No, he failed in business. He survives the same way that other celebrities do, by selling his image to people who can do business. And, like him, most celebrities are living beyond their means just no one cares because their celebrity means that they can always just generate more money.
I don’t think so. Poorly documented businesses aren’t safe from prosecution because it’s too complicated to go there.
I’ve seen some deposition footage and he seems much more self aware, in fact it was the point of showing the footage. If he had behaved in those occasions like he does now he wouldn’t have made it without bad outcomes. It’s impossible to go through a deposition by giving out stream of consciousness answers without trouble.
I was born post-Nixon, but I still get angry at Ford for pardoning him (while at the same time I can see he had to do it).
I don’t believe for a second our congress in 2018 would even send a formal rebuke much less formal charges and conviction, so my doubts about FEDERAL prison are great. You know because when you’re a star, they let you do it.
But as to the core “we would never ever do that”? I think if there is a big enough blue wave to flip congress (maybe not the senate or maybe just to a one or two vote margin), not sending him to jail if serious criminal activity is absolutely crystal clear, knowing, active participation, pre- and post-election… the backlash would be bad for the Democrats. It does look terrible for us to throw a president in jail, but I think it looks worse to let someone get away with it.
Politically, the best solution (assuming he wasn’t president anymore) would be to drag out hearings and hope the Big Macs get him first. Then no one over reacted, under reacted, etc.
So maybe no elected official wants to set that precedent, but if not for Trump (again, assuming our worst theories are true), then for whom?
And if congress wusses out, the states aren’t going to let it go.
I give prison about 20% chance. Big Macs 70%. Wildcard 10%.
If he’s a criminal, he should be imprisoned for his crime. The fact a small portion of your population bought red hats and clapped their hands for him doesn’t matter. To whom would it look terrible? His fans? There’s no need to placate them any more than there was a need to placate O.J. Simpson fans. The rest of the world? We’d be grateful. And impressed.
A lot of new precedents have been set with this “president.”
This is a bad situation such as we’ve never faced before. Like Fair Rarity, I remember Nixon and Watergate. I was young, but I lived through it. And same as Fair Rarity, even though I understand Ford’s reasoning in issuing the pardon, it never sat well with me. If no citizen is above the law, then no citizen should be above a just punishment for what they are proved to have done.
Compared to Nixon, I consider what Trump has likely done to be far, far worse. If true, he has not only betrayed our country for his own selfish gain. He has betrayed it to a foreign country with hostile intentions toward the US and the whole of Western democracy for his own selfish gain.
He may never see an orange jump suit while he remains in the White House. After he is no longer “president”? All bets are off.
Твоя мать знает.
I wasn’t meaning to imply that he was completely unchanged during depositions, just in the ways that I specified.
I see somebody found their Cyrillic font. I always thought Mike’s accent was a little funny.
I just caught Real Time, and I’ve come to a conclusion: Vicente Fox is one funny dude.
And big. He dwarfs Bill Maher. Maybe we could get him to wrestle Trump.
Stick to English, please.
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Unless Pence gets brought down in the same series of actions, he would surely pardon Trump.
There is a difference with the Nixon/Ford situation. Nixon did not conspire with a foreign power and, at the time Nixon resigned, he still had a substantial base. Trump squeaked in with an anti-Hilary base and has been losing support (outside of Alabama) for the entire duration of his term.
I keep a loose grip on the polling, current T approval #s are about 8-10 over the last Nixon polls before his resignation.
Let us not forget that trump is the one who popularized the notion of “locking up” one’s opponents. Seeing him go to jail would be justice in both absolute and poetic terms.
And we can hope Pence gets ousted first. I mean, this is The Stupidest Timeline, but it doesn’t mean we can’t mirror what happened before. Literally one of the first WH guests after the inauguration was Kissinger.
I mean, there is a reasonable chance Pence could be out first, and not just political machinations. His ties with Manafort are stronger. Plus despite his general awfulness, there seems to** maybe** be a semblance of a person behind those beady little eyes, whereas Trump is just empty or filled with empty styrofoam 80s Filet O Fish boxes.
So if no VP (especially no VP Pence), there isn’t a payback motive to pardon.
Plus the brilliance of Mueller involving state AGs is that he can be federally pardoned, tarnishing the legacy of the pardoner forever, but he can still wear an orange jumpsuit in upstate New York. Or Florida. Or Maryland. Or Delaware.
I think it’s very telling that Mueller has not sought an interview with Pence, who lied repeatedly on camera, knowingly obstructing justice. As I’ve said before, if you look around the poker table and you can’t tell who’s the sucker…
Pence is one of the “big fish.” I just don’t believe Mueller is going to give him a pass. I may be wrong, of course, but I just don’t.
I don’t see a semblance of a person. I see a zealot. He’s dangerous – but he’s not charismatic.
I suspect that it just means that Pence was smart enough to stay 20 miles away from everything Trump and his campaign and his presidency are up to.
He hasn’t, though. Elijah Cummings warned Pence directly about Flynn’s conflicts of interest in a letter dated November 18, 2016. Pence acknowledged receipt of the letter. Pence knowingly lied about Trump’s reasons for firing Comey. He was in the meetings where the pretense was discussed and agreed upon, then went out and lied about it to the press. He knowingly lied about Mike Flynn’s phone calls with Kislyak. He was in the meetings where Flynn’s phone calls to Kislyak were discussed about the true purpose of the calls (to discuss sanctions). He knowingly lied about his awareness of Flynn’s being investigated by the FBI. He was the head of the transition team, for goodness’ sake. Do you honestly think he didn’t know and wasn’t told by McGahn after Sally Yates warned of Flynn’s situation?
He’s up to his neck in it. He sure didn’t stay “20 miles away” from it all.
Well, based on the Van der Zwaan indictment, I’ve got to assume that Person A is crapping their pants.
I’m going to guess Kushner.
VDZ was deposed in November 2017, it seems. Isn’t that about the time that Kushner started shopping around for a crisis management company?
I’ll also note that Person A and VDZ were communicating in September of 2016, well past the time when Manafort had been ejected from the campaign. This would pretty clearly have nothing to do with Manafort, whatever it is.
This NBC report says “Person A” is a Ukrainian based associate of Manafort.
From what I’ve read, Trump’s performance in depositions has not been much different from what you’d expect from what you see of him now. The big difference is that those were all civil cases, where if he just casually ran his mouth as is his wont he might harm his case a bit. Now he has hard-edged prosecutors on the other side of the table.