“I don’t really care if the lawsuits against Trump – emoluments, First Amendment Twitter blocking, etc – are truly merited or not. Even if they’re baseless, they serve an important public goal in distracting Trump and making him spend energy defending himself, and the more time he does that, the less he has to create messes in governing the country.”
The OP assumes that:
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Trump is truly distracted by the lawsuits, and not just given more Twitter fodder while he laps up the attention, and
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that any lawsuit distractions are not absorbed by oodles of White House lawyers who are trained to handle such matters.
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that “nuisance” lawsuits (if they really are such) are OK if directed at targets one dislikes, and do not represent a drain of time and energy on the court system which in turn is “distracted” from useful activity.
It’s a little like asking my sentiments on the implications of 2 + 2 equalling five mean that seven is larger than eight now. I can’t really answer, because the underlying assumption isn’t true. Even the notion that Twitter somehow isn’t speech, and therefore isn’t subject to the First Amendment, or that Trumps emoluments aren’t emoluments is…well, weird.
Nice well-poisoning by referring to them in the title as ‘nuisance lawsuits,’ though.
Disagree. If the lawsuits are truly nuisance lawsuits without merit, it will distract the public from more important news, and in the long run, give the impression that all criticisms of Trump are without merit.
I disagree with the sentiment expressed in the OP. I would prefer that the president, even the asshole who currently holds the office, not be subjected to frivolous harassment. The suits I have read about so far do not seem to be nuisance lawsuits as I understand the term, so I’m glad they are being pursued.
This is not the issue at all. The lawsuit in play is not about whether Twitter is speech. It’s about whether the Twitter account @RealDonaldTrump is a government public forum or a private account. If it’s a public forum, then the First Amendment restricts blocking people based on their viewpoint; if it’s a private asset of Trump’s then the First Amendment protects his Twitter speech and doesn’t prevent him from blocking people.
For example, no one believes that Miley Cyrus is prevented from blocking people from her Twitter account right now for any reason she pleases. Does the First Amendment stop RealDonaldTrump from doing the same thing?
Do you understand the notion now?
So, the OP wants to gauge the level of support/tolerance on the SDMB for raising false issues, (not to mention hiding unwarranted assumptions therein) to distract and harass political opponents. Well, a survey is certainly a more-than-usually genteel method of doing that, I suppose. On the whole, I’m against both the general principle and the offered hypothetical.
I agree because I think he is truly dangerous, as are his sycophants. However, I don’t think he has the intellectual capacity to be truly focused on or distracted by anything.
Neither agree or disagree. Could work as suggested or not. The justification may or may not apply. Presumes too much.
Bricker is objectively wrong that these are nuisance suits. (And, FWIW, there is no Twitter lawsuit yet.)
If they were, they would be improper, especially if motivated by a desire to distract the President.
I picked Disagree. There’s only so many times you can cry Wolf before people tune you out.
Russian collusion, obstruction of justice, emoluments - how long before 'there’s no smoke without fire" turns into “you’re trying to blow smoke up my ass, again”.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - No, there isn’t any concrete evidence of any of it, and all the wishful thinking and spin isn’t going to change that.
I voted disagree. I don’t think it’s a good strategy to pursue nuisance/baseless lawsuits.
This doesn’t mean that I believe that all the lawsuits can be characterized that way, however.
Neither agree nor disagree. For one, I am not qualified to guess on the merits. For another, if all the other shit in politics and demolishing institutions and traditions is fair game then there really isn’t any line left. Failing to recognize that only hurts you. Spend years filibustering every piece of legislation, block a Supreme Court Justice, slander the special counsel and lie about the investigation and, what the hell, file a million frivolous lawsuits to gum up the government. Who gives a fuck any more? There isn’t a hill left to die on. I suppose in theory I’m against it but in the real world, I can’t be bothered to care any longer.
Disagree because (as noted in the first reply) the lawsuits probably don’t actually do diddly to distract Lord Orange.
Disagree. Process matters.
The First Amendment Twitter thing is incredibly stupid.
My (relatively uninformed) impression is that the emoluments ones maybe have merit, though.
No. Mr. Trump is a strange man *, and I certainly would like for him to leave office, preferably to a remote part of Alaska where he can write his memoirs like a nobler Bonaparte, but all this stuff, Russian Interference !, Emoluments !, Twitter ! merely distracts from actually opposing his economic, social and environmental imperatives, and form a carping Greek Chorus of pitiful petty concerns, shrieking tragically as victims:
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- “We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever !” **
Get over it, the bastard won, fair and square. Now man up and oppose him. Not these pathetic gnat bites at invented offences.
- I read yesterday that in the 70s, 80s and 90s he would phone up journalists pretending to be his own press secretary…
We can do both.
That is a form of opposing him. Not everyone can form a human wall outside his bedroom or vote in Congress or whatever. Some people have the capacity to oppose him by trying to slow his agenda through judicial action. The GOP used obstruction to slow Obama’s agenda to great effect and this is pretty much more of the same cloth.
So what? Trump could be filmed setting the Library of Congress on fire and get indicted for it and a significant part of the nation would still say “He can do that if he’s president!” while Gingrich talked on Fox News about how the LoC was the Deep State and Trump tweeted that the judge was a liberal hack who shouldn’t be allowed on the bench because his father was Mexican. And the GOP wouldn’t give a shit or push back at all.
At some point, dodging bullets while meekly saying “Excuse me? The brochure said that this would be a knife fight?” isn’t the noble course of action any longer, it’s just you getting shot. Start shooting back.
I voted disagree but I’ll admit to mixed feelings on this one.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I feel Trump is a terrible President. Ideally, we could deal with that within our existing legal system. Congress would hold investigations to determine if there is merit to the serious allegations that have been made against Trump and then if the allegations are found to be true, they would remove him from office. Trump is not too big a problem for our legal system to handle.
The problem is the system isn’t being used. Trump himself infamously said that he could commit murder and his supporters would still defend him. And Congress seems more interested in defending the Republican Party than defending the United States.
Nuisance lawsuits are a bad thing but they’re not illegal. (Which makes it ironic that Bricker, of all people, is posting this poll.) And I’m at least considering that these particular lawsuits might be serving a good purpose by bringing public attention to Trump’s wrongdoings and thereby eroding the base of true believers which allows him to ignore the law. If Trump’s popularity dips then the rest of the political and legal system might become willing to do its job.
I’m thinking back to the civil rights movement where people went down south to protest against institutional racism. Those people knew they were likely to be arrested and/or beaten (and maybe killed). And being arrested or beaten or murdered wouldn’t do a thing to end institutional racism. Directly. But the sight of people being wrongfully arrested and beaten and murdered drew public attention to the evil of institutional racism and got the legal system moving to end it.
Here’s another issue. Nuisance legal action can be a tool to distract politicians. As I’ve said, I think Trump’s a terrible President so I feel it’s a good thing for him to be distracted from his political agenda. The more resources he spends fighting legal actions the less resources he’ll have to use messing up the country.
But nuisance legal action is a non-partisan tool. Anyone can use it against any political opponent. It works just as effectively against a good president as it does against a bad one. So is it a good idea to promote the precedent of using nuisance legal actions?
The counter-argument to that is that the precedent has already been made. Presidents prior to Trump have faced attacks by lawsuits and investigations that were motivated by political opposition rather than any concern over actual serious wrong-doing.
Principled people might decide that we should only use legal actions when serious wrong-doing has occurred. But principles don’t guide unprincipled people. Unprincipled people will use legal actions whenever it’s convenient without regard for justification. And if unprincipled people are willing to use a tool and principled people are not, then unprincipled people have an advantage in political battles and gain in power. Should principled people be willing to use the same tools in order to fight the unprincipled people on equal footing? But if principled people begin using the tools of unprincipled people, are they still better than the unprincipled people?
Even more ironic in the case of nuisance lawsuits against presidents that Trump kept beating that “Obama is a Kenyan Muslim” drum while Orly Taitz filed multiple nonsense suits to try and force Obama to “prove” his citizenship.
But now we’re upset that someone might file suit against Trump for ignoring the Emoluments Clause? Heh.