Prediction: Nauta throws himself under the bus and confesses that he’s the one who hid the documents and moved them around, and Trump knew nothing, nothing about what was happening or even that these documents existed. He gets sent to prison, secure in the knowledge that Trump will pardon him when he’s elected.
(narrator: Trump won’t do this)
WAY too much documentary evidence and witness testimony saying otherwise.
Also the problem isn’t that Trump wouldn’t pardon Nauta. He so would. The problem is Trump would need to be elected first, and if he’s not elected, then Nauta spends the rest of his life in prison. Bad gamble.
I’m hoping that Nauta flips or has flipped and is wearing a wire. Highly unlikely of course.
Here is some good news. A Magistrate is going to preside over this, not Cannon.
Edit: this is just for the arraignment and bail. She is still head judge for the trial so probably not a big deal. Also, something I missed…there are four Judges in the district so there was a 25% chance that Cannon would get it.
Dream scenario.
Trump is then charged with suborning perjury.
Although peer pressure and political bubbles undoubtedly affect some of Trump’s supporters, I don’t know if characterizing them as cult members or deplorables is accurate or helpful. The Democrats might be better off addressing the many reasons small niche groups find them suboptimal. Of course, this strategy won’t win over actual cult members nor those who indulge in deplorablism. (Nor will it get you the generous member discount on incense, icons, pamphlets, chants or candelabras).
I disagree. I’d like to see more calling them out for exactly who they are.
I was reading through an article this morning in the NY Times about Floridians who may, by virtue of where they live, be called to sit as a potential juror on Trump’s case in Florida. One woman with whom they spoke was a native of Argentina. I found what she said to be so compelling:
She described the documents case, and Mr. Trump’s still-considerable base of support, in terms of an unsettling loosening of civic standards. “We saw all that in my own country, when the lies kept getting bigger and bigger,” she said. “The margin of tolerance kept getting wider and wider, so that you never saw the limit. They would talk of morality and of the family, but they would be the most corrupt, the most obscene people anywhere. It’s like a state of madness.”
Her words resonated with me to my core. This is Corruption 101 as it manifests, and I believe we should call it out plainly and often for exactly what it is.
Small niche? Suboptimal? There is a huge number of people in the US that find the whole bunch of them deplorable.
Absolutely agree. Enough is enough. I don’t give a rats ass how they respond. They are going to be assholes no matter what it said. If they ‘win’ they are going to be even bigger assholes (if that’s possible).
Damn right. As it stands democracy is teetering on the edge. These morons drove it there and they want to give it another push.
They must be stopped. Sure, they will just crawl back under their rocks until the next traitor comes along, but we have to TRY.
Agreed. They are cult members AND deplorables.
I think whether it’s accurate and/or helpful are like four different questions with different answers in different contexts–but I also am not sure that this thread is the place for me to elaborate on why, so I’ll just leave it there :).
The trouble is, a lot of people are using the terms very loosely, which is not helpful.
Some people’s relationship to Trump is the same as cult members to their charismatic leader. This is an issue, but it doesn’t cover every Trumpist. For them, they are treating Trump as more than human, and the idea of holding him to human standards like justice is blasphemous.
Others are more or less brainwashed, not by Trump’s apparent charisma, but by the large amounts of propaganda they’ve been fed over time via Fox etc. This group, similarly, regards Trump irrationally, but for them it’s more because Democrats / Deep State / Lizard people / whatever are doing nefarious things, and Trump is merely the underdog victim of a vast conspiracy.
Both of these two groups are irrational, and a real problem, but I think they function quite differently. I’m sure there’s some overlap, of course.
Meanwhile, there are the self-interested amoral Republicans, who are playing to win: they’re backing Trump out of perceived self-interest, and are willing to throw the nation’s norms and institutions under the bus for their own power. This is what I’d refer to as deplorable. These people, also a problem, have no illusions about Trump, but are attempting to ride the tiger for their own gain.
Then there are the R-voters who will hold their nose and vote for Satan’s lawyer if that demon will appoint conservative judges / veto abortion / punch an immigrant / drown a sack of kittens / whatever their single issue is. These people are also acting in rational perceived self-interest, but could be swayed by arguments.
Finally, there are the low-information voters who don’t know or care much about anything and who can be swayed by an emotion-laden sound bite. These people can be salvaged by going back in time and investing in a robust public education system that also teaches civic duty.
Edited: I think Trump’s indictment would just drive the cultists and the brainwashed further into their delusions; the self-interested will make plenty of use of it, but otherwise it will have little effect. If anything, it seems to me that it will help Republicans overall.
The bigger the tent, the bigger the discount!
But if she does she will more than likely make a perfectly legitimate ruling that favors Trump and no matter how many times she will have ruled in the Government’s favor it will be taken as proof of her bias.
She probably will make rulings that favor Trump, and so long as they are within the norms for such rulings, they’re fine. Judges often hew more to the side of defendants than prosecutors as a way of appeal-proofing their cases.
But the rulings Cannon made in the civil Special Master matter were just off the reservation. They were wrong in ways that were obviously far beyond what could be justified in any legal way – as evidenced by the rulings to reverse her made by the (very conservative) Eleventh Circuit.
You’re right that some will take any rulings adverse to the prosecution as proof of her bias. But many won’t.
Not quite. Two of those judges already have a full or nearly full docket for the year, so they would not have even been considered.
So this truly shouldn’t have been a surprise and the prosecutors are ready for her.
My only conclusion is that Smith expected to get Judge Cannon. The conspiracy theorist side of me is screaming that this is all performative, and that Trump will never face any justice for anything.
I think he is well and truly fucked, and will drop dead sometime next year, leading to an epic thread about all of the conspiracy theories it will have spawned.
Well, immigration is pretty evenly divided.
About 47% (oddly about how many vote Republican) has issues with immigration.
31% say we are getting the right number of immigrants, 27% say more, and 28% say less.
But altho most American do want some sort of Abortion control, very very few want it banned as the GOP is doing- which is when they leave it up to the voters, the people vote down any bans.
NRA only has about 4million members, and quite a few are just hunters, not crazed reactionaries like Kari here.
Other than something on the order of Jan 6 (which had few deaths and few guns) , I predict now the idea of an armed uprising over trumps arrest and conviction is zero. Lots of yelling sure.
Judge Cannon will likely be recused or removed- that is my prediction.
Good.
Rich people want their tax cuts and no tax audits. They dont care about the other shit. The oil industry is another GOP backer, along with Big Tobacco - not cultists just “me first”.
Right, not all people who voted for trump are cultists. Just the stupid ones.
It depends how you ask the question.
I’m afraid that this is more politically salient:
Scrolling down in my link, you’ll see that Republicans are, of 21 policy areas, least satisfied with “level of immigration into the country today.”
There thus a reason why right-wing populists hang onto nativism as their biggest issue.
As for Democrats, the February 2023 level of satisfaction with current immigration policy is still underwater, although it is hard to interpret the question (I’m dissatified because the legal immigration quotas are too low).
Of course, I’m not saying that Democrats should triangulate every issue. But Trump is on to something, from a pure self-interest standpoint, in being a nativist. If his nativism was less popular, his indictment would matter more.