Just a quick derail - d’be great if, for once and for all, this fear of optics issue can finally be put to bed considering it’s been mentioned ad nauseum throughout these boards that it doesn’t matter what course is taken - the GOP snowflakes and followers will demonize anything and everything.
Always.
Not quite. If Trump goes to jail, they’ll bitch endlessly about their martyred king, sure. But the danger of him not going to jail isn’t that they’ll still get to bitch about something. That’s a given: whiners gonna whine. The danger of him not going to jail is that lefties, including me, are going to bitch about the corruption favoring the rich and powerful that makes us into a banana republic.
I must be asleep and completely missed that part. Got it. (certainly agreed)
“Executive privilege” (the notion that a sitting president is outside the reach of the law) seems fundamentally un-American to me. I thought the President was “first among equals,” not “above the rest of you.”
As to the OP, I disagree. With Trump, I don’t think there is a possibility of remorse or rehabilitation. That leaves punishment and deterrent, but I don’t think the wheels of justice will grind exceedingly fine here.
Already, we’ve seen an attempted coup by a sitting president where, for two years following, NOTHING HAS HAPPENED TO THE INSTIGATOR. Unless I missed an indictment? So far, this is not a deterrent; does anybody think that a wealthy and powerful 78-to-80-year-old is going to serve the kind of sentence that would actually deter a future would-be despot?
But even though what we do will be more than a day late and a dollar short, I still think it’s the right course.
This is a classic example of how people miss the point when talking about the purpose of incarceration.
By far the most important reason to imprison a criminal is separation from society. For whatever term the miscreant serves, society benefits by not having that person around to inflict more damage.*
A period of separation from Trump and his stylings** would do the country a lot of good.
*another oft-stated reason for incarceration is rehabilitation, which is mostly a joke.
**he can tweet from prison all he wants.
Someone will always complain. But it’s just empty griping. Is Japan a Banana Republic?
Or South Korea?
How about Italy?
Or even France?
Developed countries imprison former leaders all the time. People who claim otherwise are ignorant. A Banana Republic is one that gives its leaders ultimate power and puts them above the law. Countries like North Korea, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, or Russia. Should the US be in that list?
And that’s not what it means. “Executive privilege” has a very specific meaning within the law as it applies to the Executive Branch. It basically means that communications between the “Executive” (President) and chosen members of his cabinet and inner circle are protected from being forced to publicly share information that was intended to be privately shared between only them. The intent of the protection is so a president can speak freely about how to deal with issues facing the country.
However, this privilege as it has traditionally been applied is very different to how Trump has attempted to apply it. Traditionally:
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It is not a blanket privilege. A witness can be compelled to testify, and each question asked is subject to a claim of executive privilege, then thrashed out on a case-by-case basis.
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There is a crime/fraud exception. Executive privilege can’t be used as a shield to prevent witnesses from testifying about a potential crime or abuse of power discussed by the president.
Up until now, the meaning and limits of executive privilege were accepted, and they have never been tested at the level of the president. Trump changed all that by his willingness to stoop lower than any other ever had in his quest for power.
This raises a lot of legal questions, and they must all play out all the way to the Supreme Court. It takes a lot of time to wend their way through the system.
The rulings will establish case law going forward. (Assuming stare decisis remains important to the SCOTUS, which it doesn’t any longer appear to – but that’s another debate for an entirely different thread.)
You and others think this is a really long time in legal matters. It just isn’t. You’re trying to compare what would happen to an average person in this situation with what is happening to a previously-sitting president. As little as I think of Trump’s presidential demeanor and “accomplishments,” what I think about it doesn’t matter. He is afforded all the courtesy and deference of any ex-president. If he’s not, expect every president going forward to be treated just as shittily – even without cause. Can you doubt it, watching how good Democrats currently in Congress are being treated by their fellow House Republicans?
And one more point: Trump isn’t just a former president. He’s a current potential candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024. He still has friends inside the DOJ and FBI. He has a significant number of congress persons on his side – in fact, the House is controlled by those folks at the moment, and the Senate has quite a lot of his supporters, too. Don’t think the Russians won’t take every opportunity to move the needle toward support for Trump.
The knives are out for DOJ in every direction imaginable, by forces looking to ruin these prosecutions for their own political purposes.
I don’t blame DOJ and the Special Counsel for taking their time to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’ before indicting.
You make a good point. I would like it if the U.S. were on that list. But historically we haven’t been. I would enjoy it if we could imprison Trump with minimal repercussions, but I think there will be major repercussions. I’ll be willing to endure them, but it will be a nasty couple of decades (generations?) until the right-wingers let go of it.
This problem could have been nipped in the bud if Gerald Ford hadn’t pardoned Nixon, but he did, and we’re paying the price today for Ford’s cowardice and buck-passing. He didn’t end our long national nightmare, he extended it.
Of course there will be, it’s political.
That’s being overly dramatic. Nobody beyond his most devoted supporters among right wing politicians are going to do more than a token protest. (Think of the looniest of the “Freedom Caucus” gadflies.) Others will distance themselves from it. It’s already happening. The more he loses, the less they want anything to do with him, and being imprisoned will make him the ultimate loser. The last thing we need to worry about is what people on the right think about it. They’re concerned about getting in power and staying in power, and aren’t going to risk any of that over someone who isn’t going to help them.
Do you remember how many of them strongly and fervently opposed Trump until he was the nominee, then suddenly they were his sycophants? Expect whiplash the other way if he gets convicted.
The insurrection was pretty dramatic, and the insurrectionists are still with us in force. Ask Paul Pelosi.
The insurrection lasted for hours, not “generations”. And it had to be spurred on by Trump directly, urging people to ensure he stayed in power. You’re giving Trump so much more power than he has, to have that much of an impact so long after he is gone. It’s absurd.
Southerners are still bitching about the war of northern aggression.
I made this accusation:
And your retort is to compare putting Trump in jail to a war that claimed over a half a million lives, where American citizens slaughtered each other on American soil, where the country split in half with two separate governments for a number of years, where the entire trajectory of the nation was changed forever.
You need to think about the arguments you’re making here and consider what you’re saying.
This reminds me of my Jr. High School history teacher telling my class that in her opinion, the main reason Hitler committed suicide with instructions to have his (and Eva’s) bodies cremated afterwards was because of how Benito Mussolini’s body was treated after his demise.
Now, said history teacher was a little older than my parents, so was necessarily a fully functioning adult in 1945 (my parents were in their 20s at the time). There is no question that the citizens of Italy abused Benito’s body out of revenge as well as to send a deterrence to other fascists. At least according to my Jr. High history teacher, it was obviously effective at sending a message to other fascists.
You seem intent on minimizing my argument, perhaps to a larger degree than I am maximizing the danger of Trumpists, who will certainly outlive him. They are, in fact, not to be compared with 2023 pro-Confederates as much as they are coterminous with 2023 Confederates, as the Stars and Bars at the insurrection illustrate. These Lost-Causers are eager for martyrs, and I’m merely suggesting that one possible effect of jailing Trump is to give them one. I won’t be crying any tears if it turns out we do–it will be a happy day in my household, but I am suggesting that if he manages to die before entering prison, and if his co-conspirators are severely punished, we will have deterred future conspirators sufficiently, or at the least given them something to consider the next time a future Presidents asks for assistance in committing treasonous or other felonious acts. Seems like a reasonable conclusion to me, and I invite you to consider what I am saying, not what you’re accusing me of saying.
Since your argument so involves the Confederate flag while noting that “Lost-Causers are eager for martyrs”, I’d maybe expect your “we will have deterred future conspirators sufficiently” claim to be that Trump shouldn’t be found guilty and sentenced to prison the way Jefferson Davis was, or the way Robert E. Lee was, or whatever — because that trial-and-sentencing affair, not directed at those below them but at them, created a martyr who still motivates these people lo even today — such that finding Trump guilty and sentencing him to prison could do likewise.
I’d disagree with that argument; but, if I agreed with it, the problem seems to me that, AFAIK, Davis and Lee and so on weren’t found guilty and sentenced to prison.
So: what’s the lesson? Hit harder?
You might as well argue that your Uncle Gilbert will get really mad if Trump is jailed, and Gilbert has a mean ol’ temper. I have about the same concern for that than I do the tiny handful of the fringiest of the fringe that might care about Trump being imprisoned for blatant and serious crimes, many years from now.
It’s about as reasonable as appeasing Hitler was in preventing WWII. When you let people get away with bold acts of misbehavior you only encourage them and their admirers.
Many of Trump’s toadies have been put in jail already. MANY. The list is exhaustive. It hasn’t done a thing to discourage him or his remaining sycophants. Your assumptions are ignoring what is actually happening in reality.
We’re straying from the main topic here a bit, but I find the digression interesting. As with Nixon, I find the reluctance to punish the Confederate leaders a failure, based on the results: their apologists still make martyrs out of them anyway, and they’re still with us in force. In contemporary terms, I disagree with Biden and other centrists who maintain we can and should work with MAGA-types to persuade them to come back to the fold of reasonable people, and so on. In non-contemporary terms, I’m just now reading Grant’s memoirs and I’m amazed by his optimistic eagerness to view his Southern counterparts in the war as “gentlemen” with whom he happens to have some substantial political disagreements. I’m more from the “Exterminate the brutes” school of politics, but I am noting that both kindness and cruelty seem to work out similarly, and it wouldn’t be as horrible as I first imagined for Trump to evade prison. Maybe I’m just trying to comfort myself in the event that he skates free.
Not nearly enough. None of the 40 most serious major co-conspirators have even gone on trial yet, and there could be 80 or 120 of them in need of prison terms. Without that sort of punishment acting as a deterrent to future co-conspirators, we’d be sending the signal that maybe conspiring to overthrow the government is a smart gamble. I’m afraid that all they’ll take from throwing Trump in prison will be “Politics ain’t beanbag,” which is the wrong lesson to take. I think it’s future Presidential aides who we need to signal “You’re taking a chance with your life by even listening to treasonous suggestions, much less acting on them.”
I see what you’re saying about the political optics, but I prefer justice.
Sure there are plenty of morons that will want to pick a fight if Trump is thrown in prison.
Wana be dictators seeing only the possibility of their supporters thrown in prison will want to try it again. There are no shortages of morons willing to support them.
The political optics don’t seem to matter. Trump blurred that line. No, he destroyed the line. What is considered normal for the GOP is now ‘anything goes’. My god, look at MTG, Gaetz, Boebert and Cruz to name just a few.
Threats to impeach Biden have already been made. For what is anyone’s guess. They don’t need a reason, they only need the votes.