There is an enormous amount of rejoicing, chortling, fingerpointing, anger, sorrow, etc. following President Donald Trump’s conviction in the trial in New York. My reactions are pretty closely aligned with those of James Joyner:
In the grand scheme of things, paying hush money to a porn star to avoid political embarrassment and then committing tax fraud in the service of that tawdry act is as easily dismissed as committing perjury about an illicit affair with a subordinate while testifying in a case about sexually harassing a different subordinate. Both are arguably disqualifying for high office and yet easily dismissed by supporters.
To be clear, while I thought Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were both morally unfit to serve as commander-in-chief before they were ever sworn in and had that reinforced by their behavior in office, the latter’s transgressions are considerably greater. While I thought Clinton rightly impeached for perjuring himself regarding Lewinsky, that was the height of his transgressions as President. Further, while I frequently disagreed with him on policy grounds, I have no reason to doubt that he spent his presidency trying to make the country a better place. Trump, by contrast, used his office as a personal piggybank and had no interest in anything but his own power and enrichment.
I think he’s discounting the Clintons’ desire to enrich themselves via the presidency a bit.
I think there is a slippery slope in nominating and voting for individuals who are “morally unfit to serve as commander-in-chief” and we are seeing that play out. As we have seen there are also slippery slopes in impeaching presidents, castigating reasonably decent individuals running for president as monsters, and challenging the results of presidential elections in the courts.
I guess we’re about to see if there is a slippery slope in prosecuting former presidents, too.
Update
Momentous as the verdict feels, it comes in what was neither the most important nor the most legally compelling of the cases against Mr. Trump. Special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution regarding Jan. 6, 2021, involving both the scheme to draw up fraudulent slates of electors and the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, implicates an alleged assault on democracy. The Mar-a-Lago classified-documents case cuts to Mr. Trump’s unfitness to serve as commander in chief. The obstruction charge, covering Mr. Trump’s alleged efforts to mislead investigators about his retention of papers from the White House, seems clear-cut. Yet these cases remain unresolved, as Mr. Trump successfully persuaded various judges, and the Supreme Court, to consider time-consuming procedural issues. Thursday’s verdict, by contrast, involved a hush money payment scheme to an adult-film actress.
This is not to say Thursday’s result was illegitimate — or, as Mr. Trump declared, the result of a “rigged, disgraceful trial.” The Biden campaign’s decision to hold a news conference outside the courthouse on Tuesday was doubly unfortunate because it belied an important reality: Contrary to accusations from Mr. Trump and his allies that probes into him are “witch hunts” and any outcome that disfavors him “rigged,” the case showed the opposite. An investigation occurred. An indictment was secured. A jury was selected, and in an orderly trial, Mr. Trump got due process of law. Only with six weeks of testimony from 22 witnesses and ample corroborating evidence was a verdict declared.
The jurors appear to have fulfilled their oath to assess the case with care, taking time to have relevant testimony and jury instructions laboriously reread to them. They also accepted a crucial civic duty amid trying circumstances, forbidden from discussing a subject of widespread attention with their friends and family, and risking blowback for their eventual decision, whichever way it went.
Thursday’s guilty verdict wasn’t entirely surprising, given the jury pool in Manhattan. If Mr. Trump had lucked out, he might have drawn one or two stubborn skeptics, like the Henry Fonda character in “12 Angry Men,” resulting in at least a hung jury. Instead the fortunate one was Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who filed the weakest of the four indictments of Mr. Trump, but who managed to drag his case first over the finish line.
Normally a felony conviction would be politically fatal for a candidate appearing on the ballot in five months. But normally a prosecutor wouldn’t have brought this case. Mr. Bragg, an elected Democrat, ran for office as the man ready to take on Mr. Trump. When the new DA didn’t indict shortly after winning office, his top Trump prosecutors loudly quit, increasing the pressure on Mr. Bragg to do, well, something. Even after a guilty verdict, the case he ended up filing looks like a legal stretch.
The evidence from the six-week trial fleshed out some of the facts. Stormy Daniels testified that she and Mr. Trump had a sexual rendezvous in 2006, which he keeps denying, if implausibly. In the runup to the 2016 election, Mr. Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet. Mr. Trump reimbursed him, and then some, in 2017. According to the DA, the crime was disguising this repayment as legal fees to Mr. Cohen for work under a retainer that didn’t exist.
On the law, though, the case was a bizarre turducken, with alleged crimes stuffed inside other crimes. By the time Mr. Bragg showed up on the scene, the Stormy business was old enough that Mr. Trump couldn’t be hit with misdemeanor falsification of records, because the statute of limitations had expired. To elevate these counts into felonies, the DA said Mr. Trump cooked the books with an intent to commit or cover up a second offense.
What crime was that? At first Mr. Bragg was cagey. He eventually settled on a New York election law, rarely enforced, that prohibits conspiracies to promote political candidates “by unlawful means.” This explains why prosecutors spent so much trial time on David Pecker, the National Enquirer boss. His outfit paid $150,000 in 2016 to silence another woman, Karen McDougal, who also says she had an extracurricular affair with Mr. Trump. Mr. Bragg’s argument is that they were all in cahoots, more or less, to steal the election.
Yet what “unlawful means” did this alleged conspiracy use? The DA’s argument was that there were three: First, the hush money was effectively an illegally large donation to Mr. Trump’s campaign. Second, more business filings were falsified, including bank records for Mr. Cohen’s wire transfer to Ms. Daniels. Third, false statements were made to tax authorities, since Mr. Trump’s repayment of Mr. Cohen was structured as income and “grossed up” to cover the taxes he would need to pay on it.
In some ways this Russian nesting doll structure, to use another analogy, defies logic.
In a humble courtroom in Lower Manhattan on Thursday, a former president and current Republican standard-bearer was convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The jury’s decision, and the facts presented at the trial, offer yet another reminder — perhaps the starkest to date — of the many reasons Donald Trump is unfit for office.
The guilty verdict in the former president’s hush-money case was reached by a unanimous jury of 12 randomly selected New Yorkers, who found that Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, was guilty of falsifying business records to prevent voters from learning about a sexual encounter that he believed would have been politically damaging.
Americans may wonder about the significance of this moment. The Constitution does not prohibit those with a criminal conviction from being elected or serving as commander in chief, even if they are behind bars. The nation’s founders left that decision in the hands of voters. Many experts have also expressed skepticism about the significance of this case and its legal underpinnings, which employed an unusual legal theory to seek a felony charge for what is more commonly a misdemeanor, and Mr. Trump will undoubtedly seek an appeal.
Yet the greatest good to come out of this sordid case is the proof that the rule of law binds everyone, even former presidents. Under extraordinary circumstances, the trial was conducted much like any other criminal trial in the city. That 12 Americans could sit in judgment of the former and potentially future president is a remarkable display of the democratic principles that Americans prize at work.
The term “kangaroo court” has seemed an apt and amusing term to apply to the trial of former President Donald Trump in Manhattan during the past month. But now that, for the first time in history, a former president has been found guilty of felony indictments, it cannot be regarded as anything other than a dark day for the nation. Jurors decided Trump was guilty on all 34 counts, carrying the possibility of more than 100 years of jail time for business record violations that occurred over a decade ago.
It is a dark day, not because of the guilty verdicts but because this trial has been a travesty from start to finish. It is clear, first of all, that no one other than Trump would have been charged in this way. No one other than Trump would have had a prosecutor concoct such an absurd and disgraceful list of charges and twist the law to do so. It is indisputable that no person has ever been prosecuted as a felon for the misdemeanor recordkeeping crimes as Trump was. It’s odd, isn’t it, that the only person ever so charged should be a former president, the much-hated opponent of the current incumbent, who is leading in the polls only five months before Election Day. The only reason Trump was charged and convicted of this crime is because he is Trump. This is what banana republics do.
My expectation is that Biden will see some improvement in his numbers — perhaps something roughly equivalent to a mini convention bounce — and the question is mostly about how steep it is and how long it persists. In particular, I’ll want to see whether any decline for Trump survives past the first debate on June 27 or instead the debate reverts the race to where it was previously.
If there isn’t some sort of bounce for Biden, however — even a temporary one — then obviously that will count as a highly bearish signal for him. Improved consumer perceptions about the economy haven’t really improved Biden’s numbers much, and nor has a period of comparatively favorable news coverage. (The “vibes” within the pundit class don’t translate in any reliable way to those among swing voters.) The poker term for being in a dicey spot but where your odds have a chance to improve is “having outs”, meaning that you might catch some good cards to redeem your position. The possibility of a criminal conviction was one of the best outs Biden had left — and if it doesn’t move the numbers, I’m not sure what will.
The Donald Trump verdict is a travesty of justice. I say this not as a Trump-lover—I don’t love any politician, preferring transactional relationships regarding policy—but as a lover of the rule of law. From the moment that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg chose to indict Trump for nearly decade-old offenses that Bragg himself had previously declined to prosecute, the circus came to town. The jury’s findings of guilt on all 34 counts of falsifying business records are almost anticlimactic, putting the cherry on top of multiple scoops of misused legal authority.
You can read elsewhere analyses of the allegations about how the former president funneled business funds through his convicted-felon consigliere Michael Cohen to his mistress Stormy Daniels so that she wouldn’t spill the beans on their affair in the midst of the 2016 campaign. As I understand it, the business-records violations became felonies because they’re in furtherance of a campaign-finance violation—this is what allowed Bragg even to bring charges, given that the statute of limitations would otherwise have run out on the first, underlying actions. But you wouldn’t get this from following the trial, which left most observers scratching their heads at what the crimes were that Trump had supposedly committed.
Mind you, I didn’t follow the trial that closely, either. Because that fact pattern is what lawyers call a stretch, and because it was so blatantly Bragg’s politicized persecution of his party’s bête noire, the legal play-by-play seemed beside the point. Salacious details notwithstanding, I couldn’t get myself worked up about the minutiae of long-ago accounting practices relating to a nondisclosure agreement. But I do have a JD and work in legal policy, which should give me a better understanding of what’s going on. And yet, I still don’t understand these 34 convictions.
IMPLICATIONS OF CONVICTION
The trial of Donald Trump on jerry-rigged charges produced the foreordained outcome. Trump was found guilty by a Manhattan jury of 34 felony charges. It couldn’t have been otherwise. This was a show trial.
It would have been more efficient — it would have saved a day or two in show time — if Judge Merchan had simply directed a verdict of guilt and sent the jury home when the parties’ rested. It would not have been more unconstitutional than having the jury pick from Column A, Column B, or Column C for the “other crime” that was vital to the case.
Instead Merchan let the prosecution run wild. He constrained the defense. He all but stripped Trump’s defense to the charge of federal election misconduct to which Michael Cohen had pleaded guilty.
He gagged the defendant. He excluded evidence that might have helped the defendant, say with respect to the allegation of misconduct under federal election law. He crafted jury instructions that adopted the show-trial theory of the case.
And the jury performed predictably under the circumstances. In this case its role was ministerial. The guilty verdict on each of the 34 charges was for show.
The show trial lacked certain elements of the Stalinist show trials of old. Most notably, the defendant did not confess or repent. He has not professed to accept the opinion of his accusers. He may even prevail at some point on appeal after the election.
But appeal is irrelevant. As in the show trials of old, the point of the case is political, not legal. Democrats have achieved their immediate political objective. Trump is now a convicted felon.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/05/implications-of-conviction.php
As this lawfare success sinks in, I think a national furor will simmer among the “little people,” many belonging to the silent majority who bite their lip when screwed over, and continue to lawfully get on with their lives. However, when something so blatantly unlawful occurs, akin to a judicial assassination, something that one party joyfully embraces as a “win,” dismissing all omissions of fairness as exemplifying some kind of “rule of law,” quiet discontent will no longer be observed.
Good to hear from you, Jan. I found Shapiro, and your comments spot on.
It will be interesting to hear comments from jurors. Do they even know on what basis they convicted?
Drew, this was such a pre-manufactured trial having no basis for even being brought to the court room in the first place. One pundit today called it “legal excrement,” which I found so descriptive and fitting for its substance. I’m disappointed, though, in coming back to this site, seeing posters unchanged in their perspective about the presidencies of Trump vs Biden – the latter continuing to be ok because it’s under a democrat regime, and the former distasteful or unworthy just because it’s “Trump.”
It was a perk to see your name as well. I always enjoyed your robust retorts and clear thinking in the past – a scarcity these days.
the running wild part, the salacious bits, were allowed due to Trump insisting that they contest the sex ever happening. That was bad lawyering and only the most devout MAGA folks believe he would pay someone to keep quiet about sex that didnt happen. The evidence showed without doubt that he paid to have it covered up and he did it to improve his election chances.
Steve
Steve, you obviously heard what you wanted to hear in a trial where the prosecutor was given carte blanche leeway with his witnesses – all objections overruled by Merchan — and the defense couldn’t even call certain witnesses to refute false testimony (especially dealing with the correct interpretation of FEC laws) . When a defense witness did make it to the stand (Costello), their testimony was narrowed down to almost nothing, and even limited more by every objection by the prosecutor being sustained by Merchan. The trial was so lopsidedly micromanaged by the decidedly Biden-biased judge that there was no chance there would be any verdict other than guilty.
This was definitely an example of injustice exercised by unjust officials of a “rigged” NYC court system.
“I think he’s discounting the Clintons’ desire to enrich themselves via the presidency a bit.”
I can’t determine whether that’s your dry and subtle wit or if you really only have mild disagreement with Joyner but I got quite a laugh out of that line.
One thing I don’t understand is the idea that “ Trump, by contrast, used his office as a personal piggybank and had no interest in anything but his own power and enrichment.”
What are people referring to when they say that? I haven’t paid attention to the numbers but generally I’m quite sure that the Obamas and the Clinton saw much greater increases in their net worth during and after their administrations.
Trump is motivated by ego, without a doubt (as were Obama and Clinton, but Trump is obnoxious and gauche in the way he presents himself.) I think they all believe there’s no conflict between their own personal aggrandizement and the good of the country.
That’s exactly how politicians think. They don’t distinguish between their own personal good and the good of the country. In fact they think their own personal good is the good of the country.
A trial worthy of Stalin or North Korea or the Congo. An utterly corrupt judge, an utterly corrupt prosecutor, and most worrisome of all an utterly corrupt jury.
The rule of law in New York has utterly collapsed, and verdicts are now openly bought and sold. People are convicted of non-existent crimes, and violent criminals wander the streets freely, if they have the right race or gender.
Nationally, the courts are politicized and corrupt all the way down from the Supremes to the meanest mayor’s court. The entire American governmental system is both corrupt and illegitimate; it is Third World throughout.
There is no curing this. The current system can only be removed in toto and replaced by another. Almost every politician would have to be imprisoned.
On the “bright side” the lunatics in the Biden administration (3rd Obama?) are trying to start a nuclear war with Russia and China, so our curse might be lifted after all, at least for some rural folk.
jan- There really isn’t much doubt about the facts of the case. Trump had sex with Daniels and lied about it being a business expense to protect his election efforts. It reflects the old adage about if, roughly, you argue the facts if you can, if you cant then you argue the law and if you cant then you BS. They sent Cohen to jail, partially, for committing this same crime. However, no one anticipated this kind of act so they are combining two laws to convict him. He clearly broke the spirit of the law and its at least partially a matter of opinion as to whether he broke the letter of the law.
You dont think he did and I do. However, 12 jurors (the little people) , knowing they are risking their lives in the process, determined that he did break the law. Now it goes to appeals, where the facts and the law wont really matter, just the politics of the judges. It’s how our system works.
Steve
Steve that is such complete bullshit.
“No one anticipated this kind of act”????
No one except every single person who isn’t a total naif. Are you seriously claiming that most politicians don’t pay hush money to keep their dirty laundry out of the public eye? Or that there aren’t a myriad of accounting sleights of hand to keep those payments secret? And that most voters don’t assume this kind of stuff about most of the candidates we vote for-especially someone with Trump’s reputation for womanizing? I really can’t understand why he bothered to pay off SD anyway and it’s absurd for the prosecutor to claim that this influenced the election. If anything Trump was probably trying to hide his activities from Melania.
As for the campaign finance laws, what a farce. Has anyone bothered to look at how the Hillary campaign paid “legal fees” to the firm that was working with our intel agencies to spy on and attempt to dirty up Trump and his people? Oh, I’m sure those payments were completely above board.
Steve, don’t be so sanctimonious and/or naive. Those 12 jurors did not represent any kind of unbiased cross section of the ‘little people”. They came from a jurisdiction where almost 90% voted against Trump, living in mostly upper white class neighborhoods (the demographic best suited to be a Biden voter). The majority received their democrat-slanted news from The NY Times and MSM. Consequently, in Manhattan the news of Trump’s conviction was rejoiced and met with glee. But, outside that bubble people were appalled by the unmitigated, overt use of politics used to interfere with an election less than 6 months away.
A better analysis of this trial is given by Turley, a constitutional attorney. It is well worth reading, if you are willing to delve into all the flaws, errors and biases of this so-called legal proceeding.
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/01/the-ghost-of-john-adams-how-the-trump-trial-harkens-back-to-a-dark-period-of-american-law/
jan: Judge Merchan had simply directed a verdict of guilt
That’s not a power a judge has under the law.
jan: the defense couldn’t even call certain witnesses to refute false testimony (especially dealing with the correct interpretation of FEC laws)
Explanations of the law are not evidence and not admissible as such.
CStanley: I’m quite sure that the Obamas and the Clinton saw much greater increases in their net worth during and after their administrations.
The Obamas and the Clintons released their tax returns. They made their money primarily by writing books and giving speeches.
steve: There really isn’t much doubt about the facts of the case. Trump had sex with Daniels and lied about it being a business expense to protect his election efforts.
Trump continues to pretend he “did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Horseface.”
CS- The closest I can think of is the Jonathan Edwards case. (Imagine that, a Democrat was taken to court for campaign violations for an affair!) However, IIRC, too lazy to go look it up, that was more about his soliciting money from contributors to pay to help support the mistress. In this case Trump tried to wash the money by going through his business.
Hide it from Melania. That’s too funny. He had never tried to hide past affairs. What happened when Melania did find out? Nothing. She is a paid for trophy model and they both know that. She’s not going anywhere.
Also, you totally forget that a lot fo his support was from the evangelical community. While the very large majority of them are cultural Christians and not true believers, enough of them are so that they would have found it shocking that he was screwing a porn star, and the Bunny, while his wife was pregnant. He is bullet proof now after naming the judges who overturned Roe so he could have sex with a porn star and kill her afterwards and they would still support him, but at the time it was a close election and the pussy thing was an issue.
Steve
jan- I hope you dont really believe that 90% of people in NYC are Democrats. Remember that Santos won an election there (with the GOP giving us one of their finest!). Most Republicans dont bother voting since it doesnt matter. Pew and IIRC Gallup have both polled there for years and find about 25% are Republican. Trump only needed one juror to rule in his favor and as we know, he only hires the best lawyers who screened the jurors. It’s just not believable there weren’t people sympathetic to Trump on the jury.
I have read Turley. I have also read lawyers who disagree with him. As I said, the facts are pretty clear that Trump did what was claimed by the prosecution. On appeal it will be an issue of interpretation of the law.
Steve
Steve, I guess you consider yourself a sage of sorts. You took on this role during COVID, never even considering the possibility of vaccine harms, or the positive uses of other remedies initially banned (including threats to physicians prescribing them), and now quietly reconstituted back into the medical world, after mass vaccinations were accomplished. Now, your behavior is the same with a legal system that has handily convicted an opponent, who has bugged the dem party for years, on outdated misdemeanor charges, magically transformed into felonies, fueled by salacious sex rumors going back to somewhere around 2006, because of testimony plied from a convicted perjurer, liar, and thief.
Steve, if you haven’t noticed Dems are the party of intimidation. One only votes against their agenda at the risk of being doxed, having damage done to their property, cars keyed, in the case of jurists on the SC, being threatened with physical harm or having mobs harassing you at home, or Schumer screaming dire things will happen (Kavanaugh) at the steps of the Capitol. Imagine now being a lone juror seeking to exonerate a defendant, in a room full of avid people wanting to generate a quick conviction. Not many people are that brave.
jan: They came from a jurisdiction where almost 90% voted against Trump
Close. The jury pool was Manhattan, which, among those who voted, voted 85%-15%, Biden-Trump. That would mean to expected average of about two Trump voters per twelve jurors (assuming everyone in the jury pool voted, or those who didn’t vote had the same partisan breakdown as those who did vote).
jan: if you haven’t noticed Dems are the party of intimidation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iludfj6Pe7w
Zachriel: They made their money primarily by writing books and giving speeches.
Ah yes, the speeches. Nothing to see here…
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-clintons-russia-trump-688592
Speeches and book deals (and more recently streaming platforms and “art”) are the acceptable ways that the right people launder their influence peddling money- not like that vulgarian real estate mogul Trump.
CStanley: Nothing to see here…
From the link: “As is the often the case, {Trump} is stretching the truth about the Clinton Foundation and money it received”. Unlike Trump, there is no evidence that the Clintons were double-dealing with their charitable foundation. The Clinton Foundation was independently audited. That doesn’t mean the Clinton Foundation didn’t provide access and influence. However, like almost all charitable giving, it allowed participants to look good by doing good.
CStanley: Speeches and book deals (and more recently streaming platforms and “art”) are the acceptable ways that the right people launder their influence peddling money- not like that vulgarian real estate mogul Trump.
Not sure that buying a book will give you much access. However, speeches do give some access. You will note that the Clintons’ speech income began *after* Bill left office and ended *before* Hillary started her campaign for president. The speaker fees were in line with industry standards.
Again, the Clintons provided their tax returns showing exactly how they made their money.
“Steve, I guess you consider yourself a sage of sorts. You took on this role during COVID, never even considering the possibility of vaccine harms, or the positive uses of other remedies initially banned”
Nope, I just read the studies and passed them on. I also took care of real live patients in the ICU and elsewhere and talked with hundreds of other physicians. When people presented studies that disagreed with conventional belief I actually read most of those, at least for the first couple of years. I have a responsibility to my patients and being a department chair one to my staff also. The alternate treatments you supported had very weak studies, most often too small, rarely with controls. They largely had little laboratory evidence to support them. Finally, we actually did try almost everything that was suggested by the alternate treatment people because we were desperate. We tried HCQ, Ivermectin, the vitamins, zinc, etc. We, like everyone else who actually published their results, didnt see any effects.
On the vaccines the numbers dont match up with the claims of harm. If they were killing as many as you guys claimed we would have seen them in our ICUs. Didnt happen. So for you it appeared some random nurse making a claim constituted evidence. I saw as many or more pts as any nurse and in my oversight role reviewed way more than any random nurse. Didnt see anything. However, anecdata doesnt matter that much. You need to publish results to support your claims. Didnt happen.
On the legal issue I am not claiming to be a legal expert. If anything you are making the claim. I am claiming that the facts on the case are pretty clear. Trump did everything of which he is accused. He clearly committed at least a lot of misdemeanors. I think the claims that law makes it also a felony makes sense, and a lot fo lawyers agree. You dont, and a lot of lawyers agree. Also, everything you claim is practiced by Republicans, as much or more. It doesnt take a lot of bravery to hang a jury. It has been done millions of times.
Finally note that once again you are wrong on basic facts. NYC is not 90% Dems. That’s like claiming that because Dems win in CA all of the time they are 90% Dems. In reality 24%, at least are Republicans and the state has a large percentage of independents, about 23% IIRC, and as we know that really means about half vote Republican.
Sorry, cant help myself. Kavanaugh? Some guy was having thoughts about hurting Kavanaugh and turned himself in? Really?
Steve
@CStanley
It has been a while. Hope all is well with you and your family.
@jan
Steve, I guess you consider yourself a sage of sorts.
C’mon man, he is The Sage. Carnac the Magnificent was an amatuer compared to @steve.
Sorry to interrupt the food fight.
Tasty, your posts usually make me smile. That’s a much lighter response from me than what most posters have to say. Food fight you say! It’s actually a condition of cerebral hard-headedness more than anything else.
Finally note that once again you are wrong on basic facts. NYC is not 90% Dems.
Never said that. The number given was a rounded one for percentages voting for Biden (who are obviously not Trump fans). It’s a similar percentage for the negative Trump news stories printed by the MSM. As most people know NY is notorious for its dem slant, just as Oklahoma, for instance, might be considered Republican territory. BTW, how do you think such a trial would have fared there….except of course it never would have made it that far in a non-anti-Trump state.
@tasty- good to hear from you too. I’ve been busy with family issues both positive and negative but overall have no right to complain. Lots of travel plans for the summer so my postings will likely be scarce. I’m also finding it hard to express my reactions to current events so I’m lurking more than commenting. Reading, contemplating, and praying a lot.
Steve: Also, you totally forget that a lot fo his support was from the evangelical community. While the very large majority of them are cultural Christians and not true believers, enough of them are so that they would have found it shocking that he was screwing a porn star, and the Bunny, while his wife was pregnant..
Steve, I know quite a few evangelicals and lots of conservative Christians. I can’t tell you how many times during the 2016 campaign that I heard the line about God drawing straight lines with crooked sticks. The Bible is filled with very imperfect men (kind of the central point of our religion) who did great things. None of that excuses Trump’s immoral behavior but most Christians do not clutch their pearls and they don’t expect untarnished leaders. I think like most of us they know that such types just aren’t likely to be on the ballot.
CS- Absolutely. People can always find ways to justify what they really want to do. In this case they were hoping that a man with zero moral compass would do stuff that aligned, at least somewhat, with their faith, like abortion or being mean to gays. But this was also well beyond issue son faith as they also wanted a guy who would be mean to liberals. However, it also meant accepting a man who as leader and a model for their children was going to advocate for hate and teach them to always put themselves first as an individual. (Remember Joy is putting Jesus first, others second and yourself last?)
He was a total compromise in both their beliefs and their long time insistence that character matters. Besides which any other Republican who won the election was going to name the same judges anyway.
Going into the weeds, if you know evangelical culture then you also know it has a constant problem with frauds and grifters. Tammy Faye/Jim, Allen Stanford, Haggard, Coy, Alamo and numerous people who each individually scammed people out of millions of dollars. The list of preachers and lay people specifically taking advantage of people’s fatih while committing sexual sins or defrauding people of lots of money is incredibly long. They know that, yet they voted for a man with the same sense of character as those who have harmed tham all along.
Steve
“The Obamas and the Clintons released their tax returns. They made their money primarily by writing books and giving speeches.”
Absolutely true and it’s what concerns me the most about Joe Biden’s accumulation of wealth. Why the need for shell corporations?
Why not just copy Obama and have three or four ghostwriten autobiographies produced and published so supporters in the universities and public schools could use public funds to stuff the libraries full of them and bingo! Nest feathered.
But no, too greedy, and the CCP roped him in.
Trump, BTW, has damn near bankrupted himself on this President project.
When people assert he has enriched himself in office they need to show their work. Not true.
Grey Shambler: Absolutely true and it’s what concerns me the most about Joe Biden’s accumulation of wealth.
Joe Biden has released about a quarter of a century of his income tax returns. Most of his wealth, about $10 million, is from real estate which has appreciated in value over the decades. He also owns a 1967 Corvette Stingray, which his father gave him as a wedding present, now worth $100,000.
Of note, Trump has not released his tax returns, and he has been found guilty of falsifying business records.
“Trump, BTW, has damn near bankrupted himself on this President project.”
You appear to be the only person in country with access to his tax/financial records. Could you please share?
Steve
@steve- it was actually those very preacher scandals that I had in mind when I wrote my comment. That history demonstrates that these people aren’t naive and that they know very well that men in powerful positions often engage in sins of the flesh (see King David as perhaps the prime example.)
Also noteworthy about their backing of Trump is that they were intentionally choosing a strongman (and weren’t electing him as their church leader.) The subtext that you and most moderates and liberals don’t understand is that the GOP has promised to look out for social conservatives’ interests for decades and it’s become obvious that they have no plans to deliver on those promises.
I mean you can keep on painting them in disparaging ways all you want but that kind of attitude from media and politicians is why we have reached this point. It’s mind boggling how people can misread conservatives so badly but that’s what happens when you assign the most malign motives to their behavior (like your comments about hating gay people.) If you really believe conservative Christians are guilty of excessive judgmentalism perhaps you should deal with that plank in your own eye, the judgments you make about them.
CS- Those people are my family and a number of friends. We talk when I go home and i go to church with them and I hear their ministers preach. I still read some Christian conservatives. It’s what I grew up with. None of which means I cant be wrong but it’s clear to me that they are pretty judgmental, the current trend, for a while, has been to criticize those who would compromise by not being judgmental.
Choosing Trump was mixed. A surprisingly, to me, large percentage have decided that Trump is a true Christian. There isn’t much evidence of that but that’s what they believe. For the rest I agree they wanted a strongman, but they were wiling to compromise on their religious beliefs and any basic ethics to choose him. The way I would interpret the history of the constant scandals is that they never learn. It keeps happening over and over. They keep choosing manly men who then go on to defraud them or screw their teenage girls and boys.
Of note, Trump also didnt deliver on any of the stuff that social conservatives wanted other than abortion and that was McConnell. The Federalist Society chose the judges so we would have had the same ones if Rubio was POTUS. POTUS doesnt really have the power to deliver what they want.
Steve
Best legal commentary I have seen as it used the actual transcript from the hearing. It clears up the 3 choices thing noting that Trump’s legal team agreed that was the norm. Also, the witness complaints remain bizarre to me. If the defense thought the prosecution had not called witnesses that would help Trump the defense could have called them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnapsSRptqg
Steve