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Topic: Everything Trump… (Read 181110 times)
  • OakdaleFTL
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Everything Trump…
Quote from: jax – on
Too lazy to create a new thread, after earlier (IIRC) pointing out this thread has expired?
:) Yup!
But of course people need a place to vent their spleen… So, consider this an open-ended receptacle.
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
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Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #375 –
Quoting somebody else's wrong opinion won't help you out. You remain wrong about everything.

The reality:
- It was not Judge Cannon's decision. It was Justice Thomas's opinion that Cannon relies on. You know, Clarence Thomas the supreme corruptant in SCOTUS.
- Justice Thomas's opinion would dismiss all special counsels appointed by DOJ Attorney Generals, such as Robert Mueller of Mueller Report or Archibald Cox of Watergate.
- The partisan intent is all on Cannon's and Thomas's side. Trump stole documents designated as federal secret. He boasted around with them liberally and refuses to return them. Based on the facts it is a very easy open-and-shut case that requires a hyperpartisan hypocrite to disagree.

"The President has the authority to declassify documents!" you say? :lol: He is on public record boasting to his guests about the documents exactly as secret documents!

You are always wrong about everything. This should not be hard for you to learn.

The 11th District will more likely make the right decision: Replace Judge Cannon for her third egregious mistake in this case (judges are allowed up to three egregious mistakes, I hear) so the case can proceed. When appealed to SCOTUS, SCOTUS is likely to make the wrong decision again, because for SCOTUS there is no law and order, no justice, no checks and balances. SCOTUS is on board with the plan to secure the creation of Unified Reich as promised in Trump's campaign ad.

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #376 –
Quote from: ersi – on
SCOTUS is on board with the plan to secure the creation of Unified Reich as promised in Trump's campaign ad.
You remain an idiot, ersi! Also, on the basis of your posts, I think you're a Nazi! (I'm applying your own criterion... :) )

Shall I try to argue you out of this reprehensible ideology?

—————————————

But Nazi or Communist, you've not any power to speak of; so, I don't worry. And your arguments  convince no one.
You don't like Trump. You don't like America. You don't like — hell, what do you like? :) You've never said...

BTW: I don't think you can begin a sentence with "The reality" when you've openly confessed that you believe all speech is political! :)[1]
1 I suspect all your speech is masturbatory! :) ↵
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #377 –
Quote from: OakdaleFTL – on
Quote from: ersi – on
SCOTUS is on board with the plan to secure the creation of Unified Reich as promised in Trump's campaign ad.
You remain an idiot, ersi!
When confronted with a fact, your counter-argument needs to be factual, not a personal insult. This is babystep basics that you are failing at, doofus.

By the way, how do you like Trump's VP pick? Not too long ago JD Vance held that Trump was fascist, but now he is his running mate. So, checkmark on being a turncoat bootlicker. Any other virtues you see in him?

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #378 –
Quote from: ersi – on
When confronted with a fact, your counter-argument needs to be factual, not a personal insult.
When dealing with an ersi who makes insults his primary mode of discourse, closely followed by outrageous assertions and tenuous at best deductions, an occasional insult is justified:
As I mentioned before: You're too old to be mesmerized by memes!

What plan do you speak of? And how did you determine SCOTUS (I assume you mean the supposed "conservative" majority...) is "on board"?
You've got Nazis on the brain![1] (And in your neighborhood...?)
1 And since there's little else there, as credulous as you seem to be, it might be considered more than a preoccupation! (You and Putin have that in common.)↵
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #379 –
So you're oblivious of both where the discussion is at the moment and where it came from? You need hand-holding so much that it honestly deserves mocking. I would really prefer if you kept to the topic and to the issues, but you are atrociously incapable of it.

You could simply have answered the perfectly topical question about JD Vance, but no, you prefer to keep it on your doofus level. That's where you are comfortable. It's truly amazing how little you know about your own country, but clearly this is a pre-condition to be a hyperpartisan hypocrite for Repubs.

Quote from: OakdaleFTL – on
What plan do you speak of? And how did you determine SCOTUS (I assume you mean the supposed "conservative" majority...) is "on board"?
This is an astonishing masterpiece of reading incomprehension from you, doofus. Are you so drunk that you forgot Project 2025 already? Project 2025 is the plan. In the post with Trump's campaign ad that I linked, enough elements of the plan are spelled out for you.

Hasn't Trump promised to become dictator on day one (or was it SNL comedy according to you)? And hasn't he said that if he gets the office again, you don't need to vote any more? This is what SCOTUS is on board with: Absolute immunity! In SCOTUS's mind, when the founding fathers were drafting the constitution, they envisioned a god-on-earth while trying to steer clear from king.

Quote from: OakdaleFTL – on
You've got Nazis on the brain!
Says the guy in whose team of presidential and vice-presidential candidates one has said that the other one is Hitler — and they are running together. You already voted for that gang twice and you are about to do it a third time. Projection is superstrong in you.

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #380 –
Quote from: ersi – on
Project 2025 already? Project 2025 is the plan.
Project 2025 is a plan compiled for and published by the Heritage Foundation for potential incoming Republican administrations... It is a wish-list of that organization. If wishes were horses, we'd all ride!
The Dems are pushing it as a "secret" campaign document... And some few silly people will believe that's what it is. :)


Quote from: ersi – on
Hasn't Trump promised to become dictator on day one [...] And hasn't he said that if he gets the office again, you don't need to vote any more?
Your context goggles have fallen off... I'll wait while your fumble about, trying to find them! :)


Quote from: ersi – on
Quote from: OakdaleFTL on 2024-07-27, 23:30:25You've got Nazis on the brain!
Says the guy in whose team of presidential and vice-presidential candidates one has said that the other one is Hitler — and they are running together.
In much the same way I used to think you a smart guy, just easily deluded by a particular set of prejudices — I realized that I was wrong! Your intelligence is in serious doubt.

Quote from: ersi – on
This is what SCOTUS is on board with: Absolute immunity!
So, you couldn't be bothered to read the actual decisions? Not surprising! But the sources that underpin your take must -by now- be considered suspect, even by you?! No?

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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #381 –
Quote from: OakdaleFTL – on
Quote from: ersi – on
Project 2025 already? Project 2025 is the plan.
Project 2025 is a plan compiled for and published by the Heritage Foundation for potential incoming Republican administrations... It is a wish-list of that organization. If wishes were horses, we'd all ride!
Trump's platform is whatever he declares and repeats on the campaign trail. He declares and repeats and posts videos with points from Project 2025, which is authored by people who were in his administration and who are running his campaign right now. Knowing your limits, it's okay that you are blind to Project 2025, but you should at least acknowledge quotes from the horse himself. Unfortunately, you are blind doofus to everything related to Trump.

And most crucially to the point right now: You have nothing to say about JD Vance. Let's try again differently: If Trump were to replace JD Vance, who should the replacement be?

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #382 –
What about Project 2025 bothers you? Can you name one or two things?

(Don't be shy! I'm sure your opinions are based on more than Democrat Party memes...)
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #383 –
Trump's own private jet got a bit glitchy, so he switched to Epstein's old plane. Well, naturally, of course he had that as a backup!

Quote from: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article290986070.html
Trump, enroute on his own private plane to a campaign event in Bozeman, Montana last week, unexpectedly landed in Billings because of mechanical problems, a campaign spokeswoman said. He and part of his staff then flew on a small charter to Bozeman for a rally Friday night. The next day, he switched to another larger Gulfstream with a serial number that matches a plane once owned by Epstein, his former neighbor in Palm Beach, the campaign confirmed.

“The campaign had no awareness that the charter plane had been owned by Mr. Epstein,” the spokeswoman said, adding that the charter was commissioned by a vendor that has often been used by the campaign. “We heard about the former owner through the media.”

Miami Herald has verified that Trump's current plane is Epstein's former jet.

As another backup plan, Trump said in his Musk interview broadcast by Twitter (also glitchy) that if Kamala Harris wins (which would be unfair to him and to democracy) he would flee to Venezuela https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-suggests-hell-flee-to-venezuela-if-harris-wins-the-election

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #385 –
Quote from: ersi – on
David Runciman at the Guardian cannot decide whether Trump is a fascist.
Much of that is just… weird, to say the least. Was everything the brownshirts did in Weimar Germany an external conflict? Was the Reichstag fire?

Or to summarize the article in just one sentence: nobody today is exactly like a fascist from a 100 years ago. Shocking.

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #386 –
Fascists 100 years ago weren't exactly like each other either.

Easy to be bogged down into what are the common traits of fascists and fascism, and what are the most dangerous ones.

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #387 –
I listened to the Rogan interview. Trump's (and Rogan's) lies are so uninteresting that I won't mention them this time. This time I mention only the true parts.

Trump: "I ran and I won against Hillary...[1] And presidency was a very surreal experience."
Rogan: "How did you know who to pick [when in office]?"
Trump: "I didn't... I made some mistakes."

A specific mistake he mentioned was  "I picked some people, a few people I should not have picked" which is not quite true. Everybody he picked was wrong in one way or another, along with himself as president.

Rogan: "There are some chemicals and ingredients in our food [in USA] that are illegal in other countries. There's pesticides and herbicides and a lot of health consequences..."
Trump: "Look at this chart. These [other countries] are healthier countries."[2]

And this is all the truth there was during those three hours of interview. Trump rehashed his usual lies, but more comfortably and more elaborately than ever because Rogan accommodated and enabled him fully, so that Trump felt free to tell for example the stories how he defeated ISIS, how migrant gangs come from mental institutions to swing states to vote "who are mostly Haitians who don't speak any language that anybody could understand" (straight quote) along with prisoners of the Congo, how Putin and Xi loved him and how Harris is a low-IQ individual, all stories told multiple times in multiple ways during the interview. It could have been considerably shorter.
1 Well done, Donald! It was not Obama or Biden you won against :)↵
2 This was immediately followed up by Trump stating that "I gotta be careful about the environmental. I love oil."↵

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #388 –
Quote from: OakdaleFTL – on
Victor Davis Hanson is not a personal friend of mine, but ... He's always struck me as an astute observer of the world.
What a busy weekend. Today Victor Davis Hanson gave the following interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHU6x-9rhzQ

I find Victor Davis Hanson giving off an air of an astute observer of the world, while really being a hyperpartisan basket case of bs brainwash flush. He calmly presents partisan lies as facts.[1] The sad state of affairs is that almost everything presented as fact is a lie by Hanson. Even more: Absolutely everything without exception regarding the current presidential race that he should be well informed about is either flat-out lies or so partisanly tendentious that cannot be taken as an almost-there information on good faith. There is a slight chance on some points that he doesn't know any better due to excessive immersion in self-confirming academic updates combined with too little travel.

The interviewer appears to be well-meaning, but really too well-meaning and under-prepared for the kind of dangerous intellectual deceiver that Hanson is. The interviewer is not up to his task.

To onlookers: Victor Davis Hanson is not worth your time. He is all-in for Trump, but he is not a player like e.g. John Eastman who broke no laws according to OakdaleFTL, but whose election theft plan for Trump got him into criminal cases in several states and disbarred in California. As long as Hanson does not serve under Trump, he is not that important.
1 As with the Rogan interview, I am not in the mood of debunking lies this weekend.↵

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #389 –
Quote from: ersi – on
I find Victor Davis Hanson giving off an air of an astute observer of the world, while really being a hyperpartisan basket case of bs brainwash flush. He calmly presents partisan lies as facts.
Hm. I just listened to the podcast... I seriously doubt that ersi ever did. (Note: He cites not one instance what Hanson said that was factually incorrect.[1] But a salient reason for the lack of examples (besides not bothering to listen to -or inability to understand- the exchange) is that his preconceived notions (and disguised motives) might be exposed if examined.

But I did like ersi's "while really being a hyperpartisan basket case of bs brainwash flush" locution! He's much more creative than Kamala Harris! Still: If brainwashing is bad, wouldn't a flush of bs be good? Or did he just mean that Hanson didn't do well with the flush?!
I think he meant the latter: It would take an industrial plunger to unstop the toilet that is ersi's political mind.
1 But that may be due to his ancient -and deficient- logical machinery. He did say that everything Hanson said was a lie — that's his major premise; he feels that any example of what Hanson says (after that) is the minor premise, and the conclusion must be that whatever he said must be a lie. Y'all know ersi: If he asserts something, you'd damn well better agree it's true — else you're, well, not ersi! That's a sin, you know... :) ↵
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #390 –
Quote from: OakdaleFTL – on
Hm. I just listened to the podcast... I seriously doubt that ersi ever did. (Note: He cites not one instance what Hanson said that was factually incorrect.
I also noted myself that I'm not in debunking mode this weekend. So, I can seriously doubt that you read the post you are responding to, as per your usual....

Anyway, the lies are blatantly obvious. Take for example his pushback against the fact of insurrection. He is not "factually incorrect". He is lying his head off.

We have been over this, you and I, and concluded that facts have no effect on you, so why bother at all. And as I said, he is unimportant because he does not work for Trump or Project 2025. Still, it's really bad for an academic to wallow in deceit this way. I'd understand if this partisan grift of his were for some pragmatic partisan purpose, but it's far worse when it's lies without a reason to lie.

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #391 –
Quote from: ersi – on
We have been over this, you and I, and concluded that facts have no effect on you,
thought OakdaleFTL about ersi. But not everyone here is ersi — although ersi thinks they are! :)

Hanson is a classicist, a historian who focusses on military history. Sure, he taught at Fresno's State University — not prestigious...[1] Yet people listen to him (although he speaks without passion.). He's a long-time member of Stanford's Hoover Institute. And a successful author. And a -mostly- successful farmer. [2]
What ersi means... Well, he doesn't usually say. He rants and raves or "hand waves", and gets vicious -in words- if one doesn't succumb to his bullying.

ersi, what do you believe? What and who do you support?
1 And some people can't go beyond prestige to find cogent thought, let alone truth!↵
2 In California's Central Valley, that counts for a lot!↵
进行 ...
"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)
 

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #392 –
I recall you saying that you were called to military service (back when Estonia was a Soviet vassal) and you hid away... When I was young I was subject to the draft (during the Viet Nam war) and I jointed the U.S. Air Force[1]
What would you fight for?

Forgive me for saying so out-right, but I suspect it would be something petty...

Well, governments often screw everyone who isn't an insider with clout. The U.S. Congress managed to lose the war for South Viet Nam — and it only cost them 58,00 American lives. And close to 2,000,000 Vietnamese lives, before and after. Ah, well!
That's politics!

As far as I can tell, you -ers- think politics is just fine! And you hate anyone who say "No! It ain't"
1 As I reported to the recruitment center at the end of the enlistment procedure, the sergeant finally requested my draft card; I said I didn't have one! He said I had to go get one and surrender it. So, I did. When the clerk at City Hall asked why I hadn't registered before, I answered "Before now I hadn't intended to serve in the military."
She -sort-of tut-tuted and gave me one; which I duly surrendered to the recruitment sergeant, and was inducted (i.e., I joined).
No one asked for my views on the war. But had someone, I'd have mentioned that I'd seen the aftermath of a "peace" rally (riot) and been caught up in its aftermath. Having thought about the pros and cons of the war, I thought it was a noble cause.
Having seen what a "peace" protest/rally was (mass looting and random mayhem), I had no qualms.

I suspect your experience, ersi, was different: You likely had the cowardice of your convictions! :)↵
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"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility." - James Thurber
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts!" - Richard Feynman
 (iBook G4 - Panther | Mac mini i5 - El Capitan)

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #393 –
Let's parse the key section of the interview from 11 minutes to 26 minutes where he begins, "Let's go through them (=all the reasons why Trump should not be president that are actually no reasons at all according to Hanson) one by one," and which ends with the interviewer approving the "exhaustive and spontaneous defense."

The items under discussion are as follows:

E. Jean Carroll
Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
She [E. Jean Carroll] couldn't remember what year it was. She couldn't remember what she wore. In fact she said she wore a particular dress that wasn't even in production at the time.
Is Hanson saying that all was well with Trump whose defence was that Carroll was not his type?[1] When E. Jean Carroll was pointed out to him on a photo, he said "This is Marla," one of his former wives. The problem with wives tends to be that they are the type, or close to.

Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
Stranger still, the scenario that she gave was almost exactly the same as a plot of a TV show of a person who goes into the same department store, goes to a dressing room and supposedly is sexually assaulted by a celebrity.
The TV show in question is "Law & Order: SVU" from 2012. According to its creator, all of its scenes are at least "inspired" by real events, if not shamelessly copied. Edit: In New York it has been common gossip that Trump raped E. Jean Carroll since 90s, because E. Jean Carroll has not been silent about it. Given when the TV show came out, the gossip inspired the TV show, not vice versa.

Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
The suit that she filed in front of a favorable judge was funded entirely by Reed Hoffman, a mega billionaire and Biden donor, so it was highly irregular.
You mean totally different from Trump whose Mar-a-Lago case was delayed and eventually thrown out by the judge he had appointed? Seems to be a fully regular feature of United States judicial system, perfectly in line with the American understanding of law and order. Hanson is just being silly partisan clown here.

Letitia James
Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
She [Letitia James] said that Donald Trump had overvalued his Mar-a-Lago residence which he said was worth about $17 million and therefore got a loan from the Deutsche Bank that he otherwise wouldn't have and therefore he had committed fraud. The bank in question said they knew better than she did the exact value of Mar-a-Lago, so the bank in question not only did they have no problem with the assets that were used as collateral, the loan was paid back promptly and with profitable interest.
Last thing first, interest is not supposed to be profitable, so Hanson does not know how bank loans work. He is, to say, not even wrong. He is totally off his rocker. Consequently, Hanson also does not know why overevaluation is a fraud in general, but overevaluation was especially fraudulent with absolute lucidity in Trump's case: Among other things, he inflated the square footage of his real estate and invented imaginary furniture and installations that were not there!

Moreover, Deutsche Bank has made internal investigations regarding its relationship with Trump. It's only hyperpartisan wilfully blind MAGAdonians who believe that the bank did not see any problem with Trump's fraudulence. Says Engoron's ruling: "In summer 2019, Deutsche Bank sent three different letters to Donald Trump, indicating that he was not in compliance with his Debt Service Coverage Ratio covenants under the Trump Chicago, Doral, and Old Post Office loans. Williams [a witness from Deutsche Bank's Wealth Management] testified that there were two more breaches of the Old Post Office and Trump Chicago loans in 2020. Williams went on to detail that all three loans breached their debt service coverage requirements in 2021, resulting in Deutsche Bank commissioning appraisals on all three properties. Williams confirmed that in July 2021, Deutsche Bank determined to “exit” the client relationship with Donald Trump." Therefore Hanson is a hyperpartisan wilfully blind MAGAdonian.

Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
That (kind of indictment) has never been used against a public figure in New York or any figure.
Allen Weisselberg, Trump's CFO, went to jail in connection with these investigations. So yes, someone has been criminally convicted in connection with this and it's not the first time nor the first hundredth time. Fraud is very well defined in New York law and real estate frauds are common according to this source (search for "inflate").

Fani Willis
Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
He [Trump] called and said find me the votes. You can argue that he didn't say invent the vote. He said they're basically there and you've got to go find them.
No, you have to be a Trump-worshipping lunatic to think that you can argue this. The discussion between Trump and Raffensberger went as follows:
- Trump: [After more than ten minutes of lying his head off citing imaginary specific instances with numbers.] So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already
- That’s not accurate, Mr. President. The numbers that we are showing are accurate.
- Trump: Did you ever check?
- We looked into that situation that you described.
- Trump: Why don’t you want to find this, Ryan? What’s wrong with you? Every single ballot went to Biden, and you didn’t know that, but, now you know it.

Therefore, by "find" Trump does not mean "they're basically there". Those in Georgia closer to the situation (and Republicans to boot) knew those alleged votes were not there and they told Trump so, but Trump still wanted to "find" when the votes were not there. Which means he wanted those votes invented, or else.

- Raffensperger: Mr. President, you have people that submit information and we have our people that submit information. And then it comes before the court and the court then has to make a determination.
- Trump: You guys are so wrong. You treated the population of Georgia so badly between you and your governor, who was down at 21. And like a schmuck, I endorsed him and he got elected, but I will tell you, he is a disaster. I can’t imagine he’s ever getting elected again I’ll tell you that much right now. But why wouldn’t you want to find the right answer.

Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
I've talked to a lot of politicians because I was curious myself how many times in close races have you called the registrar — all the time. Counting how many votes are left or [saying] there must be more votes, that was criminalized by Fanny Willis. And of course it's now in suspension, because the special prosecutor that she hired was her paramour and there was accusations that she has not been able to refute that she was giving money to the special counsel that she hired and then going on junkets with him with the monies he had taken from her public purse and he [the paramour] had met twice with the Biden White House.
As everybody even half a globe away from America knows, the court system of United States is full of partisan bias by design and this is usually considered normal over there, e.g. "judge shopping" is part of "being smart", so it is hypocritical of Hanson to try to attempt to score any moral points on it. What is not normal, however, is a politician making a call to election officials as follows:

- Raffensperger: Well, I listened to what the President has just said. President Trump, we’ve had several lawsuits and we’ve had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions. Um, we don’t agree that you have won. And we don’t — I didn’t agree about the 200,000 number that you’d mentioned.
- Trump: You know, we won the state. If you took, these are the most minimal numbers, the numbers that I gave you, those are numbers that are certified, your absentee ballots sent to vacant addresses, your out of state voters 4,925. You know when you add them up, it’s many more times, it’s many times the 11,779 number. Because, what’s the difference between winning the election by two votes and winning it by half a million votes. I think I probably did win it by half a million. We won. You know in Alabama, we set a record, got the highest vote ever. In Georgia, we set a record with a massive amount of votes. And they say it’s not possible to have lost Georgia. And I could tell you by our rallies. I could tell you by the rally I’m having on Monday night, the place, they already have lines of people standing out front waiting. It’s just not possible to have lost Georgia. It’s not possible. When I heard it was close I said there’s no way. But they dropped a lot of votes in there late at night.
- Raffensperger: Well Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.

Stormy Daniels
Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
Alvin Bragg alleged that Donald Trump had given money to Stormy Daniels in a non disclosure [agreement]. There's no controversy that he did. [The sexual affair] looks very incriminating, so Trump had a common non-disclosure. The argument was that that was a campaign donation that he did not report and therefore it wasn't personal. But the point doesn't matter. The federal prosecutor who prosecutes federal statutes because that's what campaign finance statutes apply to in presidential campaign chose not to prosecute and said there was nothing there. Alvin Bragg then took a federal violation he thought and jump-started it into a state [lawsuit]. And of course the judge was a small donor to the Biden campaign and his wife was a major advisor to democratic candidates and he was urged by a number of justices to recuse himself. He did not.
Just silly partisan clowning. Absolute failure to acknowledge the fact that Michael Cohen went to jail for this (and Weisselberg and Trump were implicated), so the criminality of these events has been established beyond a reasonable doubt.
1  Even saying "She would not have been the chosen one."↵

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #394 –
Jack Smith
Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
There is no special counsel statute. It's expired. Congress never renewed it. He's not a special counsel.
False. The *independent counsel* statute expired on June 30, 1999. Here is the special counsel statute, last amended in August 2024, i.e. in full force.

Calling Jack Smith's status into question is a sign of hyperpartisan anti-institutional blind QAnon-MAGA cultist Trump-worship. Hanson thinks that lying confidently his head off in the name of the holy cause of Trump's fascism is commendable because then you are on the Right side of history like the main actors in SCOTUS.

Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
He [Jack Smith] is a special prosecutor who was appointed by Merritt Garland. He is an employee of the DOJ the DOJ's own handbook on judicial ethics and principles for all their employees says that no federal indictment shall be issued on a major political figure or concerning a major political event 90 days before a campaign. That's exactly what he is doing now.
Except that Jack Smith began as soon as he was appointed in November 2022 (that's what he was appointed for!) and obtained the first grand jury indictment on Trump in June 2023. He did not begin now. Deliberate deception by Hanson.

Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
More importantly Donald Trump was the subject of two of a parallel situation in which special prosecutor Smith was investigating his supposed unlawful removal of classified documents from his personal residence. At the same time that was happening special prosecutor Robert Hur was investigating incumbent and current president Joe Biden. Special prosecutor Hur, if you read the entire report, has testified that Joe Biden illegally in a in a period of over three decades removed documents that were classified, he put them in unsecure locations, perhaps four of them. More importantly he had his ghost writer give access to those documents. The ghost writer destroyed the tapes, said he was worried that they may be hacked, even though they were under subpoena. Prosecutor Hur said he that could have been indicted, but he chose not to because he felt that the ghost writer did not mean it with evil intent. He said that Joe Biden was culpable, but he didn't think that he could win a conviction and I don't think I've not heard of this about a federal prosecutor before.
Last thing first, of course Hanson is lying that he has not heard a federal prosecutor to refrain from prosecution when doubting that a conviction can be obtained. Different from Hanson's delusions, those federal officers are well known for their excellent conviction rate and do not want failures on their resumes. This is why the Durham report, which according to Oakdalean wackadoodles was definitely going to impeach Biden, quietly disappeared instead, and all other impeachment attempts against Biden amounted to zero, while Trump was impeached twice on solid grounds.

As to the comparison of Biden's and Trump's documents' cases, Hanson not only betrays his partisanship, but resorts to serial lying and distorting. Robert Hur's report did not find that Biden had "over three decades removed documents that were classified." Hur's report found that Biden had been collecting documents for decades (as every career politician does) AND when classified documents were found to be among them (which were very few and only from the current century) he promptly returned them. The biggest dispute was about Biden's personal notebooks that he had been scribbling in office and which, according to the report, contained classified information. But, mind you, personal notebooks are not *marked as classified*, so there is a categorical difference compared to Trump who both held AND did not return documents that were *marked as classified*.

Biden shared his documents with his ghostwriter, while his published memoirs have not been found to contain classified material (this is also stated in Hur's report). Trump shared his documents with Saudis, specifically bragging that these were classified documents. One must be a hyperpartisan crackpot to think that this comparison favours Trump somehow.

Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
So you have this parallel prosecution on the documents. What I'm getting at is in all prior cases when there is a dispute about a classified document, it's usually handled administratively or bureaucratically. You don't take an FBI type SWAT team and go into somebody's private residence. And anybody who drives by Mar-a-Lago can see it's much more secure than Joe Biden's garage, as we know it from photograph.
Utter bunkum. Trump was defiantly uncooperative. The SWAT team did not come unannounced, but on the agreed time. And it absolutely had to be a SWAT team to protect the DOJ investigators because of Trump's violent brownshirt followers, as had become evident on January 6th, 2021.

Insurrection
Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
On January 6th Donald Trump addressed a group of people. I think that was unwise because there were people amassing at the White House and they had announced that they should go over to the Capitol. Whether you think that it was self-serving or it was genuine it doesn't matter — he did say to the group, "I expect you to assemble peacefully and patriotically at the Capitol and make your voices heard."
The fuller quote from Trump's Jan 6th speech is, "Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

As everybody knows, the "lawfully slated" part was an important element of Trump's election theft scheme. In reality, the slates of the electors were not under dispute and there were no alternative slates to consider.

Trump also said in the speech, "For years, Democrats have gotten away with election fraud and weak Republicans. And that's what they are. There's so many weak Republicans. And we have great ones. Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they're out there fighting. The House guys are fighting... If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it... Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you... And you know what else? We don't have a free and fair press. Our media is not free, it's not fair. It suppresses thought, it suppresses speech and it's become the enemy of the people. It's become the enemy of the people. It's the biggest problem we have in this country...The American people do not believe the corrupt, fake news anymore. They have ruined their reputation. But you know, it used to be that they'd argue with me. I'd fight. So I'd fight, they'd fight, I'd fight, they'd fight... We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

If due to delusional hyperpartisan blindness it is somehow unclear that this speech is full of unlawfulness (for example, Mike Pence would have done precisely the wrong thing by handing Trump the election the way Trump urged him to do) and lies, let's note that this speech by Trump was one in a series of other incitement speeches that day, such as Rudy Giuliani's "trial by combat", and John Eastman who "saw it happen" when machines stole votes from Trump, both now convicted of the election theft and insurrection conspiracies.

Quote from: Victor Davis Hanson
They entered unlawfully the Capitol and the Rotunda. They went through offices. There was violence outside the Capitol. The leftists called this an insurrection, but if you're the head of an insurrection you don't tell people to assemble peaceful and patriotically. If you go into the Capitol and you're there for insurrectionary purposes, you're armed. They didn't find a firearm. People had said they found a taser or a knife, but they have not found a firearm.
Here, convicted of carrying a firearm onto Capitol grounds. Hanson is not even trying to lie in a subtle way. He does it openly and brazenly without batting an eye. I suppose he would say "patriotically", because that's how Trump does it.

Anyway, insurrection is the absolute easiest and simplest sanity check, so I'm stopping here. If you did not see the insurrection, then you are not just insane, but wilfully so and proud of it too.

The poor little interviewer was woefully unprepared, unfamiliar with the topic, and short on facts. Additionally, I think he was being respectful of the supposed academic erudite in front of him. The interviewer was expecting intellectual integrity and was not ready for unconscionable lies. Yet it is normal for Trumpites to commit offences of the worst sort against their own dignity, not to mention against the dignity of others, so the interviewer was an easy victim for Hanson.

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #395 –
Quote from: ersi – on
Last thing first, interest is not supposed to be profitable, so Hanson does not know how bank loans work. He is, to say, not even wrong. He is totally off his rocker.
I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here. Interests are the primary source of income on loans. But of course whether a loan was paid back is wholly irrelevant in determining whether there was fraud involved.

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #396 –
Quote from: Frenzie – on
Interests are the primary source of income on loans.
Well, without going into the technicalities of banking: Everybody pays interest on loans. It's not that anybody gets to pay "unprofitable" interest for some reason, so Trump cannot be a special case here, somehow paying "profitable" interest.

With going into the technicalities of banking: Interest rates on loans are set by the central bank, so it's literally the same for everyone, and economy can turn such that interest rates are negative. The profit part for banks is in margins that are an extra rate on top of the central bank rates. Bank customers get to negotiate margins, but not interest.

Hanson would know this, had he read the Engoron ruling, because the ruling mentions it for people who happen to not know. The interest in USA is called LIBOR, in eurozone it's EURIBOR. These are the same for every customer. The main income for banks is fees, not interest.

Edit: Had Hanson read the ruling, he would know that from Deutsche Bank's point of view the discussion was about LIBOR+4% versus LIBOR+8% which was determined by the difference between Trump's personal guarantee versus corporate guarantee (i.e. whether the loan would essentially go personally to Trump or only to one/some of his companies), where the personal guarantee was linked to LIBOR+4%. Trump went for personal guarantee, i.e. lower margin, i.e. it was *less profitable* for the bank (if one is inclined to think of this in terms of profit), i.e. you cannot summarise it as "profitable interest."

Also you cannot summarise it as "the loan was paid back promptly" when the ruling says it was so unprompt and full of breaches that the bank decided to "exit" Trump — kick him out in banquese, even though the formal procedure is not very quick in reality, particularly when talking about corporate customers and private banking (private banking = VIP segment).

Since Hanson messes these important elements so profoundly up that they are upside down, it is clear that he has not read the ruling (or he read it but understood none of it, because he is a total doofus in economics overall), so he is not talking about the facts of the case, but mouthing off talking points he got from elsewhere. Namely Q.

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #398 –
Some select illegal immigrants are okay: Trump rules out deporting Prince Harry
Quote from: https://nypost.com/2025/02/08/us-news/trump-rules-out-deporting-prince-harry-takes-jab-at-meghan-markle/
Prince Harry can breathe freely in Montecito, because President Donald Trump has ruled out deporting the self-exiled British royal.

Harry’s immigration status is the subject of litigation in Washington DC, with the Heritage Foundation alleging that he may have concealed past illegal drug use that should have disqualified him from obtaining a US visa.

But the president told The New York Post Friday that he isn’t interested in throwing Harry out of the country.

Re: Everything Trump…

Reply #399 –
Yeah. For some reason, he's concentrating on rapists, child molesters and murderers... All Harry did was take a mediocre actress off the market. (She took a fool out of the line of succession — Great Britain should thank her! :) )
And, as usual, ersi shows that he has no sense of humor!
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