As near as I can tell, there are three primary defenses of Donald Trump coming from Republicans:
- Trump didn't sell any of the documents, destroy or alter any documents, or give them away. So how bad can it be?
- Hillary did it too.
- DOJ and the FBI are corrupt and have been weaponized against Trump.
None of these even remotely address the actual charges against Trump: that he took classified documents with him when he left the White House and then actively withheld them even after NARA and the FBI repeatedly demanded their return.
But they just don't care. They don't care about January 6. They don't care about the Big Lie. They don't care that Trump tried to extort Ukraine for dirt on Joe Biden. No matter what, Trump is being unfairly victimized. That's the alpha and omega. The facts don't matter and never will.
BENGHAZI!!!!
(that still works, right???)
Hell, Whitewater would. Or Dukakis in the tank. Or Billy Beer.
then:
LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP, . . . !
now:
WEAPONIZATION OF THE DOJ AND THE FBI, WEAPONIZATION OF THE DOJ AND THE FBI . . . !
One thing for sure, consistancy is not the hobgoblin of these little minds.
When they start saying again, "Ladies and Gentlemen" at online work, then I will return, but not until then! Florida is a common sense conservative state where most jd-60 people have brains!
...
Open The Link———————————➤ https://hignearningdoller1.blogspot.com/
The king is fons et origo of all law, and cannot commit a crime. The law cannot break the law.
Throw away your copy of the Federalist Papers, or sell them to some unsuspecting APUSH student.
What you need is Bossuet. "Politics Drawn From the Very Words of Holy Scripture"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_Drawn_from_the_Very_Words_of_Holy_Scripture
Or Richard II:
Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm off from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly men cannot depose
The deputy elected by the Lord:
Dieu et mon Droit
Plus, why would any government pay for them when all they needed to do was walk around Mar-a-Lago with a camera?
I'm sure we'll be hearing years from now stories from all over the world about how various countries got access to grade A intelligence via some asset they had working as a maid or plumber at MAL.
Hell, don't even have to work that hard. Alexi, member of MAL Club from Moscow. And not the one in Idaho. Just walk through the club, and used the bathroom.
Jonathan Chait also thinks that "no amount of evidence will make Republicans admit Trump's guilt." According to him, "The concept of 'crime' has been redefined in the conservative mind to mean activities by Democrats. They insist upon Trump’s innocence because they believe a Republican, axiomatically, cannot be a criminal."
Johnathan Chait also identifies as an attack helicopter.
He's not the sharpest tool in the shed. Though he is a toolshed.
I keep wondering about the Milley document discussing how the US could attack Iran, that Trump claimed to have in 2021 but was never found. And I also keep wondering about that two billion dollar investment that Jared Kushner received from the Saudi wealth fund in 2021, after Mohammed bin Salman overruled the fund's advisory panel's advice. That's a lot of money just for defending MBS's right to dismember annoying American journalists. I don't want to cast any aspersions, but did the Saudi crown prince get anything else for that two billion? Inquiring minds would like to know.
I have zero doubt that anything of interest to the Saudis has already been communicated to them by Trump/Kushner.
The US military has contingency plans for military operations in just about every area of the globe, save maybe for Antarctica, but particularly for hostile nations like Iran. As Kevin laid out earlier today, Trump was having a tantrum and demanding to know if we could invade Iran. Milley pulled out what were no doubt longstanding DOD papers detailing what a potential invasion of Iran would entail (probably thinking this would disabuse Trump of thinking it would be some simple operation, bless his heart). Trump kept them and then tried to convince the writers he was talking to that it wasn't *him* but Milley who had the idea of invading Iran.
The stupid, it burns.
Very true. There was a book about war games published years ago that described a war game the Navy played out in a gymnasium sized building with a blue tile floor. They had been playing this game for many decades and the hostile navy always won. But with the addition of the USS North Carolina and the USS Washington to the battle line, the US Navy was able to fight the Royal Navy to a draw off the US Northeast coast. The year was 1940.
I don't think anyone in the Navy in 1940 thought the UK was going to attack us, but it was their job to make plans for anything they could think of. You could envision scenarios where the Nazis got control of the British fleet.
Too bad, of course, they didn't look at gaming a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
They did. Unfortunately it usually takes more than a loss in a war game to alter military strategies.
Fleet Problem XIX in April and May, 1938, simulated an attack by carrier-based planes on Hawaii – almost exactly what Japan would do three years later. Planes from the USS Saratoga successfully “hit” the Army’s Hickam and Wheeler airfields and the Navy’s airfield at Pearl Harbor, as well as the radio station at Wailupe, and returned to the ship.
https://www.worldwariiaviation.org/u-s-navy-exercise-simulated-pearl-harbor-attack-18-months-before-it-happened
Prior to the Battle of Midway the Japanese Navy war gamed the invasion of midway and the results were the loss of several carriers. The referees stepped in and reversed this obvious erroneous result.
The U.S. assumed that the Japanese would do minimal damage in a hypothetical Pearl Harbor attack because they wouldn't be able to torpedo the fleet -- Pearl Harbor being too shallow for aerial torpoedos. The Japanese innovation of the Type-91 was unanticipate.
For Midway, the game had an anomalous result where B-17s sank two carriers. Disallowing that result was justified. In the real battle, the B-17s did no damage, and in THE ENTIRE WAR high-altitude bombers only manage to hit a single seaborne target. The problems with the Japanese wargame were that:
1) they didn't include American carriers at all because they thought the carriers would be distracted by Japanese operations in the Aleutian islands, and
2) they didn't continue the game to see how the Japanese fleet would respond to unexpected losses.
http://navalwarcollegemuseum.blogspot.com/2021/06/you-sank-my-aircraft-carrier-did.html
To the point at hand, Milley wasn't wargaming an attack on Iran, nor was this a contingency; he was responding to Trump's demand that the U.S. be ready and willing to pursue such an attack.
Yep, that's what you have a General Staff structure for
excellent use of "bless his heart"
War Plan Red--The US plan to invade Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red
Defence Scheme #1--Canada invades the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Scheme_No._1
Given that there is A LOT of contingency planning done, I would be surprised if there isn't at least one scenario involving military operations in Antarctica.
But, Kevin, what does your sensible Republican friend with whom you take lunch sometimes at the various Panera Bread locations of Orange County think of this? Is he sold on President Trump's (because he's still president) innocence against the accusations of the hater & loser Jack Smith?
You know what the best part of this whole affair is, don't you?
Trump, as recently as last month, publicly claimed he'd declassified all the documents that were found on his properties, and represented them as his to Judge Eileen Cannon. Only, it turns out that there's a recording of him explaining to others that he didn't declassify the documents he'd snatched away to Mar a Lago.
In one fell swoop, Trump's own words establishes his state of mind and cognition of the crime of retaining and sharing classified documents.
Dumbest criminal, ever.
The only people dumber are his faithful minions.
No, I don't think it's that he is dumb. It's that he lives solely in the present. This is true of Boris Johnson here in the UK as well. They say whatever is expedient in the moment, because they can be sure that they won't be held to account for it since they never have been before.
And then when they are held to account for it, their world collapses almost instantly. And the question then becomes whether or not they even notice because hey, that's the past now. Consider how Trump behaved right after the Carroll verdict the other week.
I wouldn't call it "living in the present." Rather, I'd call this short-sightedness.
And yes, I think it takes an idiot not to see beyond the tip of their nose, particularly if their actions constitute a lie.
I'd like to think assigning the case -- or, at least, the Tuesday arraignment -- to Paola Escodisbarred is DOJ rubbing her nose in the turd sundae she scooped back in November 2022, like when a dogparent makes their furchild experience the dookie they left in the house.
The DOJ has absolutely nothing--zero, nada, bupkis--to do with assigning judges to an action. And if they did, which I'll reiterate they do not, the last thing they would do is assign this case to shameless Drumpf/MAGA foot soldier Cannon.
She's a proud Michigan Woman, & Bo Schembechler's reanimated corpse will be paying you a visit for this libel.
It may be maize to you, to us it’s just corn.
So, Matt Ruhle is going to make Nebraska football great again?
Possibly. Just not in 2023.
Nebraska hasn't figured out NIL and the transfer portal, just yet.
No matter how low an opinion of Trump you begin with, he manages to shock you on the downside. That's what Republicans love about Trump.
As Lily Tomlin noted, many decades ago, "No matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up."
"But they just don't care. They don't care about January 6. They don't care about the Big Lie."
Fascists wouldn't care, no. The law to them is power over others, not a set of rules for everyone to abide by.
Wilhoit's Law.
Thank you for that!
I'd put this comment alongside another higher up:
"
Jonathan Chait also thinks that "no amount of evidence will make Republicans admit Trump's guilt." According to him, "The concept of 'crime' has been redefined in the conservative mind to mean activities by Democrats. They insist upon Trump’s innocence because they believe a Republican, axiomatically, cannot be a criminal."
"
Compare.
- The Jonathan Chait comment has Republicans insisting that only Democrats can commit crimes.
- The megarajusticemachine comment has that only fascists run lawless totalitarian regimes.
Tweedledum and tweedledee. Both equally deluded, both apparently utterly ignorant of history, even in the past fifty years. Both utterly toxic. That's what we're dealing with on both sides.
Trump called Nazis "very fine people" and tried to ignore the results of the election he lost. "Both sides" that, troll. =)
Literally any crime is going to be accepted and applauded by the loyal drones.
Working with Russian intelligence, bribing foreign governments, stealing US intelligence, raping women....it literally doesnt matter.
In a few weeks most republicans will be pro-rape and supportive of stealing secret documents. The only thing more unifying than supporting the actions of dear leader is loudly signalling just how supportive you are.
@jdubs, I laughed out loud when I read your post, because what you said is both horrible and true.
- Noted for posterity. -
I think you described the essence of Authoritarians and their authoritarian followers. I find it sociologically interesting that the concept that "the king can do no wrong" goes back so far in history.
I'm assuming that the concept arises from some low level code baked into the mammalian brain, which assigns total trust to a parent's decisions.
This default belief usually works fine for infants growing up in caves, but most individuals get wiser when they grow up.
The question I ask myself is; "How can we get everyone to get wiser when they grow up?" Because " an infant in an adult body" is nearly the definition of a criminal.
And 'infant in an adult body' really is the definition of Donald Trump.
They are already pro-rape.
Otherwise, they would have renamed the Hastert Rule to something else.
Completely accurate description of his actions and the MAGA GOP reaction to it all. Nixon may have been a crook (minor league crook compared to this Orange Fuckhead), but he was also a patriot.
I generally view his actions with regard to Ukraine as extortion instead of bribery, since he tried to withhold what they desperately needed, for personal gain of course.
Still don't quite understand the Milley angle. Why was Trump apparently so insistent on saying Milley supported an attack on Iran? Half the damn country probably thinks it's a good idea. Why did Trump want to show buy-in from Milley?
Trump is upset that Milley & the rest of the military hierarchy didn't go along with the events of January 6, 2021, so the 45th president is lashing out & trying to destroy the Joint Chiefs reputation. He's painting them as the real warmongers, much as the GOP writ large paint their enemies generally as what the GOP is (i.e. the Democrat Party is the real racist party, because of Robert Byrd (but not Harry Byrd, whom the GQP does not support)).
As a bonus, anti-anti-Trump leftists like Greenwald, Tracey, Dore, Fang, the Bruenigs, can then turn around & say that this is further evidence of Mr. Trump's noninterventionist mindset, & that our real president is the only candidate who will ensure the end of the forever war.
January 6 is the big enchilada, I agree, but I think he was already getting really cheesed off at Milley earlier, when Milley apologized for letting himself get co-opted into the upside-down Bible photo-op. He did it at a public event, iirc, a ceremony or maybe even a graduation, something like that. So extremely disloyal and all.
It's possible Milley had an even lower opinion of POTUS45 than Colin Powell had of POTUS42.
Trump is upset that Milley & the rest of the military hierarchy didn't go along with the events of January 6, 2021, so the 45th president is lashing out & trying to destroy the Joint Chiefs reputation. He's painting them as the real warmongers...
If your explanation is valid, it really paints Trump as an utterly out-of-touch moron. I mean, Milley is a general. It's his job to come up with plans to destroy our enemies. Much of the public would probably be more surprised to hear Milley didn't support attacking Iran than the "revelation" that he did support such a course of action.
Couldn't they have broken into his therapist's office? Maybe order an IRS audit? GOP rat-fucking sure ain't what it used to be.
America’s decline there for all to see. Politicized corrupt legal system; oligarchs and the military industrial complex in control; open corruption; aging leadership; cult of originalism; guns everywhere; erosion of separation of church and state; public education under assault; unaffordable inefficient healthcare; state sanctioned racism and homophobia, and obvious stupidity (the last how I’d typify the Trump persona). Not sure we’ll every recover……
With the exception of guns everywhere, all the things you mention have long been characteristic of America. Yes the present may suck, but the past wasn’t always so great either. And compared to other countries we are not all that exceptional.
We're going to find out soon that the first claim is incorrect.
Even Ed Muskie did it. They just found classified papers amongst his things at Bates College, the Portland Press Herald is reporting this morning.
When I was reporting on businesses doing business with the military, this was a constant headache. Something would be not classified in one place, but classified in another, and I had whole stories tanked because they subject got classified during the middle of reporting it. The folk who I interviewed really feared crossing that line, even when they were uncertain where it was.
Trump's actions are an insult to their efforts and national loyalty.
But there really is too much stuff classified, stuff that has nothing to do with security and everything to do with just creating a cloud of incomprehensibility.
Stipulating that over-classification is a thing, I seriously doubt that all of the materials Trump was hiding were misclassified. Waving the mis-classification bloody shirt is pure misdirection.
It’s not that Trump broke the law. It’s that he did it intentionally and in a dramatically incompetent and clownish manner. This guy wants to be president and he thinks it’s a smart idea to hide classified documents in his shower and then lie to his lawyers about it?
Re. Clay Higgins (R-Coonass) calls for insurrection.
"President Trump said he has 'been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM.' This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/clay-higgins-trump-indictment-tweet-insurrection-b2354933.html
Let's take up a collection and buy this guy a G.I. Joe.
omg!
They changed the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark,
https://twitter.com/McJesse/status/1667296912943493120
"But they just don't care"
I think this is one of these things where you have to be clear about the subject of the claim. There are, of course, the usual crowd who will always defend him, and the Pravda-like media are mostly in that camp.
But the media are far from "Republicans".
The score seems to be that the loudest (not all) Congressmen are speaking up for him, but few in the Senate are. State-level reaction seems even more mixed, mostly quiet, those who are speaking up are saying vague platitudes that non-one can criticize ("Rule of law! Don't decide before the trial!").
And of course the "Republicans" that actually matter are the vast bulk of voters. My guess is that, while many of them will never say anything out loud, there will be a reaction in the form of not bothering to vote in the next election (basically the same thing we saw after Nixon).
My point is "The Republicans" is a term that means whatever you want it to mean. If you want it mean the rabid Republican media, well yes, true. If you want it to mean Republican politicians and the party establishment, well, seems there's a split with plenty of them happy Trump got his come-uppance, but so far too cautious to say anything out loud (again same response after Nixon). And if you mean the entire party, well, we probably won't know until the next election.
And apparently the "Biden Crime Family" is the real story here, and the one this whole investigation was initiated to distract people from.
It was always and will always be whataboutism from the right.
DJT is a jerk of the highest caliber, no doubt
There have been multiple times throughout recent history where enemies have gotten intel spot-on.
There was a German general (keitel?) who guessed Normandy for the landing spot and he failed to prevent us from getting a foothold. Just to name one
So we have a president who'd dumb as snot and the JC's are "gaming" an invasion of Iraq. Wouldn't it be prudent to change those "war game plans" as soon as dumb ass was out of the WH to throw our enemies off? Having ONE plan ready to go in THAT particular White House just seems dumber than normal for our military.
What gets me about these indictments is that there are many that are not singular in nature we have multiple instances on many of these counts.
There will be a "deal" struck. Trump will agree to not run for political office any more and the charges will be held up until he dies.
I hope I'm wrong but I just feel like they won't want to pursue to fervently if in fact he takes a slightly path.
Trump lives to defy, when he isn't living to lie. The only reason he would strike any agreement that included a promise not to run would be to resume his campaign within about 15 seconds of signing it.
Trump or no Trump, contingency plans need to be regularly updated as the composition of the available forces on both sides changes. My guess would be that the plans that are seen as extremely unlikely to ever be implemented are allowed to get pretty stale between updates, whereas contingency plans that have a real chance of suddenly becoming ops plans probably get updated as often as the situation changes significantly. In other words, I expect the Iran plan is changed two or three times every year.