Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[gondrin]

Wait, am I wrong in think that would be every school even colleges? I am under the impression that vaccination is mandatory for every school especially public in the country unless you have a medical condition.

Funny thing is, he wouldn't be able to do that anyway as that would be Congress that gets the say in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congre...ol_Act_of_1974

[Mayhem]

I use to think this way until I studied civics and understood we are a democratic republic.

Uhu, ok, quick question, what does "studied" mean in your universe?

[Mekh]

Uhu, ok, quick question, what does "studied" mean in your universe?

PragerU...

[unfilteredJW]

Uhu, ok, quick question, what does "studied" mean in your universe?

YouTube video of a guy in a hat in his car talking to his phone.

[Doctor Amadeus]

Well good think this turn coat @*# won't be running.

[Benggaul]

Well good think this turn coat @*# won't be running.

Wrong thread.

[Breccia]

Trump demands new trial in Carroll case.

"Didn't you already post that?"

Yes, he's demanding it again.

"On what grounds?"

That he lost. Well, okay, he's claiming First Amendment because he wanted to explain how all of this was fine because he was in the WH.

"But...he raped her before he was elected. He was defending behavior from decades earlier."

Yes. He also claimed that the judge gave “erroneous jury instruction on the definition of common-law malice.”

"Is that true?"

No. He also said the damages should be reduced because the harm he caused was "garden-variety" yes that's an exact quote.

"Did he forget that this was his second round of defamation, and the penalty from the first clearly wasn't enough to stop him the second time?"

He has dementia, he might have, but I think he was just desperate and trying literally everything -- even repeat attempts.

"Isn't he supposed to pay up by Friday?"

Trump will have to either pay up $83 million to Carroll or cough up the amount for the bond by the coming weekend.

Good times. Good times.

"So this is a desperate ploy to delay, then?"

Yes. If the judge made an error in law when sustaining an objection, which is what Trump claims by the way, that's something handled during appeal. You do not get a whole new trial. Ask literally anyone who knows, in other words, every lawyer except Trump's. You get a new trial, retrial, or mistrial, only in extreme cases -- such as prosecutorial misconduct, which Trump is clinging to in Georgia since "I didn't do it" won't work.

Not that it should matter. Trump was going off-topic pretty hard with "I couldn't be guilty, I was in the White House when I did it". The judge did not make a significant error, in fact, I don't think he made an error at all, suppressing that.

Based on the results we've seen so far, I would expect the judge to rule early tomorrow that, not only is there no new trial, but the payment deadline doesn't move a second due to this filing.

"Why hasn't Trump just posted the cash or bond yet? He clearly has eighty-three million."

He doesn't have five hundred plus million, and the due dates are close together. Every dollar he locks into the Carroll appeal is a dollar away from his NY fraud, well, conviction, for all useful intents and purposes.

Let me make this clear: Trump's NY fraud conviction is not Carroll's problem. The fact that Trump is such a criminal that he can't face the consequences of all his crimes isn't a reason to be let off for any of them.

And let's go one step further: Trump's lawyers said, correctly, that Carroll said Trump was rich. Trump's lawyers pointed that out as a reason not to pay bond/the full bond. I'm pretty sure that argument was rejected. I do know it was rejected in the fraud case, so I see no reason why it would work in the Carroll case.

Nothing would make me happier than the judge applying the letter of the law on Trump, then immediately going vindictive and saying "Judge Cannon already pushed back her trial for months because you were busy with other trials, so I'll do the same, the appeal will be Jan 20, 2025. We'll just hold onto all this money you owe her until then." I know it doesn't work that way, but it'd be hilarious.

[Edge-]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/05/trum...elections.html

CNBC checked in on all the Trump-aligned groups that were formed to "totes prove there was totes tons of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, totes" to see how they're all doing. Let's see!

One notable disappearance from the field of election integrity efforts has been American Greatness, a network of pro-Trump groups founded by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.

Parscale announced in 2021 that he was launching a nonprofit, a PAC and a side group called the “Election Integrity Alliance” under the American Greatness umbrella.

He told the Axios news site at the time that American Greatness would “provide transparent data research and visualization, which will offer an accurate state-by-state aggregation of all needed, ongoing, and completed efforts towards voting integrity.”

The mission of the Election Integrity Alliance, likewise, was ending election fraud.

Today, American Greatness has largely collapsed.

It is also unclear if it ever completed any of its stated goals.

Parscale, who is no longer leading the organization, and the two other prior board members, did not return requests for comment.

But a person familiar with the group, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, said it did not ever provide transparent data research and visualization to help with voting-related matters, despite Parscale’s promise of that.

The nonprofit headed into 2023 with only about $195,000 on hand. A year earlier, it raised $550,000 and spent all but around $50,000 of that, tax records show.

American Greatness last year changed its name to the Jefferson Rising Fund, and was taken over by former Trump campaign aide Katrina Pierson.

Pierson, who is now running for the Texas state House, told CNBC that she since has “left the organization shortly after formation” and is “unaware of who is on the board or their current activities.”

Recent disclosure reports show that the American Greatness nonprofit since changing its name to the Jefferson Rising Fund brought on a lobbyist to take on Biden’s policies affecting the oil and gas industry.

The affiliated PAC hasn’t fared much better than its sister nonprofit.

The PAC entered 2024 with about $123,000 on hand. And it raised just $176 for all of 2023, records show.

The PAC spent much of the $550,000 it received from oil and gas magnate Tim Dunn during the 2022 election cycle on a variety of consultants, according to the records.

Dunn and the Jefferson Rising Fund did not return a request for comment.

No money was spent on supporting pro-Trump candidates, despite then-PAC Chairman Jim Renacci, a former Ohio congressman, saying two years ago that was part of the group’s plans, records show.

But payments by the PAC to consultants last year included $80,000 toward Pierson’s firm PCG and another $80,000 payment to K.F.6 Partners, an Israel-based firm.

A weird, long, winding road with hundreds of thousands of dollars involved and...nothing happened. Gosh, if I didn't know better I'd think this was an unserious kinda grift or something.

Unlike the American Greatness PAC and the nonprofit, the Election Integrity Alliance was launched with a board made up of well-known figures in Trump’s orbit. Several of those people played key roles in Trump’s failed effort to overturn the 2020 election.

Former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik were listed on the website as members of the alliance’s national board in 2021.

“The Election Integrity Alliance will unite groups and efforts across the nation focused on combating election fraud,” the group’s now-defunct website trumpeted in 2021.

“Election Integrity Alliance will be a centralized hub that gives tools to enact meaningful change for the American people.”

The website also had links to a “scorecard” page, where the group said it would “evaluate the integrity of elections in key states.”

But to carry out its grand plans, the Election Integrity Alliance aimed to secure an elusive prize: Trump’s personal endorsement.

In summer 2021, several board members traveled to New York to meet with Trump at his office in Trump Tower. They asked the former president to designate their group the official hub for election integrity work by Trump allies, according to a source who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

But Trump never publicly designated the Election Integrity Alliance as the standard bearer for the MAGA universe’s election integrity efforts.

Oh hey, Jenna! But womp womp, no personal endorsement. But...

Instead, a few months after the Trump Tower meeting, the former president took the stage at his private Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, in November 2021 and cheered on a different Trump-allied nonprofit, the America First Policy Institute.

This group was led by other longtime Trump insiders, including former Small Business Administration Administrator Linda McMahon, former White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow, and former West Wing aide Brooke Rollins.

Trump’s blessing for AFPI that November evening in Palm Beach elevated it above a crowd of other groups founded by Trump alums, including American Greatness, and launched it on a fundraising juggernaut.

The year after Trump endorsed it, AFPI raised $22 million, almost $9 million more than it had raised the previous year, according to IRS records reviewed by CNBC.

AFPI also launched an election integrity effort, the Center for Election Integrity, and staffed it with former Trump White House press aide Hogan Gidley and conservative author Ken Blackwell.

It even launched its own color-coded election integrity scorecard map, which looks strikingly similar to the one that the Election Integrity Alliance had created for its now-deleted website.

A source close to the Election Integrity Alliance said that during its short lifetime, the group had helped to organize calls with other Trump-allied groups working on election issues with a conservative tilt, including AFPI and the Heritage Foundation.

So the AFPI, who raised tens of millions, seem like they've accomplished...launching a website and likely stealing the "election integrity map" from Jenna's Election Integrity Alliance. Damn, seems like the upser-grifters won out on that one, and still have accomplished nothing.

Another election integrity group is run by Trump-allied conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell, who had worked with Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election results when she took part in a phone call featuring the then-president and Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger.

She later founded the Election Integrity Network, which has been working to influence future elections.

Last April, Mitchell spoke at a Republican donor conference, where she said that conservatives needed to work together to limit voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration and automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters, according to a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Washington Post.

But the group’s tax records, provided to CNBC by Dave Armiak, a research director at the Center for Media and Democracy, show that Mitchell’s group entered 2023 with very little money left that could be used for those goals.

The Election Integrity Network raised just over $753,000 and spent about $746,000 in 2022, which left the organization with up to $24,298 in assets entering 2023.

Almost 70% of their funding in 2022 came from the Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit group that’s led in part by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to CPI’s tax records from that year.

Entering 2023, Mitchell’s group had only $6,200 in net assets that could be used without restrictions.

Mitchell declined to comment.

Another organization founded by Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, had a dedicated “election integrity” section on its website.

But Vought’s group has not posted anything related to elections since September 2022.

Damn, so basically they're mostly broke, defunct, and have collectively accomplished next to nothing.

Be honest, literally every person in this forum reading this right now absolutely predicted this outcome. We all did.

[Surfd]

Damn, so basically they're mostly broke, defunct, and have collectively accomplished next to nothing.

Oh, the "election integrity" agencies are all broke and collectively accomplished nothing, sure. But I guarantee you the people involved in them probably came away heftily compensated and accomplished exactly what they set out to do: Line their pockets with minimal effort.

[Benggaul]

It comes as no surprise:

Nikki Haley to end White House bid, clearing path for a Trump-Biden rematch

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley will suspend her presidential campaign on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with her plans, ensuring that Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination and once again face Democratic President Joe Biden in November's election.

Haley will give a speech at 10 a.m. local time (1500 GMT) to address her future in the race, the source said, but she will not make an endorsement at that time. She will urge Trump to try to win the backing of her supporters, which include a significant chunk of moderate Republicans and independent voters, the source added.

Haley, who served as Trump's ambassador to the United Nations when he was president, will discuss the importance of a robust foreign policy, the source said. Throughout her campaign, Haley said the United States must help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression, a position at odds with Trump.
There was no indication Trump would moderate his message.

"He'll continue to focus on the issues that matter: immigration, economy, foreign policy," Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the Trump campaign, said late on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, known as Super Tuesday, Trump beat her soundly in 14 of the 15 Republican nominating contests.

Haley lasted longer than any other Republican challenger to Trump but never posed a serious threat to the former president, whose iron grip on the party's base remains firm despite his multiple criminal indictments.

The rematch between Trump, 77, and Biden, 81 - the first repeat U.S. presidential contest since 1956 - is one that few Americans want. Opinion polls show both Biden and Trump have low approval ratings among voters.

The election promises to be deeply divisive in a country already riven by political polarization. Biden has cast Trump as an existential danger to democratic principles, while Trump has sought to re-litigate his false claims that he won in 2020.

Haley, 52, had drawn support from deep-pocketed donors intent on stopping Trump from winning a third consecutive Republican presidential nomination, particularly after she notched a series of strong performances at debates that Trump opted to skip.

She ultimately failed to pry loose enough conservative voters in the face of Trump's dominance.

But her stronger showing among moderate Republicans and independents - she won unaffiliated voters by a wide margin in New Hampshire and notched almost 40% of the vote in South Carolina - highlighted how Trump's scorched-earth style of politics could make him vulnerable in the Nov. 5 election.

On March 3, she won the Washington, D.C., Republican primary with 62.9% of the vote, versus 33.2% for Trump. On Tuesday, her only win came in Vermont, a small, deeply Democratic state.

Biden has his own baggage, including widespread concern about his age. Three-quarters of respondents in a February Reuters/Ipsos poll said he was too old to work in government, after already serving as the oldest U.S. president in history.

About half of respondents said the same about Trump.

There's more to it but it continues territory that's been rehashed here before and I think we all knew it was going to be Trump vs. Biden back in 2021. Biden was unlikely to step down and throw away the advantage of being the incumbent and no other real challengers stepped forward (despite many in the party practically begging for someone else) and the MAGA cult has an iron grip on the GOP so it was never going to be anyone besides Trump.

[diller]

Glad that she doesn't outright endorses Trump, but I'm sure one he asks her to be VP she will change her mind.

[Benggaul]

Glad that she doesn't outright endorses Trump, but I'm sure one he asks her to be VP she will change her mind.

I sincerely doubt that will ever happen. She ran against him. Big baby Trump would never invite someone to be his VP who defied him.

[Gorsameth]

Would I be wrong in thinking that the SC playing defence for Trump and pushing the Jan 6th trials until after the election is probably a bigger contributing factor to Halley dropping out then the Super Tuesday result?

The potential hope of "stick it out and hope Trump gets disqualified or the cases bury him" is basically 100% gone now.

[Redwyrm]

Would I be wrong in thinking that the SC playing defence for Trump and pushing the Jan 6th trials until after the election is probably a bigger contributing factor to Halley dropping out then the Super Tuesday result?

The potential hope of "stick it out and hope Trump gets disqualified or the cases bury him" is basically 100% gone now.

That was my thinking from the beginning of the primaries. The only reason to stay in after getting 1%-5% in polling is to hope health or courts knocked Trump out of the race.

[Benggaul]

That was my thinking from the beginning of the primaries. The only reason to stay in after getting 1%-5% in polling is to hope health or courts knocked Trump out of the race.

Eh, I wouldn't say it's the only reason. She kept Trump from sweeping the primaries which gives him a bit of a bloody nose and gives her something else to write about when the book deals come through or, alternatively, it raises her national profile among the slightly-closer-to-center conservatives who can't stand the MAGA shit anymore so she might take a run in the future with more success. I don't think she went into this fully expecting a good chance at winning, though there were possibly glimmers of hope.

I don't think anyone reasonably expected Trump to be in jail/disqualified before the General election, let alone the primaries.

[Breccia]

Glad that she doesn't outright endorses Trump, but I'm sure one he asks her to be VP she will change her mind.

I sincerely doubt that will ever happen. She ran against him. Big baby Trump would never invite someone to be his VP who defied him.

I agree. Trump cultists do not forgive even the slightest transgression. Basically every Republican that has spoken out against Trump has done so on the way out the door.

[Benggaul]

So, before I go starting/posting some 2024 election stuff...is there already a 2024 election thread I'm missing? Because of the way this forum handles new threads posted by users you have ignored it's possible they're invisible to me due to the handful I have on that status and I'd rather not go making duplicate threads.

In any case it's probably past time we have one set up.

[TACOshake]

So, before I go starting/posting some 2024 election stuff...is there already a 2024 election thread I'm missing? Because of the way this forum handles new threads posted by users you have ignored it's possible they're invisible to me due to the handful I have on that status and I'd rather not go making duplicate threads.

In any case it's probably past time we have one set up.

Go for it. Trying to create topical and accurate threads with pithy titles is the second most thankless job on the forum. The passive-agressive management style of this site leadership makes it truly special. Especially in the current meta.

[Gaidax]

I would much rather have Haley as the nominee, hopefully that happens in 4 years from now.

[Edge-]

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/voter...b0f9d26cacfecb

A voter in North Carolina faced fierce backlash over his highly offensive reasons for not even thinking about supporting GOP hopeful Nikki Haley’s presidential run.

NBC News’ Shaquille Brewster asked the man — identified as Emmett Martin, and who’d claimed “things were a whole lot better” with Donald Trump in office ― if he’d ever considered Haley for the White House.

“You know, what I got to say, you don’t really want to put it on,” he replied.

When pressed for an answer by Brewster, Martin let rip: “A woman is not going to be a good president. She don’t have no balls to scratch. She’s just gonna scratch her head. All a woman is good for in my book is having babies and taking care of the house. That’s the old thing. You know, I’m old school.”

Brewster sought to clarify: “So, you never even considered her, mainly because she’s a woman?

Martin replied, “Because she’s female. Don’t get me wrong: Females know what they’re doing, but they still got to have a little bit of guidance.”

Trump would provide that guidance, he added.

I'm glad this man said the quiet part out loud, actually. Because we know there's a lot of deeply held misogynistic views within the Republican party, but it's rare that Republicans ever actually honestly talk about it.

Ladies, sorry you don't have balls to scratch which I guess is now a requirement to be the chief executive even if it's not in the Constitution anywhere that I see.