Speaking of laws (and not changing the subject yet again because you cannot respond to what was just said), what laws are there that actually enforce themselves, and not depend on actual people to enforce them?
I asked you first. You’ve had 12 days to think it over and that’s the best you can do?
Yep. You sure did try to change the subject elsewhere. Remember what happened (besides the fact that I didn’t bite)? Imagine getting the same result here, only with a middle finger held high. If you want to start a new Pit thread about my personal life you are of course welcome to do so…because I haven’t had that much fun in the BBQ Pit in years. 
You could do something that really matters . . . like changing your profile picture.
My hair changes color quite frequently (it is now blue, with a full blue beard). Do you think that might help?
You’ve misread the arguments that people have been making. We are not saying that Trump has absolute power. We are saying that the people who have power over Trump will choose not to use that power.
The Republican majorities in the House and Senates have the power to impeach Trump and remove him from office if he breaks the law. But they have not removed Trump from office on the two previous occasions when he faced impeachment. So why believe they will act differently a third time?
Various law enforcement agencies can normally arrest somebody when they break the law. But the Supreme Court has ruled that Trump has immunity as long as he is in office.
The Supreme Court has authority to interpret the law and rule that a President’s actions are prohibited. But the Republican majority on the Supreme Court has shown (as I just mentioned above) that they will not rule in a way that interferes with Trump. And the Supreme Court has the power to overrule the decisions of any other court in the country.
Trump has repeatedly broken the law in the past and he has gotten away with it. He has stated he intends on breaking the law again in the future. It’s pretty naive to think he won’t.
If you don’t believe Trump will get away with breaking the law in the future, explain what has changed. What factors will exist in Trump’s second term that didn’t exist in his first term?
Which is why Joe Biden was never president, since they declared Trump the winner in 2020.
No they haven’t. They’ve ruled that the president has presumptive immunity when performing an official duty, which is exactly what everyone assumed to be the case beforehand. That ruling did not give Trump ANY powers or privileges he didn’t already have during his first term.
Trump breaking the law is irrelevant. He can’t rule by fiat and he cannot claim powers that the Constitution does not give him. “You don’t have the power to do that” is not the same thing as “it’s illegal for you to do that”.
It’s not illegal to blow up the Moon. That doesn’t mean he can, and the threat of jail time is not necessary to prevent him from doing so.
Nah. I’d much rather just continue to point out that you’re a coward and a hypocrite who can’t answer a question.
What could they do? Nothing, that’s what. Especially against ones that haven’t even been made yet.
You do that, you scamp you!
There is a massive, massive excluded middle happening here, and in most previous discussions, where there is perceived polarization on what Trump will or won’t, and can or can’t, do with the power of the Presidency. And it’s creating friction and frustration that’s impeding discussion.
I don’t think Trump, as President, will have absolute fiat. I do, however, believe that he will act as if he does. And, further, I believe that some people, but definitely not all, will go along with it. I believe there will be pushback and resistance, certainly. But I also believe that the levers of that pushback will operate slowly, and that Trump and his minions will move quickly by contrast, and will be able to do significant damage before they are reined in (to whatever degree that happens).
Let’s take his bloviating on immigration. He wants to end birthright citizenship, he wants to deport not just undocumented people but their family members even if they’re citizens, yada yada yada. He says he wants to use military forces for at least some of these efforts, and he believes he can find a legal fig leaf that will justify it (e.g., he could say the mayors of sanctuary cities are engaging in insurrection, because they’re ignoring federal immigration laws). He says he wants to do these things, and there’s no reason to think he won’t attempt to do them.
Your argument in response to this is that he doesn’t have the legal authority to deport American citizens. I don’t think anybody disagrees with that. He definitely does not have that legal authority, under the currently constituted laws and regulations available to him. He doesn’t care about that, though, which is something else I don’t think anybody disagrees with. He acts as if that doesn’t matter, and he’ll find a way to go ahead regardless.
So it appears we have a binary question. Can he deport these people, or will he be stopped? The people you label as doomwankers lean toward the first option; you clearly lean toward the second.
My view is a little more nuanced. I ask myself— what does “stopping him” look like? Lawsuits, injunctions, court orders. Military units whose leaders believe the orders are unlawful, yet are unwilling to openly refuse, so they slow-roll their compliance. Protesters roll into vulnerable neighborhoods and set themselves up as human shields, and authorities hesitate to use force on American citizens. There are lots of ways Trump can be obstructed.
But— those obstructions are not perfect, and many of them will take effort and time. Appealing to the courts, for example, can take weeks or months. Even an emergency filing may take a few days to hear. And in that time, if Trump can find a compliant federal authority or military unit to carry out his order, some people can, indeed, be removed from the country. Not many, perhaps. But some.
And then they will be required to pursue their action while they’re on the wrong side of the border. If they get one or more layers of judges to order that their deportation was unlawful, the administration will appeal those rulings, over and over, as many times as are available according to the process, pushing the limits of what is possible and permissible. Along the way, they’ll get some rule-of-law judges who oppose the deportation, and some Trumpy judges who support it. It’ll take months, if not years.
And those people will still be barred from the country, for as long as that process takes to complete. Even if, ultimately, they do prevail, and they do get a final order from the Supreme Court that says they shouldn’t have been deported and they must be readmitted, it’ll be months later, at best, more likely years. Sure, Trump will have “lost.” It will be proven that he “didn’t have that authority.” The process will have “worked.” But those people’s lives will still be unimaginably, irreversibly damaged.
You may be correct that, ultimately, Trump’s initiatives will fail and he will be impeded and obstructed at every turn. But your repeated insistence that these impediments and obstructions will be quick and seamless is obstinate to the point of being delusional. There is no magic wand here. There is no single ultimate power to which Trump’s opponents can appeal, pointing out that he doesn’t have the legal authority to do something, which will result in a magic wand being waved and Trump’s machinery instantly dissolved. He may very well fail, in the long run. But he can create incalculable pain and destruction in the interim.
Which, to be clear, is not doomwanking. It is not an argument for hopelessness and surrender. It is an acknowledgement of reality— that in order to beat Trump, in order to get to that point where he does, ultimately, fail, we will have to fight him tooth and fucking nail every minute of every day he has the power of the Presidency available to him. He’s going to come on like a furious hurricane of hatred and vengeance, and it will be exhausting, and if we let up, he will win. But we cannot be blind to the truth that in the struggle to oppose him, even if, eventually, we do prevail, there will— will— be casualties.
Getting back to the OP & title.
I agree. This back and forth in the dozen threads it is in is boring.
A couple other quick things:
- Is this thread really substantively different from this one?
Do we really need two simultaneous pit threads discussing the obsession with Trump and what he will or will not do?
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@Cervaise : thank you for taking the time to spell that out. The vast excluded middle, indeed. And you could pick any number of issues – just f’rinstance (in keeping with “every accusation is actually a confession”):
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how might he direct Pam Bondi/Kash Patel to go after his enemies and attempt to prosecute – with absolutely no legal grounds – the people who were mean to him beginning in 2017?
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What might the effects be of a draconian DOGE committee – the slash-and-burn billionaires tapped to play Calvinball with the federal government?
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What’s likely to happen with the economy if he pushes through massive and permanent tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, imposes stiff tariffs on key trading partners, and deports millions of low-wage, hard working laborers? Is this an approach to making housing more affordable – extrajudicially creating millions of housing vacancies across the entire country?
There are legitimate questions to be asked.
For my entire life, we tended to pray that our leaders would make good on their promises. Now, even (particularly?) his staunchest supporters are hoping to hell he doesn’t.
May you live in interesting times.
Conversely, the “Trump can’t do anything, bEcAuSe We HaVe LaWs!” arguments are also boring as shit. We all know that Trump doesn’t give a shit about the law, and that large numbers of Republicans are fine with that, and will rarely if ever hold him to account for breaking the law.
The reality will probably end up somewhere in the middle. He won’t do everything he wants to do, but he’s going to do a hell of a lot more than some people think he will be allowed to do.
To the OP, I feel your pain. This thread has become what it was deriding.
I’m ignoring the doomwankers. When they end up going into the trump-brand showers and ovens crying “I TOLD YOU SO!” I will concede the point.
Right along with everything other than the hyperbolic extreme case.
Not helpful.
Trump will try to do whatever he wants and get away with a lot of it. When he oversteps lawsuits will result but he’ll have his toadies running interference for him and slowing down any judicial action. So he can be stopped, slowly, and often the damage will already be done. More than that, his style of corruption will grow rapidly. IMO a tolerable government can be an organized system of corruption, and still preferrable to what Trump is trying to achieve. Part of his success so far is due to how far down that hole we’ve sunk already.
I don;t even know what point you think you’re making, so I’ll just ignore it.
Thus proving my point.
Thanks!
Nobody’s talking about blowing up the moon so stop inventing imaginary scenarios.
But Trump has talked about wanting to do things that are illegal. If the threat of jail time is taken out of the picture, what do you imagine will stop him from doing those things?