US politics

[Tim Healys Chutney Spoon]

Alongside Peter Bone effectively being sacked by his constituency, Mr Trump has had a bad day too

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67768873

[d-d-d-dAz]

17 hours ago, Big'Olympic_Hero'Pete said:

Alongside Peter Bone effectively being sacked by his constituency, Mr Trump has had a bad day too

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67768873

I think, unfortunately, Trump has probably had his best day in a while.

He's been given everything he's ever wanted. He said all along that there was no substance to the many charges against him, and it was just an attempt by the establishment to freeze him out of office. It's why most states judiciaries and prosecutors have avoided pushing this button, a) because no one knows whether this is actually constitutional and whether it'll stand up in court and b) because it gives him cover to say "see, I told you so!"

The special prosecutor will be having kittens today. Colorado has made it far more likely he'll become President, and he'll probably be on their Primary list anyway.

Edited December 20, 2023 by d-d-d-dAz

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

21 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

I think, unfortunately, Trump has probably had his best day in a while.

He's been given everything he's ever wanted. He said all along that there was no substance to the many charges against him, and it was just an attempt by the establishment to freeze him out of office. It's why most states judiciaries and prosecutors have avoided pushing this button, a) because no one knows whether this is actually constitutional and whether it'll stand up in court and b) because it gives him cover to say "see, I told you so!"

The special prosecutor will be having kittens today. Colorado has made it far more likely he'll become President, and he'll probably be on their Primary list anyway.

Possibly Dazzler. There are a couple of things that mean this has a chance of sticking to him. The Colorado Supreme Court did not disagree with the evidence of the lower court. That evidence found that Trump had committed insurrection against the United States, they found that the judge interpreted the law wrongly. As I understand it the Supreme Court very rarely overturns rulings based on the evidence as they traditionallytake a view thst the evidence is seen by the original judge, and not them. They overturn if they feel the law has been interpreted wrongly. The opinion by the Colorado Supreme Court is 218 pages long. A lot of their ruling is based on a case and a ruling handed down by the judge Neil Gorsuch, who was at the time a judge in Colorado, but he is now on the US Supreme Court. So to overturn this decision Gorsuch would have to go against a ruling he had made previously. Not impossible but definitely a spanner in the works. 

At the end of the day if they want to find out if Trump committed insurrection they only have to ask Chief Justice Thomas' wife. She was heavily involved in the January 6 riots. 

[Loki]

Trump doesn't really HAVE bad days.

His entire story is proving how utterly ineffectual the legal and political system really is in the US.  Losing court cases and receiving fines doesn't work if you simply... don't pay.  It works for Giuliani too - the second he lost his case brought by the Georgia election workers he walked straight out of the court case and re-slandered them. Thereby starting another legal process.  Enough of those and you can keep all the balls in the air forever.  The only people who lose are the lawyers who never actually get paid, they just get added to a longer and longer list of creditors.

Meanwhile each case adds a stone to the wall of litigation that, at this point, actively PROTECTS Trump and guarantees that he can say or do what he wants, and people will believe him.  The Supreme Court, to which he personally added 3 Supremes, will collapse the political cases and make sure he can stand unencumbered for President.  And he's very likely to win.

The entanglement of the judicial and political systems in the US has always just about survived until now, but Trump is destroying the conventions that kept the system moving.  It feels more and more like we're watching the collapse of the US in realtime now.  Even if Trump loses, even if the Democrats were to win Senate, House AND Presidency, it will take decades to un-fuck the system.  If Trump wins it'll be civil war.

Edited December 20, 2023 by Loki

[d-d-d-dAz]

16 minutes ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Possibly Dazzler. There are a couple of things that mean this has a chance of sticking to him. The Colorado Supreme Court did not disagree with the evidence of the lower court. That evidence found that Trump had committed insurrection against the United States, they found that the judge interpreted the law wrongly. As I understand it the Supreme Court very rarely overturns rulings based on the evidence as they traditionallytake a view thst the evidence is seen by the original judge, and not them. They overturn if they feel the law has been interpreted wrongly. The opinion by the Colorado Supreme Court is 218 pages long. A lot of their ruling is based on a case and a ruling handed down by the judge Neil Gorsuch, who was at the time a judge in Colorado, but he is now on the US Supreme Court. So to overturn this decision Gorsuch would have to go against a ruling he had made previously. Not impossible but definitely a spanner in the works. 

At the end of the day if they want to find out if Trump committed insurrection they only have to ask Chief Justice Thomas' wife. She was heavily involved in the January 6 riots. 

The problem Colorado have got is they didn't try Trump for insurrection, they have taken it as given that he has committed the crime.

The Supreme Court will hide behind/abide by the principle of innocent until proven guilty by a court of law in front of a jury of one's peers, and kick the ruling back to Colorado and say until Trump is convicted you can't penalise him. They'll probably do so 9-0 in the court.

That way they're not saying that an insurrectionist can be President (though the actual wording of that Civil War era ammendment is vague, so it refers only to being barred from being an 'officer of the US Government', which would be an arguable term if it ever came to that), they're saying that someone first has to be found guilty of insurrection before you can punish them as such.

Ultimately, the biggest fuck up came when Mitch McConnell assumed Trump would never run again and didn't whip the Republicans to vote for the second impeachment article, and thus it failed by ten votes or so. Had he acted how everyone knows he wanted to, Trump would be barred from all public office ever again. That's the sliding doors moment that changed history.

 

Edited December 20, 2023 by d-d-d-dAz

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

10 minutes ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

The problem Colorado have got is they didn't try Trump for insurrection, they have taken it as given that he has committed the crime.

A couple of things really Daz. The original court spent a couple of weeks taking evidence from witnesses, they didn't just take it as a given. Trump's lawyers got to cross examine those witnesses but the Judge ruled he had committed insurrection. The original judge ruled that section 3 of the 14th amendment didn't apply to Trump because it doesn't mention The President specifically, only Officers of the United States who swore an oath protect it. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled that The President is an officer of the United States, so it does apply to him. 

The other thing is that section 3 doesn't say you have to be found guilty in court, only that you either commit insurrection or offer aid and comfort to those that do. Trump has paid the legal fees of people who have been found guilty for crimes committed on January 6th, including people convicted of seditious conspiracy. 

It will probably get overturned but part of the reasoning for overturning Roe v Wade was that it overruled State rights to set their own laws. All the Conservative justices are big advocates of individual states rights rather than those of the federal government, to overturn this they will have to overrule a states right to impose federal law. Might get tricky for them. 

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

Thank you @Chest Rockwell We have always had plenty of threads about doing a poo, but very few just about a trump. 

[d-d-d-dAz]

I'll always recommend this podcast as I think it's genuinely brilliant pretty much all the time, but today's News Agents pod about the Trump charges is utterly superb.

[David]

1 hour ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

The Supreme Court will hide behind/abide by the principle of innocent until proven guilty by a court of law in front of a jury of one's peers, and kick the ruling back to Colorado and say until Trump is convicted you can't penalise him. They'll probably do so 9-0 in the court.

Despite the individual who stands to benefit in this particular case, I'd hope that the Supreme Court always chooses to "hide behind" the principle of innocent until proven guilty by a court of law. While it would be seen by many as a "win" if this rule didn't apply to The Donald, the precedent it would set would be terrible. 

[d-d-d-dAz]

54 minutes ago, David said:

Despite the individual who stands to benefit in this particular case, I'd hope that the Supreme Court always chooses to "hide behind" the principle of innocent until proven guilty by a court of law. While it would be seen by many as a "win" if this rule didn't apply to The Donald, the precedent it would set would be terrible. 

I specifically mentioned 'in front of a jury' deliberately, as that is where this is going and where the debate will end up; can someone be excluded from office because a court has found them liable for a crime, without first trying them in person. 

Courts can make judgments of someone's involvement in criminality without them having been tried (Piers Morgan), but is that enough? If it's not, it's a high bar to ever exclude someone from office.

But, like I say, I suspect thats where it'll end up and everyone will rue the Republicans not killing Trump off when they had the chance.

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

1 hour ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

Courts can make judgments of someone's involvement in criminality without them having been tried (Piers Morgan), but is that enough? If it's not, it's a high bar to ever exclude someone from office.

It should be a high bar to exclude someone from office, but it has already happened because of the January 6th riots. 

https://sourcenm.com/2022/09/06/couy-griffin-first-elected-official-barred-from-office-for-participating-in-jan-6-attack/

I know that's not the President, but he was an elected official who had taken an oath. He has been found guilty by a jury, so that does make him different to Trump. If Trump gets found guilty in the Washington Federal case that would have to put Disqualification firmly into play. 

[d-d-d-dAz]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-67632728
 

This is a pretty good collation of where things are right now.

The worst part of this is how it seems to have united the Republicans around a message of supposed abuses of power by the Democrats.

On a slightly less rational, more emotional, note… I hate Trump with all my being. Not just for his nasty brand of politics, but for that weird level of anxiety he makes me feel about the safety of the world. I swear between 2015 and 2021 I googled his name every fucking day. I hate that we’re back there.

[David]

3 hours ago, d-d-d-dAz said:

On a slightly less rational, more emotional, note… I hate Trump with all my being. Not just for his nasty brand of politics, but for that weird level of anxiety he makes me feel about the safety of the world. I swear between 2015 and 2021 I googled his name every fucking day. I hate that we’re back there.

I actually have a higher level of anxiety about the safety of the world when Biden is in power than I do Trump.

Nothing provides the Putin's, Bolsonaro's, and Jong Un's of this world with more confidence that they can do whatever the fuck they like than an American President who can't even walk up a flight of stairs without falling over.

I'm actually more worried about what happens next if Biden wins another term. It could be seriously catastrophic for much of the world. I would much rather we had a competent political leader of sound mind coming into the White House, but that seems unlikely now. It's either Biden or Trump, and at this point? It's a fucking coin toss as to who would be the worse of the two I think.

 

[d-d-d-dAz]

38 minutes ago, David said:

I actually have a higher level of anxiety about the safety of the world when Biden is in power than I do Trump.

Nothing provides the Putin's, Bolsonaro's, and Jong Un's of this world with more confidence that they can do whatever the fuck they like than an American President who can't even walk up a flight of stairs without falling over.

I'm actually more worried about what happens next if Biden wins another term. It could be seriously catastrophic for much of the world. I would much rather we had a competent political leader of sound mind coming into the White House, but that seems unlikely now. It's either Biden or Trump, and at this point? It's a fucking coin toss as to who would be the worse of the two I think.

 

Nah, I fundamentally disagree with this.

Biden, the man, is absolutely weak and probably unsuited to the position. But, what he represents, a strong United States that thinks internationally, is willing to work multilaterally and is willing to work within the global institutions is what helps constrains global basket cases.

The reason why Putin is holding steady waiting for Trump; why Vucic is waiting for Trump; why even Orban is waiting for Trump, is that his lack of concern for international norms, his lack of interest in leading the free world, will allow them to pursue their worst instincts. Vusic has basically said as much, that he's waiting until the right time to revisit the Kosovo war.

I think it's wrong to assume the US needs a strong leader, it just needs one that understands the strength of the position, the country and its role on the world stage; one that understands the power of the US state and is willing to use it for the wider international good.

Trump is an isolationist and is combative with both international institutions and the levers of his own state. With him at the helm, it's likely that China will feel emboldened to move on Taiwan, Russia could step up it's attack on Ukraine and the Balkans, Serbia would start to look again at Kosovo etc etc

It's the pulling away from international institutionalism that is the real danger across the world currently, as that way danger lies.

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by d-d-d-dAz

[Loki]

One of the more worrying new stories recently, for US security anyway, is that a massive folder of top secret CIA information "went missing" in Trump's White House.  And at around the same time, the CIA started losing a lot of agents around the world. The possibility that one of Trump's inner circle was passing information to the Russians or Chinese has major implications.

Of course, when your Commander In Chief insists on taking private meetings with Putin, and has admitted to sharing confidential information with him in that meeting, it's not that surprising if the whole administration was compromised.

Biden may be old, he may be infirm, but he at least acts like a President.  You know that Putin is praying every day for a second Trump term, it will probably hand him Ukraine.

Edit: incidentally, I think it's not unlikely that NEITHER of Biden or Trump end up being the next President.  They're both VERY old, it's not an insignificant statistical possibility that a health complication will rule one or even both of them out some time in the next 12 months.  

Edited December 21, 2023 by Loki