For Trump specifically, or the office in general?
+1
He is to be presumed a legally legitimate holder of the office of the President, unless someone can prove there were unlawful shenanigans in the actual procedure.
That he rode in on a wave of illegitimate premises is a separate story.
Trump blows Comey an air kiss. Aww, that’s adorable!
Looking back, is there any doubt that there was collusion between Comey and the Trump campaign? I mean, Giuliani was out on the news circuit two days before the infamous letter telling people that this was coming out (skip to a bit after 2 minutes in video). That video makes no sense if Giuliani wasn’t in on it ahead of time.
That’s nothing compared to undermining Vietnam war peace negotiations.
To be ruthlessly fair, collusion is not required. Guiliani may have been tipped off by the New York FBI people, who some reports describe as being key to it all. And why should they “collude”? Why even take the chance that some honest conservative, like Comey’s previous reputation, would say “Wait a second, hold on here, that’s not kosher, that’s not fair, and we might get caught!”
Obviously, Comey didn’t care about getting some sort of permission, he already had protocols right in front of him that said he wasn’t supposed to pull that kind of shit.
So, Comey is the paragon of integrity and virtue when doesn’t recommend prosecuting Hillary but he is a partisan when he re-opens an investigation based on new evidence?
This reminds me of when Wikileaks and Assange was a beacon of truth and freedom of the press when they released stuff damaging to Bush and the Republicans but is suddenly a rapist and Russian provocateur when he releases stuff damaging to the Madonna Hillary.
He’s the duly elected president, gods help us.
Caveat though…there is the smell of something not quite right about how it all went down. Maybe all the polls were wrong and folks, especially lefty types simply didn’t learn from history and decided to stay home or vote for someone other than Clinton, who got FAR fewere votes than Obama did (for that matter, Trump got less than Romney so maybe it was legit and Trump was simply the lesser loser). I don’t know…just doesn’t smell right to me for some reason.
But as of right now, today, he IS the legitimate president, having won the EC vote, which is the only thing that matters in our system.
That’s not what I was saying. The system is meant to find the (single) most popular person. If you clone the most popular person into 5 different bodies and run the clones against the least popular person, the end result will be a division of the vote that’s going to the most popular person, causing the least popular person to have a higher (though still minority) percentage than the competitors.
The end result being that the least popular person won the popularity vote.
I’m stating that there is an intent behind the system, and that intent has not been met. I’ll grant that this is true of pretty well every election we have had post-George Washington, but it still would be a point against any non-legality/non-rules based concept of legitimacy.
Rules and laws aren’t (meant to be) arbitrary. They are meant to have a particular intent, and the rules laid out are intended to accomplish that intent. A failure for that to happen is certainly a systemic failure, and does constitute some amount of illegitimacy on the output.
The system is intended to find a person who is qualified for the position and trusted by the people. I think it’s completely fair to say that the system did not work this time around.
I’m not sure what you mean by “you guys”. This is the first I’ve ever mentioned it. In every thread I have been supportive of the Electoral College (as the founders intended it). And subsequently, that is the first national voting result that I mentioned - because it is the more important one.
But secondarily to the Electoral College, there is the popular vote. I’m going through all off the things which, if we ignore the rules and legalities, could give Trump’s presidency legitimacy.
It does not. As a system (if it was one), it would be meant to elect the most popular person - just as the primaries are meant to do (within their parties). Factually, the popular vote did not elect the most popular person into the Presidential office. Granted, it would never do that. But still, it does not give Trump any legitimacy.
But we aren’t talking about mechanisms. We have explicitly removed those. Rules and laws are not what we are discussing here. We’re talking about whether the system achieved the goal that it is intended to do.
If the system elected a patent crony of a Maoist dictator from Zimbabwe into the role, via a concentrated effort by the Zimbabwean government to assassinate, confuse, and misinform the American people in a targeted manner so that their crony is elected, would you call that a “success” of the system, regardless that no vote tampering had occurred?
As I have said, if we exclude legalities from the definition of legitimacy, there is nothing to support Trump. If you think there is, you are fully in your right to suggest one. But, again, note that this is minus the rules and laws of the situation. If you can’t do that, then as I said way back, “One can make an argument for illegitimacy.” I have not said that Trump is illegitimate. I have agreed that he legally got to the Presidency and that this makes him legitimate.
But, factually, I have made an argument. You don’t have to buy into it. But it was eminently possible.
Actually, Trump is pressing the case that he isn’t legitimately the president.
Everyone that says he is legitimately president is basing that on the belief that the voting results are accurate.
If he says there was massive voter fraud then, ipso fatso, the results of the election are not valid.
I don’t see why anyone should defend his legitimacy when he is the one undercutting it.
How could he not be illegitimate? Here is a person who has NO IDEA how to do anything on his own. Doesn’t read, is racist, a failed-businessman, I doubt he could bake cookies from a roll of Toll House.
Here’s what he knows: I have money (or so I say I do), I will pay other people to get what I want, screw everyone else. This is all he’s ever known. That sort of went downhill when he started getting turned down by every American bank for a freaking loan.
For some dumb reason, they let this guy speak on the news, host SNL (why I haven’t watched it in 20 years) and give him a network game-show host job. And that’s enough criteria for most people to think he’s “a qualified president”.
If he’s a legitimate president, then the GOP should just release Charles Manson and nominate him as next candidate.
He is a partisan when he announces that he’s reopening the investigation against the time-honored traditions of his own agency, to the obvious benefit of one of the candidates running for President.
Any more history you’d like to revise? Ah yes, it follows.
Bush and co. damaged themselves by provably acting illegally. Hillary has never even been indicted. None of what Assange published about her proves anything, but it sure was fodder for the character assassination-mongers of the right, for whom ‘provably’ means nothing.
And, while we’re at it, how about exposing and quite literally physically endangering US intelligence assets abroad? Forgot about that one, didn’t we?
Be kinda like prosecuting Jeffrey Dahmer for Health Code violations.
I realized Election Night that the Electoral college would make Trump President.
As the news unfolded about how many more of us voted for Clinton, I reviewed the Constitution–and the Apportionment Act of 1911 that really ensured representation would be tilted toward The Little States. But I’m a history buff–glad that we can’t put all the blame on the talented but imperfect men who wrote the Constitution. I was willing to put an asterisk next to Trump’s name on the List of Presidents–then try to deal with the present & plan for the future.
Trump is not “illegitimate”–but mentally & morally unfit. As he keeps proving every day.
And he’s the one who can’t “get over” his popular loss…