested the limits of executive authority before, but this guy acts like the limits are “fake news.” Addressing the abnormal use of incredible powers with normal processes is like trying to sop up a flood with a mop.
The clearest casualty of this oxymoronic thinking was Robert Mueller. When confronted with clear evidence that President Trump used every tool in his arsenal to try to obstruct justice, Mueller decided that the normal thing to do was: to not charge or recommend charges against the president, and instead submit his report to Trump’s handpicked guard dog masquerading as an attorney general. What did Mueller think was going to happen? Justice? These people are criminals—how many times do we have to be shocked by their willingness to take lawless action?
It’s not just Mueller, or former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, or current FBI director Christopher Wray who hide behind “the book” instead of using the book to inflict some blunt-******* justice upon this administration. Judges and justices have also insisted that Trump be treated as a normal (yet still presidential) litigant and apply normal standards to his outrageous behavior.
Don’t get me wrong: Most courts have ultimately been resistant to the idiotic legal claims Trump throws at them. His administration has been unsuccessful in court on a historic scale. His attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was stopped cold. Judges have desperately tried to end his baby-separation policy. Despite Trump and McConnell’s relentless efforts to stack the courts with Trump-friendly judges, the courts have held up pretty well so far.
But, man, are they slow. Trump attacks the rule of law at Twitter speed; courts rebuff him on a preindustrial timescale. It’s like trying to swat a maniacal wasp with a musket ball.
The nature of the legal process itself helps Trump delay reckonings even when he has no case. The law is the ultimate example of “both sides–ism”; it prides itself in putting even dumb and ridiculous arguments on equal footing with factual and rational analysis. It’s not enough to know something to be true; the law makes you prove it. It gives the other side every opportunity to argue their fanciful points. It’s the proverbial worst system, except for all the others.
In the same way a cancer takes advantage of the cell’s own reproductive machinery to infect the system, Trump is using the courts’ respect for the rule of law to destroy the rule of law.
Can Trump assert executive privilege after he’s already waived the privilege? No. Can Trump declare a national emergency to steal money not appropriated to him by Congress? No. Can he order his cabinet to ignore congressional investigations? No. Trump should lose all of these legal battles, but our court system will let him take all the time he needs to make his facially stupid arguments. And then let him appeal in search of other judges who owe their position to his benevolence.
When the Supreme Court eventually gets around to ruling “Congress is still a thing” (assuming that Chief Justice John Roberts isn’t fully comfortable with American monarchy), some institutionalist will crow, “The system worked!” Trump, meanwhile, will have committed more crimes by then. He’s running a chop shop where he reaps the profits from your car before you even realize it was stolen.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Justice doesn’t move swiftly, but it can when it perceives a unique threat to justice itself. For instance, the Richard Nixon administration sued to halt the publication of the Pentagon Papers on June 14, 1971. The Supreme Court lifted the injunction on June 30. That’s justice moving at tachyon speed. Or how about the time Nixon tried to ignore a subpoena for his tapes? The subpoena came down in April. The Supreme Court unanimously ordered Nixon to hand them over by the end of July. Nixon resigned and continued to fight for his tapes as a private citizen, where he was afforded all of the delay a normal citizen is entitled to. See, if we treat Trump like a normal criminal president, we can hold him accountable.
There are signs that some judges get that Trump is a unique threat. The Trump Organization has sued to prevent its accounting firm, Mazars USA, from complying with a congressional subpoena for some of Trump’s financial information. In an aggressive order, Judge Amit Mehta has decided to hear the case in an expedited fashion and make a ruling on the substance of the Trump Organization’s claim instead of first allowing it to engage in a lot of procedural delay.
Every judge should be acting like this. Every Trump case should be on a fast track. He’ll win some and he’ll lose some, but the sheer volume of unprecedented actions from this administration demands a unique response from the courts.
But we know that law enforcement and the courts generally won’t treat Trump as unique, and I fear that we, the people of the United States, are the ultimate problem.
What do we do that suggests we are facing a unique threat to democracy and the rule of law? Bitch and moan on Twitter? Write columns? Donate money? Vote? That’s what I do, and it’s all kind of normal, isn’t it? As I said to my wife on election night 2016: “If I make it through four years of this mom[jumper] without getting arrested, I didn’t try hard enough.” Well, it’s been three, and here I still sit behind this useless keyboard, without being so much as fingerprinted.
Everybody wants to see the “un-redacted” Mueller report, but nobody is outside of Bill Barr’s house right now demanding that he release it. Chief Justice John Roberts could be sitting right next to you as you read this, and most of you wouldn’t notice him, and those that do wouldn’t scream, “I can’t believe you voted for the Muslim ban, you accomplice to bigotry!” right in his face. The “resistance” should be near revolt, but instead we’re dithering about whether the normal process of impeachment is “worth it.”
The courts will regard Trump as a unique threat to the normal operation of government just as soon as we make the normal operation of government impossible while he reigns.
People know the start of the Frederick Douglass quote “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” But most forget how the passage ends: “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
How does Trump keep getting away with it? Because we let him.
They pick who they polled geinus
