[Discussion] Impeachment, Legacy, and Discussion of Individual 45

Though noted as discussion, news, debate, and all things related to events that occurred during the Tr*mp administration can go here. The scope of this thread is specific to the former administration and it's hangers-on in the aftermath of the shift in power for the United States and impacted areas worldwide.

Player Hater wrote:

I didn't mean "this ride" as in Trump getting away with stuff. I meant as in any real "justice" happening to any of these rat bastards. I was born in '75 and I saw Reagan get away with all of it and Bush/Cheney get away with all of it too. Why would this be the exception?

72 here and yup.
Nixon was the last accountability in the GQP party (love that abbreviation!)

Natus wrote:

Agreed and well said. But I can't think of any politician or public figure in the recent memory who has gotten away with more criming--sexual assault, fraud, inciting violence, collusion with a foreign power, emoluments, etc.--with zero consequences like Trump has. I get that his perceived immunity from oversight is part of the attraction for his base, but I would be shocked to see him or his family actually suffer any actual penalties for their actions.

Sexual assault cases are rarely successfully prosecuted, especially when some of them are decades old. However E. Jean Carroll is moving forward with her defamation lawsuit against Trump and, now that he's not President, is forcing him to turn over documents and, eventually, a DNA sample. And then Trump has to deal with a similar lawsuit from Summer Zervos, a former contestant on The Apprentice.

Trump's facing quite a bit when it comes to fraud. His former lawyer admitted he committed real estate fraud under oath and the SCOTUS's recent ruling is moving that investigation forward. The New York State AG is also going after Trump for tax and bank fraud. Those investigations are broadening out to his other properties (and that's being matched by countries like Scotland who are starting to poke around Trump's properties there because they *really* look like money laundering fronts). And then there's that whole IRS lawsuit that Trump used his position to freeze for four years. And then there's the additional New York felony investigations related to him falsifying Trump Organization records to pay hush-money to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. Then his sister is suing him for cheating her out of her inheritance and she's already shown she'll burn sh*t down around him and I wouldn't be surprised if the lawsuit was merely a way to pry information out of Trump.

The rest are political crimes and, very unfortunately, aren't likely going to go anywhere. SCOTUS dismissed the emoluments lawsuits, which are merely academic now that Trump's out of office. Foreign collusion would be a Female Doggo to prosecute and, again, is kinda moot with him not being President anymore. And we've already seen the results of his political trial for inciting violence. But who knows if there's anyone who got hurt on 1/6 who might want to file a civil lawsuit against Trump and recoup damages from his orange ass.

There's a lot of legal pokers in the fire right now and I seriously doubt Trump's going to be able successfully deal with them all. He'll never truly pay his debt to society, but I'll be happy if he gets the Capone treatment and goes to jail for tax evasion or something like that. And it probably will.

Well, personally, I'm still dreaming of Trump in Rikers Island. That would make this a good year, I think.

edit: although, more likely, it would make 2023 a good year.

Bernie Madoff got 150 years and is going to die in prison, pending any sore of release due to hardship as he ages.

There are a lot of vested interest in making sure the head of a major political institution doesn't go to prison but it's kinda hard to forestall that with this much legal and financial pressure coming for him. It's not like the WSJ portion of the GOP cannot WAIT to rid themselves of this guy.

I can see it now, "Well, golly, he broke the financial rules and it turns out he just doesn't have the cash to cover his bets. In truth, he never really was one of us. Just an up-jumped real estate guy from Queens who got along better with mobsters and the nouveau-riche than with us real masters of the universe types. We're glad to see him go."

The fact that the GOP has apparently decided that the useful idiot is still useful does make me wonder if there will truly be accountability for all of the sh*t that Trump has done or has been rumored to have done.

I'm still hopeful that, at least on some levels, there will be some reveal of just how poor and over-leveraged Trump actually is. If for no other reason then I want to see the GOP fall over themselves to explain it. Given the current adulation of Trump by the GOP I have very little hope that there's going to be any true shift in thinking. It'll all be chalked up to fake news. Despite that, I'm hoping that some sort of justice comes out of this, even if it is just some sort of perceived karma balancing.

JC wrote:

The fact that the GOP has apparently decided that the useful idiot is still useful does make me wonder if there will truly be accountability for all of the sh*t that Trump has done or has been rumored to have done.

ALL of the sh*t he's done? No.

SOME of the sh*t he's done? I think it's more probable than it seems. The "they got Capone for tax evasion" comparison is apt, I think. He's done a LOT of sh*t. Some of it is likely to stick.

Player Hater wrote:

I didn't mean "this ride" as in Trump getting away with stuff. I meant as in any real "justice" happening to any of these rat bastards. I was born in '75 and I saw Reagan get away with all of it and Bush/Cheney get away with all of it too. Why would this be the exception?

If Trump gets nailed, it'll be for things he did outside of the scope of his presidency. Reagan, Bush, Cheney, et al., did a lot of horrible stuff while in office, but they did those horrible things in the name of advancing some kind of political interest for the party and (as they saw it) for the nation as a whole. People will "can't break an omelet" and "rough men in the night to visit violence" their way into justifying those actions, and legally it all becomes a big morass.

But Trump is now being prosecuted for out of office actions like tax evasion, defamation, and all that kind of stuff that can't be waved of away as "the unfortunate but necessary duties of the office". Unless he has people in positions of continued power willing to come to his rescue, there's a better-than-normal chance that he could be prosecuted for those things.

The ironic thing is that he likely wouldn't have faced consequences for his decades of usual rich man bullsh*t criminal activity if he hadn't have become President. If he had been President and done all the same things (minus, you know, the insurrection bit) then he would have been shielded from all of that. If he had never been President, he probably could have kept right on doing all the things he was doing and buying his way out of trouble with NDAs, endless court filings, settlements, and the usual ways that rich people use money to insulate themselves from consequence.

However, because Trump did become President and did do a bunch of horrible stuff while President, he opened himself up to prosecution for all that other rich dude stuff by people or groups that have financial resources and political convictions driving them to see him brought to some kind of justice. The tax cases are a proxy for the crimes of his presidency when they otherwise likely would have gotten much less scrutiny.

Rich white dudes only go to jail when they rip off other rich white dudes.

TheGameguru wrote:

Rich people only go to jail when they rip off other rich people.

Fixed that for you. I don’t know what it’s going to take to get people like you who desperately cling to race as the root of every problem in this country to understand, but the only color that matters in good old ‘Merica is GREEN! If you have the cash you won’t do the time, and a rich black dude can afford those same high powered lawyers that a rich white dude has. Racism is an important issue in this country, that’s no question, but the fact is money talks and bullsh*t walks. If you think for one second that somehow a black man with millions of dollars isn’t going to get off the same way a rich white man with those same resources would then you must be incredibly naive. It’s all about the Benjamins folks, that’s all it’s ever about. If you have money you don’t live in the same reality as the rest of us, regardless of your skin color. Of course there are exceptions like your OJs (and I’d also like to point out that OJ got off on the murder charge, despite all the evidence and his skin color, he went to jail for robbery) and your Bernie Madoffs, but those are few and far between. The vast majority of rich people with high powered lawyers NEVER see the inside of a cell, that’s just a fact you can look up.

And let’s be honest here, it’s by and large minority races that get harassed by the police, but not all. It happens to white people too. My daughter is about as white as you can get, but that didn’t stop six cops from pulling her over on her way home from work late one night. They got her out of the car, yelled at her, accused her of having a gun (!), searched her and her vehicle, then made her wait another 20 minutes just to screw with her even more because they knew they had nothing. Luckily she has some of my ex-wife’s fight in her so she stood her ground and told them to search whatever they wanted, she didn’t do sh*t. I was so proud of her for standing up to them like that. Oh and by the way, and I know you of all people will probably find this impossible to believe, but the cop that pulled her over, started the entire thing, by far the most hateful yelling and screaming in her face? He was black.

Glycerine wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Rich white men only go to jail when they rip off other rich white men.

Fixed that for you.

Fixed that for you. Pulling out one or two exceptions doesn't stop the avalanche of evidence that your equivalence is false. Class reductionism ain't cool. Race and gender are a factor at ALL levels of class.

Edit: here is a question that I think may sort of illustrate the difference here. When your white daughter found the fire of her mother and stood up to the black policeman, was she shot to death?

hbi2k wrote:
garion333 wrote:

IMAGE(https://media0.giphy.com/media/lTB6FKY1fmAZhhv1En/giphy.gif)

You may very well be right, but it's going to get real tedious real quick if this thread falls into a pattern of "someone posts something mildly hopeful -> five posts in a row saying some variation of 'ain't nothin' gonna happen' -> wash, rinse, repeat."

Yes, we know that Trump has a history of weaseling out of the consequences of his actions. But that's not a reason not to continue trying to hold him accountable.

Every criminal in history has gotten away with it until the day they didn't. Maybe this development will lead to that day, and maybe it won't. But I for one will continue to believe that that day will come one way or another, because defeatism solves nothing.

I'll stop posting this image every six months or so when Trump is held accountable for something, anything. He was impeached twice and it didn't do sh*t. It was political theater, the second time coming closest and that was largely only because folks invaded the Capitol and erected a frickin noose.

However, I truly believe that Trump ran for office as a way to further his brand, make $$, get himself more power and keep his ass out of jail. For the past five+ years Trump has been collecting politicians in order to keep his ass from jail. He's got huge loans coming due and will use every last ounce of power he has to weasel out of it.

Trump may end up with financial losses, but I seriously doubt he'll ever see a jail cell. All he needs to do is draw out any investigation and conviction long enough for a Republican to be in the White House and pardon him.

I would love to be wrong, but until the day comes where he's being hauled off in handcuffs, well, it's clear that money talks and despite all his poor choices Donald frickin Trump still has enough of it to keep his ass out of jail.

Seth wrote:

Edit: here is a question that I think may sort of illustrate the difference here. When your white daughter found the fire of her mother and stood up to the black policeman, was she shot to death?

... Also at which point did the officers decide not to 'find' a gun or drugs to validate their stop?

Letting the police search your car for a fishing expedition is not standing up to the cops.
https://www.naacp.org/wp-content/upl...

I'm glad your daughter is safe.

Rezzy is absolutely correct. I am suspicious this thread is about to fill up with people pointing out the myriad problems with Glycerine’s post, so I just also want to say I’m glad your daughter is safe, #acab, and I’ll leave the rest to y’all.

To post something like that at TheGameguru and mention family situations... I just... someone done shot a bottle rocket off inside the fireworks factory.

Glycerine wrote:

And let’s be honest here, it’s by and large minority races that get harassed by the police, but not all. It happens to white people too. My daughter is about as white as you can get, but that didn’t stop six cops from pulling her over on her way home from work late one night. They got her out of the car, yelled at her, accused her of having a gun (!), searched her and her vehicle, then made her wait another 20 minutes just to screw with her even more because they knew they had nothing. Luckily she has some of my ex-wife’s fight in her so she stood her ground and told them to search whatever they wanted, she didn’t do sh*t. I was so proud of her for standing up to them like that. Oh and by the way, and I know you of all people will probably find this impossible to believe, but the cop that pulled her over, started the entire thing, by far the most hateful yelling and screaming in her face? He was black.

You completely undermined your argument in the first para with this.

While this is a valuable discussion we have threads about it. Shouldn't this one focus on our bitter disappointment in trump being held accountable and how it reflects on the state of our nation - you know lighter stuff.

Glycerine would have a point if there WERE a load of rich people who weren't white, but in America, where one of predominant factors that determine your wealth is your race, he's technically right, but practically wrong.

Would he though? While rich Black people are certainly treated better than poor Blacks, they are not treated so well as rich whites.

I would also point out how his first paragraph was about how "us people" keep making it about race, while his second paragraph was him making it entirely about race. I read it as really an uncomfortably racist objection to the treatment of his white daughter by a Black officer. When your final objection in the discrimination diatribe is to let us know that the cop was Black, I am just going to send you positive thoughts and hope you develop some self awareness.

I saw a TED talk awhile back that richness and color are separate issues, and that a lot of the resentment from poor whites is that they see rich black people that are better off than they are, and they get frustrated with being told that they're privileged, when they feel that they aren't.

Richness matters more than color, but color matters a lot. A rich white man is in the best position overall, followed by rich white women, followed by rich black men, followed by rich black women, followed by middle-class white men, and so on. (In some cases, a middle-class white man may be more privileged than a rich black woman.)

Privilege sorts first by wealth, then by color, then by gender, but at any wealth level, whiteness is a big advantage, enough to sometimes cross into the next wealth bracket in terms of how you're treated.

Malor wrote:

Privilege sorts first by wealth, and then by color, but at any wealth level, whiteness is a big advantage, enough to sometimes cross into the next wealth bracket in terms of how you're treated.

Yes, but wealth and color aren't independent variables. As I said a couple posts up, wealth itself largely sorts by color.

If you substitute that into your premise, you get "privilege sorts first by color and then by color." Which feels like a more fundamental summation.

Jonman wrote:
Malor wrote:

Privilege sorts first by wealth, and then by color, but at any wealth level, whiteness is a big advantage, enough to sometimes cross into the next wealth bracket in terms of how you're treated.

Yes, but wealth and color aren't independent variables. As I said a couple posts up, wealth itself largely sorts by color.

If you substitute that into your premise, you get "privilege sorts first by color and then by color." Which feels like a more fundamental summation.

No, that's not an accurate rewording. There are a fair number of wealthy blacks, and they are much more privileged than middle-class white people, for the most part.

Yikes

Malor wrote:

No, that's not an accurate rewording. There are a fair number of wealthy blacks, and they are much more privileged than middle-class white people, for the most part.

Regardless of the facts, you might wanna rethink the use of the word "fair" in that statement!

Anything Trump related happen lately?

The problem with trying to rank privilege in that way is that it presupposes some simple and objective metric by which privilege can be measured and ranked. Different people are afforded differing levels of privilege in different contexts, and trying to get much more granular than "white folks tend to have more privilege than colored folks in most contexts" quickly runs into too many exceptions to be useful.

Controlling for severity of the crime, men are incarcerated on average 63% more often than women and are twice as likely to be incarcerated at all. Men are far more likely to be the victims of homicide than women, and their rate of successful suicide is twice to four times that of women.

I am sure that someone can and probably will reply to the above paragraph with any number of statistics illustrating male privilege, and they'll probably be right. The point is that it's more complicated than an orderly totem pole in which rich white men sit at the top and poor colored women at the bottom.

Malor wrote:
Jonman wrote:
Malor wrote:

Privilege sorts first by wealth, and then by color, but at any wealth level, whiteness is a big advantage, enough to sometimes cross into the next wealth bracket in terms of how you're treated.

Yes, but wealth and color aren't independent variables. As I said a couple posts up, wealth itself largely sorts by color.

If you substitute that into your premise, you get "privilege sorts first by color and then by color." Which feels like a more fundamental summation.

No, that's not an accurate rewording. There are a fair number of wealthy blacks, and they are much more privileged than middle-class white people, for the most part.

You couldn't have posted a more incorrect post.. You have a myriad of examples that will show you how wrong you are. First unless you are black you have zero clue how life is regardless of wealth. My wife is asked almost 100% of the time when she answers the door to our house by literally anyone on the other side of that door if she is the owner (or even worse not even asked but told "can I speak to the owner of the house"). The day to day micro-aggressions black people in America regardless of wealth face that no white person regardless of wealth faces is unmeasurable.

Yikes

On so many levels.. even Oprah was harassed and questioned in a retail store.

TheGameguru wrote:

You couldn't have posted a more incorrect post.. You have a myriad of examples that will show you how wrong you are. First unless you are black you have zero clue how life is regardless of wealth. My wife is asked almost 100% of the time when she answers the door to our house by literally anyone on the other side of that door if she is the owner (or even worse not even asked but told "can I speak to the owner of the house"). The day to day micro-aggressions black people in America regardless of wealth face that no white person regardless of wealth faces is unmeasurable.

And that's the problem right there: there's no way to make a simple apples-to-apples comparison between the kind of day-to-day BS you describe, and the various privileges afforded by wealth.

I'd rather be a poor white person getting pulled over on a routine traffic stop than a wealthy black person. One is simply more likely to be harassed or shot by the cops than the other.

I'd rather be a wealthy black person than a poor white person if I had to pay for cancer treatment or higher education for my kids.

Who is more privileged? It depends on context.

Not to mention multiple examples of rich black men having the cops called on them for trying to get into their own house.

garion333 wrote:

However, I truly believe that Trump ran for office as a way to further his brand, make $$, get himself more power and keep his ass out of jail. For the past five+ years Trump has been collecting politicians in order to keep his ass from jail. He's got huge loans coming due and will use every last ounce of power he has to weasel out of it.

Trump may end up with financial losses, but I seriously doubt he'll ever see a jail cell. All he needs to do is draw out any investigation and conviction long enough for a Republican to be in the White House and pardon him.

I agree with you that Trump ran for office as a way to further his brand and make more money.

I'm not so sure about him wanting more power because his entire career was built around claiming wealth, not building power. Building power requires you to not treat personal, business, and political interactions as transactional in nature. Building power requires you to mentor and nurture in people now in the knowledge that your investment will pay off many fold down the road. Building power requires the ability to organize and influence other powerful people and shepherd them in a way that helps you achieve your goals.

Trump has none of those skills.

All Trump has power-wise is an angry mob of White people who've been riled up by years of conservative news who, for various reasons, have adopted him as their savior. Currently, that angry mob represents a slim majority of Republican voters.

But even last year Trump's endorsement wasn't enough to guarantee Republican candidates victory. I don't see him having a greater ability to do so in two or four years and Trump's escalating legal problems are likely to make some Republican candidates run away from him.

Ironically Trump being President is what triggered many of the investigations he's now facing and is motivating prosecutors to hold him accountable in ways they wouldn't be if he was just a washed-up reality TV host.

I mean no one would be combing through his taxes now if he hadn't had his personal lawyer pay off a porn star and Playboy bunny while he was campaigning and run those payments through the Trump Organization. Nor would they be looking at his taxes if his personal lawyer hadn't testified to Congress that Trump purposefully undervalued his properties when tax assessors came and overvalued them when he was using them as collateral for bank loans.

I'm moderately confident Trump's going to serve some jail time. He's lost the biggest legal protection he had--being President--and now the Wheels of Justice are turning faster. Plus the tax and fraud stuff are going to be state charges so there's not really a chance for a theoretical future Republican President to pardon him. Not to mention the court cases and (hopefully) convictions are going to tarnish Trump's image and turn off whatever moderate Republicans are out there still carrying water for him.

I'd rather be a wealthy black person than a poor white person if I had to pay for cancer treatment or higher education for my kids.

Nope (again) the reality that face many black people when they go to get treatment even if they can afford it is very different vs your average white person. Black people routinely receive worse treatment and die at higher % than whites (just look at Covid recently).

And education you couldn't be more wrong.. take a look at any feedback on Black websites about the harassment, double standards, and overall treatment in private schools where black people make up less than 1% of the students and faculty. .