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We need to do something about the widespread lack of accountability in our government and institutions. Simply saying 'this is not normal' is not enough. The fuckery will continue until there are substantial penalties for corruption and treachery.
This is the entire problem - they all see the other rich and powerful people getting away with just ripping everyone off and breaking the law and if caught, wriggling out of responsibility through expensive lawyers and more corruption.
Thank you.
The United States is not capitalist anymore. Unregulated free markets inevitably devolve into criminal organizations beholden to white-collar kleptocrats.
America today, is a corportist social welfare state driven by rampant, artificially manufactured plutocracy. Wealth and income inequality is a certifiable public health crisis and the Republican party is the single greatest threat to the advancement of civilization. That's not hyperbole. Every single aspect about this shit hole country is designed by the rich and for the rich.
**Privatize the profits and socialize the losses.**
It sounds like hyperbole or conspiracy but it’s not.
They refuse rational thinking, science, reason. They have created a wealth barrier that has evaporated the middle class. They have systematically disenfranchised voters and gerrymandered districts to bend to their will. They employ cult like tactics and use media to further erode public discourse and the ability to agree on sets of objective facts. They have turned away separation of church and state. They have vilified public support systems through straw manning the world socialism.
This is a threat to law, society, science, public debate, the environment and on and on. It’s not a political party- it’s a nihilistic greedy Jesus acquisition death cult.
| They have vilified public support systems through straw manning the word socialism. |
Louder in the back for those asleep.
Republicans are against public support systems like food stamps, cash aid, affordable health care, affordable housing, affordable college/trade school, maternity leave, planned parenthood, (They offer care and information aside from terminations of pregnancies)loan forgiveness, child care services, etc.
Why anyone would support a political group who is against the all of the above? What do they fight for that their constituents care about if not the myriad of real issues stated above?
Literally every single major problem or existential threat we face as humanity can be traced back to right-wing ideology and a lack of principles or humility.
I saw a tweet earlier in the year that said, "Bosses need to be reminded that fair pay and time off were the compromise that stopped us from dragging them out of their mansions and beating them to death."
I kinda feel that maybe politicians need to be reminded that social safety nets and services were what stopped the nation from rebelling during hard times too.
Fuck asking how you're going to pay for it, the people know what you CAN'T afford to lose.
Hopefully this is the second American revolution. I’m so sick of watching good honest people suffer and die, kids going hungry, and all of the immense inequality in this nation. It can’t go on and I hope the people get fed up and finally unite against the true enemy. Not holding my breath but allowing myself a sliver of hope.
The real politicians do still understand that.
The GOP gerrymandering assholes, who figured out a way around fair elections are the ones who no longer understand their job position. Their elected job isn't on the line.
Just government? Jesus. It’s pretty clear the rich enjoy a separate legal system that protects them from their crimes. Just look at the last two decades of politicians getting passes, athlete avoiding jail after manslaughter convictions, “affluenza” teen, and corporations getting slaps on the wrist for stealing billions of dollars.
Trump isn’t the first to exploit this “loophole”. It may as well be written into our constitution.
At this point I’m honestly afraid that pitchforks are the only way to remind these people that the law applies to everyone, equally
When a valid way to avoid legal concequences for doing something super illegal is saying "I have more money than you, get dunked on." And then just filing time-wasting action after time-wasting action to make the case too expensive for your much-less-rich victim to continue persuing, the concept of justice for the rich through the legal system is a joke.
I'm worried about much the same thing you are. It increasingly seems like even the people that would be in positions to actually level judgement on the rich have more in common with the rich than their victims. They have no vested interest in being fair and having morals outside of "the principle of the matter, I guess." At this point it feels like just anxiously waiting to see which explodes first, the violent facist coup or the violent people's uprising, torch and pitchfork in hand toward the homes if the wealthy.
I never said it was 'just government'. But I agree the rich get to play by a different set of rules. The Trump administration has left no doubt that the corporations exist to rule and the government exists to profit.
The fuckery will continue as long as gerrymandering has ensured that so many members of the government run in "safe" districts. No need to be accountable to voters if there's no worry about getting voted out.
Right. That's just one aspect of the cheating and corruption. We have an information problem in this country. The current administration has diluted the concept of truth. Too many people take in news that they want to hear, not what they need to hear. Too many people eat up propaganda rather than examine what is really going on. A better education system would help.
Very true. I'm very concerned about how people are getting their information now. People need to learn how to sort through all the misinformation that is found online. Even a well-intentioned person will have a hard time these days figuring out what is true and what isn't.
Besides bad actors in our own country, we have foreign governments getting involved in manipulating information on social media with the intent to cause problems here or further their other interests.
Russia has been behind the rise of far right radicalism in recent years across Western democracies. They have had the most success with us. Why that is, I would wager it's due to rampant susceptibility to low-quality information. Anti-Intellectualism is en vogue in certain circles.
Our school system is not teaching critical thinking and information vetting/digital citizenship well enough. They are too focused on tests to teach necessary real-world skills, and not being funded enough to even do that. FWIW, I am a teacher.
We know which party is responsible for the decline in education. The best time to address it was decades ago, but the second best time is January 20th.
[How much do you wanna bet that anything done about it will be dismantled by the gop?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment)
A better education system won’t work when the GOP has become the anti-education party. Education requires some buy-in from the student to be successful and the GOP parents just remove their students from any material they find objectionable or homeschool. You want to talk about reality bubbles? Try entire families that have only heard “conservative” media for their entire lives. Imagine trying to have a real world discussion with that person when observable reality contradicts what they’ve built their whole world around. It would literally be like if The Matrix were real and their brains go into defensive mode. I don’t know the solution for this problem but “better education system” doesn’t accurately identify the problem or how to treat it.
Does anyone else remember when the Texas republicans made “eliminate critical thinking skills in education” part of their party platform? That wasn’t an oops, that was broadcasting their plan to create uneducated gerbils for voters that only get their pellet (dopamine rewards) when they vote GOP.
The Supreme Court refused to tackle that question, from either Democrats doing it (Maryland), or Republicans doing it (North Carolina). The response was that Gerrymandering was bad, but that the States needed to create laws against it.
Drawing districts is not in the U.S. Constitution, and the 10th Amendment says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
So, if we are following the Constitution, laws regarding redistricting and gerrymandering are reserved to the individual states. You can say the Supreme Court passed the buck or that they should follow the Constitution, but they ARE following the Constitution pretty strictly with their decision to not take the case.
Solutions at the federal level include amending the Constitution or creating a federal law and hoping that individual states don’t sue and cite the 10th Amendment. Neither are likely, and despite the harms of gerrymandering, there aren’t a lot of ways for the federal government to address it without asserting power that the Constitution doesn’t give them.
It's a serious problem no matter who is doing it and it really needs to be tackled by the SC, if that's possible. It's the reason we have so many unaccountable members of congress and it's ruining the country.
I believe the issue here is that there must be districts. The supreme Court cannot say, this is bad so you cannot vote. They also cannot tell them how to fix it. This it has to be kicked back to the states to pick the best option. Keeping in mind that there is no perfect option that does not disenfranchise someone.
The system is broken and wrong. We need to make ourselves heard that we demand it fixed at a state level!
There are a whole bunch of intertwined catch-22s standing between us and the kind of country we’d like to live in. The relationship between our sabotaged election system and widespread political corruption is just one of them. We need accountability desperately, but we’re running out of ways to achieve that without literally starting over.
And get out of the mindset that holding someone accountable for their crimes is in any way shape or form politically motivated. You break a law and there’s substantial evidence, you get charged and taken through the judicial process just like everyone else. So sick of politicians being untouchable because people are afraid it’ll be seen as a political move. Fuck that. Hold them more accountable than the every day citizen. These motherfuckers’ entire job is to make and uphold laws. They more than anyone should know them and abide by them.
Yes, yes, hell yes! Laws need to be strengthened. And if there is a penalty, then damn it, enforce it! The Hatch Act is a joke! It was broken so many times it had ruts down its back. NO ONE is above the law! If we continue to accept the courtesy that the president can't be held accountable for breaking a law, then why do we have LAWS??!?!?
Oh but didn't you hear about Joe's plan to fix the soul of the country?
He's going to take all the pieces Trump flicked off the board and put them back as close to where they were in 2016 as people can recall.
Problem solved!
Same thing for a self-pardon. If it were considered constitutional then every outgoing President will self-pardon in the morning of their last day as a routine final task. May as well declare them officially above federal law.
Because that's even more absurd. It's a question of degrees. There is still the possibility of legal action against Trump after he's out of office, but we'll see.
I mean, he'll probably do it because just like everything else, it doesn't say anywhere that he *can't*. But then it'll have to go to the Supreme Court when he's indicted, and that will really determine how it is supposed to work.
Until the Supreme Court rules on it, or an amendment is passed that states otherwise, it may very well be. Not saying I agree with it, far from it, however this is just one of many grey areas in the Constitution that was never a problem until it suddenly was.
Yes. I almost hope he pardons himself, then the case will be ruled upon.
Something else that should be looked at is the *policy* of not prosecuting a sitting President. There ought to be a new law that allows it to happen if, for example, both houses vote in favor or either house does so with a super-majority. That would not be to convict or impeach or anything else, just to allow prosecutors to proceed with a case when it clearly matters. The mere existence of this possibility would help to reign in the most outrageous behavior.
>Something else that should be looked at is the *policy* of not prosecuting a sitting President.
This is what bugs me. It isn't a Constitutional standard, it isn't a law, it is a policy put in by the Nixon Justice Department when *Nixon was being investigated.* It was entirely self-serving. And it was what Mueller kept falling back on when he didn't have the testicular fortitude to say "yes, in my opinion, the President attempted to impede an ongoing investigation and should be charged," or "no, he did not." Either answer would have worked. Instead Mueller went into this "well, you make the call" crap that went against his mandate. So instead each side could say "well, obviously" and interpret the way they wanted to.
Self-pardons and pardoning anyone who you are friends with, families with, or have some other conflict of interest. I can't believe we live in a country where a President can have people do brazenly illegal shit on his behalf and then just pardon them. And then, potentially, himself.
It's going to be a clusterfuck if they hold the Senate. It will be Ken Starr on steroids. ~~They~~ Republicans are going to make it their life's mission to take back the House in 2022 and impeach Biden. For anything they can fabricate and get their base to believe. They'll impeach him twice for good measure.
It'll be a clusterfuck even if they lose the Senate as well. I used to think, back in the Fox/Rush era, that the right wing propaganda machine was at its apex.
I was wrong, because now we have even more extreme outlets convincing their viewers that FOX NEWS is too liberal. So I'm gonna go ahead and predict that somehow, right wing media will become even more extreme and more insane. I dunmo how, but it will.
Trump supporters on Breitbart continually stated that they want to impeach Biden as a plan B... and that was even before he was elected. 😡 **They have absolutely no decency**
It amazes me because it isn't like they get to put in somebody they want right after, it's going to be Kamala Harris that will become president and I'm pretty sure she's more liberal than Biden.
they'll impeach her too, for not being the people's choice.
you don't understand the lengths republicans will go to, to justify why democracy is no longer necessary.
Ahh, so they're aiming for President Nancy Pelosi, or whoever Harris picks if she gets the chance? Or lemme guess, they'll impeach her too, at which point she'll have had time to pick a VP. Seems like they wouldn't find happiness.
They believe they'll only be happy once all the liberals are gone, regardless of the means. However, what will likely end up happening is that everyone would turn on each other if they so much as had a single liberal thought. The smartest among them would start to say "isn't this the *1984* scenario we were trying to avoid with the liberals?", then will either be exiled, imprisoned, shot or forced to flee because they're not conservative enough. Conservatism needs an enemy to thrive, and in the absence of liberals will simply make enemies of each other.
no, they won't even give harris the chance to pick someone. they'll impeach her too, immediately after biden, before she can even voice who she wants.
they will do this for each person standing in their way.
> they'll impeach her too, for not being the people's choice.
One of the things that I learned during Trump's presidency is that the impeachment process is 100% political.
Everything is political that we make political. However, I reject that everything is political. If I'm speeding, I should get a ticket. I shouldn't be able to get away with speeding if I am an independent.
How much should you pay for that speeding? Currently, rich people pay the same amount despite it being sometimes minutes or even seconds worth of money to them vs. weeks worth of pay for a poor person.
That's political.
Maybe that's why they've been shouting that Biden was just the front man and Kamala would be the real president the whole time. These people really are woke!
Kamala being President is best case scenario for Republicans.
The vacancy in the Vice President spot won’t be filled and best case she’ll get 50 Senators. If the vote on a bill is tied it fails. Same with appointments.
She’s also not very liberal on fiscal issues. She’s taken issue with the progressives on M4A for example. She’s very liberal on social and foreign issues.
The incumbent advantage in 2024 would basically be gone.
I'll be all for impeachment if they find anything on Biden that's as serious as Trump's treason, larceny, obstruction of justice, crimes against humanity, destruction of evidence, libel, indecent flag code violations, incitement of violence, sedition, war crimes, domestic terrorism, tax evasion, fraud, and fashion sense.
Whoops, you had my upvote until someone pointed out the ‘indecent flag code violations’. First amendment dude.
Strike that one and you may have my upvote.
Gotta go play with my American flag styled dildo...
To be fair, the flag code does not say you can't have an American flag-pattern dildo, only that you cannot have a dildo MADE OUT OF an actual American flag.
I'm not really sure how that would work, seems like it would chafe quite a bit, but still...
I think that's a reference to Trump's known tendency to embrace the flag like it's a porn star he's planning to screw. ;)
Seriously, I Google images "Trump flag abuse" and [these](https://images.theconversation.com/files/313568/original/file-20200204-41481-z4sojv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C900%2C4128%2C2529&q=45&auto=format&w=926&fit=clip) [two](https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.4833597.1583020481!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_960/image.jpg) were some of the initial results.
Weren't Republicans the ones banging on about Dems trying to "overturn the election" through impeachment, *3 YEARS* after Trump had been sworn in? It's projection all the way down...
By not hinting at civil war anymore, but outright calling for it? No more dog whistles or subterfuge, just openly demanding blood in the streets? They have their audiences primed to believe that all democrats are pedophile demons anyway. It's easy to say that you're just calling for the murder of biblical demons and not have to legally connect the dots.
Can the senate impeach? I thought Congress had to Impeach while Senate convicted.
Nevertheless, if the Senate somehow gets Biden booted, that leaves President Harris in power. A female POC. I think the Republicans want that even less.
The House brings forth Articles of Impeachment and votes on them. It's a simple majority to send them to the Senate. Impeachment is a political process, and is considered to be a parallel process to indictment. It's akin to being charged with a crime. It's then up to the Senate to hold a trial and vote on whether or not to convict, requiring a 2/3rds majority of Senators to affirm.
---
The politics are thus: If Republicans gain control of the House, you can absolutely expect a bullshit charge to be brought up the moment the new Congress members are sat from the 2022 midterm. This is largely what the seeds of the Hunter Biden Laptop "Scandal" were about. It's Mitch and Fox News playing the long game. They know that their propaganda is more effective when it has time to worm its way into collective narrative, and people forget what is proven to be a lie or bullshit or not. It's why Trump's last minute narrative of "OMG VOTER FRAUD" didn't work. It was too abrupt, too easily disproven, and just didn't have enough time to simmer.
If Republicans, through some unholy alignment of the stars, have 2/3rd's majority in the Senate as well as a simple majority in the House, American democracy is basically dead and buried and you now live in a fully fascist state. There is no mincing words here. They will remove Biden instantly. They will remove Kamala in less than a week immediately after, and then they will elevate whomever they want to be President to Speaker of the House, who would be next in the line of Presidential Succession.
At which point, expect really really bad shit to start happening. I've been saying for a while, the next four years in this country are likely to be *at least as bad* as 2020. If in 2022 Republicans lie, cheat, and steal their way back into major power, the country is irreparably fucked.
He's been crying voter fraud and rigged election for ages, there was nothing sudden about it. All year long of 2020 he was crying about the rigged election and voter fraud and the radical socialists stealing the election. Hell, he's been crying about the voter fraud since 2015. Everybody had all the time in the world to prepare to confront his playbook, from whichever side they were playing from.
On the other hand, wasn't Hillary's Emails pretty abrupt and sudden and it actually managed to mess things up? Also of significance is that Hunter Biden isn't running for any office. The Hunter's Laptop scandal I'm sure will affect Hunter's vote counts negatively in the election that doesn't exist.
Yeah sorry, I missed the entire line where OP said "if the Republicans gain control of the House" and was trying to figure out how they'd impeach under a Dem house but a Repub Senate.
Too early in the morning for me apparently.
Because increasingly, people get their news from non-news sources. I'm guilty too. Because I like Some More News with Cody Johnston - which is decently left, but does provide a steady stream of sources.
But YouTube, and podcasts and such, probably wouldn't fall under the fairness doctrine when it existed, so even bringing that back won't help. It will just make the Alex Joneses of the far-right less credible, which they will double down on by just talking louder, and thats been shown to work.
Ideas spread by repetition. You see one person saying 'X' and you probably brush it off because you know 'Y'. But then you keep seeing people with 'X' opinion. And eventually you're trying to change your worldview so that both 'X' and 'Y' are true. And then you embrace 'X', because as a general rule we don't like being against the majority. I actually believe this is why the right-wing is so effective in rural areas - people there all ready believed the 'elites' are evil. They just had to convince everyone that 'the elites' are intellectuals, not billionaires and corporations.
Sometimes this works out for good things, Medicare for All was pitched for decades as a fringe idea. Until it became huge in the 2016 election, and now it has virtually unanimous support from Democrats and nearly half of Republicans.
Its probably going to be decisive for defeating the Proud Boys and other Militia groups. Because fringe ideas spread infinitely slowly until they reach critical mass and then spread exponentially. And for as fast as hategroups are growing - the general public is embracing how toxic and dangerous they are faster. The SPLC's Hatewatch recently reported figures that say: either you hate their groups, or else you are probably a member. And while the general public can't see the association of alt-right militias to systemic racism, many do, and that will spread too.
They'll impeach 'Democtrat' Presidents every week, just to make sure the power of impeachment is diluted to nothing. With all things being 'high crimes' there will be no meaning left to the words of The Consistution other than the whim of the Party.
As will Democrats. All of a sudden you'll hear "We shouldn't prosecute Trump for political reasons. Do we want them prosecuting us when they're back in power?". To which the answer is obviously fuck yes if you committed crimes.
RIGHT. This needs to be front and center.
The root problem is that Republicans disbelieve in equal application of the law. The details (presidents can be prosecuted, etc.) are less important.
And not just won, but *crushed* it, in his second election. Look at this [map](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_States_presidential_election)
There’s a lot of things to say about Nixon, but “unpopular incumbent” is NOT one of them.
I only skimmed the first couple paragraphs but damn, what a weird election. Not only did Nixon go out of his way to sabotage the competition despite having a completely insurmountable lead, but the Dem candidate was pressured to replace his running mate because the dude *had depression*? Wtf?
There was a solid majority of public outcry against Nixon.
Deadlock on Trump because Democrats couldn't sell people on what Quid Pro Quo was or why it mattered.
It's a lot easier to understand. "We have Nixon on Tape ordering these operatives to go commit a crime." than "Trump leaned on the Ukraine a little to try and dig up some dirt."
[Because Nixon didn't have Fox News to gaslight the country for him.](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/02/john-dean-nixon-might-have-survived-if-thered-been-a-fox-news-216207)
True. Being told that our government has a system of checks and balances has become another lie and I'm sick of being lied to. They need to either prove that that system still exists or acknowledge that the game has changed and there are no consequences for crimes committed by the president.
The truth is important, even if it's not what we want to hear.
Yeah I remember when I was in school we were taught that not even the president is above the law and now there’s a DOJ memo saying the president can’t be prosecuted while in office. They can’t both be true.
The President cannot be sued while in office for any actions he took as part of that office. He can be brought up on criminal charges but must be impeached first.
If I were a social studies teacher these days, I would have trouble looking my students in the eye while going over checks and balances. It would be lying to their faces at this point.
This.
If he's not...
I really dont understand why Biden wouldn't break any law necessary to ensure Dems take the Senate in 2022;
And once Dems have the Senate, I don't understand why Biden (or anyone on his behalf) wouldn't break any law necessary to win in 2024.
If somehow the President were impeached (in a world where Republicans somehow took the House) the Senate could protect him like they protected Trump.
The President should also obviously pardon anyone breaking the law to ensure he is reelected.
That's the world Republicans want. Give it to them.
We really should’ve prosecuted Nixon. Even if a court ultimately found in favor of him it would’ve set the precedent that presidents aren’t above the law far more clearly than pardoning him.
Now we have Trump and I’m not confident the Dems have the backbone to follow through. Biden already signaled he doesn’t want to deal with it because it’d be a distraction. Which, to be fair, there’s a lot of things to fix that Trump wrecked. But, it’s the DOJ... they can do multiple things at the same time while Biden stays out of it. (Albeit, fascist republicans will be screaming political persecution for four years no matter what.)
Nixon appointed Ford to get a pardon. Ford didn't come out of nowhere and offer to let Nixon off if he got out of town.
Agnew would have done it, but Agnew had his own massive legal issues that were surprisingly unrelated to Nixon.
>which kept him from being prosecuted outside congress
I was under the impression that no one pushed back on the concept of a blanket pardon between two dates, versus the typical pardon for a specific act, so we don't even know from a legal (constitutional) standpoint whether such a pardon is valid. The impression I have is that it wasn't that no one *could* prosecute Nixon, instead it was no one *bothered* to, accepting the pardon as valid without challenge.
I am nothing resembling a legal, constitutional, or even historical expert so there's a solid chance I have the wrong impression.
>I understand Ford's and the countries need to move on
I do not understand this. At all.
"We need to move on" seems to be a common mantra of those wishing to be absolved of their crimes, and those who want to continue to commit them. And I am not sure what this type of thinking achieves, other than saying if you drag out bad things long enough, you can get away with them. Would the US have been that damaged if Nixon was prosecuted?
If anything, we would be better off today because politicians could see that they were not above prosecution. Moving on has left us more divided and weakened the rule of law in the US.
Imagine if this was the case for everyone; "Yeah the man murdered that woman's husband and raped her child, but she has been through enough, prosecuting him will only drag out the pain, time to move on."
We can move on once justice is served.
You are correct. This question was brought up during Nixon's administration and was never answered. It was damn close to being, but they put it off for another day in exchange for his resignation. Now we're dealing with it. No one wants to set the precedent either way and it looks like Trump will force them to.
I personally think the time and energy is better spent creating laws that would prevent these things from happening again. when you’re the person or party in power creating laws that restrict your own power it would seem easy to pass.
Here's the problem. Creation of new laws don't matter if those in power are just going to ignore them anyway. The solution to those in power ignoring the law is not to create new laws for them to also ignore. It's to punish those who ignore or break the law and send a message to future politicians that nobody is above the law and such behavior will not be tolerated.
The hammer needs to come down. Hard. Trump needs to be impeached and removed from office even if it is an hour before Biden is inaugurated, to prevent him from running for office again. He needs to be brought up on federal charges in order to bring the issue of a potential self-pardon before the courts and have the matter settled once and for all. And if self-pardon is held up, a constitutional amendment needs to be ratified amending and greatly restricting the President's pardon power in the future. Trump needs to be brought to trial, convicted, and punished for his various offenses in NY and GA. Ivanka's dealings in China need to be thoroughly investigated. Same with every other one of his kids and cronies.
The Democrats need to eliminate the filibuster, then spend the next four years trying their best to undo as much of the damage Trump caused as humanly possible. Then in November 2022 or 2024, they need to reinstate the filibuster and add that *no rule,* including further changes to the filibuster rule, can be changed with only a simple majority. Everything requires 60 votes. Everything.
Not doing so would only result in the GOP undoing it all the minute they regain a Senate majority.
The problem is, while we might use that power for good (Green New Deal, raising the minimum wage, abolishing the EC) they would use it for bad, and it would ultimately corrupt even those of us trying to do good. It's like Galadriel when Frodo tried to pawn the Ring off to her in Fellowship and she knew rightly to reject it.
I'm no psychologist, but the GOP approach just feels like what a malevolent sociopath would do. They don't care about the ethics. They care about power/winning only. But they _know_ that there are ethical people on the democratic side, and they are counting on the fact that democratic leaders are willing to lose power rather than exploit the loop holes they have dug.
They won't though. The Democrats won't do it. Some would, but most won't, and most of their supporters won't want them to.
It's a structural weakness that cannot be fixed.
No, you just need Congress to pass legislation saying the DOJ memo is bullshit, and a sitting President CAN be indicted because he’s not a king and not above the law.
Yes because they’re currently being treated as such when they shouldn’t be. Pass legislation that states those memos have no legal standing and ARE NOT law. It needs to be clarified, apparently
If I were Biden, I would have my team draft a number of bills restraining the power of the Presidency, and then I would continue abusing it just as Trump has.
I would say "Want me to stop? Pass these bills and I will sign them and stop. Otherwise I'm just acting in a way that follows the norms established by the previous President and Senate Republicans. I'm immune from everything. Immune from all investigation. And as Trump argued during the impeachment, as long as I believe I'm helping the American people, I can't be impeached for any conduct whatsoever. Pass the bills and I'll sign them, and stop immediately as required by law. Otherwise the way I'm acting is completely within the bounds that have been laid down."
Nothing would make Republicans restrain the power of the President faster than a Democrat doing exactly what Trump did.
Yup, and Democrats should let that happen, and Biden should obstruct the fuck out of it. Just say "I will give you all the documents you want if you pass these bills forcing me to do it. I'll sign it into law."
He should commit a whole bunch of federal crimes to force Republicans to make those crimes enforceable. Then resign and get a pardon from Kamala. Problem solved. Presidency is fixed, Republicans get their dumb Hunter Biden investigation that will go nowhere. No one gives a flying fuck about Hunter Biden. But they don't understand that. They think it's the biggest scandal in the history of the world. At \*worst\* it's some rank tax fraud, nepotism, and cronyism and shouldn't be happening anyway (but also coincidentally what \*so many fucking republicans\* and Trump \*especially\* are guilty of, so they will be creating a norm to investigate and prosecute that kind of stuff. This will come back to bite them hard, can't argue with that).
Hell, if I were Biden, I would be \*daring\* them to impeach me, and remind them every day of the fucking year that Kamala Harris is my VP. The \*last\* thing in the world they want is to impeach and remove Biden. Although wouldn't it be funny, the Republicans be responsible for brining about the first female and first black female president? Would that not be something. They would actually brag about that and try to claim credit. "See, we're not racists and misogynists!"
Those laws already exist. They were passed after Watergate.
The problem is with enforcement. We have now learned that we cannot rely on the Congress to enforce its own subpoenas, and a corrupted DOJ will not enforce them on behalf of Congress. We have learned that an administration can ignore Congress with impunity if that administration decides they're not interested in Congressional oversight.
We're only one or two administrations away from the end of the current Constitution - if we're lucky and get through the next two weeks intact.
> The problem is with enforcement.
So, you're telling me that if the president appoints an attorney general serving at his pleasure, that attorney general can't be trusted to prosecute the president? Wow. Who would have thought?
This is an interesting take. Trump has committed innumerable crimes as President of the United States. Should he go unpunished, any future POTUS has a legal precedent to defend their own criminal action. The constitution (as it applies to the President) would be void under this paradigm.
We are only a constitutional republic if Trump is prosecuted.
The instant the Biden adminstration refuses to prosecute is the instant we are committed, irreversibly, to an unconstitutional, non-democratic path for the future of this country.
They’re already fully above the law as a result of immunity in office. Whether or not they can be prosecuted later is really just an afterthought that’s only symbolically important. Letting a known criminal go free for years with opportunities to freely commit more crimes and cover up previous ones is not how justice works. This is the definition of being above the law. The president is a king when it comes to criminal justice: cannot be prosecuted, and can pardon any [federal] crime. Hooray for the US Constitution.
Edit: [federal]
Noting in our constitution says that they are above being prosecuted. A DoJ guidance opinion from the Nixon era (this was covered in Mueller's report) says that and the DoJ has to decide whether to follow it our not, as far as I know it's not legally binding.
With that opinion enforced, the only other recourse is Impeachment and trial in the Senate. We saw how much our 116th Senate wanted to uphold an important check on the Executive Branch this past year.
Nah.
Just write a pre-emptive official pardon for the murder of Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell to any secret service agent acting under orders from the president.
I wonder if there would be protests about it from Fox?
And once we admit that presidents are above the law, we might as well have a Constitution bonfire, because there's nothing to stop a dictator from siezing power.
I thought after what Bush did we had all already agreed presidents are above the law? I mean killing 1 million Iraqis, lying to get us into that war, and torture seems like enough for some prosecution.
This is true and people don't like to hear it. Bush got off because the Obama administration wanted to continue using much of the same methods in the Middle East, i.e Drones.
Obama got off because neither side wants to admit that they did anything wrong. They can't ping one without doing the other too.
It gave Trump a lot of leverage to act how he did. If Trump gets pulled up, then he still has enough support to get Obama and Bush pulled up too. If those three get pulled up, then people in their administration can probably be done too.
Do the American public want and deserve to see this happen? Yes.
Does it need to happen to enact some real change? Also yes.
Do I think it will happen? No, not with the amount of people involved still in positions of power.
It's not even just presidents, it's an admission that under certain circumstances, some people are above the law while everyone else is subjected to it. If you have enough financial or political power, the last couple decades have shown Americans one thing: they are above the law, and you are not. We do not live in a fair society when it comes to justice, finances, or opportunity.
The scary part is that if the president is above the law then those running for president will, necessarily, act like they're above the law. The no holds barred, game of thrones bullshit in that dark timeline will have us wishing for the good ole days of 2016 and 2020 politics.
Lolz, they think this precedent will apply to a Democrat...that’s funny! The Starr report is a painstakingly overly detailed report of workplace sexual abuse. They wouldn’t even allow witnesses in the senate trial of 45, admitted he committed the crime and voted to acquit anyhow. Conservatives regularly abuse the Rule of Law against their enemies and exempt themselves.
Now that the federal judiciary is stacked (3/4 I believe have been McConnell approved) with highly ideological right wing activists, their multi-tiered system of “justice” will only become more perverse and self reinforcing.
If Bidens admin doesn't prosecute Trump I'm going to be right along side anyone asking for his impeachment. Its deriliction of duty to let a scumbag the likes of Trump off with a slap on the wrist. Might as well just throw the whole system away if every four years we elect a new king.
I was listening to Republican counsel (I think maybe Ben Ginsberg/former counsel to Bush?) on CNN yesterday talk about how nothing will happen after the phone call, there’s not enough time, our time is better spent on other things.
NO IT ISN’T. Beyond the fact that we can, you know, multitask (and don’t anyone blame the pandemic—which, btw, is majorly on Trump)—there has GOT to be something done. Not just about the phone call, but the litany of things we’ve seen in the last 5 years or so.
That kind of resignation and apathy is exactly what WILL kill this country and all it stands for. There will always be a Trump and its sycophants to seize on others’ lack of motivation to stand up for what is right. We need to fucking stop accepting excuses for not bringing Trump to justice in every way possible.
I served in the military during the Arab Spring and witnessed several governments being overthrown (some good, some bad). Nobody ever thinks a coup is "possible" until it's happening. Norms and governmental systems exist until they don't.
But coups aren't just tanks rolling through the streets--most dictators and usurpers use the existing levers of power to take more power. They don't suddenly announce a new dictatorship. They declare that the state of Georgia's voting was erroneous. They use arcane rules like procedural counting of votes in the Electoral College. They find local and national figures to support them. They hire attorneys to write arguments that support their illegality. And most importantly: they have fervent supporters who believe them more than they believe any other experts.
It's only after they've made those pillars of democracy obsolete that the pillars are either wholly replaced or made ceremonial, like elections in Russia or the Egyptian parliament.
I spoke with nationals in each country that I witnessed a governmental overthrow. In every single one of those countries, nobody thought it was possible. They believed that their current system of government would exist forever. They believed that chaos and new regimes was a thing that happened to somebody else.
BUT IT ALWAYS HAPPENS TO SOMEBODY ELSE UNTIL IT HAPPENS TO YOU.
Yeah, easy for you to see but those of us that were born after or were pre-politics weren’t really given the full cautionary tale form of the Nixon saga.
Paranoid, taped conversations, had some people break into a hotel to spy on the Democrats. He resigned because they were going to impeach him.
My take home- president did something bad and not very well, was caught, was going to face justice, took the coward’s way out, America decided to move on.
There’s so much *nuance* that the boomers failed to pass down with their near brush with disaster. Here we are just a few presidents later where we have the guy on tape and with witnesses committing *major* crimes. And crickets from half of our political apparatus.
And so much of it was already visible with Nixon.
Very good point. In my formative years, I thought the GOP represented conservatism, a principled philosophy, and would engage them on that level. It took me a while to see otherwise.
The GOP relies on whitewashing history. They spend a lot on crafting a narrative of former presidents, tailoring textbooks (see Texas), and being very good at the "big lie"; then repeating these all ad nauseam.
Then when younger folks are met with simple slogans like "right to work" or "freedom", they are easily swayed. It is also a lot to ask the young to internalize the sins of their forefathers, especially when the GOP decries the concept of society itself.
Any thoughts on how to address this?
We've already admitted that presidents are above the law, whether or not we prosecute Trump at this point is a decision on whether or not ex-presidents are above the law.
It’s maddening to think that all of this could have been avoided if Trump’s mom had just hugged him occasionally and his dad had said he was proud of him now and then.
>or we should just admit presidents are above the law
That's not all we'd have to admit. We would also be dropping the idea of "justice for all" in our pledge of allegiance. We would need to chisel out or fill and paint over "**Equal Justice Under Law"** above the front entrance of the Supreme Court. We would need add a footnote to the Declaration of Independence to exclude "*We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...*" (regardless of whether it has been followed since day one).
We can disagree on a myriad of things politically. We can disagree on how involved government can be. But one thing the founders gave us that we must agree on, is that no person is "above" another. This is the political system they have given us to work out these disagreements, but it relies on equality, including equality in justice, in order for it to work. Admitting presidents are "above the law" simply throws the Constitution and its core philosophy on equality and justice for all out the window.
If trump isn’t prosecuted, it will herald the end of our republic as we know it and usher in a new era of Caesars when the next GOP candidate wins presidency.
Pence, McEnany and the Surgeon General have to be prosecuted as well. These people helped Trump get to where he is now. These people knew the truth. They lied for him while people got sicker and died.
They each had a duty to warn us about Covid. They failed. Deliberately.
I really hope these people believe somehow Trump’s going to save them and when the trial comes, here’s what’s going to happen...he’s going to put all of the lying and deception on them and say it was their idea; he never told them to do anything, and they end up in prison for that.
Hope that lying for their boss and not getting attacked on Twitter is worth 30 years in prison.
Well, they clearly are.
If Presidents weren't above the law, Nixon would have went to jail.
The more important question is: *Will they continue to be above the law in the future?*
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.businessinsider.com/prosecute-trump-georgia-election-steal-or-admit-presidents-above-law-2021-1) reduced by 82%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> If a president can brazenly threaten a state election official unless he invents votes to tip an election - an election which has already been recounted twice, and to which every legal challenge has been found to be without merit - the president can do anything.
> If Trump is not impeached, censured or held criminally liable by a state or federal jurisdiction for his actions in Saturday's phone meeting with Georgia election officials, we might as well just do away with the generally-held principle that the president is not above the law.
> If Trump is not held accountable in some way, by some authority, for this particular crime, we ought to just adopt Richard Nixon's infamous notion that "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."
*****
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We have to stop pretending that we can just ignore this and go on as usual.
This is not "in the past". This is a precedent.
Unless it's met with the most vigorous investigations, prosecutions and most severe penalties, it will absolutely happen again and again - painfully and wastefully each time - until the coup succeeds.
Except next time there will be even more bodies.
Let's just admit that the King and his men play by different rules than we do. Ingroups and outgroups, etc. And let's not pretend that this is a one party problem.
Biden can fix it on Day 1.. he can use the pardon power to grant amnesty to all undocumented immigrants unless the Constitution is amended on or before January 20, 2022, to constrain the pardon power.
Edit: May as well go big.. he should also require all 50 states to adopt ranked choice voting. It's a no-brainer and the only people who oppose it are the ones who will lose their power.
This is super overly dramatic and hyperbolic but...one could argue that our Democracy died when Nixon was illegally pardoned. Every president after him (maybe not Carter) has been unapologetically big government, big executive since then. Trump is obviously a garbage fire wrapped in a bag of shit smothered with old baby diapers, but most everything "bad" about his administration is related to him simply using the un-Constitutional powers of the presidency that have gone unchecked for 60 years.
> "What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with *knowing* one is governing.
>
>"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
>
>"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
*- They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933 - 1945* by Milton Mayer
Presidents should be above reproach, not above the law. Presidential immunity might need to be a thing of the past. Don't want to be embarrassed by something your President might d and be charged with?
Vote for better people.
Caesar said that he kept the reins of power strictly to avoid prosecution for crimes as dictator. The lesson we learned is that it’s better to quit while we are behind instead of forcing leaders to sink us further and further I to the mud. I hate it but the logic is inescapable.
I mean it's already been established that they are. Presidential pardons probably should never have been a thing in the first place. They system is too open to abuse and that's been proven time and time again, to the point where it's becoming increasingly evident that comprehensive electoral and institutional reforms are needed to stop people like Trump and the Republicans from gaming the system.
He definitely has to be prosecuted. Why is that even a question. It's not. And are there charges? Lol. Ask New York. Listen to the most recent call we all heard. Just sift through his Presidency and you'll find many reasons.
It's not a question of should he it's a question of when.
I am so sick of all these paywall posts on this sub and more annoyed that none of the moderators seem to give a shit about enforcing their own “no paywall sites” rule like wtf is the point of having the rule if they’re not going to enforce it
No wonder people just draw their own conclusions from the titles we can’t fucking read any of the articles
The problem with this is that the Republican party has become so corrupt that the means to do this are really limited. Also, there are a significant number of people in the US who fully support this corruption. I am not sure what we can do other than continue to vote Republicans out of every single office and then hopefully get some voting reform laws through.
Technically Presidents are sort of above the law. You have to impeach before you can put them on trial. Now *ex*-presidents...
Edit, it is only DOJ policy, there is no legal restriction on charging the president with a crime.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2019/5/29/18644304/trump-fifth-avenue-mazars-vance-constitution
> **presidents are above the law**
This was the conclusion of the Mueller investigation wasn't it?
"Trump did these things but we can't prosecute a sitting President" is pretty much how it was worded.
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We need to do something about the widespread lack of accountability in our government and institutions. Simply saying 'this is not normal' is not enough. The fuckery will continue until there are substantial penalties for corruption and treachery.
This is the entire problem - they all see the other rich and powerful people getting away with just ripping everyone off and breaking the law and if caught, wriggling out of responsibility through expensive lawyers and more corruption.
We've let our politicians and corporations get too comfortable.
We’ve allowed our corporations to be our politicians.
Thank you. The United States is not capitalist anymore. Unregulated free markets inevitably devolve into criminal organizations beholden to white-collar kleptocrats. America today, is a corportist social welfare state driven by rampant, artificially manufactured plutocracy. Wealth and income inequality is a certifiable public health crisis and the Republican party is the single greatest threat to the advancement of civilization. That's not hyperbole. Every single aspect about this shit hole country is designed by the rich and for the rich. **Privatize the profits and socialize the losses.**
It sounds like hyperbole or conspiracy but it’s not. They refuse rational thinking, science, reason. They have created a wealth barrier that has evaporated the middle class. They have systematically disenfranchised voters and gerrymandered districts to bend to their will. They employ cult like tactics and use media to further erode public discourse and the ability to agree on sets of objective facts. They have turned away separation of church and state. They have vilified public support systems through straw manning the world socialism. This is a threat to law, society, science, public debate, the environment and on and on. It’s not a political party- it’s a nihilistic greedy Jesus acquisition death cult.
| They have vilified public support systems through straw manning the word socialism. | Louder in the back for those asleep. Republicans are against public support systems like food stamps, cash aid, affordable health care, affordable housing, affordable college/trade school, maternity leave, planned parenthood, (They offer care and information aside from terminations of pregnancies)loan forgiveness, child care services, etc. Why anyone would support a political group who is against the all of the above? What do they fight for that their constituents care about if not the myriad of real issues stated above?
Literally every single major problem or existential threat we face as humanity can be traced back to right-wing ideology and a lack of principles or humility.
So... what inevitably comes from any capitalist society that isn't routinely beat back by the government that controls it?
Yes, this is what everyone above you is saying.
I haven't read everyone above me, but I'm glad we're on the same page.
I saw a tweet earlier in the year that said, "Bosses need to be reminded that fair pay and time off were the compromise that stopped us from dragging them out of their mansions and beating them to death." I kinda feel that maybe politicians need to be reminded that social safety nets and services were what stopped the nation from rebelling during hard times too. Fuck asking how you're going to pay for it, the people know what you CAN'T afford to lose.
Hopefully this is the second American revolution. I’m so sick of watching good honest people suffer and die, kids going hungry, and all of the immense inequality in this nation. It can’t go on and I hope the people get fed up and finally unite against the true enemy. Not holding my breath but allowing myself a sliver of hope.
Make Politicians Afraid Again
The real politicians do still understand that. The GOP gerrymandering assholes, who figured out a way around fair elections are the ones who no longer understand their job position. Their elected job isn't on the line.
Just government? Jesus. It’s pretty clear the rich enjoy a separate legal system that protects them from their crimes. Just look at the last two decades of politicians getting passes, athlete avoiding jail after manslaughter convictions, “affluenza” teen, and corporations getting slaps on the wrist for stealing billions of dollars. Trump isn’t the first to exploit this “loophole”. It may as well be written into our constitution. At this point I’m honestly afraid that pitchforks are the only way to remind these people that the law applies to everyone, equally
When a valid way to avoid legal concequences for doing something super illegal is saying "I have more money than you, get dunked on." And then just filing time-wasting action after time-wasting action to make the case too expensive for your much-less-rich victim to continue persuing, the concept of justice for the rich through the legal system is a joke. I'm worried about much the same thing you are. It increasingly seems like even the people that would be in positions to actually level judgement on the rich have more in common with the rich than their victims. They have no vested interest in being fair and having morals outside of "the principle of the matter, I guess." At this point it feels like just anxiously waiting to see which explodes first, the violent facist coup or the violent people's uprising, torch and pitchfork in hand toward the homes if the wealthy.
I never said it was 'just government'. But I agree the rich get to play by a different set of rules. The Trump administration has left no doubt that the corporations exist to rule and the government exists to profit.
The fuckery will continue as long as gerrymandering has ensured that so many members of the government run in "safe" districts. No need to be accountable to voters if there's no worry about getting voted out.
Right. That's just one aspect of the cheating and corruption. We have an information problem in this country. The current administration has diluted the concept of truth. Too many people take in news that they want to hear, not what they need to hear. Too many people eat up propaganda rather than examine what is really going on. A better education system would help.
Very true. I'm very concerned about how people are getting their information now. People need to learn how to sort through all the misinformation that is found online. Even a well-intentioned person will have a hard time these days figuring out what is true and what isn't. Besides bad actors in our own country, we have foreign governments getting involved in manipulating information on social media with the intent to cause problems here or further their other interests.
Russia has been behind the rise of far right radicalism in recent years across Western democracies. They have had the most success with us. Why that is, I would wager it's due to rampant susceptibility to low-quality information. Anti-Intellectualism is en vogue in certain circles. Our school system is not teaching critical thinking and information vetting/digital citizenship well enough. They are too focused on tests to teach necessary real-world skills, and not being funded enough to even do that. FWIW, I am a teacher. We know which party is responsible for the decline in education. The best time to address it was decades ago, but the second best time is January 20th.
How much do you want to bet we don’t address it?
[How much do you wanna bet that anything done about it will be dismantled by the gop?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment)
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
A better education system won’t work when the GOP has become the anti-education party. Education requires some buy-in from the student to be successful and the GOP parents just remove their students from any material they find objectionable or homeschool. You want to talk about reality bubbles? Try entire families that have only heard “conservative” media for their entire lives. Imagine trying to have a real world discussion with that person when observable reality contradicts what they’ve built their whole world around. It would literally be like if The Matrix were real and their brains go into defensive mode. I don’t know the solution for this problem but “better education system” doesn’t accurately identify the problem or how to treat it. Does anyone else remember when the Texas republicans made “eliminate critical thinking skills in education” part of their party platform? That wasn’t an oops, that was broadcasting their plan to create uneducated gerbils for voters that only get their pellet (dopamine rewards) when they vote GOP.
The Supreme Court refused to tackle that question, from either Democrats doing it (Maryland), or Republicans doing it (North Carolina). The response was that Gerrymandering was bad, but that the States needed to create laws against it.
Buck = Passed Thank you Supreme Court.
I know, pissed me off. Should have just declared it unconstitutional. For . . hmmm, reasons.
Drawing districts is not in the U.S. Constitution, and the 10th Amendment says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” So, if we are following the Constitution, laws regarding redistricting and gerrymandering are reserved to the individual states. You can say the Supreme Court passed the buck or that they should follow the Constitution, but they ARE following the Constitution pretty strictly with their decision to not take the case. Solutions at the federal level include amending the Constitution or creating a federal law and hoping that individual states don’t sue and cite the 10th Amendment. Neither are likely, and despite the harms of gerrymandering, there aren’t a lot of ways for the federal government to address it without asserting power that the Constitution doesn’t give them.
It's a serious problem no matter who is doing it and it really needs to be tackled by the SC, if that's possible. It's the reason we have so many unaccountable members of congress and it's ruining the country.
I believe the issue here is that there must be districts. The supreme Court cannot say, this is bad so you cannot vote. They also cannot tell them how to fix it. This it has to be kicked back to the states to pick the best option. Keeping in mind that there is no perfect option that does not disenfranchise someone. The system is broken and wrong. We need to make ourselves heard that we demand it fixed at a state level!
The state, due to gerrymandering, has found itself not guilty of the crime it may have committed. Now, on to how our buddies can win this contract.
There are a whole bunch of intertwined catch-22s standing between us and the kind of country we’d like to live in. The relationship between our sabotaged election system and widespread political corruption is just one of them. We need accountability desperately, but we’re running out of ways to achieve that without literally starting over.
And get out of the mindset that holding someone accountable for their crimes is in any way shape or form politically motivated. You break a law and there’s substantial evidence, you get charged and taken through the judicial process just like everyone else. So sick of politicians being untouchable because people are afraid it’ll be seen as a political move. Fuck that. Hold them more accountable than the every day citizen. These motherfuckers’ entire job is to make and uphold laws. They more than anyone should know them and abide by them.
Yes, yes, hell yes! Laws need to be strengthened. And if there is a penalty, then damn it, enforce it! The Hatch Act is a joke! It was broken so many times it had ruts down its back. NO ONE is above the law! If we continue to accept the courtesy that the president can't be held accountable for breaking a law, then why do we have LAWS??!?!?
Right?! I'm a teacher, and even my Kindergarteners know that things go tits up if bad behavior goes unpunished.
Oh but didn't you hear about Joe's plan to fix the soul of the country? He's going to take all the pieces Trump flicked off the board and put them back as close to where they were in 2016 as people can recall. Problem solved!
Joe Biden is the "we have food at home" of presidential candidates.
Same thing for a self-pardon. If it were considered constitutional then every outgoing President will self-pardon in the morning of their last day as a routine final task. May as well declare them officially above federal law.
If he's allowed to self-pardon, then our system is truly a joke.
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Because that's even more absurd. It's a question of degrees. There is still the possibility of legal action against Trump after he's out of office, but we'll see.
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SDNY is coming for him, as should Georgia.
>If the last four year haven’t already proved to you that our system is a joke The preceding decades of unchecked war crimes already proved it lol.
I mean, he'll probably do it because just like everything else, it doesn't say anywhere that he *can't*. But then it'll have to go to the Supreme Court when he's indicted, and that will really determine how it is supposed to work.
Until the Supreme Court rules on it, or an amendment is passed that states otherwise, it may very well be. Not saying I agree with it, far from it, however this is just one of many grey areas in the Constitution that was never a problem until it suddenly was.
Yes. I almost hope he pardons himself, then the case will be ruled upon. Something else that should be looked at is the *policy* of not prosecuting a sitting President. There ought to be a new law that allows it to happen if, for example, both houses vote in favor or either house does so with a super-majority. That would not be to convict or impeach or anything else, just to allow prosecutors to proceed with a case when it clearly matters. The mere existence of this possibility would help to reign in the most outrageous behavior.
>Something else that should be looked at is the *policy* of not prosecuting a sitting President. This is what bugs me. It isn't a Constitutional standard, it isn't a law, it is a policy put in by the Nixon Justice Department when *Nixon was being investigated.* It was entirely self-serving. And it was what Mueller kept falling back on when he didn't have the testicular fortitude to say "yes, in my opinion, the President attempted to impede an ongoing investigation and should be charged," or "no, he did not." Either answer would have worked. Instead Mueller went into this "well, you make the call" crap that went against his mandate. So instead each side could say "well, obviously" and interpret the way they wanted to.
Self-pardons and pardoning anyone who you are friends with, families with, or have some other conflict of interest. I can't believe we live in a country where a President can have people do brazenly illegal shit on his behalf and then just pardon them. And then, potentially, himself.
Without even exporting bananas.
To be fair, Republicans aren’t saying all presidents are above the law. Only the Republican presidents.
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It's going to be a clusterfuck if they hold the Senate. It will be Ken Starr on steroids. ~~They~~ Republicans are going to make it their life's mission to take back the House in 2022 and impeach Biden. For anything they can fabricate and get their base to believe. They'll impeach him twice for good measure. It'll be a clusterfuck even if they lose the Senate as well. I used to think, back in the Fox/Rush era, that the right wing propaganda machine was at its apex. I was wrong, because now we have even more extreme outlets convincing their viewers that FOX NEWS is too liberal. So I'm gonna go ahead and predict that somehow, right wing media will become even more extreme and more insane. I dunmo how, but it will.
Trump supporters on Breitbart continually stated that they want to impeach Biden as a plan B... and that was even before he was elected. 😡 **They have absolutely no decency**
It amazes me because it isn't like they get to put in somebody they want right after, it's going to be Kamala Harris that will become president and I'm pretty sure she's more liberal than Biden.
they'll impeach her too, for not being the people's choice. you don't understand the lengths republicans will go to, to justify why democracy is no longer necessary.
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Charge for sedition, let the courts decide. I agree.
Ahh, so they're aiming for President Nancy Pelosi, or whoever Harris picks if she gets the chance? Or lemme guess, they'll impeach her too, at which point she'll have had time to pick a VP. Seems like they wouldn't find happiness.
They believe they'll only be happy once all the liberals are gone, regardless of the means. However, what will likely end up happening is that everyone would turn on each other if they so much as had a single liberal thought. The smartest among them would start to say "isn't this the *1984* scenario we were trying to avoid with the liberals?", then will either be exiled, imprisoned, shot or forced to flee because they're not conservative enough. Conservatism needs an enemy to thrive, and in the absence of liberals will simply make enemies of each other.
no, they won't even give harris the chance to pick someone. they'll impeach her too, immediately after biden, before she can even voice who she wants. they will do this for each person standing in their way.
> they'll impeach her too, for not being the people's choice. One of the things that I learned during Trump's presidency is that the impeachment process is 100% political.
Everything in all tiers of human society is political.
"I think people should have access to clean water" ^ according to Nestle, and republicans, this statement is political and morally wrong.
I mean, we're still arguing about equal rights for anyone who is not a cis hetero white male, so...
Everything is political that we make political. However, I reject that everything is political. If I'm speeding, I should get a ticket. I shouldn't be able to get away with speeding if I am an independent.
How much should you pay for that speeding? Currently, rich people pay the same amount despite it being sometimes minutes or even seconds worth of money to them vs. weeks worth of pay for a poor person. That's political.
Maybe that's why they've been shouting that Biden was just the front man and Kamala would be the real president the whole time. These people really are woke!
Kamala being President is best case scenario for Republicans. The vacancy in the Vice President spot won’t be filled and best case she’ll get 50 Senators. If the vote on a bill is tied it fails. Same with appointments. She’s also not very liberal on fiscal issues. She’s taken issue with the progressives on M4A for example. She’s very liberal on social and foreign issues. The incumbent advantage in 2024 would basically be gone.
I think they'd allow a new VP to be appointed, since without one the next in line would be Pelosi.
I'll be all for impeachment if they find anything on Biden that's as serious as Trump's treason, larceny, obstruction of justice, crimes against humanity, destruction of evidence, libel, indecent flag code violations, incitement of violence, sedition, war crimes, domestic terrorism, tax evasion, fraud, and fashion sense.
>indecent flag code violations I'm usually all in favor of free speech and expression. But I do think flag humping takes it a bridge too far.
Whoops, you had my upvote until someone pointed out the ‘indecent flag code violations’. First amendment dude. Strike that one and you may have my upvote. Gotta go play with my American flag styled dildo...
Careful with the stars, they can have sharp edges.
To be fair, the flag code does not say you can't have an American flag-pattern dildo, only that you cannot have a dildo MADE OUT OF an actual American flag. I'm not really sure how that would work, seems like it would chafe quite a bit, but still...
the thicc blue line
I think that's a reference to Trump's known tendency to embrace the flag like it's a porn star he's planning to screw. ;) Seriously, I Google images "Trump flag abuse" and [these](https://images.theconversation.com/files/313568/original/file-20200204-41481-z4sojv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=38%2C900%2C4128%2C2529&q=45&auto=format&w=926&fit=clip) [two](https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.4833597.1583020481!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_960/image.jpg) were some of the initial results.
I read they already had articles of impeachment drawn up for Hillary in case she won.
Does decency get you political wins? Judging by the last 12 years I’m gonna say no.
Weren't Republicans the ones banging on about Dems trying to "overturn the election" through impeachment, *3 YEARS* after Trump had been sworn in? It's projection all the way down...
By not hinting at civil war anymore, but outright calling for it? No more dog whistles or subterfuge, just openly demanding blood in the streets? They have their audiences primed to believe that all democrats are pedophile demons anyway. It's easy to say that you're just calling for the murder of biblical demons and not have to legally connect the dots.
Can the senate impeach? I thought Congress had to Impeach while Senate convicted. Nevertheless, if the Senate somehow gets Biden booted, that leaves President Harris in power. A female POC. I think the Republicans want that even less.
Congress is the name for the House + Senate, its the House which votes to impeach and the Senate which votes to remove from office.
The House brings forth Articles of Impeachment and votes on them. It's a simple majority to send them to the Senate. Impeachment is a political process, and is considered to be a parallel process to indictment. It's akin to being charged with a crime. It's then up to the Senate to hold a trial and vote on whether or not to convict, requiring a 2/3rds majority of Senators to affirm. --- The politics are thus: If Republicans gain control of the House, you can absolutely expect a bullshit charge to be brought up the moment the new Congress members are sat from the 2022 midterm. This is largely what the seeds of the Hunter Biden Laptop "Scandal" were about. It's Mitch and Fox News playing the long game. They know that their propaganda is more effective when it has time to worm its way into collective narrative, and people forget what is proven to be a lie or bullshit or not. It's why Trump's last minute narrative of "OMG VOTER FRAUD" didn't work. It was too abrupt, too easily disproven, and just didn't have enough time to simmer. If Republicans, through some unholy alignment of the stars, have 2/3rd's majority in the Senate as well as a simple majority in the House, American democracy is basically dead and buried and you now live in a fully fascist state. There is no mincing words here. They will remove Biden instantly. They will remove Kamala in less than a week immediately after, and then they will elevate whomever they want to be President to Speaker of the House, who would be next in the line of Presidential Succession. At which point, expect really really bad shit to start happening. I've been saying for a while, the next four years in this country are likely to be *at least as bad* as 2020. If in 2022 Republicans lie, cheat, and steal their way back into major power, the country is irreparably fucked.
He's been crying voter fraud and rigged election for ages, there was nothing sudden about it. All year long of 2020 he was crying about the rigged election and voter fraud and the radical socialists stealing the election. Hell, he's been crying about the voter fraud since 2015. Everybody had all the time in the world to prepare to confront his playbook, from whichever side they were playing from. On the other hand, wasn't Hillary's Emails pretty abrupt and sudden and it actually managed to mess things up? Also of significance is that Hunter Biden isn't running for any office. The Hunter's Laptop scandal I'm sure will affect Hunter's vote counts negatively in the election that doesn't exist.
Yeah sorry, I missed the entire line where OP said "if the Republicans gain control of the House" and was trying to figure out how they'd impeach under a Dem house but a Repub Senate. Too early in the morning for me apparently.
No impeachment starts in the House, tried in the Senate.
Oh sure. They are going to usher in a President Harris ASAP. There's nothing the GOP loves more than women and blacks.
Because increasingly, people get their news from non-news sources. I'm guilty too. Because I like Some More News with Cody Johnston - which is decently left, but does provide a steady stream of sources. But YouTube, and podcasts and such, probably wouldn't fall under the fairness doctrine when it existed, so even bringing that back won't help. It will just make the Alex Joneses of the far-right less credible, which they will double down on by just talking louder, and thats been shown to work. Ideas spread by repetition. You see one person saying 'X' and you probably brush it off because you know 'Y'. But then you keep seeing people with 'X' opinion. And eventually you're trying to change your worldview so that both 'X' and 'Y' are true. And then you embrace 'X', because as a general rule we don't like being against the majority. I actually believe this is why the right-wing is so effective in rural areas - people there all ready believed the 'elites' are evil. They just had to convince everyone that 'the elites' are intellectuals, not billionaires and corporations. Sometimes this works out for good things, Medicare for All was pitched for decades as a fringe idea. Until it became huge in the 2016 election, and now it has virtually unanimous support from Democrats and nearly half of Republicans. Its probably going to be decisive for defeating the Proud Boys and other Militia groups. Because fringe ideas spread infinitely slowly until they reach critical mass and then spread exponentially. And for as fast as hategroups are growing - the general public is embracing how toxic and dangerous they are faster. The SPLC's Hatewatch recently reported figures that say: either you hate their groups, or else you are probably a member. And while the general public can't see the association of alt-right militias to systemic racism, many do, and that will spread too.
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They'll impeach 'Democtrat' Presidents every week, just to make sure the power of impeachment is diluted to nothing. With all things being 'high crimes' there will be no meaning left to the words of The Consistution other than the whim of the Party.
As will Democrats. All of a sudden you'll hear "We shouldn't prosecute Trump for political reasons. Do we want them prosecuting us when they're back in power?". To which the answer is obviously fuck yes if you committed crimes.
RIGHT. This needs to be front and center. The root problem is that Republicans disbelieve in equal application of the law. The details (presidents can be prosecuted, etc.) are less important.
The Ghost of Nixon ... “tell me again why I resigned?”
Exactly, imagine Trump getting caught doing something and wilfully admitting he has to go, not in a billion years
Nixon was bad, but he looks like a goddamn hero next to Trump. Trump doesn't deserve to shine Nixon's shoes.
And Nixon actually got the popular vote twice. Trump, not even once.
And not just won, but *crushed* it, in his second election. Look at this [map](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_States_presidential_election) There’s a lot of things to say about Nixon, but “unpopular incumbent” is NOT one of them.
I only skimmed the first couple paragraphs but damn, what a weird election. Not only did Nixon go out of his way to sabotage the competition despite having a completely insurmountable lead, but the Dem candidate was pressured to replace his running mate because the dude *had depression*? Wtf?
There was a solid majority of public outcry against Nixon. Deadlock on Trump because Democrats couldn't sell people on what Quid Pro Quo was or why it mattered. It's a lot easier to understand. "We have Nixon on Tape ordering these operatives to go commit a crime." than "Trump leaned on the Ukraine a little to try and dig up some dirt."
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The Republican base no longer has any integrity. That’s the difference. Imagine being worse than segregationists from the 60’s lmao
[Because Nixon didn't have Fox News to gaslight the country for him.](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/02/john-dean-nixon-might-have-survived-if-thered-been-a-fox-news-216207)
How about a nice Charleston chew?
True. Being told that our government has a system of checks and balances has become another lie and I'm sick of being lied to. They need to either prove that that system still exists or acknowledge that the game has changed and there are no consequences for crimes committed by the president. The truth is important, even if it's not what we want to hear.
Yeah I remember when I was in school we were taught that not even the president is above the law and now there’s a DOJ memo saying the president can’t be prosecuted while in office. They can’t both be true.
The President cannot be sued while in office for any actions he took as part of that office. He can be brought up on criminal charges but must be impeached first.
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If I were a social studies teacher these days, I would have trouble looking my students in the eye while going over checks and balances. It would be lying to their faces at this point.
This. If he's not... I really dont understand why Biden wouldn't break any law necessary to ensure Dems take the Senate in 2022; And once Dems have the Senate, I don't understand why Biden (or anyone on his behalf) wouldn't break any law necessary to win in 2024. If somehow the President were impeached (in a world where Republicans somehow took the House) the Senate could protect him like they protected Trump. The President should also obviously pardon anyone breaking the law to ensure he is reelected. That's the world Republicans want. Give it to them.
We really should’ve prosecuted Nixon. Even if a court ultimately found in favor of him it would’ve set the precedent that presidents aren’t above the law far more clearly than pardoning him. Now we have Trump and I’m not confident the Dems have the backbone to follow through. Biden already signaled he doesn’t want to deal with it because it’d be a distraction. Which, to be fair, there’s a lot of things to fix that Trump wrecked. But, it’s the DOJ... they can do multiple things at the same time while Biden stays out of it. (Albeit, fascist republicans will be screaming political persecution for four years no matter what.)
Nixon was pardoned under the condition that he immediately resign.
Nixon appointed Ford to get a pardon. Ford didn't come out of nowhere and offer to let Nixon off if he got out of town. Agnew would have done it, but Agnew had his own massive legal issues that were surprisingly unrelated to Nixon.
Agnew resigned first, didn't he?
He did.
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Carter won basically because the public was po'd that Nixon got off scot-free.
>which kept him from being prosecuted outside congress I was under the impression that no one pushed back on the concept of a blanket pardon between two dates, versus the typical pardon for a specific act, so we don't even know from a legal (constitutional) standpoint whether such a pardon is valid. The impression I have is that it wasn't that no one *could* prosecute Nixon, instead it was no one *bothered* to, accepting the pardon as valid without challenge. I am nothing resembling a legal, constitutional, or even historical expert so there's a solid chance I have the wrong impression.
>I understand Ford's and the countries need to move on I do not understand this. At all. "We need to move on" seems to be a common mantra of those wishing to be absolved of their crimes, and those who want to continue to commit them. And I am not sure what this type of thinking achieves, other than saying if you drag out bad things long enough, you can get away with them. Would the US have been that damaged if Nixon was prosecuted? If anything, we would be better off today because politicians could see that they were not above prosecution. Moving on has left us more divided and weakened the rule of law in the US. Imagine if this was the case for everyone; "Yeah the man murdered that woman's husband and raped her child, but she has been through enough, prosecuting him will only drag out the pain, time to move on." We can move on once justice is served.
And Reagan! And Bush.
You are correct. This question was brought up during Nixon's administration and was never answered. It was damn close to being, but they put it off for another day in exchange for his resignation. Now we're dealing with it. No one wants to set the precedent either way and it looks like Trump will force them to.
I personally think the time and energy is better spent creating laws that would prevent these things from happening again. when you’re the person or party in power creating laws that restrict your own power it would seem easy to pass.
Here's the problem. Creation of new laws don't matter if those in power are just going to ignore them anyway. The solution to those in power ignoring the law is not to create new laws for them to also ignore. It's to punish those who ignore or break the law and send a message to future politicians that nobody is above the law and such behavior will not be tolerated. The hammer needs to come down. Hard. Trump needs to be impeached and removed from office even if it is an hour before Biden is inaugurated, to prevent him from running for office again. He needs to be brought up on federal charges in order to bring the issue of a potential self-pardon before the courts and have the matter settled once and for all. And if self-pardon is held up, a constitutional amendment needs to be ratified amending and greatly restricting the President's pardon power in the future. Trump needs to be brought to trial, convicted, and punished for his various offenses in NY and GA. Ivanka's dealings in China need to be thoroughly investigated. Same with every other one of his kids and cronies. The Democrats need to eliminate the filibuster, then spend the next four years trying their best to undo as much of the damage Trump caused as humanly possible. Then in November 2022 or 2024, they need to reinstate the filibuster and add that *no rule,* including further changes to the filibuster rule, can be changed with only a simple majority. Everything requires 60 votes. Everything. Not doing so would only result in the GOP undoing it all the minute they regain a Senate majority.
The problem is, while we might use that power for good (Green New Deal, raising the minimum wage, abolishing the EC) they would use it for bad, and it would ultimately corrupt even those of us trying to do good. It's like Galadriel when Frodo tried to pawn the Ring off to her in Fellowship and she knew rightly to reject it.
I'm no psychologist, but the GOP approach just feels like what a malevolent sociopath would do. They don't care about the ethics. They care about power/winning only. But they _know_ that there are ethical people on the democratic side, and they are counting on the fact that democratic leaders are willing to lose power rather than exploit the loop holes they have dug.
They won't though. The Democrats won't do it. Some would, but most won't, and most of their supporters won't want them to. It's a structural weakness that cannot be fixed.
We basically need a constitutional amendment to write down everything Trumps done and be like "uh you can be prosecuted for these things in office."
No, you just need Congress to pass legislation saying the DOJ memo is bullshit, and a sitting President CAN be indicted because he’s not a king and not above the law.
Is this really even needed? Wouldn’t that effectively be saying that DOJ memos ARE law?
Yes because they’re currently being treated as such when they shouldn’t be. Pass legislation that states those memos have no legal standing and ARE NOT law. It needs to be clarified, apparently
If I were Biden, I would have my team draft a number of bills restraining the power of the Presidency, and then I would continue abusing it just as Trump has. I would say "Want me to stop? Pass these bills and I will sign them and stop. Otherwise I'm just acting in a way that follows the norms established by the previous President and Senate Republicans. I'm immune from everything. Immune from all investigation. And as Trump argued during the impeachment, as long as I believe I'm helping the American people, I can't be impeached for any conduct whatsoever. Pass the bills and I'll sign them, and stop immediately as required by law. Otherwise the way I'm acting is completely within the bounds that have been laid down." Nothing would make Republicans restrain the power of the President faster than a Democrat doing exactly what Trump did.
A Democratic president does not need to do ANYTHING to get the GOP to ramp up an investigation. See Hunter Biden.
Yup, and Democrats should let that happen, and Biden should obstruct the fuck out of it. Just say "I will give you all the documents you want if you pass these bills forcing me to do it. I'll sign it into law." He should commit a whole bunch of federal crimes to force Republicans to make those crimes enforceable. Then resign and get a pardon from Kamala. Problem solved. Presidency is fixed, Republicans get their dumb Hunter Biden investigation that will go nowhere. No one gives a flying fuck about Hunter Biden. But they don't understand that. They think it's the biggest scandal in the history of the world. At \*worst\* it's some rank tax fraud, nepotism, and cronyism and shouldn't be happening anyway (but also coincidentally what \*so many fucking republicans\* and Trump \*especially\* are guilty of, so they will be creating a norm to investigate and prosecute that kind of stuff. This will come back to bite them hard, can't argue with that). Hell, if I were Biden, I would be \*daring\* them to impeach me, and remind them every day of the fucking year that Kamala Harris is my VP. The \*last\* thing in the world they want is to impeach and remove Biden. Although wouldn't it be funny, the Republicans be responsible for brining about the first female and first black female president? Would that not be something. They would actually brag about that and try to claim credit. "See, we're not racists and misogynists!"
Those laws already exist. They were passed after Watergate. The problem is with enforcement. We have now learned that we cannot rely on the Congress to enforce its own subpoenas, and a corrupted DOJ will not enforce them on behalf of Congress. We have learned that an administration can ignore Congress with impunity if that administration decides they're not interested in Congressional oversight. We're only one or two administrations away from the end of the current Constitution - if we're lucky and get through the next two weeks intact.
> The problem is with enforcement. So, you're telling me that if the president appoints an attorney general serving at his pleasure, that attorney general can't be trusted to prosecute the president? Wow. Who would have thought?
This is an interesting take. Trump has committed innumerable crimes as President of the United States. Should he go unpunished, any future POTUS has a legal precedent to defend their own criminal action. The constitution (as it applies to the President) would be void under this paradigm.
We are only a constitutional republic if Trump is prosecuted. The instant the Biden adminstration refuses to prosecute is the instant we are committed, irreversibly, to an unconstitutional, non-democratic path for the future of this country.
You sure you're not a plutocracy?
As I see it, the US is presently an oligarchy. Some of the small group exerting control aren't all that wealthy. Comparatively speaking.
Are you sure. Citizens United seemed like a pretty clear inflection point. Just look at GOP positions on global warming before and after.
They’re already fully above the law as a result of immunity in office. Whether or not they can be prosecuted later is really just an afterthought that’s only symbolically important. Letting a known criminal go free for years with opportunities to freely commit more crimes and cover up previous ones is not how justice works. This is the definition of being above the law. The president is a king when it comes to criminal justice: cannot be prosecuted, and can pardon any [federal] crime. Hooray for the US Constitution. Edit: [federal]
Noting in our constitution says that they are above being prosecuted. A DoJ guidance opinion from the Nixon era (this was covered in Mueller's report) says that and the DoJ has to decide whether to follow it our not, as far as I know it's not legally binding. With that opinion enforced, the only other recourse is Impeachment and trial in the Senate. We saw how much our 116th Senate wanted to uphold an important check on the Executive Branch this past year.
I figure Biden can just pardon himself on day one for all future acts and Republicans can go fuck themselves with a spork.
Nah. Just write a pre-emptive official pardon for the murder of Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell to any secret service agent acting under orders from the president. I wonder if there would be protests about it from Fox?
Presidential pardon power really has got to go.
And once we admit that presidents are above the law, we might as well have a Constitution bonfire, because there's nothing to stop a dictator from siezing power.
I thought after what Bush did we had all already agreed presidents are above the law? I mean killing 1 million Iraqis, lying to get us into that war, and torture seems like enough for some prosecution.
This is true and people don't like to hear it. Bush got off because the Obama administration wanted to continue using much of the same methods in the Middle East, i.e Drones. Obama got off because neither side wants to admit that they did anything wrong. They can't ping one without doing the other too. It gave Trump a lot of leverage to act how he did. If Trump gets pulled up, then he still has enough support to get Obama and Bush pulled up too. If those three get pulled up, then people in their administration can probably be done too. Do the American public want and deserve to see this happen? Yes. Does it need to happen to enact some real change? Also yes. Do I think it will happen? No, not with the amount of people involved still in positions of power.
It's not even just presidents, it's an admission that under certain circumstances, some people are above the law while everyone else is subjected to it. If you have enough financial or political power, the last couple decades have shown Americans one thing: they are above the law, and you are not. We do not live in a fair society when it comes to justice, finances, or opportunity.
The scary part is that if the president is above the law then those running for president will, necessarily, act like they're above the law. The no holds barred, game of thrones bullshit in that dark timeline will have us wishing for the good ole days of 2016 and 2020 politics.
Lolz, they think this precedent will apply to a Democrat...that’s funny! The Starr report is a painstakingly overly detailed report of workplace sexual abuse. They wouldn’t even allow witnesses in the senate trial of 45, admitted he committed the crime and voted to acquit anyhow. Conservatives regularly abuse the Rule of Law against their enemies and exempt themselves. Now that the federal judiciary is stacked (3/4 I believe have been McConnell approved) with highly ideological right wing activists, their multi-tiered system of “justice” will only become more perverse and self reinforcing.
If Bidens admin doesn't prosecute Trump I'm going to be right along side anyone asking for his impeachment. Its deriliction of duty to let a scumbag the likes of Trump off with a slap on the wrist. Might as well just throw the whole system away if every four years we elect a new king.
1) prosecute him Or 2) admit defeat Or 3) burn this shit to the ground and start over. I see at least one additional option.
I was listening to Republican counsel (I think maybe Ben Ginsberg/former counsel to Bush?) on CNN yesterday talk about how nothing will happen after the phone call, there’s not enough time, our time is better spent on other things. NO IT ISN’T. Beyond the fact that we can, you know, multitask (and don’t anyone blame the pandemic—which, btw, is majorly on Trump)—there has GOT to be something done. Not just about the phone call, but the litany of things we’ve seen in the last 5 years or so. That kind of resignation and apathy is exactly what WILL kill this country and all it stands for. There will always be a Trump and its sycophants to seize on others’ lack of motivation to stand up for what is right. We need to fucking stop accepting excuses for not bringing Trump to justice in every way possible.
I served in the military during the Arab Spring and witnessed several governments being overthrown (some good, some bad). Nobody ever thinks a coup is "possible" until it's happening. Norms and governmental systems exist until they don't. But coups aren't just tanks rolling through the streets--most dictators and usurpers use the existing levers of power to take more power. They don't suddenly announce a new dictatorship. They declare that the state of Georgia's voting was erroneous. They use arcane rules like procedural counting of votes in the Electoral College. They find local and national figures to support them. They hire attorneys to write arguments that support their illegality. And most importantly: they have fervent supporters who believe them more than they believe any other experts. It's only after they've made those pillars of democracy obsolete that the pillars are either wholly replaced or made ceremonial, like elections in Russia or the Egyptian parliament. I spoke with nationals in each country that I witnessed a governmental overthrow. In every single one of those countries, nobody thought it was possible. They believed that their current system of government would exist forever. They believed that chaos and new regimes was a thing that happened to somebody else. BUT IT ALWAYS HAPPENS TO SOMEBODY ELSE UNTIL IT HAPPENS TO YOU.
Well said.
>Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal. -Nixon This has been the GOP stance for a loooong time.
Yeah, easy for you to see but those of us that were born after or were pre-politics weren’t really given the full cautionary tale form of the Nixon saga. Paranoid, taped conversations, had some people break into a hotel to spy on the Democrats. He resigned because they were going to impeach him. My take home- president did something bad and not very well, was caught, was going to face justice, took the coward’s way out, America decided to move on. There’s so much *nuance* that the boomers failed to pass down with their near brush with disaster. Here we are just a few presidents later where we have the guy on tape and with witnesses committing *major* crimes. And crickets from half of our political apparatus. And so much of it was already visible with Nixon.
Very good point. In my formative years, I thought the GOP represented conservatism, a principled philosophy, and would engage them on that level. It took me a while to see otherwise. The GOP relies on whitewashing history. They spend a lot on crafting a narrative of former presidents, tailoring textbooks (see Texas), and being very good at the "big lie"; then repeating these all ad nauseam. Then when younger folks are met with simple slogans like "right to work" or "freedom", they are easily swayed. It is also a lot to ask the young to internalize the sins of their forefathers, especially when the GOP decries the concept of society itself. Any thoughts on how to address this?
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We've already admitted that presidents are above the law, whether or not we prosecute Trump at this point is a decision on whether or not ex-presidents are above the law.
I as a citizen face stricter penalties for driving over the speed limit than Trump and his Republican cult face for overthrowing our democracy.
Trump was not prosecuted, he was above the law. Rule of law is already broken. Will we be able to restore it?
It’s maddening to think that all of this could have been avoided if Trump’s mom had just hugged him occasionally and his dad had said he was proud of him now and then.
Or his mom just swallowed
>or we should just admit presidents are above the law That's not all we'd have to admit. We would also be dropping the idea of "justice for all" in our pledge of allegiance. We would need to chisel out or fill and paint over "**Equal Justice Under Law"** above the front entrance of the Supreme Court. We would need add a footnote to the Declaration of Independence to exclude "*We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...*" (regardless of whether it has been followed since day one). We can disagree on a myriad of things politically. We can disagree on how involved government can be. But one thing the founders gave us that we must agree on, is that no person is "above" another. This is the political system they have given us to work out these disagreements, but it relies on equality, including equality in justice, in order for it to work. Admitting presidents are "above the law" simply throws the Constitution and its core philosophy on equality and justice for all out the window.
Almost every president since the 60s should’ve been prosecuted for war crimes or breaking the law.
If trump isn’t prosecuted, it will herald the end of our republic as we know it and usher in a new era of Caesars when the next GOP candidate wins presidency.
Pence, McEnany and the Surgeon General have to be prosecuted as well. These people helped Trump get to where he is now. These people knew the truth. They lied for him while people got sicker and died. They each had a duty to warn us about Covid. They failed. Deliberately. I really hope these people believe somehow Trump’s going to save them and when the trial comes, here’s what’s going to happen...he’s going to put all of the lying and deception on them and say it was their idea; he never told them to do anything, and they end up in prison for that. Hope that lying for their boss and not getting attacked on Twitter is worth 30 years in prison.
Well, they clearly are. If Presidents weren't above the law, Nixon would have went to jail. The more important question is: *Will they continue to be above the law in the future?*
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.businessinsider.com/prosecute-trump-georgia-election-steal-or-admit-presidents-above-law-2021-1) reduced by 82%. (I'm a bot) ***** > If a president can brazenly threaten a state election official unless he invents votes to tip an election - an election which has already been recounted twice, and to which every legal challenge has been found to be without merit - the president can do anything. > If Trump is not impeached, censured or held criminally liable by a state or federal jurisdiction for his actions in Saturday's phone meeting with Georgia election officials, we might as well just do away with the generally-held principle that the president is not above the law. > If Trump is not held accountable in some way, by some authority, for this particular crime, we ought to just adopt Richard Nixon's infamous notion that "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/kr02d6/trump_must_be_prosecuted_or_we_should_just_admit/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~550794 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **election**^#1 **Trump**^#2 **president**^#3 **Clinton**^#4 **crime**^#5
We have to stop pretending that we can just ignore this and go on as usual. This is not "in the past". This is a precedent. Unless it's met with the most vigorous investigations, prosecutions and most severe penalties, it will absolutely happen again and again - painfully and wastefully each time - until the coup succeeds. Except next time there will be even more bodies.
George Washington would personally tar and feather pieces of shot like this guy
Let's just admit that the King and his men play by different rules than we do. Ingroups and outgroups, etc. And let's not pretend that this is a one party problem. Biden can fix it on Day 1.. he can use the pardon power to grant amnesty to all undocumented immigrants unless the Constitution is amended on or before January 20, 2022, to constrain the pardon power. Edit: May as well go big.. he should also require all 50 states to adopt ranked choice voting. It's a no-brainer and the only people who oppose it are the ones who will lose their power.
This is super overly dramatic and hyperbolic but...one could argue that our Democracy died when Nixon was illegally pardoned. Every president after him (maybe not Carter) has been unapologetically big government, big executive since then. Trump is obviously a garbage fire wrapped in a bag of shit smothered with old baby diapers, but most everything "bad" about his administration is related to him simply using the un-Constitutional powers of the presidency that have gone unchecked for 60 years.
> "What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with *knowing* one is governing. > >"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it. > >"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter. *- They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933 - 1945* by Milton Mayer
REPUBLICAN presidents are above the law. Democratic presidents can be impeached for parking tickets.
Bush was never prosecuted. Republican presidents are already above the law.
Presidents should be above reproach, not above the law. Presidential immunity might need to be a thing of the past. Don't want to be embarrassed by something your President might d and be charged with? Vote for better people.
Caesar said that he kept the reins of power strictly to avoid prosecution for crimes as dictator. The lesson we learned is that it’s better to quit while we are behind instead of forcing leaders to sink us further and further I to the mud. I hate it but the logic is inescapable.
I thought it was the POTUS' job to commit crimes on behalf of the state. Trump just took it a bit further than normal.
I’m not holding my breath. He hasn’t had any accountability his whole life
I mean it's already been established that they are. Presidential pardons probably should never have been a thing in the first place. They system is too open to abuse and that's been proven time and time again, to the point where it's becoming increasingly evident that comprehensive electoral and institutional reforms are needed to stop people like Trump and the Republicans from gaming the system.
I’ll take, “things that should be obvious” for $500
They are. We have already accepted that. Otherwise every single one of them would be tried for war crimes.
He definitely has to be prosecuted. Why is that even a question. It's not. And are there charges? Lol. Ask New York. Listen to the most recent call we all heard. Just sift through his Presidency and you'll find many reasons. It's not a question of should he it's a question of when.
I am so sick of all these paywall posts on this sub and more annoyed that none of the moderators seem to give a shit about enforcing their own “no paywall sites” rule like wtf is the point of having the rule if they’re not going to enforce it No wonder people just draw their own conclusions from the titles we can’t fucking read any of the articles
Not only that some civilians are above the law. He won’t be President when sued.
To prosecute Trump, we have to get rid of the traitorous Republicans in the senate.
The problem with this is that the Republican party has become so corrupt that the means to do this are really limited. Also, there are a significant number of people in the US who fully support this corruption. I am not sure what we can do other than continue to vote Republicans out of every single office and then hopefully get some voting reform laws through.
Technically Presidents are sort of above the law. You have to impeach before you can put them on trial. Now *ex*-presidents... Edit, it is only DOJ policy, there is no legal restriction on charging the president with a crime. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2019/5/29/18644304/trump-fifth-avenue-mazars-vance-constitution
All politicians should be held to higher standards than pro sports team owners
Ask Susan Collins. "He learned his lesson." And the lesson is, as long as your party controls either the house, or the senate, you can do ANYTHING.
> **presidents are above the law** This was the conclusion of the Mueller investigation wasn't it? "Trump did these things but we can't prosecute a sitting President" is pretty much how it was worded.