Wait why did trump get arrested, i’m out of the loop. Was it cuz of the hair? I bet it was cuz of the hair.
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It was the hamberders. I told you the libs were making beef illegal
These are literally your words. I’m not going to go too far down the counterfactual rabbit hole with you because I’m not sure what would have happened if Trump lost (although I could make a decent argument that he might already be sitting in jail if he hadn’t been essentially immune from federal prosecution while he was literally overseeing the justice department for 4 years). The bottom line is when someone flagrantly commits crimes, the fact that they do it open and obviously should be a strike against them, not something that protects them.
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i saw trump eating a hamberder at trader vic’s
his hair was perfect
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ooo he’ll rip your lungs out jim
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I’m not sure what would have happened either? I’m saying that if the prosecutors did notice this crime, knew all the details, and he hadn’t been elected, and in that circumstance they wouldn’t have brought charges, then it’s a political prosecution. I obviously can’t evaluate that because I don’t know anything about their case or the law or anything really.
It’s fine if you don’t want to get into my counterfactual but don’t quote half of it and ignore the rest. If you don’t want to get into it don’t get into it.
Ok, fine let’s get into it some more. Your counterfactual is a ridiculous basis on which to have a serious debate because aguing about whether a prosecution is illegitimate in this world because maybe, possibly the prosecution would not have happened in an alternative world where a bunch of other things were different is:
(a) unknowable and therefore can’t be resolved
(b) is a bad standard for deciding how things SHOULD work in this world given where we are at the present moment. I mean the obvious conclusion of your position is that Trump is now immune from prosecution because any such prosecution is “political” (because I can’t prove definitively that the case wouldn’t have been brought in the other universe, right), and that seems like a pretty shitty rule.
If the case has merit, the DA should be able to bring it. You can’t engage in that discussion though, because you proudly refuse to actually look into the details.
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Part of the timeline is that there was an SDNY investigation while he was president which was closed because they couldn’t prosecute a sitting president and later taken up the Manhattan DA.
I think he probably still gets prosecuted if he loses and they know everything, but I don’t know if they discover the same evidence of he doesn’t win. Does this case rely on the media digging up stuff that wouldn’t have been uncovered if Trump hadn’t been president? The Stormy Daniels payment was reported by the WSJ in 2018.
One thing we do know is that there has been a widespread investigation into Trump where a couple of prosecutors resigned to protest charges not being brought. That suggests to me that the DA might have a higher threshold for being charged against Trump vs other people.
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It’s a matter of personal judgement and opinion. The simplest way of looking at it is, would Trump face a prosecution if he wasn’t running for president. Leave everything else the same. If that’s the motivation for the charge then I don’t see how anyone could argue that it isn’t political. If revenge for his record as president is a major motivation then it’s also political but that gets more complicated because the president will rightly get more attention and investigation.
I’m not sure what the fuck details I’m supposed to look into with the indictments still sealed. I’m not even saying it is a political prosecution, I’m saying it’s a political prosecution if it meets those tests. Does it meet those tests? How would I know, the charges aren’t even public.
So, how would you go about showing whether or not he would face prosecution if he wasn’t running for president?
I wouldn’t. I’d have my opinion, others can think what they like.
How would you form your opinion?
Read the indictment, follow the case as it proceeds. Read about the law involved. If I’m interested enough, which is questionable.
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Do you think you can tell the difference between a prosecutor going after Trump because they are politically anti-Trump or anti-Republican and a prosecutor going after Trump because he is a high-profile target and they’d go after anyone famous, Republican or Democrat, politician or other celebrity, because they think it helps their career?
GG and Taibbi are bad actors. They are unserious and cashing checks and totally detached from any coherent world view.
You can agree with them on something occasionally but I am curious if there are people itt who actually think these guys are serious
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By serious, do you mean sincere, arguing in what they think is good faith, that kind of thing?
I think it’s possible, but that’s really more of a reflection of me not feeling that the journalists (and others) that people consider serious, are serious. So if I could be wrong about that, I could be wrong about GG and T. Maybe most people are serious and I just don’t get it.
Yeah, I don’t believe they are sincere. I think they are smart enough to know when they are making very bad arguments but still make them anyway because they have their lane and their brand.
This can obviously be true of many people but I don’t subscribe to any Substacks and it seems like those guys have huge Substack followings at least in part because they represent a certain viewpoint that IMO they probably don’t care about at all and may not totally believe. They are closer to charlatans than serious people
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By asking “would these charges be brought if he weren’t running for President” you are setting up a test that cannot be answered. That type of test might be fun to chat about, but it’s an impossible way to make a decision if, like the DA, you actually have to make a go/no go call. Because of that, that is not the test I’m am going to use to determine if his actions are legitimate.
I feel this way too. But I also feel this way about essentially any public figure “serious analyst” you could name
I would say someone like David Sirota who is sometimes annoying, wrong about stuff, and often too biased is definitely a good actor and is trying to push an honest narrative in good faith.
Just look at the type of work he’s doing compared to the Greenwald / Taibbi types. He was front and center doing actual reporting on the Ohio train derailment and helped run Bernie’s campaign in 2020.
GG charges money for his blog and does right wing media
Taibbi does the same thing and also cooks up stories for Elon now (for money)
People also put like Bari Weiss and Michael Tracey in this group of subversive independent free thinkers? Lol
I guess my point is these people are nihilists who don’t believe in anything and are just here to make money off people who are sympathetic to a relatively niche viewpoint and it’s possible to distinguish them from people operating in good faith