The argument that Trump will do whatever he wants and no one can stop him is really fucking boring

The BBQ Pit
61

Even if the J6 mob did overthrow the capital, do you really think they would keep it? thats like saying when prisoners throw a riot and take over a prison that they will keep it.

The military takes an oath to the constitution. They would’ve wiped the floor with the few thousand insurrectionists in DC.

Even if Trump appoints a bunch of incompetent yes men as generals, thats no guarantee that officers, NCOs or enlisted soldiers will follow his orders. Also what is to stop the next democrat from purging all the incompetent generals appointed by Trump and putting competent generals who value the constitution back in.

62

They could have killed off a lot of the Democratic leadership if things had gone a bit differently. It wasn’t about holding the capital, it was about killing the opposition.

63

They actually came there to kill the vice president!

“Doonesbury” had a cartoon where they were saying, “Oops, we meant to say ‘Hang WITH Mike Pence.’”

64

I think we can all agree that we should be neither too hyperbolic, nor too complacent / dismissive given the many norms already broken including Trump miraculously avoiding any jail time for any of his crimes.

What I’ve tried to say in the various threads is not that Trump will face no restrictions, but that the constitution and checks and balances of government will not be watertight. Trump, and his acolytes, want to do a whole list of things which are actually unconstitutional or outside of their power.
I expect that, thanks to having all 3 branches of government, a corrupt SC and many toadies already installed in federal courts, that at least some of the things on that list will get pushed through.

Anyway, we’ll all see very soon.

65

What infuriates me is the man is a dumb ass. He should be chuckled at like you would a child, told to go to his room and let the adults talk.

66

Just because I’m having way too much fun with the threads on this topic …

When COVID hit, far too many people (read: MAGAs) hammered home the low mortality rate, blindingly obviously ignoring that there are other negatives associated with a pandemic besides death – severe illness, hospitalization, long-term disability, and contagion to name a few.

Ignoring the unbelievable strain on scarce resources and all the direct dollars it cost us all.

Death is not the only bad thing a pandemic can cause.

Marching minorities off to the camps isn’t the only horrible outcome that a Trump 2.0 could see.

Those same low-information/unbearable passion and vociferous ardor folks also didn’t understand that spreading the infection triggered all of the above, even if the spreading was done by the young, healthy, and asymptomatic, leading to the adverse consequences above.

Finally, they screamed, that the pandemic was a total nothing-burger, that Fauci was a war criminal, and that the whole thing was a government plot because the public health mechanism was getting control over the virus based overwhelmingly on the success and the uptake of the vaccines.

Their bogeymen were actually the story’s heroes.

When viewing Trump 2.0, I see a whole lot of the same mentality brought to bear. I also predict that – if we’re fortunate enough that Trump 2.0 isn’t a total shit show – the same people will be saying they “told us so,” where the actual reason will likely be the extraordinary efforts of those in power to both “Trump proof” and resist him at every turn.

Nobody who might be the direct ‘beneficiary’ of Trump’s unchecked insanity is sitting idly by – that’s my surmise.

Just as I surmised, elsewhere, that those who experience the worst of Trump’s ire, and who have the means, are almost surely considering their own Plan B if Trump starts in on his Mortal Enemies List.

Trump didn’t NOT overthrow the legitimately-elected US government because he didn’t try. He didn’t overthrow the government because he tried and failed.

That difference is indescribably important to both understand and acknowledge.

67

The problem is, he’s a dumbass who will soon have real power. Even if he stays within the normal powers of the presidency, he will have the legal authority to make bad decisions, with long-lasting implications. Last time around, it wasn’t illegal for him to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, or to negotiate with the Taliban to withdraw from Afghanistan, and we’re still dealing with the fallout of those choices.

And he’s shown a willingness to go beyond that, to make decisions that go against the laws, and certainly against the “norms” that other Presidents acknowledged. He will push the limits on what he’s “allowed” to do.

And he’s currently surrounding himself with Yes Men who will do whatever they can to do whatever he says, regardless of the law. And so we’re stuck hoping that some lower-level people will realize when he’s crossed the line into illegal actions, decide to do something about it, and also have the power to succeed in the face of opposition from the president and senior leadership of the entire US government.

None of that fills me with hope.

68

That’s what the Supreme Court is for. See Trump v. Anderson. I mean, taken as broad precedent, it could be argued it’s not for the states to decide whether Trump can run again…

69

No. Trump v. Anderson narrowly ruled that it’s not within a State’s remit to determine who violated the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. And that’s a good decision, if you consider it would have opened the door for Missisippi to keep Harris off the ballot for some bullshit reason like “she basically did insurrection by saying Trump is an authoritarian”.

On the other hand, the fact that Donald Trump served 2 terms office is a Constitutionally constructed and ratified fact. The 22nd Amendment says Presidents aren’t eligible to serve more than 2 terms, the 12th Amendment says nobody ineligible as President can be eligible as VP. So this doesn’t require a State to find any federal fact, since those facts have already been developed, certified, and published by the US.

I’m not arguing that the Constitution is self-executing, so any brain-dead zombies parroting that dump catchphrase can kindly blow it out their ass. Yes, given a sufficiently pliant court and control of the military, Trump can do whatever the fuck he wants. SCOTUS has demonstrated a lot of leeway, but to say Trump can be on the ballot will require an appetite for anti-textual Constitution rewriting that even the current SCOTUS hasn’t yet displayed.

Could that happen, yes it could, but the point is it’s an infinitely more complex construction of rights than just (for example) throwing Liz Cheny in jail and daring anybody to stop him. It’s easy to go to court to slow down an enforcement, it’s a lot harder to go to court and force lots of people to do things.

70

Yeah that’s one way to phrase it.

They have shown they will do whatever it takes to help Trump circumvent the law. When he wasn’t even in power.

How to even parse the idea that they will find an iota of integrity, let alone courage, and defy Trump and his mob now?

As I say, I don’t think everything Trump will try to do will pass, and a third term is admittedly one of the toughest to get over the line. But he’s got 3+ years for the remaining guardrails (such that still exist) to be bent or broken for that one.
If they can argue for presidential immunity, they can argue that what 22A meant was more than two contiguous terms.

71

And yet, I actually wrote, “…taken as broad precedent…”

I get it. I really do. I’m theory, the Supreme Court should stop Trump from running again. Indeed, states should be allowed to decide that he is not eligible to run again. Better yet, Trump should follow the rules for once and not even try to run again!

That is really the crux of the matter, isn’t it? Some of y’all seem to want to rest on what shouldhappen and what any sane Supreme Court/Congress/President would allow to happen. But others among us can’t help but point out how utterly batshit it is to expect sanity from this Supreme Court, this Congress, or this President.

During Trump 1.0, the norms went on the window.

During Trump 2.0, don’t be shocked if the laws go out the window too.

And when the laws go out the window, there is nothing between us and Trump 3.0 but (1) a Trump-loving Supreme Court, (2) a sycophantic Congress, and (3) the Problem in Chief.

My point isn’t that the laws will definitely go out the window, but that if you are relying on laws and precedent to save us from dictatorship, I’ve got a story to tell you. It’s about Weimar Germany.

72

You’re doing exactly what the OP was complaining about!

73
Hijack about person I was surprised to hear was ill with long covid

So I was wondering what happened to the youtube channel Physics Girl and then found…she’s been bed-ridden these last two years with long covid. She can still barely move. :pensive:
It’s extra depressing because she’s still young and was quite sporty.

But hey, fake news, something something Fauci. And the US response to the next pandemic is almost certainly going to be worse than it was for this one, somehow.

74

I will futilely repeat the caveat that I included above:

The universe of unconstitutional stuff that Trump could do is vast. Some of these things are easy, some of them are hard, all of them are achievable if you get enough of the right people on your side. But people, even Republicans, have their own axes to grind.

I like to find the nuance in that, but sure, we can also tear out our hair and say “woe betide, he’s an infinitely powerful god now, he can just tweet out a new constitution over Truth social and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” Maybe but that seems like a boring and uninformative conversation to me.

75

We really need to separate “Trump will never be punished for his crimes,” from “Trump is now all-powerful and his every decree will be upheld by a Supreme Court that will most assuredly agree with everything he wants, despite any past evidence to the contrary.”

76

Counterpoint:

The whole fucking Carrol case.
Trump doing exactly what he wants and nobody even trying to make him pay the fucking “judgement”.

The judge let him threaten his family and he (the judge) did absolutely jack-shit.

How is that not “doing anything he wants”?

And this was when he wasn’t President (elect).

77

That case is on appeal. They haven’t reached the “try to make him pay” stage.

78

I don’t want to hijack, just wondering if there should be a “things that mr. trump threatened / promised that didn’t pan out” thread. We could start with him admitting that he cannot, in fact, bring grocery prices down.

79

…Sarah Kendzior once described the first Trump administration as a “transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government.”

So I think its most useful to look at the next Trump administration through that lens. Imagine Don Corleone got elected president. They’ve got many of the governors and mayors on the payroll along with many judges and prosecutors. The police unions across the country plead loyalty. The captains of corporate America and the tech-bros all stand united.

What exactly could Don Corleone get away with?

I suspect he could probably stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters, nor face any real consequence.

80

As long as he calls it an official act. Probably best for him to stand next to a soldier and, in his role as commander in chief, order the soldier to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.