Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

As you can see they're both the same except one wants a war with Iran while the other wants a war with Russia.

Here's an article about the Russia political narrative: https://www.thenation.com/article/el...on-russiagate/




Oh and so much for being a so-called traitor:

Nah.

The media has done a bad job explaining Russian actions and relations besides reminding consumers that it exists. Try checking the poll numbers once you control for Republicans.

If, as has become chillingly plausible over time, the Russians modified state voter rolls, we are squarely in the territory of illegitimacy. We are only one step from this revelation, though we can only hope it did not come that far. If vote tallies were modified, anything becomes possible.

Haranguing allies for not meeting perceived obligations to the United States, to no obvious effect that could threaten Russia (quite the opposite) is not an anti-Russian action.

Obama launched the EDI and increased funding to $3 billion over time in office. Republicans' proposed increases across the board in military spending of course would affect this program. If you have evidence Trump personally advocated for funding increases to this specific program, present it. At any rate, the administration's (executive's) input in budgetary details is small compared to the Congress that drafts it.

The fact that Trump's cabinet secretaries and other selected officials constantly contradict him does not reflect well on Trump.

The closest this comes to a point is in the sale of ~200 Javelin missiles and ~40 launchers to Ukraine. If this were flanked with consistent policy aimed at constraining Russia and multiplied by an order of magnitude, we could call it approaching "tough on Russia".


I really hate the misinformation and disingenuous takes on Russia. I understand if one is on the take, or is an outright fascist, but too many have allowed reflexive anti-Americanism to turn their heads to mush.

[AE Bravo]

The only source you've given about this whole meddling affair is from the US Senate, one of the actors who are being accused of throwing up a smokescreen by a large portion of the US public. See there's this core principle called due process in the US and I'm not seeing what's chillingly plausible to you. I get really wary of people acting as if the whole issue is settled. All we have are the words of a few government agencies which lied consistently in the past.

[Montmorency]

The only source you've given about this whole meddling affair is from the US Senate, one of the actors who are being accused of throwing up a smokescreen by a large portion of the US public. See there's this core principle called due process in the US and I'm not seeing what's chillingly plausible to you. I get really wary of people acting as if the whole issue is settled. All we have are the words of a few government agencies which lied consistently in the past.

I'm not sure what you're referring to. Can you be more specific?

The details of the issue are not settled. The contours are. Skepticism in January 2017 was recommended. Skepticism today is self-delusion or contrarian compulsion. I don't know how much you know, so just tell me what you think the facts are.

The presumption of innocence exists only in the courtroom during the course of a criminal trial and nowhere else. Trump has not yet been put through the judicial system, save for his many hundreds of civil suits. Don't worry your head for him; no single person in the world is better placed to receive the full benefits of due process. I'm not advocating for a Yanukovych treatment, far from it. The whole affair must be hashed out in the courts for all to see. Impeachment is a nice idea because -

because let's say you believe in something absurd to make Russia go away. Maybe, for instance, the dozens and dozens of secret (and lied about) meetings and attempts at incognito communication channels by dozens of campaign and administration and GOP members high and low, were actually all because people around Trump just like listening to Russian accents. They find it soothing, perhaps. So soothing they'll lie prodigiously about it and disrupt the workings of the country to get their fix. They'll jet around talking to various Asian and Arab autocrats about business dealings with Russia on the agenda of sharing the amazing Russian accent with the world. Leaving aside that this surreal scenario in itself would potentially be impeachable, let's go ahead and abstractly excise any possible relevance of Russian compromission, policy conduct toward Russia, anything and everything. Trump would still be impeachable a dozen times over for his conduct in office. He would have been impeachable the instant he was sworn in. So you understand why impeachment could be seen as a procedural good in itself. Alas, Trump will never be impeached this coming cycle; it's, as I described earlier in the thread, mathematically unavailable. It will be endured.

But giving Trump his metaphorical day in court is indispensable for the health and sanity of the country. For the sake of the truth. It's non-negotiable, and were the future DOJ, or any succeeding administration or Congress to discard the process in the name of "healing the country", they would do so at the risk of disgracing themselves.


Refresh my IIRC, aren't you a Shiite Arab in the Middle East? Your style of posting has changed so much from previous years you could, along with the name change, be taken for another person.

Disclaimer: You'll hate me for taking this out of context, but here's a dunk courtesy of Mangal Media:

Opposing racist narratives and the manipulation of historical truths for one’s own ideological end should be a starting point for any discussion. If the ‘anti-war’ movement cannot face its own racism and Islamophobia, it is not a movement aimed at our wellbeing and dignity. If the bar is this low for the left, then yes – let us be divisive. If this is what is to be accepted by whatever the “antiwar movement” is – then yes! Let us completely destroy it. What use is it to us if these people call themselves “anti-war,” but commit themselves to a dogmatic left-statist position where the crimes of Soviets or modern-day Russia are whitewashed in whataboutisms.

[AE Bravo]

Referring to this document: https://www.burr.senate.gov/imo/medi...ings,Recs2.pdf

I’m trying to wrap my head around why one should blame anyone besides the US government first and foremost.

The details of the issue are not settled. The contours are. Skepticism in January 2017 was recommended. Skepticism today is self-delusion or contrarian compulsion. I don't know how much you know, so just tell me what you think the facts are.

How are they settled? Why should crimes levied against a foreign government not call into question the actions of the victim state in this circumstance? If the US wants to make a fuss about its cybersecurity and its sovereignty, it needs to examine itself first before sabotaging international relations. I don't understand how you can say skepticism is self-delusion when the issue is far from being settled.

They find it soothing, perhaps. So soothing they'll lie prodigiously about it and disrupt the workings of the country to get their fix. They'll jet around talking to various Asian and Arab autocrats about business dealings with Russia

Very shady I agree. Hasn’t Israel been doing the same thing? I think America's elites love Israeli accents a little bit more. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a8470481.html

Refresh my IIRC, aren't you a Shiite Arab in the Middle East? Your style of posting has changed so much from previous years you could, along with the name change, be taken for another person.

I don’t know how it has changed (Sunni btw), but I’m not sure how going as far as to call those trying to ease the tensions with Russia fascists, with US funding fascist apartheid regimes and Israel funding fascists in Ukraine. It’s hard to engage someone who starts from a position that Russia is the aggressor when the US acted treacherously and reneged on their agreements with Russia regarding NATO for example: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-b...-leaders-early

[Montmorency]

Once more, you're oscillating between the two questions of 'What happenned, what is happening?' and 'What is the historical and philosophical context?' I've already commented on the latter, you know my opinion, and the weaknesses of your own. I won't bandy any more in scorecarding and whataboutism. My only interest here is underlining "what happened".

Since you raised some of the more recent developments in the hacking investigtion, we can discuss that: efforts to hack or modify the electoral infrastructure, and their Russian origin.

First, the late report is a Senate summary based on the reports of numerous state governments, agencies of the federal government, and independent and contracted investigators. This isn't something a Senate subcommittee extrapolated from original research.

The Committee’s assessments, as well as the assessments of the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), are based on
self-reporting by the states. DHS has been clear in its representations to the Committee
that the Department did not have perfect insight into these cyber activities. It is possible
that more states were attacked, but the activity was not detected. In light of the technical
challenges associated with cyber forensic analysis, it is also possible that states may have
overlooked some indicators of compromise.

Second, reports on this (I mean about cyber intrusions, not Congressional reports specifically) have been coming out since 2016, accumulating and painting a more profound and disturbing picture of the scope of Russian activities all the time. For example, in mid-2017 various CIA and NSA documents were leaked that provided details on one branch of the attempts to penetrate voting systems in the states, and the responsibility of the GRU in it. (Putin's response was to suggest that independent Russian "patriots" may have conducted cyber operations against the US after all.) Trump and his team were even briefed on the state of investigations before he was inaugurated. This briefing included text, audio, primary source testimony, and corroborating work done by multiple Western governments.

Third, it is already known that Russia has a demonstrated desire and a stated and demonstrated ability to engage in various forms of cyber operations against the United States (among others). Putin finally publicly admitted in the Helsinki summit that "[he] wanted Trump to win." The email hacks, the infrastructure hacks, and the microtargeting/information-war were all distinct but interrelated covert activities, and mutually corroborating. It is far less parsimonious to believe that multiple actors, not cooperating but working in tandem toward the same objective, would engage in discrete and non-overlapping fields of intervention. Mueller's indictments do not (yet) elucidate the state electoral hacks, but I recommend you look through Mueller's Russian indictments as they contain a fair amount of detail in describing and analyzing the process of the information ops and the email hacks, and their Russian provenance.

Fourth, someone is already known to be targeting the 2018 election: Microsoft recently announced spearphishing attempts against several Democratic candidates from domains that had previously been associated with the 2016 operation.

Now here's homework for you. In 2013, the Obama Administration admitted that the United States was directly involved in overthrowing Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Between 1953 and 2013, what evidence was there that the US had any part in this episode, that it wasn't the work of a guy sitting at their desk who weighs 400 lbs?

[AE Bravo]

You have so far labeled those who disagree with you as fascists and anti-American for not having the same faith in faulty intelligence as you do. It’s exactly the sort of elitism the article I linked before highlights in American discourse. The Senate summary is comprised of evidence from authoritative institutions and their overlords, the scriptural foundation a largely fact-free assessment yet the media insists on passing it off as unassailable fact. We agree that there is disinformation alright, just not on the same side.

Of course anything that provides context is dismissed as ‘whataboutism.’ So here’s some more context for you: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.e69dae10b53f
The story was entirely wrong and was retracted, unlike the stories regarding Russian interference in the French and German elections even after they were discredited. California and Wisconsin election officials denied that the Russians hacked local and state voting systems as well.

As for your reference to the meetings which you called “incognito,” after publication of the story, Erik Prince said he was shown evidence by sources from the intelligence community that his name was unmasked and given to the paper. This was the Seychelles meeting. So what are you referring to exactly with the Russian and Arab autocrats meeting GOP secretly?

There are far more consequential threats to democracy than cyber-interference such as the billionaire interference, loss of voting rights protection, mass incarceration, immigrant scare-mongering, gerrymandering, electoral college, US Senate. This may as well be a campaign by bureaucrats who violated the privacy of American citizens, who are simply butturt over election results they disagreed with. Those who perpetuate this political narrative are their assets.

Second, reports on this (I mean about cyber intrusions, not Congressional reports specifically) have been coming out since 2016, accumulating and painting a more profound and disturbing picture of the scope of Russian activities all the time. For example, in mid-2017 various CIA and NSA documents were leaked that provided details on one branch of the attempts to penetrate voting systems in the states, and the responsibility of the GRU in it. (Putin's response was to suggest that independent Russian "patriots" may have conducted cyber operations against the US after all.)

Hand-picked analysts, the claims of the latter (NSA) made with only 'moderate confidence.' This is creating a misleading impression of unanimity, since only three of the sixteen intelligence agencies contributed to the report.

‘Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.’

Trump and his team were even briefed on the state of investigations before he was inaugurated. This briefing included text, audio, primary source testimony, and corroborating work done by multiple Western governments.

The sort of backchannel diplomacy that routinely happens between one administration and the next. Not a sign of collusion.

Fourth, someone is already known to be targeting the 2018 election: Microsoft recently announced spearphishing attempts against several Democratic candidates from domains that had previously been associated with the 2016 operation.

And the NSA probably knows who, yet hasn't presented the evidence yet. The NSA's ability to trace hacking to its source is a matter of public record.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

You have so far labeled those who disagree with you as fascists and anti-American for not having the same faith in faulty intelligence as you do....

Monty can get a bit hyperbolic at times -- something we all succumb to here in the Backroom now and again. But he does better than some at supporting his arguments and explaining his points.

As to the intelligence, the degree to which it can be considered faulty is not knowable at the present time, at least based on the partial information available in the media. Most intelligence analyses are less than 100% correct as they are ALL estimations of intent etc. based on the data available.

Finally, some of the Trump supporters really are "fascists" as we commonly use the term today, and while Trump has decried them publicly, he has often been a bit slow and a bit less vehement in denouncing those white power idiots than he has been in denouncing his political opponents.


NOTE: Fascism is correctly labeled as an authoritarian political structure that emphasizes nationalism and in which the government guides and influences economic decisions while ownership and capital is retained on a private basis. Today, we use it as a pejorative for authoritarian attitudes, particularly those of a racist or hyper-nationalist stripe. USA Aryan Nation and White Power groups really are not fascists in the classic sense, just racist idiots scared to be evaluated on the content of their character because they know deep down they would then have to admit they don't rank as worth much of anything.

[spmetla]

The Senate summary is comprised of evidence from authoritative institutions and their overlords, the scriptural foundation a largely fact-free assessment yet the media insists on passing it off as unassailable fact. We agree that there is disinformation alright, just not on the same side.

Authoritative institutions and their overlords? You mean the FBI and US intelligence agencies I assume? What do you consider a legitimate source then, is it only legitimate if it backs up your predetermined narrative?

There are far more consequential threats to democracy than cyber-interference

Yes, there are and those need to be looked into but that does not mean that cyber interference should be ignored or downplayed. It has the ability to get into tampering actual vote counts for electronic voting, the swaying of opinions by targeted propaganda is dangerous enough in a culture were people don't check the 'facts' they get from facebook or twitter.

The sort of backchannel diplomacy that routinely happens between one administration and the next. Not a sign of collusion.

For a normal administration it would't be. This administration however has all sorts of alleged ties to illicit Russia money, sanctioned individuals, and the President himself has an obvious and undeniable man-crush on Putin (or he's beholden to him). He's only conducted actions such as sanctions against Russia when presented with veto-proof votes by Congress on the bill and even then he protests and says it has “clearly unconstitutional provisions” giving doubt in his intent to carry out the letter of the law.
Seeing as the line has changed from "there is no collusion" to "collusion isn't a crime" it seems they are coming to terms with what seems to actually be collusion which will probably end up being potential charges of criminal conspiracy between Russia and US individuals (how high up no one knows for sure yet).

[Montmorency]

You have so far labeled those who disagree with you as fascists and anti-American for not having the same faith in faulty intelligence as you do. It’s exactly the sort of elitism the article I linked before highlights in American discourse. The Senate summary is comprised of evidence from authoritative institutions and their overlords, the scriptural foundation a largely fact-free assessment yet the media insists on passing it off as unassailable fact. We agree that there is disinformation alright, just not on the same side.

I did not call you a fascist, though pointing out many who promulgate the disinformation (e.g. Assange) are fascists in that they explicitly identify with the Russian political system and see themselves as righteous enemies of the United States as promoter of liberal ideals. I do believe anti-Americanism is the culprit in our case here based on what you've written on the board about American foreign policy and other topics over the years, to the point where objective evaluation of evidence is hindered by motivated reasoning. So what can I take your position as, if not 'The American government always lies, especially as I choose to disregard things inconvenient to me'?

And we come to the conspiracy of thousands across different US states, across countries, branches of government, conspiracy to falsify the case against Trump and paint him in a bad light - all to contradict a conspiracy of individuals, Trump and Putin, individuals whose lives prior to 2016 we have known quite a lot about. Who have lied every step of the way for 2 years, telling dozens of inconsistent stories and gradually walking them back as more and more inculpatory details have come to light. The ones who lie as a political practice on every matter under the sun to an extent unimaginable to most humans. More consonant to believe everyone opposed to them is lying or "butthurt".

Or if this estimation of your mindset is wrong, then what's your argument?

This may as well be a campaign by bureaucrats who violated the privacy of American citizens, who are simply butturt over election results they disagreed with. Those who perpetuate this political narrative are their assets.

*channels Rex Tillerson vicariously* So the conspiracy of thousands it is, then. A shame all these privacy-violating bureaucrats couldn't stop hurting Hillary Clinton if they didn't want Trump to win (also despite being overwhelmingly Republican...). Or, maybe they've lost their minds and are chasing shadows despite their training and experience, and are not so brilliant or sound of judgement as you to conclude otherwise.

Of course anything that provides context is dismissed as ‘whataboutism.’ So here’s some more context for you: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.e69dae10b53f
The story was entirely wrong and was retracted, unlike the stories regarding Russian interference in the French and German elections even after they were discredited. California and Wisconsin election officials denied that the Russians hacked local and state voting systems as well.

The WaPo story jumped the gun but it was not entirely wrong about the existence of the activity, it was wrong about the scope, purpose and technical aspect of what systems were affected (the business system). A bad job all told but not something that supports complacency about Russia or about cybercrime. As the Post's followup article explains, the government had embarked on outreach to the various utilities and power companies throughout the country and gave them a broad set of information and benchmarks with which to assess their systems for potential Russian activity that the government could follow up on. The Washington Post got some insider scoop about Vermont's Burlington utility and misinterpreted that one of the government's criteria had been pinged to mean a full-scale attack. Later reports bear out the Russian interests in American utilities and power generation.

In fact, with time the government has come to confirm a fairly wide-ranging effort to target power systems throughout the country, at a minimum for espionage. To be fair, North Korea is reportedly implicated as well here, and Russia surveils utilities throughout the world, not merely America. And to be extra fair, the US has previously gone so far as to conduct a successful attack on industrial controls themselves through Stuxnet. To be extra-extra fair, Russia was recently successful with an attack of similar depth on the Ukrainian power grid.

Perhaps you would also like to bring up the CNN story about Scaramucci's Russian connections published and retracted in 2017? 'Ha!' you would cry, 'journalists were fired over it!' As it so happens, the story turned out to be accurate. The problem here was of journalistic standards: CNN fired the people involved because they did not follow company procedure in sourcing.

Stories of Russian interference in France and Germany were not discredited. Provide strong proof that it could not have been Russia, or that it was someone else; otherwise, that's a lie.

The last quoted sentence is an example of why you make me so frustrated. Why on earth would you type that sentence? Around 20 states so far have reported Russian attempts or successes in penetrating to varying extents their voting framework. Twenty means fewer than 50 FFS. That we know of. To suggest that if 2 states report no evidence of Russian breaches in their own systems, no state was breached, is insultingly dumb.

As for your reference to the meetings which you called “incognito,” after publication of the story, Erik Prince said he was shown evidence by sources from the intelligence community that his name was unmasked and given to the paper. This was the Seychelles meeting. So what are you referring to exactly with the Russian and Arab autocrats meeting GOP secretly?

I think you're mixing together several different people and issues.

So far the evidence of GOP connections to foreign influence with Trump's campaign is much thinner than that for the efforts of campaign agents themselves. However, it is noteworthy because it shows at least some political actors were aware of Russian interference (that is, before email dumps became public) and wanted to use it to their advantage or to assist the Trump campaign. Setting aside the NRA and Erickson (Butina's boyfriend) for now, some of these were:

Nevins (G.O.P. OPERATIVE CONFIRMS ALLEGED RUSSIAN HACKER GAVE HIM 2016 VOTER DATA)
Smith (GOP Operative Sought Clinton Emails From Hackers, Implied a Connection to Flynn)
Stone (Roger Stone was involved heavily in both the Trump campaign and the party at-large, so I'm going to make the unoriginal prediction that he will be indicted rather soon; there's a huge amount of reporting on his campaign activities, including within Mueller's Russian indictments)

As for the campaign itself, a few names pertaining to the Middle East and its economic interests vis-a-vis the US and Russia:

Prince
Flynn
Kushner
Papadopoulos
McFarlane
McFarland
Nader
Barrack

There are far more consequential threats to democracy than cyber-interference such as the billionaire interference, loss of voting rights protection, mass incarceration, immigrant scare-mongering, gerrymandering, electoral college, US Senate.

All of these really are consequential threats, but I can bring even more to the table: Natural disasters! Climate change! Water scarcity! Mass migration! Pandemics! Cosmic events! How can you be worrying about elections when we're all going to die?

The fact that there are challenges in the world you could enumerate does not obviate the existence or importance of other, additional challenges. They have to be placed against each other and synthesized, not dismissed, to be effectively addressed. Geez, talk about Oppression Olympics.

For that matter, how could one possibly think that the influence of billionaires and elite lobbyists is a threat to free and democratic elections, but oligarchs and autocrats actually concretely capturing a US Presidential campaign IS NOT a problem???? It's a clear bloody manifestation of the underlying sickness!

Hand-picked analysts, the claims of the latter (NSA) made with only 'moderate confidence.' This is creating a misleading impression of unanimity, since only three of the sixteen intelligence agencies contributed to the report.

Most of our "intelligence agencies" don't participate in international espionage. Their role in the report could not be significant. On confidence, this is what the report said:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US
presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process,
denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess
Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We
have high confidence in these judgments.

 We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s
election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her
unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence
in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence.

We assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks.

You seem to put trust and significance in the NSA's "moderate" confidence on one item, yet are willing to reject the NSA's high confidence in its supervenient conclusion on which the other relies. This is logically incoherent, a sign of the motivated reasoning I referred to.

This, by the way, was all in January 2017. It is the middle of 2018 now. It's been more than a year and a half. You should have a little more humility.

The sort of backchannel diplomacy that routinely happens between one administration and the next. Not a sign of collusion.

What? I just told you about Trump being briefed on the 2016 election interference, and you change the subject? Anyway, it does not happen routinely in the campaign stage. Nor in the transition stage. The content and context of communications and actions also matter, as we have gone over.


By the way, one more thing I recalled: the public hacker persona Guccifer 2.0 was discovered to operate from Moscow, and to be lying about their identity as a native Romanian.


Please stop uncritically repeating Russian and alt-right talking points. I have explained to you before how Russia is a geopolitical sideshow, but situationally its made more serious by Trump and the Russian success in penetrating our system (and the West more generally). If we cannot even begin to resolve the challenges posed by Russia we are certainly not well-placed to deal with anything else. It's OK to prioritize one issue over another in concept, and to lead a vigorous debate over issues and solutions, but just as you wouldn't accept someone becoming a climate denialist because they think global capitalism is the 'real' problem - they can both be problems! - don't think you need to completely reject the existence of facts because you feel like they distract from something else.

I would understand some of the vehemence of your reactions if I presented myself as one of those centrist liberals who believes that Russia is the only problem facing the US, and that if Trump were out of the picture everything could "go back to normal", but you know that I'm not - so why? I'm asking here for some honesty and good faith. If the central position, the one thing that comes before everything else, in your worldview is that America is the root of all evil, and all knowledge must follow from this axiom, it won't be possible.

I vividly recall Nixon being ousted in August of 1974 and the drumbeat for his arrest and trial that was bouncing around. Ford's pardon of Nixon was done for the "health and sanity of the country" and it was the correct choice in my opinion. Ford paid the price for his decision, since it did cost him votes in close states that might have turned the electoral college around in 1976. I've always respected him for that choice -- he was not a fool and knew that it would be an albatross in an already tough election context for the Republicans.


The long, drawn-out trial of a recent ex-president is almost superfluous as a punishment for the individual (the public repudiation of their reputation from a resignation is a significant punishment of its own). It smacks of vindictiveness. If anything, such a trial would only serve to shame and belittle people who voted in good faith to support that president. I would assert that that is not a sound move for the mental or political health of a country.

I've only heard some pretty radical socialists argue that the criminal process should be done away with for its 'vindictiveness'.

I would say that the pardoning of Nixon, and the refusal to hold serious crimes to account in general, is what breeds apathy and disaffection. It's dangerous to blithely promote the legal invincibility of the POTUS, as though the most powerful person in the world needs special allowances and comforts.

I don't give a crap about "punishment". The public needs to know the facts of the matter, and see the actors responsible held liable. This history must not be brushed under the rug for future generations to rediscover, or to fester in the form of a revanchist mythology.

It is important that Trump partisans feel shame(d), because it is a necessary step in the process of de-Trumpifying them, which is a necessary step in bringing them away from a worldview tham demands the exclusion, marginalization, or destruction of their perceived opponents. Otherwise our politics will surely continue to get worse, and blatant, committed demagogues who outright promise the end of our system of government as we know it will be the next development. These won't be socialists.

The severity of offenses matters too. Do you really see NO circumstances in which the sitting OR former POTUS should be subjected to the criminal process for acts during tenure of office?

In all, to the extent that Trump has committed serious offenses, a recommendation to refrain from hashing it out publicly promises to be devastating to our nation. Of course pulling out the barbed arrow is painful. But you can't let it sit and live well that way.

NOTE: Fascism is correctly labeled as an authoritarian political structure that emphasizes nationalism and in which the government guides and influences economic decisions while ownership and capital is retained on a private basis. Today, we use it as a pejorative for authoritarian attitudes, particularly those of a racist or hyper-nationalist stripe. USA Aryan Nation and White Power groups really are not fascists in the classic sense, just racist idiots scared to be evaluated on the content of their character because they know deep down they would then have to admit they don't rank as worth much of anything.

Trump's approach to government, and his affinity to his base, is essentially fascist. Trumpism is fascistic. Don't make the mistake of running Zeno's treadmill when assessing the presence of fascism in contemporary times.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

...But giving Trump his metaphorical day in court is indispensable for the health and sanity of the country. For the sake of the truth. It's non-negotiable, and were the future DOJ, or any succeeding administration or Congress to discard the process in the name of "healing the country", they would do so at the risk of disgracing themselves....

I vividly recall Nixon being ousted in August of 1974 and the drumbeat for his arrest and trial that was bouncing around. Ford's pardon of Nixon was done for the "health and sanity of the country" and it was the correct choice in my opinion. Ford paid the price for his decision, since it did cost him votes in close states that might have turned the electoral college around in 1976. I've always respected him for that choice -- he was not a fool and knew that it would be an albatross in an already tough election context for the Republicans.


The long, drawn-out trial of a recent ex-president is almost superfluous as a punishment for the individual (the public repudiation of their reputation from a resignation is a significant punishment of its own). It smacks of vindictiveness. If anything, such a trial would only serve to shame and belittle people who voted in good faith to support that president. I would assert that that is not a sound move for the mental or political health of a country.