An “Opie-dope” strategy! (As Muhammed Ali might have called it.)
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Fixed that for you.
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I’m perfectly happy with the schadenfreude of a scumbag getting their just desserts. The fact that this puts Trump in further legal jeopardy is just icing. It always has been and always will be a pipe dream that any of this will lead to the removal of Trump from office.
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I’m guessing it wasn’t about Cuba providing full Internet access over the phone network. Hm, nope.
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But do remember, folks: the more conclusively individual-1 is shown to be a criminal, the worse it will be when the government openly, formally refuses to do anything about it.
I can believe that state prosecutors will go after him once he leaves office – maybe he’ll even do time – but as deliciously pleasurable as that would be, the massive, irreversible damage would already be done.
If you had relatives who ardently supported Nixon, I’m sure that was annoying, but at least you could still just about speak to them because in the end, the system protected you from those relatives’ mistakes. But if the system rules that it is A-OK for Turmp to be as criminal as criminal can be, that will officially mean that the only way to have a decent government is to stop Republican voters.
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“Is my name in there anywhere?”
“Um, no, Mr. President, but…”
“Great!” tweets
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Individual-1 is in deep trouble
Doubtful.
Is this like the thing where we were all supposed to cheer on the fact that the US caught/killed to death the second or third or fourth-highest ranked member of Al-Qaeda for that particular housing subdivision?
Because all of these stories end up sort of feeling like that.
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Speaking as an outsider, all this grumbling looks weird. It’s like looking at the Normandy landings in '44, and dismissing the whole thing since Hitler’s still alive and in charge in his bunker.
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Don’t they usually ask for less if you’re cooperating?
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Despite what people hawking woefully undertested legal theories will tell you, it’s not at all clear that the president can be indicted or that indictment and even subsequent conviction on that indictment actually has the effect of removing him as president. While there’s no way to know how things would have panned out had he won, we had someone run for president from prison just outside of living memory.
Absent a Senate that will impeach and considering that he’s halfway through his first term, the whole issue might be moot by the time any legal gears actually catch for Trump.
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I can finally get behind the chant, “Trump’s number one!”
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It’s less to do with Two Scoops himself still sitting on his throne, and more to do with who’s willing to keep propping him up for their own benefit. The puppet himself is incapable of anything but bluff and bluster; he leaves all that “thinking” stuff to his hirelings.
I am not at all sure the Senate won’t take him out of office, once the full report is out. They care more about their own hides than Trump’s, and public sentiment can (and I feel will) change. Nixon has the full support of the GOP — right up until the moment he didn’t. This is a much, much bigger deal than what Nixon was up to.
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I don’t think most Americans care. I think they’re “Trumped out.” It’s not on a lot of people’s radar. People who have high hopes for this process tend to be very knowledgeable about it, and tend to overestimate other people’s knowledge and public perception. Do I think that a large enough segment of the population doesn’t like Trump bad enough to threaten the Republicans come 2020? Sure. But that’s a threat they face happily enough every election season. Meanwhile Trump has been handing them judges and tax breaks on a silver platter. I’m not optimistic, it’s not even the same Republican party that was around during the Nixon debacle.
I could be wrong, and everything could turn out “kerplunky dory” (I’d hardly call it “hunky dory” with Pence in the WH upon a Trump conviction, and the oft-forgotten legal ability to serve as president three times.) But I’m not going to shit in one hand and wish in the other. I already know which fills up faster.
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Absolutely true, but we are also a much more partisan country than we were in the early 70s. Modern Republicans have already demonstrated a willingness to forgive (or ignore) far greater transgressions than Nixon ever committed. We’ll have to wait and see.
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Plus his loyal supporters think it’s all deep state fake news anyway.
And this… they think the corruption is worth it if it can stop the “real” problem of women having control over their bodies, among other things (state backed equality comes to mind).
Although I’d say the GOP started it’s shift to the current Trumpian mode during the Nixon era (southern strategy and all that).
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I can’t shake the feeling that this is not the whole story. Call it a gut feeling, but it doesn’t feel finished. On the other hand I may just be fooled by Mueller’s mystery act. The man runs a very tight ship.
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I think this was somewhat true back when Nixon was forced from office. Ford pardoned him, in a serious miscarriage of justice and a bad precedent. It was just one more piece of evidence that convinced politicians maybe they could break laws with little chance of prosecution.
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The big difference is that in Nixon’s time the public didn’t expect absolute party loyalty from their leaders. The public never forgave Ford for Nixon’s pardon; his approval rating dropped from 71% to 49% literally overnight and never recovered. If Trump was impeached I think around 40% of Americans would demand Pence grant an immediate pardon.
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Not up front. It’s a bargaining chip you can use to lower the sentence, but the prosecutor isn’t going to leave anything on the table at the beginning.
