Topic: US Politics [serious discussion - please read OP before posting] (Read 5799 times)

We all knew that from the day after election day. Well, everyone except for you and BADecker, who hang on to Trump's every word as if it were gospel.


Please provide one example where this was proven to be true. And I mean "proven" as in proven in a court of law, not "proven on 4chan."


Did it ever occur to you the reason why they never made legitimate arguments is because they didn't have any?


If its clearly not in their area of jurisdiction, then yes, that is a fair statement.

Otherwise your assessment smacks of your Dunning-Kreuger affliction in that you don't understand enough of the basics of the legal system to realize how little you truly, actually know.

That's a good one. So a parking ticket that I had to pay years ago was because a judge didn't want to get involved in a parking dispute. And all this time I thought I lost the challenge.

Pretty bummed they ended up not calling any witnesses after getting my hopes up.  I doubt it would've persuaded 10+ Republicans to convict, but it would've been good to have McCarthy on the record regarding his phone call with Trump as the protestors were breaking into his office through the windows and being told by Trump they cared more about the election than he did.

Overall I think the house managers did a really great job (especially the guy from Colorado) at laying out the time line of events and sharing a bunch of information that would still be unknown otherwise.  Hopefully it will result in an independent council to take a much closer look at exactly what happened, who was involved, and what their intent was.

There's a reason that Trumps defense didn't bother re litigating the 'stolen election' argument.  It's a bullshit argument that's already been litigated.  Over and over.
You're conflating judges unwillingness to overturn an election based on nonsense arguments and judges not wanting to get involved with election disputes.  They listened to Trumps arguments and made a decision.  A few examples:
"This Court has allowed plaintiff the chance to make his case and he has lost on the merits."
"The plaintiff asked for the rule of law to be followed, It has been.”
“Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so.”
“Plaintiffs have not moved the needle for their fraud theory from conceivable to plausible, which they must do to state a claim under Federal pleading standards,”
“This Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence,”
“What we saw here were a bunch of overzealous lawyers trying to make the transition from the political realm, where facts and law have ceased to be very important, into the judicial realm, where the norms are still hard and fast,”

If you still think what Trump did was something worth defending, or that he is a victim somehow, or that because he said the word 'peaceful' once means he's innocent, there's obviously no way any argument by someone you've diagnosed with TDS could change your mind, hopefully Mitch McConnel can:

Also on a side but related note:
the defenses "fight" video splice was an interesting switch up, though Trumps original campaign generated more than that footage before he was elected.

It would be a positive turn if our leaders began acting like people good enough for 10 year olds to watch.

I thought the number would go down (so I was wrong there).

Most of those who flipped don't seem to have much "political skin" left in the game.

In one way you almost can't fault a politician for making utilitarian calculations based on what they think will keep themselves in office.
Some may even believe it to be their duty and there is some truth to that, given the current political climate.  *I don't like it---at all but here we are.


BTW McConnell's stance that he could not vote to convict Trump because he is “constitutionally not eligible for conviction/ because he is no longer president" is some brilliant political maneuvering on his part ---as is per his usual.

The steps Trump took to overturn the election never had a serious chance of succeeding. Election laws were not followed, as written by the state legislatures, as required by the constitution in many states, and there were other irregularities in the 2020 election. However, Trump's legal team never made these legitimate arguments in court.

It is probably more accurate to say that Judges didn't want to get involved in the election dispute.

i think its pretty nuts to think obama did the same thing as trump and evern more so that trump could have stayed in office if he wanted to but chose not to because he was worried what other people would think of him. he filed dozens of lawsuits trying to disqualify millions of votes and judge after judge concluded they were nonsense and it wasnt even close.  he tried to pressure other republicans to declare him the winner even though they told him he received fewer votes.  he incited a literal violent mob that stormed the capital and tried to stop congress from certifying the results of the election.  how can you possibly come to any of these conclusions?  its beyond irrational.

Impeachment is ultimately a political matter. If a Senator were to vote a certain way that their constituents don't like, they may not get their party's nomination, or may not get reelected the next time they are up for election.

I think Trump was trying to delegitimize the Biden Presidency the same way that Obama and Clinton delegitimized his presidency. Trump was not using serious election law lawyers and was not making serious claims in court. I think Trump did have legitimate grievances about the election and may have been able to get the results corrected, but perhaps he knew if he did successfully was able to remain in office that his second term would have been viewed as even less legitimate than his first.

They voted to acquit. 7 Republicans flipped, which is surprisingly high IMO; I'd expected it to stay at the 5 who voted to table Rand Paul's motion from a while ago. It's especially odd that Richard Burr voted to convict when he previously voted that the whole thing was unconstitutional. With such a high number, maybe there's some small chance that they could bar Trump from running again via Kaine's censure resolution, though I doubt it.

I don't think that this will have much political effect compared to just not having a trial at all. Maybe if the Democrats had not freaked out about every little thing that Trump did, people would take them more seriously here, and would be less forgiving of the Republicans who voted to acquit. I find myself more-or-less agreeing with many of the House managers' arguments in this case, but they've been baselessly using the same language for years, such as in the last impeachment. All politicians lie so constantly that everyone just rolls their eyes when they speak unless they already agree, so any attempt at real argument is wasted.

If I were a senator looking at this as an impartial juror:

Trump's conduct was definitely not criminal incitement. He didn't tell his supporters to go break into the capitol, and he was careful to always use words like "peaceful". The specific language he used covered his ass enough to avoid criminal incitement, and a private citizen could definitely have used the same language and be protected by the first amendment. Impeachment is another matter, though, and maybe there's also some separate "abuse of office" civil/criminal law which could be used against him.

Trump's conduct was really beyond the pale for a president. He was clearly spreading misinformation and ginning up his supporters in a dangerous way which any idiot could've seen would lead to this sort of outcome. I don't think that he had some sort of premeditated coup in mind, but I think that he was rather happy with the riot, at least initially, and it's quite possible that when he was making his speeches and spreading his misinformation, he was hoping that his supporters would burn down everything and somehow manage to keep him in office, even if he wasn't actually explicitly planning what would happen. It was a months-long childish outburst based on narcissism, not a real, rational plan to stay in office. "If this sort of reckless disregard for his office and the country isn't impeachable, what is?" is a compelling argument IMO.

The best arguments I've heard against impeachment come from this line in the Constitution:
First, Donald Trump is neither President, Vice President, nor a Civil Officer of the US. However, that sentence in the Constitution is in Article II, whereas a lot of the other stuff about impeachment is some distance away in Article I, such as the now-famous sentence, "Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States." Because these things are in completely different sections of the Constitution, it seems to me that the Senate has the power to impeach someone and disqualify them from office in a context disconnected from Article II. And in fact when the Senate has impeached judges, they are dealing with an Article III official, and that Article II excerpt doesn't apply at all. So I think that it's constitutional to impeach a former President, or anyone in fact.

Second, "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" in that first Constitution excerpt above is meant to be read in context as "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors on the same sort of level as Treason or Bribery, which we mentioned explicitly." The Framers explicitly did not want Presidents impeached for "mal-administration". So I think that the argument really comes down to whether you think that Trump's extremely irresponsible conduct reaches about the same level as treason or bribery, in which case he can be impeached, or whether you think that it's more a case of him being a really terrible President, in which case impeachment is not constitutionally appropriate.

It's a close one, but I think I'd vote to impeach if I was in the mindset of being an impartial juror. The level of recklessness and selfishness brings it roughly to the level of bribery IMO, and not merely a type of "mal-administration". (If I were actually a senator, I wouldn't look at it as an impartial juror, though. I'd be making utilitarian calculations, and it's difficult to say what I'd do, especially since I would never agree to be a senator in the first place, or ever be elected if I ran.)

They were expected to have final vote bringing a close to the trial.  Instead they voted to call witnesses.  Pretty big deal, this thing could go on for another couple weeks if they end up taking a recess. 

Have lots of thoughts, no time right now though.

I watched a lot of footage from the protest/riot/insurrection, a few from our biased news outlets (fox/cnn----bbc *not as biased) and then just hours of YouTube.
Watching the officer getting crushed while some idiot was reaching for his gear just made me *pissed (for lack of a more elegant term) "Elizibeth from Knoxville" getting maced while "storming the capitol" because "it's a revolution" lightened it up a little.

 I am sure they made an "awesome" cut out of all that footage and I'll watch eventually but didn't want to start the hearings that emotionally charged. They are making a  case with the video while leaving out what is most relevant: his years of rhetoric leading up to this point. Surely they could have found enough from his campaign - now to add a 5-10 min precursor?
We've all been witness to the last 4+years it's almost a gaslighting of humanity to *still have Trump be a representative of conservative values,
for there to be a question whether he participated in inciting what happened and if he should still hold any privileges or ability to hold office.
 


"Office of the Former President"   there's a meme for that (I'll put it in the appropriate thread)


If anyone can listen to the Georgia phone call and not see clearly what that was? Money buys verdicts, so he'll get off on that too.

The reality is a conviction requires 67/100 votes and there are 50 republicans in the Senate.  So unless 17 of them vote to convict, there's no chance he will be convicted.  The over under on total votes at every sports book I've seen is 54.5 and the odds of him being convicted are between 2 and 6%.  Basically, something big needs to happen between now and the vote.

Biden already said because of his erratic behavior he won't be getting the classified briefings other former presidents get.  Not really a big deal since obviously Biden won't be calling him for advice and Trump doesn't read briefings.  It would be pretty unreasonable to take away his security detail, are there any other 'perks'?

---

I wasn't expecting any criminal investigations or indictments to be formally announced until after the Senate trial, but the District Attorney of Fulton County, Georgia made public there was an open Criminal investigation into Trump for:

First lie: the size of the crowd at his inauguration.  I remember thinking 'what a clown, does he really think anybody will believe him?' as I watched Spicer tell a room full of journalists not to believe what they saw with their own eyes.  And here we are today, people still believe that he received millions more votes than Biden and is a victim of the press.

the real question to ask.
did him having 'office' give him powers that he negatively used to cause harm/damage to people/property. if so he will lose his office (current civil office of 'former president' and all privileges assigned to that.)

so ask yourself. does he deserve to keep having access to privileges that can and will be used negatively

if a phys-ed teacher said to his class
"hey athletes, the science nerds are stealing the budget that coud be used for sports equipment,stop them, be strong, fight"
and then class wars and fights and criminal damage to the school happened due to the sport kids

should the schoolboard keep the teacher employed, using lame excuses that the teacher personally smash anything.
should the schoolboard keep the teacher employed, thus endorsing the teachers actions were not wrong

hes definitly going to get aquited but im glad they impeached him anyway.  the majority of our reps in both house and senate including from both repubs and dems will be on the record condeming his actions.

he deserves criminal consequences also but im not sure that will happen either.

I watched some of the coverage this week and man it was infuriating.  No doubt in my mind that Trump is responsible for what happened on Jan 6 even more than i thought before the trial began. the people that stormed the capital deserve to be held accoutnable for their disgusting actions but i consider most of them victims as well as they clearly believed what the president told them and thought they were doing the right thing.

it is still incredible to me how many people are able to believe the words trump says when they are just so obviously false and jan 6 we saw how dangerous that is. we have been seeing it for 4 years now. every failure as a president trump had resulted in trump making some crazy story up filled with lies to make him look like a victim and anyone who didnt believe the lies a villian.

he did it so many times that if you went step by step with him theres literally nobody left to believe except him.  you cant believe the media, or any journalist at all, or scientists, or military leaders, or other world leaders, or other politicians, only him.

and now even in this thread right now you guys are trying to defend him by repeating the things he said years ago.  wake up. the guy is a fraud.

We've been through this guys.  I think I've literally addressed every point you two have just made.  (maybe I didn't, let's not argue about that either please)

I'm not putting any more effort into spoon feeding you the Mueller report.  It just takes too much effort to explain everything to you guys multiple times and there's really no reason you can't just read it yourself.  I'm happy to continue discussing it in another thread, but only if you put the effort required into understanding what is in the report.  That means reading the actual report, not media reports on the report.  The actual report:  https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf  (Ideally you should read most of Volume 1 with special attention to section IV, Volume 2 is all about obstruction.)

Lets try to keep this thread focused on things that are directly related to the trial for now.  I'm going to try to avoid the win/lose mentality better than I have the last few years and hopefully have more of a thoughtful discussion than a heated argument.

sorry but i really have to address this point
you think trump didnt have an amplifier

.. um..
democrats mention trump a ilegitimate president. ..  no riot. no insurrection
republicans call biden an ilegitimate president... riots.. insurrection

seems trump had the propaganda amplifier on full. and caused many weak minds to bleed and go crazy

How about the current speaker of the house claiming Trump colluded with Russia? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-jr-emails-russia-collusion-nancy-pelosi-lindsey-graham-republicans-democrats-response-latest-a7835991.html

You think she'd represent the democratic caucus. You also had Eric Swalwell, the guy who apparently banged a chinese spy, who said Trump was a foreign agent.

I'm sorry but no, dems do not get a pass on this one.

Hiliary said that she could "beat him again". Trump was spied on by the previous administration, and unfounded rumors were planted by the previous administration of being an agent of the Russian government.

Being a puppet is the same thing as being a spy, except maybe it is worse.

The election process was not called into question.  Hillary didn't say she got more votes.  (electoral votes, that is) There was a peaceful transition of power.  Being a puppet is not the same as being a spy.

If all of that had happened, it wouldn't justify what Trump did.