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Post by Rob Hanesworth on Jul 4, 2024 12:33:05 GMT -5
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Post by epaul on Jul 4, 2024 12:51:30 GMT -5
If Trump is elected, my bet is the odds of the first military coup in this country will rise from 0% to 30%.
One scenario: Trump issues a military order so outlandish (i.e. ordering Federal troops to take action against a state official (NY) that is under the protection of that state's National Guard), that the military leadership refuses to obey him and initiates action to replace him (the meat and bones of the military leadership, not whatever lick-spittle looney he picks to be top dog).
There is a sanity to the power structure of this country that will follow Trump's insanity only so far.
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Post by millring on Jul 4, 2024 13:18:50 GMT -5
I suspect that maybe we have come to a divide so great that it cannot be bridged.
I also guess that Trump will not be the next President.
But the current administration has effectively done exactly what the article is claiming that Trump would do if he was ever again given the chance to have the power to defend himself. They have tried their political enemies and used the court to empower themselves.
Though the thought of trying all the government officials named by the poster whose post Trump forwarded (he apparently did the equivalent of "sharing" someone else's meme on facebook) for what they perceived as their official acts as government officials is abhorrent ... it is, ironically, the point of the most recent Supreme Court ruling on "immunity".
If it were to play out, the most likely outcome -- if everyone here is correct about the 2020 election and the following events -- is that such a "tribunal" would find everyone from Cheney to Obama innocent, and Trump would have egg on his face (as if that's ever mattered to him).
Or, we might actually get to see all the evidence that was kept out of the previous hearings (that's not going to happen because the institutions, when all is said and done, are far more powerful than any of the people who think they are guiding them).
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Post by Cornflake on Jul 4, 2024 13:33:34 GMT -5
I saw that article. By now, people either find Trump scary or they don't. There appear to be enough who don't to give him a second term. I'd like to think that Congress can reign him in a little. But invertebrates like Vance and Rubio are doing their best to curry his favor. I'm not sure there's enough integrity left in Congress for it to serve as a brake on Trump's excesses.
I hope I'm too pessimistic.
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Post by majorminor on Jul 4, 2024 13:50:30 GMT -5
I'm not sure there's enough integrity left in Congress for it to serve as a brake on Trump's excesses. I hope I'm too pessimistic. Assuming the world doesn’t end in the first two years of his term I wonder if a “lame duck Trump” isn’t the safest place for him to be? When the tide of kowtowing turns it might happen quickly. |
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 4, 2024 14:17:05 GMT -5
Even a lame-duck Trump would remain a source of favors and access, and opportunists and would-be oligarchs and outright authoritarians would happily use that access to line their pockets, secure benefits and advantages for themselves and their clients/constituents, and (in the worst case) rearrange the state in ways that would perpetuate their power. Trump is out for himself, but he is also a front man for those impatient with pesky laws and regulations and mere civil society. A few years back I reviewed two dystopian near-future novels by Christopher Brown, a Texas-based lawyer and writer. Even back in 2019 and 2020, these were scary visions, and I'm sorry to say they're just as scary now. Here's a pull-quote from the novel from the first review: Defeat meant the end of empire. Economic sanctions, scarcity where there had been abundance, more people fighting over the less that was left. The rich hoarded what they had won in the years before, hiding in gated communities and shell companies guarded by privatized police and smart lawyers. The more irrelevant the American flag became in a time of worldwide crisis, the more some people started to wave it… trying to conjure the return of a past that had never really been. Sound unlikely? And a second snippet: He tried to get inside the head of the President. It was a scary place, the mind of a person who thinks they should be able to exercise power over everyone else, including the power of life or death – a power whose exercise was guided entirely by the self-interest of one man. Pretty obvious who the inspiration for that was. locusmag.com/2019/10/russell-letson-reviews-rule-of-capture-by-christopher-brown/locusmag.com/2020/10/russell-letson-reviews-failed-state-by-christopher-brown/ |
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 4, 2024 14:21:56 GMT -5
But the current administration has effectively done exactly what the article is claiming that Trump would do if he was ever again given the chance to have the power to defend himself. They have tried their political enemies and used the court to empower themselves. Once again, examples and evidence? And in any case, the "effectively [and] exactly" strikes me as utterly unjustified. |
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Post by millring on Jul 4, 2024 14:29:57 GMT -5
But the current administration has effectively done exactly what the article is claiming that Trump would do if he was ever again given the chance to have the power to defend himself. They have tried their political enemies and used the court to empower themselves. Once again, examples and evidence? And in any case, the "effectively [and] exactly" strikes me as utterly unjustified. You're kidding, right? Trump's just spent the last two years defending himself in court. |
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Post by John B on Jul 4, 2024 15:17:56 GMT -5
Once again, examples and evidence? And in any case, the "effectively [and] exactly" strikes me as utterly unjustified. You're kidding, right? Trump's just spent the last two years defending himself in court. Does it matter to you if he actually committed the crimes of which he is accused? |
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 4, 2024 15:18:46 GMT -5
So civil actions brought by non-government actors and prosecutions for actual deeds in a variety of jurisdictions is "effectively [and] exactly" like hauling political opponents and critics into military courts on treason charges? To be fair, the posts accusing Cheney of treason and suggesting military tribunals were not Trump's own but "Re-Truthed" posts from Truth Social users and promoted by the site. On the other hand, Trump has long suggested that going after his enemies isn't off the table, though he sometimes coyly dodges around, say, prosecuting Hillary Clinton with smarmy bullshit like "Wouldn’t it be terrible to throw the president’s wife and the former secretary of state, think of it, the former secretary of state, but the president’s wife, into jail?"
Nice little store you got here. Be a shame if something happened to it, like it burned down.
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Post by millring on Jul 4, 2024 15:22:42 GMT -5
You're kidding, right? Trump's just spent the last two years defending himself in court. Does it matter to you if he actually committed the crimes of which he is accused? Of course it matters. And it also matters that the Obama administration did things significantly more criminal* in their attempt to sink the Trump candidacy and subsequent administration -- and that's what is at issue for the person who's tweet Trump retweeted at the center of the opening post's subject. *More criminal because it was a crime against the American electoral system and not a simple matter of tax evasion. |
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Post by Marshall on Jul 4, 2024 15:32:17 GMT -5
You're kidding, right? Trump's just spent the last two years defending himself in court. I got to this late. But I was going to bring up the fact that Trump has been in court for the last couple years. I actually believe he brought on most of that himself by his over-the-top stupid actions. (January 6th; Classified Documents). But in his narcissistic mind he's been under unprecedented (unjustified) government sponsored attack for a couple years now. And he's a fighter for sure.  |
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Post by John B on Jul 4, 2024 15:35:41 GMT -5
Does it matter to you if he actually committed the crimes of which he is accused? Of course it matters. And it also matters that the Obama administration did things significantly more criminal* in their attempt to sink the Trump candidacy and subsequent administration -- and that's what is at issue for the person who's tweet Trump retweeted at the center of the opening post's subject. *More criminal because it was a crime against the American electoral system and not a simple matter of tax evasion. I'm not up on rhetoric, but it appears that you're pulling a "whataboutism" by pointing at something else as a distraction. I'm also really not sure I understand what you're talking about in your whataboutism. Are you suggesting that actual crimes were committed, I assume in 2015 and 2016, that the Trump administration chose to ignore and not pursue prosecution? |
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Post by Marshall on Jul 4, 2024 15:42:24 GMT -5
Assuming the world doesn’t end in the first two years of his term I wonder if a “lame duck Trump” isn’t the safest place for him to be? When the tide of kowtowing turns it might happen quickly. I did have a thought that if he'd have won in 2020, we'd almost be done with him now. The Rs would have to have moved on to somebody else. He probably wouldn't be able to control the flock any more. |
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Post by millring on Jul 4, 2024 15:45:04 GMT -5
You're kidding, right? Trump's just spent the last two years defending himself in court. I got to this late. But I was going to bring up the fact that Trump has been in court for the last couple years. I actually believe he brought on most of that himself by his over-the-top stupid actions. (January 6th; Classified Documents). But in his narcissistic mind he's been under unprecedented (unjustified) government sponsored attack for a couple years now. And he's a fighter for sure. No, I'm trying to point out the way much of America views it. I know you don't. But there is a segment of deporables who don't think justice was ever served on the criminal dirty tricks that the Obama administration pulled on Trump. And they view it as insult to injury that when the Democrats got back in power, they did to Trump what they wish Trump had done to them -- prosecute them in a court of law. They want the American people to know the criminal acts perpetrated by the Democrats but ignored by the press and left unchallenged by the Trump administration. They are saying "never again". They've learned that the Democrats play hardball. |
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Post by millring on Jul 4, 2024 15:46:18 GMT -5
Dang it. My post was supposed to be quoting and answering John not Marshall. My phone is too small for my eyes.
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Post by Marshall on Jul 4, 2024 15:53:57 GMT -5
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Post by John B on Jul 4, 2024 15:53:59 GMT -5
Dang it. My post was supposed to be quoting and answering John not Marshall. My phone is too small for my eyes. No problem. Edit later. Thanks for the response. |
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 4, 2024 15:56:27 GMT -5
Specifics & evidence, please.
(FWIW, I Googled "obama administration crimes against trump" and looked through the Wikipedia "Allegations of Barack Obama spying on Donald Trump" article--including the Talk page--along with an old Guardian article, a Jonathan Turley piece in The Hill, a Snopes fact-check on Obama spying on the Trump campaign, and a review of the Mueller Report before I started getting cross-eyed. I was paying attention during these events--not obsessively, but not snoozing, either--and I see no reason to change my view of them.)
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Post by Russell Letson on Jul 4, 2024 16:02:18 GMT -5
They've learned that the Democrats play hardball. Oh for cryin' out tears--did you notice the GOP's behavior under Mitch McConnell? Or that of the Freedom Caucus through all of Biden's administration? Or at how GOP-dominated state legislatures have treated voting laws? The GOP has been an alley-fighting outfit at least since Newt Gingrich and Lee Atwater. And I write this as the great-grandson of a GOP bagman. |
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