Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Nurasu]

This is one of the times I might actually believe they chalked up an unrelated cause of death as COVID - in this case, his black soul.

[Edge-]

Dennis Prager announces he has COVID-19 while ranting against vaccines and declaring that he was trying to get infected.

It's a travesty that dangerous idiots like him and Rogan get through it with mild symptoms so that they can feel even more confident as they spread dangerous misinformation.

[Breccia]

declaring that he was trying to get infected.

Because, you know, a free easily-accessible basically no-risk vaccine would just be SOCIALISM! A True Patriot risks death rather than trying to protect their fellow man!

- - - Updated - - -

Biden formally challenges the Texass abortion law at the Supreme Court.

Texas’s insistence that no party can bring a suit challenging S.B. 8 amounts to an assertion that the federal courts are powerless to halt the State’s ongoing nullification of federal law. That proposition is as breathtaking as it is dangerous.

That's right, in case you missed it, forgot, or are a disingenuous poster and need it shoved in your face so you can't pretend to have missed it or forgot, Texas tried some M:tG shit like "this spell cannot be the target of spells or effects" that doesn't actually work in real life. You know who says "you cannot challenge this law"? Fascists. That's right, anyone who lives in Texas, your state passed a law with "cannot be challenged" in it in an intentional attempt to remove your civil rights. Not mine. Yours. Oh, and of course the women whose bodies the law tries to run without their permission, but we've already covered that.

If this law can do that, any law can do that. Imagine a situation where Biden and the Democrats pass the ACA, but also add "nobody can remove the ACA" to the end? Admit it: that'd be just as bad.

Condemn this fascism now, Texans, if you haven't already. Or, by failing to condemn it, admit you support fascisms and are therefore a fascists. There is no middle ground, with fascism.

[PhaelixWW]

Because, you know, a free easily-accessible basically no-risk vaccine would just be SOCIALISM! A True Patriot risks death rather than trying to protect their fellow man!

Someone should really point out to them that the easiest way to have avoided needing huge government stimulus packages would have been for everyone to get the damn vaccine in the first place.

I guess anti-vaxxers are pro-government spending. Who knew?

[Elegiac]

Someone should really point out to them that the easiest way to have avoided needing huge government stimulus packages would have been for everyone to get the damn vaccine in the first place.

I guess anti-vaxxers are pro-government spending. Who knew?

Is that really surprising when all these pro-lifers refuse to take a vaccine but swear by a treatment that was developed using dead baby juice?

[Breccia]

In another shove-it-in-your-face moment most of us already know and admit we know, Trump was informally deposed today by--

"Wait, you mean formally deposed."

No, he did it via camera and, last story I cited at least, there would be no cross-examination. This is informal shit.

As a reminder, Trump is being sued for something he's accused of from 2015. He stalled and used Executive Time while in office, which should have been illegal because he wasn't in office for the event in question. He tried to use Executive Time after, too, but at least now he's on the record.
@cubby any corrections plus your insight are welcome.

[Poopymonster]

Is that really surprising when all these pro-lifers refuse to take a vaccine but swear by a treatment that was developed using dead baby juice?

But you see, those dead babies went to Jebas. So it's OK if it saved their lives. Magic Dead Baby Juice.

[uuuhname]

Dennis Prager announces he has COVID-19 while ranting against vaccines and declaring that he was trying to get infected.

dude got the anti body treatment (which acts the exact same way the vaccine does...) or at least says he did, I'm not convinced he didn't get the vaccine before hand. Dennis is a ghoul but not some idiot like all of those Rush Limbaugh knock offs that actually didn't take the vaccine and ended up croaking. but I wouldn't put it past him to really be that deranged and sociopathic to intend to get himself and as many other people sick as he could.

[gondrin]

To quote the Biology teacher my freshman year of HS in a shithole small town in Michigan, circa 1992: I'm required to teach you about the theory of evolution, but we all know what really happened.

Yep, we all know what really happened. That teacher got their degree/certificate from mail order catalog.

[Poopymonster]

dude got the anti body treatment (which acts the exact same way the vaccine does...) or at least says he did, I'm not convinced he didn't get the vaccine before hand. Dennis is a ghoul but not some idiot like all of those Rush Limbaugh knock offs that actually didn't take the vaccine and ended up croaking. but I wouldn't put it past him to really be that deranged and sociopathic to intend to get himself and as many other people sick as he could.

He's part of that PragerU clusterfuck if I recall. I mean I can see advertising and shit, but on youtube, a PragerU ad comes up. You think "It'll be 30 seconds, maybe 2 minutes, 3 tops." You look. 1:12:39. Who. The fuck. Makes an Ad. For Youtube. Lasting over. 1. Fucking. Hour.

[Hollycakes]

Wait wait wait, there's more than one magic dead baby juice?

Hard to keep up with kids today.

[postman1782]

Dennis Prager announces he has COVID-19 while ranting against vaccines and declaring that he was trying to get infected.

Hopefully karma bites hard.

[Breccia]

After giving his pretend deposition, Trump walks outside and literally the first thing he says is false.

Trump released a statement on Monday discussing his four-hour long deposition in the civil lawsuit involving alleged violence that broke out between protesters and his security guards in 2015, saying he was "pleased to have had the opportunity to tell my side of this ridiculous story."

"How do you know that was false?"

Because Trump fought for years to stay off the stand. If he was really happy to do it, he'd have done it ages ago. Also, it's a safe bet that anything Trump says, writes, or tweets is false -- the odds lean heavily that way.

[postman1782]

So, @Breccia, you will like this, Trump is now suing the 1/6 committee, while trying to claim executive privilege that he no longer has to keep from being deposed and the people around him from going to jail for contempt of congress.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court...-block-records

Guaranteed he loses as there is already precedent that a former president does not have privilege.

[cubby]

In another shove-it-in-your-face moment most of us already know and admit we know, Trump was informally deposed today by--

"Wait, you mean formally deposed."

No, he did it via camera and, last story I cited at least, there would be no cross-examination. This is informal shit.

As a reminder, Trump is being sued for something he's accused of from 2015. He stalled and used Executive Time while in office, which should have been illegal because he wasn't in office for the event in question. He tried to use Executive Time after, too, but at least now he's on the record.
@cubby any corrections plus your insight are welcome.

Trump is doing here what he's done his entire life - cheat and steal and then hide behind his lawyers until the other side gives up. Here we can see him taking a case way beyond what is necessary, and when he's finally in "court" it's only a one-way essentially verbal statement. He is the epitome of rich assholes getting away with [grabbing her by the pussy] because they can afford to file literally the kitchen sink in appeals and motions to keep anything from actually happening. And then using the courts slowness to avoid any repercussions.

Stuff like this is why I'm fearful that Trump will never see any kind of justice for his literal insurrection treason and election tampering.

[Hollycakes]

Help me peel this banana these monkeys have thrown.
And I'll use their language here.

From their pov, what are they so afraid of if they've nothing to hide.
Why sue to keep anything from public view.
I don't want what we think(the obvious logic), I want what they are thinking.

"We were patriots on a tour of the white house and no ill deeds nor ill intent done, so what's to hide?"

If I was a Proud Fuckboy, wouldn't this be a question I'd be asking myself?
Isn't justice best done in public?
If anything shouldn't it show all the illegal radical plans the demoncrats have that Trump was fighting against?
Won't the truth being made public absolve us of their denial of election fraud and prove Trump was right all along?

Aren't any of these questions they should be asking?

[Breccia]

Trump is now suing the 1/6 committee

It looks like the Republican Party is already trying to fight this. Yeah that post is dated Oct 6th, they knew this shit was coming.

First of all, it's worth noting that "executive privilege" was more or less defined during Eisenhower's admin and clarified by the 1974 Nixon case the RNC cites...for some reason. Nixon was stomped flat. Basically, Nixon said "It's the President who decides what the limits of his own Constituional power is" and SCOTUS said "well to be fair, that's only the second worst thing you've said" and demanded the tapes be turned over. Nixon resigned two weeks later.

Let's go through it one by one.

• Presidential communications
  As the RNC points out, there was a SCOTUS Nixon case on this. Naturally, I found it and cited it above. That was stupid, but at this point, Republicans are so averse to facts they don't even care what their own sources say. They just make shit up.
  Trump is in nearly the identical position as Nixon -- he is accused of a massive democracy-ruining crime, there are tons of witnesses under legally-figurative gunpoint to testify against him, he's trying like hell to keep the evidence locked up, and he sweats more than a human being should be able to survive. There is one big difference, of course, but we'll get to that in a bit. There is no compelling reason to believe that, if Nixon lost, Trump would win. Other than a stacked court desperate to protect him, which so far, this SCOTUS has not proven they are.
• Deliberative process
  The process by which the Executive Branch decides how to enforce the laws. I suppose it's possible they said "hey let's not arrest or prosecute the people in the murderous insurrection, because we are the ones who sent them". But if that's their defense, they've admitted being involved. Boom. Headshot. Other than that, won't help.
• Attorney-client communications
  We've discussed over and over and Powell and Giuliani and Cohen and over how attorney-client privilege does not stop co-conspirators from testifying. I don't see why it would help here.
• National security
  I would pay real money to sit in the courtroom to see Trump, Giuliani, or Powell try to argue before SCOTUS why their discussions about the riot they started was somehow National Security Lol. It might be the funniest thing on TV in 2021. It would have to involve why Trump remaining in power, after losing an election, was National Security Lol.
• Law enforcement
  See "Deliberative process" above, but there's more. Privilege prevents the DoJ (etc) from releasing info about an ongoing investigation. That's the exact opposite of what's happening here. I guess if Biden was conducting an investigation, Trump could point to that, but um...see below.

There doesn't appear to be much to work with here. Trump's best bet is to argue the communications angle and hope his stacked court sides with him.

But here's where those bits I hinted at above come into play:
1) There is one big difference between Trump and Nixon. When Nixon had to turn over the tapes, he was still President. Trump is not. This immediately leads to...
2) Executive Privilege is what keeps the Executive Branch from turning over information to Congress. It does not prevent the Executive Branch from turning over information to itself. If, somehow, SCOTUS decides to protect Trump, Biden can simply say "well, we'll do it ourselves, then". Or, just for fun, he can simply make them all public. We know full well Presidents over time have unmasked things masked by earlier administrations. Trump did it personally so he knows it's 100% okay to do this. And even if the courts somehow magically find a way around this, too, that information will already be out and public.

Trump has one desperate play at that point: claiming that he can hide something so well, nobody is even allowed to look for it. (If he claims that the discussion was National Security Lol then he loses this defense -- locking away National Security documents so that nobody can read them won't work, it's not a fucking MiB neuralizer) If that's the case, it raises a lot of questions that would have to be answered:
1) If this was true, how did Nixon lose?
2) If this is true, why wouldn't every single President privilege literally everything and claim "communications" on the way out the door? If it's unbreakable by every single process, why wouldn't literally every President do that, every time, just in case? Hell, why didn't Trump do that? "I declare Executive Privilege on literally everything, and that means nobody can ever look at it ever ever, the end", he could have said, but didn't.

So let's turn back to the Republican Party.

For much of U.S. history, the standard for determining whether executive privilege was appropriate was a simple evaluation of the nation’s best interests, made by the president. If a current president does not think executive privilege is appropriate, would his opinion preclude or weigh against the invocation of executive privilege by his predecessor? The Supreme Court weighed the views of successor presidents in the 1977 case, but the 1974 case based privilege on the need for frank discussions. Allowing subsequent disclosure would presumably negate some of the value of having the privilege while president.

First of all, fuck you for hiding behind tradition when you elected Trump. That's hypocrisy and you all know it. Fuckers.

Second of all, the Republican Party says "weighed the views of the successor" but failed to actually say how it ended. That's what you have me for. Nixon lost. Again. It was ruled that, while Nixon could claim privilege retroactively -- which Trump may or may not be doing, don't know, don't care, not the point -- that it wouldn't necessarily work. The courts said that current executive officials looking at old executive files were not intruding to the point of being unConstitutional.

For added fun, that 1977 court case was at least partly about Nixon's business records. Enjoy the parallel.

I'm actually curious what Team Trump were stupid enough to write down in the first place. Either they had an official transcriber present while discussing treason, in which case you fucking morons, or they didn't but wrote stuff down and put it in Biden's desc in an envelope marked "Please do not read the evidence of our treason", in which case, you fucking morons.

Republicans are likely going to hide behind "there isn't enough evidence to say conclusively" which is what I would say, if the only thing that could keep my chosen leader from jail was something that's only been tested twice, in nearly identical circumstances, and my side lost both of them. "We don't know if that sniper's really that good of a shot," I tell my remaining soldiers as blood pours from the two formerly filled skulls of their colleagues, "Private Redshirt, stick your head out."

---

TL:DR
And all of this, all of this, ignores the main concept of Executive Privilege. The idea was, that the Executive Branch can't do its job if they have to stop every 10 minutes to sign a form, stamp it five times, and take it under a limbo bar to Congress. They're too busy doing their job to explain every detail of how they're doing their job. If there's a massive problem, say, FBI officers intentionally shooting unarmed African-Americans, Congress can step in, but they can't ask for progress reports like it's an uploading YouTube video.

That's not happening here. Trump is not concealing normal Executive Branch business as usual. He's defending how he lost an election, and tried to storm the Capitol to upend democracy itself.

Nothing about this lawsuit must be permitted to stand. Burn it all down.

[Gorsameth]

Can a former President even call upon Executive Privilege? Isn't it a power limited to the current sitting President?

Asking a former President or former aids wtf they were doing does not inhibit the working of the Executive Branch. If it does the current President is free to invoke Executive Privilege.

Or is this one of those wonderful cases where its not defined because far reaching blanked powers should always be as vague as possible...

[Breccia]

Can a former President even call upon Executive Privilege?

As listed above, they're allowed to ask.

- - - Updated - - -

So an update on two things: remember how Bannon said he was not going to testify, because of Trump's lawsuit? At the time, Trump hadn't sued yet. Well, he has now. So Bannon either knew, or guessed, or blackmailed Trump into suing.

Two problems, however.

One, other people are already testifying.

Two, most of the stuff Congress is asking for is communication between Bannon and the murderous insurrectionists. That's not covered. Also Bannon might not have been high-ranking enough to be privileged anyhow.

Bannon is likely to still face criminal charges, including jail time and fines.

[Yuujin]

As listed above, they're allowed to ask.

- - - Updated - - -

So an update on two things: remember how Bannon said he was not going to testify, because of Trump's lawsuit? At the time, Trump hadn't sued yet. Well, he has now. So Bannon either knew, or guessed, or blackmailed Trump into suing.

Two problems, however.

One, other people are already testifying.

Two, most of the stuff Congress is asking for is communication between Bannon and the murderous insurrectionists. That's not covered. Also Bannon might not have been high-ranking enough to be privileged anyhow.

Bannon is likely to still face criminal charges, including jail time and fines.

Hell of a gamble to drum up support for his cause, get Trump reelected in 2024, and get himself another pardon.