Umm, Pro Se?
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IMO itâs because
(a) reporters need to keep churning out content, so whenever they pin down some new tidbit, they want to run with it and
(B) they feel compelled to engage in good faith with any and all defenses MAGA stans put up for Trump. Someone, somewhere made the âwell maybe the staff was just sloppy when they packed up the WH, canât blame Trump for thatâ defense. And someone else made the, âTrump probably thought he had turned everything over, if you thought he still had documents you couldâve just asked, you didnât have to go in with a warrantâ argument⌠So the media feels like it can win the argument by slowly and methodically debunking these arguments, but donât realize that few if any of the people spewing those talking points care about the actual facts.
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The presumption of privilege means that the burden of proof is on those seeking documents, etc. covered by executive privilege to show why the information is necessary. US v Nixon limited executive privilege by making it clear that it is a qualified rather than absolute privilege.
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Guy on MSNBC just said MAGA is
Make
Attorneys
Get
Attorneys
Basically all lawyers that signed off to the FBI that all the documents had been turned in.
Lol, thatâs the kind of lawyering that would have gotten me smacked around in my first year writing class.
Basically, before the Court forced Nixon to hand over the tape, the opinion DOES have a lot of solemn, serious language about how executive privilege is important and courts should not interfere with the privilege lightly. But, it then goes on to say itâs making an exception for Nixon because of all the criming⌠So, the lawyer is trying to focus on the part where the court acknowledged that executive priv is important and then try to argue that the allegations against Trump arenât serious enough to justify an exception. Itâs a bold move, but Trumpâs whole defense for most of this stuff is that being the President should let him get away with stuff that noone else can, so I guess you just make the argument and hope a few judges buy the âheâs bad, but not Nixon badâ defense.
It shows that even if he initially inadvertently took classified documents, he subsequently knowingly stole them.
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Like Devil said, it torpedos the packed-in-a-hurry defense. Of course, we all know it was bullshit, but now, they canât use that bullshit anymore and have to use different bullshit. So, at the end of the day, I guess your confusion is warranted. It doesnât matter which bullshit they use. Nothing matters.
Trump is flooding the zone with bullshit, itâs what heâs always done, it always works every time because no one in the media seems to know how to report on patent bad faith bullshit. Trump claims he is the rightful heir to the throne of Gondor and Twitter lawbros dash off 15-part Twitter threads on how this violates Article X Section Y of the Constitution as interpreted by the SCOTUS instead of just saying âHey this is all bullshit; Gondor isnât even real and heâs clearly just trying to distract everyone from his crimes.â
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Not gonna check the cite, but âpresumptivelyâ here likely means, untill thereâs some reason to believe otherwise, which can be a low bar.
Iâve noticed that this case, like many before it, presents the Trump perspective much more than it should because Trump and his monkeys blab all day long while the DOJ is silent.
Reporters have to write a story and FBI is mute but fucking Kash Patel and Barbi esq. are blabbing shit like theyâre on a coke bender, probably because theyâre on a coke bender.
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But they donât, though, thatâs the thing. Or, more to the point, they can dismiss Trumpâs bullshit as bullshit and report on the obvious crimes heâs done instead. You donât have to engage with obvious bad faith bullshit, no one gets that, itâs why bullshit is so powerful.
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Their problem is the former POTUS saying that shit is newsworthy and reportable, but the fact that theyâre unwilling to contextualize it with facts is a huge problem.
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Iâve referenced this several times before. In the middle of Trumpâs presidency some network (PBS?) held a discussion with 3 national newspaper editors. IIRC it was Washington Post, New York Times, and one other.
They discussed how challenging it was to cover Trump and all his bullshit. They were not hesitant to say that Trump was a constant bullshitter (liar). When the host pressed each editor on how their newspaper was covering Trump, each said that every day they ran prominent stories on Trumpâs latest bullshit.
It was their view that anything Trump (the president) said was newsworthy, and the more outrageous it was the more newsworthy it was. Their stories typically contained no âpushbackâ on Trumpâs views/claims/lies and the editors said they had no plans to incorporate anything along those lines. I will say that the host was incredulous at the newspaper editorâs stance but it made no difference to the editors.
YOU TAKE THAT BACK!!!
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I think the media does better at fact-checking than they used to because of Trump. Itâs popular to contend that the media should always balance whatâs being said with what the truth is. But, as a practical matter, thatâs not always possible. When I was in broadcasting, I remember someone asking me âWhy donât you guys tell us what the national debt really is?â Sorry, but calculating the national debt really doesnât fall within my skill set. So, I donât know what it âreally isâ. How would I? I can only tell you what the government says it is, or I can tell you what some economist says it is. Thatâs why we qualify facts with âso-and-so says this and so-and-so says thatâ.
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Yeah the DOJ lawbro line of just saying absolutely nothing completely fails when youâre dealing with someone like Trump. You just cede incredibly valuable ground because like it or not, everything is political. Look what happened with the Mueller Report. It says âholy shit this guy did all the crimesâ but is remembered as a nothingburger because Bill Barr got ahead of itâs release and lied, then Trump screamed Russia Hoax and nobody really countered that.
Also it used to be the walk softly carry a big stick thing had teeth because people believed eventually the government would come down hard on these assholes. Nobody is scared of them anymore after 6 years of toothless plea agreements, house arrests and pardons.
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An all-timer
Revealing imo