rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

would love one day on this board where we aren't all willfully misrepresenting what the other person said

lol

look there's a hundred disqualifying things about Trump right off the bat, it sucks but the people who vote for him have already swallowed so much shit that having a civil judgement passed against him is already baked in, on the other hand if there's one group of people this country really is prejudiced against (especially conservatives) it's convicted felons, obviously a lot of these people will vote for him anyway, but its definitely not good

I had a similar reaction when I first read ZZ's post, but going back I realized "no impact" was meant in terms of public perception not jail time.

Feel like the biggest impact will be how hidebound journalists will deal with him being a convicted felon, they sort of have to mention that even by their own dumbass standards of objectivity, no?

well that's the thing if Trump has proven anything it's that labels really do matter a lot in politics and "34-time convicted felon Donald Trump" is not a good one to have, you know the Dems will pounce on it and make this a huge focus of their race which will force Trump to lean even harder into "everything is rigged but I will have my revenge" mode which is exactly what turns off the swing voters

i don't really care to have debates about what the 'impact' will be in terms of the election because in my eyes, him being found guilty of rape, even if it was 'a civil trial', was the right thing to do ethically speaking. his accuser was extremely brave and put herself in harm's way more than once and could have bailed at any point and nobody would have blamed her but she didn't.

as far as why it didn't move the needle in....idk, polls, perception, speaks more to how society views rape. even if you get a rape conviction in a criminal trial, a sizable amount of people STILL believe the victim was lying. if there's video/audio of the incident, people claim it's faked (i.e. Mason Greenwood of Manchester United, where there IS actually multiple smoking guns, only for his fans to continue to say it's fake evidence). so if a sizable chunk of the population doesn't believe the average victim when the guilty party is just a random person, they sure as fuck won't believe it when it's Trump.

I'm not sad about that because it didn't hurt his electability, I'm sad about that because rape victims go through the most ridiculous stigma of anybody in this and other countries and this simply plays into that more.

a criminal conviction in this trial will probably affect the election more, because a) people seem to trivialize civil trials as if they don't mean anything, and b) it's not rape, which is trivialized in this country to where the accusers are always presumed to be liars. that in itself is fucked up.

This is incorrect in multiple ways. He's accused of felony falsification of business records under New York state law. The idea that the jury does not have to be unanimous on this is a lie spread by Trump himself.

he's accused of *misdemeanor* falsification of business records. what makes it a federal crime is the rest of this stuff, via CNN:

Merchan told the jury in his instructions on Wednesday that their verdict “must be unanimous” on each of the 34 counts that Trump faces and that, to convict Trump of felony falsification of business records, they would have to unanimously agree that he falsified business records with the intent to commit, aid or conceal another crime — that other crime being a violation of a New York election law. But Merchan explained that while this New York election law prohibits people from conspiring to use “unlawful means” to promote a candidate’s election, jurors don’t have to unanimously agree on which particular “unlawful means” Trump may have used; they can find him guilty as long as they unanimously agree that Trump used some unlawful means.

Prosecutors provided three theories of what unlawful means Trump used. Merchan told the jury: “Although you must conclude unanimously that the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, you need not be unanimous as to what those unlawful means were. In determining whether the defendant conspired to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means, you may consider the following: (1) violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act otherwise known as FECA; (2) the falsification of other business records; or (3) violation of tax laws.”

no, he's accused of felony falsification of business records, it is a felony because it is in furtherance of election interference, and none of that makes it a federal crime

the falsification of business records, by themselves, are misdemeanors. the smorgasbord of "unlawful means" which enable the NY election law to be applied makes it a felony. trump is semi sort of half right here.

the shocking chickening out of abject (russian) debtor / pathological liar donald 2coups silverspoons from clearing the family name by testifying in his first (?) criminal trial (hey libs don't dignify the witch hunt with compliance!) and pinch hitting disgraced former mayor of NYC rudy '9/11 was an inside job' giuliani's manic stooge robert costello (because trump org chief accountant allen weisselberg is already in jail for (multiple counts of) perjury) (and rudy is holy shit what a fall from grace)) is another sign MAGA nation is in ascendance

makes sense!

The unbearable heaviness of thinking everything is good for Trump

gift link

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/06/biden-campaign-2024-election-senate/678691/

^ too optimistic for this thread

https://www.rawstory.com/roger-stone-2668542134/

Trump has judges to claim the win in 2024, boasts Roger Stone

Ok Rog, keep getting reamed at one of your pos parties.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/20/trump-conviction-fundraising-campaign-donations/

Donors channeled tens of millions of dollars to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee immediately following his May 30 conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, all but erasing the massive fundraising advantage that President Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee once held.

Biden and his allied groups have raised more money than Trump and his allies have over the course of the general-election contest. But the surge in post-conviction donations to Trump’s effort — captured in part in May reports filed to the Federal Election Commission on Thursday — has the potential to dramatically reshape the presidential race.

The Biden campaign’s long-standing fundraising lead allowed his campaign to build a much larger footprint than Trump’s and to significantly outspend Trump’s effort on the airwaves. The latest fundraising results put Trump in a position to build a bigger operation and air more television ads.

The full picture of the financial strength of each campaign’s effort will not be clear until later this summer, when their allied committees are required to file reports. But at the end of May, the Trump campaign and the RNC had a combined $171 million in cash on hand, surpassing the Biden campaign and the DNC’s combined total of $157 million, according to reports filed late Thursday.

...The Trump-allied super PAC MAGA Inc. — which has been the main vehicle for pro-Trump advertising on the airwaves — took in an eye-popping $50 million donation from transportation executive Timothy Mellon a day after Trump’s conviction, giving the former president’s allies ample resources to drive his message at a moment when he is leading Biden in many battleground state polls.

thank you Mellons!!!

Mellon also the largest donor to RFK Jr.

One could be forgiven for harboring a wish to kick him in his Mellon balls

hey guys

hi

so bad...

welcome to the resistance

Hi

ugh

cain't watch won't watch

Might as well just let Trump start moving his stuff back into the White House

staring out the window at the San Gabriels. Thinking about that chapter in the McPhee book and contemplating time.

I don't know if you can blame CNN for the format--I think Biden got the no-audience, mic-turned-off concessions.

there's still plenty of time for him to die

That golfing detour was bizarre. Trump's cheating on the golf course is infamous; and hate to say it, but Biden's a six-handicap like I'm Mookie Betts on the baseball field.

Wrong thread there for those last two posts.

But what of the "no fact check" clause? I didn't realize that that extended to their questions being ignored and then not being able to do anything about it.

Not sure about that. I remember there was one debate, not sure which one, where the moderators got a lot of grief for fact-checking answers...Obama/Romney, maybe?

folks watching presidential debates is not a good or cool or worthwhile thing to do

I was in a hipster coffee shop and everyone was watching the debate on their phones

ugh that is *not* how the director intended it to be seen

lol ty for the levity, appreciated

RELEASE THE SNYDER CUT

jfc this mother fucker has been taking up way too much fucking real estate in my head for almost a decade now!

Like the fact I need to think about this pos for more than a second is sickening

here (Belgium) the headlines are all about the panic in the Democratic party, can Biden still be replaced - and the contrast with the stronger performance by the other guy (and how truth doesn't matter, it's only about motivating enough sponsors. Voters as well, but they matter slightly less with that Electoral College system)

and even if some editors' comments are all aghast at how he keeps behaving, I suspect they're all secretly hoping for another 4 Trump years because Trump equals clicks.

sigh

y'all, i guess i gotta ask, i gotta start taking this seriously

this was about the time in 2016 i really started freaking out about the possibility trump would win. everybody was saying "oh it won't happen, trump will never win," and i needed to figure out how to handle the eventuality. because my plan at the time for what happened if trump won was to not be alive, and that wasn't a good plan.

what i actually did was move from indiana to oregon and change my gender, which i think in retrospect was a much better plan. since i already live in oregon and i'm not changing my gender again, though, i guess i gotta figure out what happens in the highly possible event trump is elected president again in 2024

because in 2016 people were making all kinds of predictions for what would happen if trump was elected president and they were as off-base as the assurances that trump would never be elected president. a lot of my friends are worried about their safety, and i don't know to what extent i _should_ be worried

it's not just that i pass, it's that i'm out as a trans woman, and people where i live support me, people where i live celebrate me. i don't follow the news. i might live in a bubble, i don't know. what i know is that in 2020, donald trump sent DHS troops to portland to kidnap people off the street in unmarked cars. what i know is that when he was called out on this, he said that he was trying to "restore order", that he sent federal troops to portland to try and "restore order", and then after a couple weeks he declared victory and retreated. it's good that the democratic party has my back, as a trans woman. the democratic party is, i think, really politically ineffective on a national level, but it's good that they have my back. what i know is that my employer is openly celebrating me as a trans person, openly celebrating lgbtq+ people, which they've never done before, despite trans people very much _not_ being celebrated by certain organizations nominally linked to my employer. what i know is that even in 2019, when my employer _wasn't_ openly celebrating trans people, they had my back, 100%, when i came out and started transition, and they're not exactly an anomaly out where i live. what i know is that what protects me isn't the rule of law, but _people_. and i trust the people around me.

the republican party's platform, not just trump's, but the republican party's platform involves eliminating transgenderism, and whatever that looks like, it bodes pretty ill for me and the people i care about. trump's platform for 2016 involved building a giant wall across the southern border of the united states. he was _incompetent_. that's the main thing i took away from trump's administration. he was incompetent, and his party was incompetent. i don't think he's gotten more competent. the republican party, on a state level, is doing awful, horrible things. awful, horrible things in texas, awful, horrible things in florida, in ohio, any red state... red states are bad. red states are not safe for someone like me to live in, i don't think.

i feel safe here in portland. i'm employable. i'm not gonna get randomly hate crimed. our community... we know the risks and we work to mitigate them. the democratic party out here where i am, on a state level, on a city level, they're _not_ effective in terms of, like, actually running the state effectively. but i feel safe out here.

do i need to be making plans to leave america? i don't want to leave america. oregon is my home. i'm done with "transition". i can get estrogen if i need to. in practice i pass absurdly well, but all my non-federal id documents - birth certificate, driver's license, etc. - have me down as non-binary. if someone opens an official registry of trans people, i'm on it.

Yeah, totally understand those concerns. My kneejerk reaction is that on a lot of issues in the near term it matters more what state you live in than who the president is. Especially if the Dems end up with at least one house of Congress. But there are certainly things Trump can do through the administrative state — which Project 2025 is all about — and who knows how deep those could go with a pliable judiciary. (Possible silver lining is that the conservative judiciary is ideologically pretty deferential to states' rights and suspicious of the administrative state. But I don't count on them for ideological consistency, obviously.)

this all feels like being in a car going 10 miles an hour in the direction of a lake, and everybody in the back seat yelling 'uh can we not drive towards the lake', and the person driving insisting 'we have plenty of time to turn the car, quit being annoying', and then suddenly we're in the lake

polling seems to suggest that while Biden is likely to lose re-election, the Dem Senate/House candidates are all doing pretty well, so if it ends up as a Trump presidency/Dem Congress, idk, it might be a lot like the first term where everyone's pissed off all the time but little outside of tax cuts actually gets done. the scary thing about 2016 was the Supreme Court, and welp

the project 2025 stuff is terrifying, but I kind of suspect it's more likely to create an administrative logjam and mass exodus of competent people rather than throw us into a fascist state overnight, I wonder if there are any measured articles about it out there detailing what's possible and what's not

a lot of heavily armed, racist, homophobic, transphobic, woman-hating nasty people who have been hiding a bit since 1/6/2021 are going to feel empowered to pop back out and I worry about that more than what Trump accomplishes legislatively.

not to mention all of the people he's going to pardon.

continued living in Texas is feeling less tenable by the minute, but I have no idea what other workable options exist

basically if Trump gets to replace Thomas, Alito (and perhaps Sotomayor) with judges in their 40s, we can expect conservative domination of the court for at least another 30 years.