Yes losing an election must be tough, but it appears to me that for Trump it is going to be much tougher then just that. All Trumps hopes and dreams are being cut off as power is slipping away, even the networks are pulling away from him and the secret service has granted Biden presidential protection. The writing is on the wall and the allied forces are now in Berlin.
Trump has indicated he greatly admires and desires the adoration that Kim Jong Un gets, and also seems to have wanted one up Putin’s takeover of Russia by having their constitution redone to allow Putin term limits not to matter. Trump is becoming what he most fears, a loser and a disgrace in front of those he sought to one up and take supreme control and add to that the impossible situation that Trump is a total embarrassment lowest of the low loser in the eyes of Trump yet it is also impossible for Trump to accept this. Immovable object meets irresistible force and Trump may crack, he has shown such signs as he flails helplessly against the inevitable, which to us is Trump losing the election, to Trump is he lost everything and his world is closing in on him, he has become his worst nightmare.
No, but I think the intelligence community needs to watch his every move. They effectively no longer work for him anymore, and Trump is quite clearly an enemy of the state. They need to watch him, and if he is on U.S. soil at 12:01 p.m. on January 20, the DoJ ought to file a criminal complaint and request a judge to confiscate his passport while a criminal investigation proceeds.
Donald Trump is the President of the United States. Period. The fact that he has probably lost the election makes absolutely no difference. There is no actual official position of “President-elect”, and there is only one Commander-in-Chief. The intelligence community “effectively” still works for him, and will up until January 20th.
There are countries where the security services decide for themselves who the “real” President is, whether elected civilian officials are “enemies of the state”, and whose orders they will follow. We generally refer to those countries as “military dictatorships.”
Oh sure, they “work” for him; but they don’t work for him. A lot of the power that Trump holds administratively or otherwise is implicit power. He cannot control every single thought or behavior or conversation that people have behind closed doors. The closer we get to January 20, the less real power he will have.
The intelligence community “reports” to him, (though he doesn’t fucking bother reading the briefs) They “work” in service of the nation and its people. We generally refer to countries in which the intelligence community works for the president as “authoritarian regimes”.
asahi is the one who claimed the intelligence community “no longer work for [Donald Trump] anymore”. The election has changed absolutely nothing about Donald Trump’s legal or Constitutional status, and won’t until January 20, 2021. The intelligence community is exactly the same position vis a vis Donald Trump as they were a week ago, whether you want to phrase that as “working for him” or “reporting to him”.
If you want to argue about whether the intelligence community “works” for the President or “reports” to the President, your argument is with asahi, not me.
That’s an urban myth resulting in numerous unnecessary investigations. It’s very common for narcissists to run themselves over with cars, poison themselves, beat themselves to death, riddle their bodies with machine gun bullets, and numerous other forms of obvious suicide.
If sworn officers of the U.S. government make a pretense of obeying the President while “conversing” behind closed doors about not actually working for him, that’s exactly the “Deep State” conspiracy Trump and his ilk have been complaining about.
I don’t like Donald Trump. I think he’s a truly awful person and a worse President. He’s the worst thing that’s happened in American politics in my lifetime. I’m happy that he appears to have lost the election - I’d be gleeful, except for the facts that he won the first time and this time is still so close.
Yes, he’s the president of the United States – who is also breaking laws and putting national security at risk
The fact that he was president of the United States did not stop the DoJ/FBI and the intel community from putting him under surveillance when he was running his campaign, nor did it stop the criminal investigations during his presidency - investigations which resulted in criminal prosecution and convictions.
Sorry, but not even the President of the United States can do whatever he wants with absolute immunity - immunity from prosecution in conducting affairs of executuve office? Yes, maybe immunity from specific acts as president. But he does not enjoy absolute immunity from suspicion and being watched by his own administration - and there are millions of federal employees, probably many thousands of which are part of the intel community. You mean to tell me that if he decided to give away national security secrets to Russian intelligence services that the intel community has to just sit and watch that? Uh, no, they don’t. And while it’s a matter of debate what would happen to the president in that situation, anyone who assists or enabled him in any way would be facing hard fucking time in prison – for life.
That’s not “deep state” either; we’re talking about trained career professionals doing what they are supposed to be doing on behalf of the American people.
Trump doesn’t live in the same reality as we do. In his subjective substitute for reality, he is always right and always a winner. He’s more likely to damage everyone else than himself.
He wasn’t the President when that happened (assuming you’re talking about the 2016 campaign).
Nor should it have. Note, however, that the intelligence community doesn’t conduct criminal investigations.
Of course he can’t.
Uh, yes, they do. I mean, if he’s actually breaking any laws in doing so, they don’t have to “just sit there.” But “national security secrets” don’t exist in the Constitution. Statutorily, “national security secrets” are determined solely at the discretion of the President. By definition, the President has sole and absolute authority to determine what information can be shared with other countries. Members of the intelligence community can, and legally must, disobey unlawful orders. They can, and should but don’t always, protest lawful-but-bad orders, and resign rather than carry out an order that violates their conscience.
But they cannot unilaterally decide that they don’t really work for the sitting President anymore. Nothing has changed since November 3rd.