Trump's America

[RoseMorninStar]

WSJ

NEW: Trump has talked to associates in recent days about starting a new party after he leaves the White House.

He wants to call it the Patriot party.

Patriot Party was a socialist organization in 1960s-70s (Wikipedia).

Suddenly, McConnell is going to be all for impeachment and preventing Trump from running for office.

I have no doubt. They have to put it down fast & hard. As one reporter put it, Trump inherited a Lamborghini and he treated it like a lawn mower.

[N.E. Brigand]

I wonder if Trump is counting on any future jury having enough of his supporters that he and his family would avoid conviction via nullification.

[Alatar]

Funny, and also not. Feel free to move if you like, but "Trumps America" seems perfect for Jonathan Pie's latest rant.

[Túrin Turambar]

So it started on a New York escalator in 2015 and ended this morning with "we love you, have a good life" at an Air Force base in Maryland. It's been quite a journey. I doubt anyone on this board is going to be sorry to see this thread drop off the front page, but it'll be of historical interest at some point in the future.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It might be worth moving this thread into the Showcase forum, next to the 2008 election thread.

[Dave_LF]

Just one more from me. I wanted to stay positive yesterday, but this from Rick Wilson is the only appropriate epitaph for the Trump administration:

The most destructive, vile, corrupt man ever to darken America’s presidency has left the White House for the last time.
He has disgraced himself, the office, his oath, and the nation in ways more profound and lasting than we can account.
His incompetence, malfeasance, and evil shouldn’t be laughed off as narcissism or ignorance. He was surrounded by corrupt, wicked, cruel counselors and reveled in it.
Emerson once said of Lincoln’s presidency “an institution is the lengthened shadow of a man.”
He was right.
Trump’s cruelty, division, insurrection, treason and corruption are unrivaled in history. He is the nadir of presidential leadership.
He was enabled by the weak, the venal, the desperate, and the compromised. He was empowered by voices normalizing and rationalizing his evils.
His abuse of power should come as no surprise. There are no better angels in Donald Trump’s nature.
There was never a bottom. There was never any maturation, self-reflection, or a “day he became president.”
It would always end this way.
A life free of consequence, accountability, justice, or moral reckonings put a man in charge of this nation with no guiderails, no boundaries, no ethical compass.
The American carnage from his inaugural address was real, and he embodied every iota of it.
The claque of his sycophants will haunt us for a generation.
They will try to clean up his philosophy and embody his authoritarianism while wearing better suits and waving credentials from an Ivy.
His cult will await the second coming and his spawn will run for office.
For all that, he is defeated. A pariah, a failure, and a traitor to the Constitution and the country.
Good won over evil. It’s that simple. Decency won over indecency.
America checked a hard slide into the darkness, blessed by providence or luck.
Enjoy this moment. There’s much work ahead.

[yovargas]

I do think that the thread should stay here for a while as it seems unlikely that this will be the last time there is something Trump related that people want to talk about.

[elengil]

True. Lots of potential with future criminal investigations, heck we still have the impeachment trial to get through, and lots of growing pains coming out of the last 147 years.

[RoseMorninStar]

I read that Newmax didn't cover the Inauguration at all but had a special devoted to Trump's accomplishments. I cannot express just how.. awful that is for a purported 'news' outlet and what that could portend for the future. Trump ushered in an era of 'alternate facts' /alternate reality bolstered by the likes of FOX/Hannity/Carlson, Limbaugh, QAnon, etc.. One of the smartest decisions was to cut Trump's twitter feed.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I do think that the thread should stay here for a while as it seems unlikely that this will be the last time there is something Trump related that people want to talk about.

Agreed. I don't plan to move it any time soon.

[elengil]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/25/politics ... index.html

So, perhaps T****'s appointments to SCOTUS benefited him after all? They just dismissed the emoluments lawsuit.

"The Supreme Court's procedural order not only wipes away two lower court rulings, but it also orders dismissal of the entire dispute -- leaving for some other time resolution of the many questions Trump's conduct raised about the Emoluments Clause," said Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

...

Former Office of Government Ethics chief Walter Shaub blasted the court's decision as "insane" in a tweet, arguing the emolument cases were not moot, as the court said.

"(Trump) still has the money. When any other federal employee violates the emoluments clause they have to forfeit the money," Shaub wrote.

[N.E. Brigand]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/25/politics ... index.html

So, perhaps T****'s appointments to SCOTUS benefited him after all? They just dismissed the emoluments lawsuit.

"The Supreme Court's procedural order not only wipes away two lower court rulings, but it also orders dismissal of the entire dispute -- leaving for some other time resolution of the many questions Trump's conduct raised about the Emoluments Clause," said Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

...
Former Office of Government Ethics chief Walter Shaub blasted the court's decision as "insane" in a tweet, arguing the emolument cases were not moot, as the court said.

"(Trump) still has the money. When any other federal employee violates the emoluments clause they have to forfeit the money," Shaub wrote.

There were no dissents noted, so it seems like the entire Court agrees with the dismissal. George Conway explains that the suits that were dismissed didn't actually ask for any damages: they just wanted the Court to issue an injunction forcing Trump to stop. Part of the problem is that the Constitution says the President can't accept emoluments, but it doesn't say what the punishment is if if the President does so. And Congress never passed a law specifying that. So it was up to the courts to decide.

But at the very least, it seems obvious that the Framers put the clause in there intending that no President should ever get to keep his ill-gotten gains. And Shaub makes a good point about how other people found to violate the clause are forced to disgorge what they weren't entitled to receive. This feels rather like the impeachment controversy. You shouldn't get to avoid consequences for your actions simply by leaving office. Bank robbers don't get to keep the money they stole. Trump shouldn't either.

But who has standing to sue Donald Trump now for having stolen all this money? I think the answer is the federal government under Biden.

- - - - - - - - - -
(Something of a tangent, here, but posting it anyway so someone who actually knows the law can tell me why it's wrong. Proposed: segregation was always a violation of the Constitution, regardless of what the Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson. Nothing changed between 1896 and 1954, when they ruled in Brown v. Board of Education, to make segregation unconstitutional. They just belatedly recognized what was always true. Accordingly, everyone who enforced segregation during that time was violating the Constitution, but the Supreme Court for 58 years refused to allow the Constitution to be enforced. In other words, for all that time, the Supreme Court itself was violating the Constitution. If the President can take an action that violates the Constitution, and the Congress can pass a law that violates the Constitution, then of course the Supreme Court can issue a ruling that violates the Constitution. In order to prevent a complete breakdown, we're obliged for to pretend otherwise, but that's just a legal fiction. I think this is also related to the issue of whether Biden's solicitor general ought to pursue bad cases that Trump's solicitor general was pursuing. They were always bad! It was Trump's s.g. who made the mistake in taking them in the first place. Biden's s.g. would just be undoing something that should never have been done. Likewise as regards the "presumption of regularity" afforded to the government in many legal matters. I think the Trump administration's abuses mean no such presumption should ever be afforded the government ever again. And I would say that the Biden administration has a moral affirmative duty to inform the courts that in certain cases (regarding the Census, for example) that the government lied to them.)

(Speaking of random legal thoughts --although I'll make tenuous connection to the preceding paragraph-- this is an argument from an expert in the field about why the Fairness Doctrine was bad. It might have been, but the example the author provides is how right-wing radio rapidly expanded starting in the late 1950s, only to be curtailed by the Fairness Doctrine and decline just as precipitously from 1965 until the 1980s. That history was unknown to me, and I appreciate learning it. But now I'm curious about something. We've all seen the flyers that were circulating in Dallas in November 1963 calling JFK a traitor, largely because of his support (lukewarm as it was) for the Civil Rights movement. I'd like to know more about the role of conservative radio, if any, in the spread of such evil disinformation. I mean, if right-wing radio played a role in cultivating an environment in which a president could be assassinated, and the Fairness Doctrine undercut that environment, then maybe it was a good thing after all? Also the author refers to FDR as "president for life," which not only suggests he has a bias, but also, as one respondent notes, ignores the fact that JFK was also "president for life.")

[elengil]

[Voronwë the Faithful]

(But Trevor Noah is a national treasure, a worthy successor to the great Jon Stewart.)

[elengil]

(But Trevor Noah is a national treasure, a worthy successor to the great Jon Stewart.)

... I... I can't tell if you're being sarcastic.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Really? I love Trevor Noah!

[elengil]

Really? I love Trevor Noah!

Just checking. It's hard to tell anymore. Hell it's hard to tell what's actually an Onion article or not anymore so...

[Frelga]

Really? I love Trevor Noah!

Just checking. It's hard to tell anymore. Hell it's hard to tell what's actually an Onion article or not anymore so...

Word. Someone posted a video claiming to be from the daughter of that Q Senator, and I still don't know if it was for real. She was saying crazy things but no crazier than some things that have been said in earnest.

Parody is dead.

Case in point.

Marjorie Taylor Greene promoted a conspiracy theory that a space laser beam -- possibly fired by "Rothschild Inc" -- was used to intentionally start the deadly 2018 Camp Fire in California.

https://twitter.com/timothywjohnson/sta ... 28260?s=19

[RoseMorninStar]

I agree about Trevor Noah.

I had recently seen a comment (and posted about it in the language thread) where the ^ symbol is being used to signify sarcasm (to be placed before & after the remark). It might be nice if that would catch on.

edited to add: Marjorie Taylor Greene is a problem.

[N.E. Brigand]

I feel the Clinesmith sentence is reasonable.

And it still annoys me deeply that we never learned what "diagraph" means.

To all appearances, Clinesmith altered a document to make it more accurate. But he still altered it. So probation, community service, and a small fine.