John Eastman Privilege Filing Over January 6th: Read It For Yourself
In a court filing, the January 6th committee argues that John Eastman’s attorney-client privilege assertion over his emails from 1/6 should not apply due to possible criminal acts detailed within them.
Washington Post:
Lawyers for the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol said in a court filing Wednesday that former president Donald Trump and key allies engaged in potential crimes during their effort to overturn the election: conspiring to defraud the United States and obstructing an official congressional proceeding — the counting of electoral votes.
The alleged criminal acts were raised by the committee in a California federal court filing challenging conservative lawyer John Eastman’s refusal to turn over thousands of emails the panel has requested related to his role in trying to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to reject electors from states won by Joe Biden. Eastman has cited attorney-client privilege as a shield against turning over the documents because he has said he was representing Trump at the time.
The committee argued in its filing that Eastman’s claim of privilege was potentially voided by the “crime/fraud exception” to the confidentiality usually accorded attorneys and their clients, which holds that communications need not be kept confidential if an attorney is found to be assisting their client in the commission of a crime. They asked the judge deciding whether to release Eastman’s emails to privately review evidence the committee has so far gathered to see if he believes it establishes that Eastman was assisting Trump in criminal acts.
“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” according to the filing.
The court filing is the strongest assertion yet from the committee that it believes Trump and some of his allies potentially committed crimes during the effort to overturn Biden’s victory and by falsely stating repeatedly that the election was stolen.
“The facts we’ve gathered strongly suggest that Dr. Eastman’s emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of electoral college ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), and vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), said in a statement.
The committee has no authority to initiate criminal proceedings, and the fact that potential criminal law violations were mentioned in a court filing by the panel does not provide any indication that the Justice Department will consider any prosecutions. Nor does it mean that the lawyer-client protection asserted by Eastman will not be upheld.
You can read the entire filing below, but here is the sticky part as far as John Eastman is concerned:
Shortly thereafter—with the assault on the United States Capitol already
underway—Trump tweeted at 2:24 p.m., “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what
should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a
chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they
were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”The evidence obtained by the Select Committee indicates that President Trump was aware that the violent crowd
had breached security and was assaulting the Capitol when Mr. Trump tweeted.The evidence will show that rioters reacted to this tweet, resulting in further violence at the
Capitol. Indeed, rioters at the Capitol were shouting for the Vice President to be
hanged.A minute after President Trump’s tweet, Plaintiff sent an email to Vice
President Pence’s lawyer stating: “The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do
what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so the American people can
see for themselves what happened.”Later that evening, Plaintiff made a final plea to the Vice President’s lawyer: “I
implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation [of the Electoral Count Act]
and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as
to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred
here.”Plaintiff knew what he was proposing would violate the law, but he nonetheless
urged the Vice President to take those actions.The Vice President rejected Plaintiff’s pleas that he violate the law, and has since
indicated that what the President and Plaintiff were insisting he do was “Un-American.”47
Former Fourth Circuit Judge Michael Luttig—for whom Plaintiff had previously worked
as a law clerk—described Plaintiff’s view of the Vice President’s authority as “incorrect
at every turn.”Evidence obtained by the Select Committee to date indicates that
President Trump’s White House Counsel confronted Plaintiff before the rally, and
rejected Plaintiff’s advice to Mr. Trump. And Plaintiff admitted that not a single Justice
of the Supreme Court would agree with his view that the Vice President could refuse to
count certain electoral votes.As documents now available to the Select Committee demonstrate, Plaintiff used
his Chapman University email account to email Greg Jacob, Counsel to the Vice
President, on January 5 and 6 urging the Vice President to take illegal action and refuse
to count electoral votes.
Read the January 6th filing regarding John Eastman for yourself here:
John Eastman
Easy to believe that crimes were committed in the efforts to overturn the election. Be nice to see time for the “non-violent” people who inspired the violence.Report
If DoJ is indeed following an organized crime playbook for its investigations, then the guilty plea by one of the indicted Oathkeepers yesterday may move the ball you are looking for along a bit.Report
Trump doesn’t have criminal lawyers, he has CRIMINAL lawyers.Report
Yes. That’s been true for years.
Step 1) Trump hires lawyers for their personality, not their competence. Arguably he hires them for their lack of competence.
Step 2) He has them do things for him. He sometimes doesn’t give them enough resources to do it legally so we’re in law-fare territory.
Step 3) Eventually they screw up (or get caught) and he throws them under the bus.
Then repeat.Report
What needs to be pointed out, again and again, is that somewhere around 35-40% of the American electorate knows this, and approves of it, and will eagerly vote for it once again.
This is the dagger aimed at the heart of the American republic.Report
In a two party system, there is a world of difference between “knowing” and “approving”.
For example, even with this, Trump ran the first time as the cleaner candidate. So everyone who voted for either of the main candidates in 2016 “approved” of dirty legal tactics.Report
In 2020 the outcome was almost identical, even after 4 years of witnessing Trumps criminality and lawlessness, and even when faced with a clean candidate.
No matter who runs in 2024, about the same percentage will vote Trump again.Report
Yes. Almost no one is willing to vote for clean gov. Faced with a Trump v HRC contest, the 3rd parties didn’t explode with votes.
Neither party is the party of clean government. Both sides are corrupt. Both sides point at the other’s rotten apples while ignoring their own.
I disagree. He’s probably unstoppable in the primary but unelectable in the general.
If the issue were just Trump is dirty, then yes. Refusing to give up the Presidency had him cross lines no one else has ever done.Report
Trump told us from the beginning that he’d cross that line.; no one should have been surprised by it. Nor should anyone have been surprised that someone high up in the conservative legal movement would back him.Report
I remember a journalist talking about how he wanted to write up how dangerous and extreme Trump was, but he couldn’t find anything to say about him that he hadn’t previously said about Romney.
It’s impossible to warn people of wolves when the nature of our politics means everyone on the other side is called a wolf.
And if everything is a wolf then nothing is.
The people on this forum are WAY more informed than the average joe and their information sources come from all sides because all of us supply links if asked.
We’re also less emotionally involved and expect reasonable arguments.Report
Was anyone reasonable saying Romney posed an existential threat to democracy like people have been saying about Trump? I don’t recall anything of the sort. No doubt some of the fringier publications ran this sort or piece, but discounting them is like tossing out the 10’s from the home country judges in figure skating.Report
You might not remember the days when most conversations didn’t end with accusations of racism, but things were different back in 2012. Romney got called a racist every time he’d criticize Obama. He was also a rich exploiter of the working man (this was just post-Occupy). Also, he was literally accused of gay-bashing.Report
The 2 criticisms of Romney I recall are the 47% thing and the binders full of women. The former \was valid political criticism and the latter was kind of amazing how it got turned around.
But, again to my point, who were the people doing the accusing of racism and homophobia? And, to address the exploiter charge, anyone who works for private equity is going to get that accusation.Report
Major networks and publications. As for the exploitation charges, a sitting senator accused him of not paying taxes.Report
My idiosyncratic thoughts on the Romney Rehabilitation that no-one asked for are these:
Romney had to lose the presidency to become whatever version of Romney (3.0? 4.0?) we have now; We forget that 2012 Romney (2.0?) was leading Team It Was All a Lie as the Bain Capital Maker, not Taker. Now that he’s all about the Takers with his various child programs? Well, that wasn’t going to be President Romney.
So, I don’t think we need to rehabilitate him so much as marvel at his latest version. A step further? Romney and his team resisting the “Reformicons”* are a part of the picture of why we are where we are.
*My unsolicited take on Reformicons? Too little, too wonky, too late.Report
Romney’s always been Romney. The D’s and R’s want him to fit their particular narratives, and Romney himself has always been concerned with his image, so there’s a lot of revisionism, but I don’t see him as having strayed much at any point from who he really is.
Someone was recently scoffing at the idea of noblesse oblige, but Bush, McCain, and Romney came from established public service families and took it seriously. The core of the man has always been duty.Report
That’s thing, I think Romney’s probably a decent fellow who isn’t afraid to take the needful positions of where he is or wants to be.
He’s a Republican Chameleon, but not in any way a leader… I’d say that right now maybe he’s the Senator from Utah and reflects everything around him. Is that the most authentic Romney? I don’t know.
I’m honestly not sure I see him doing these things out of ‘Duty’ — maybe? But nothing Romney does ever really entails sacrifice… only advancement. It undermines the Duty aspect, but maybe doesn’t obliterate it. Either way, it doesn’t move me.Report
I enjoyed Romney’s run. Right here on this very blog, you could watch multiple people explain what the “Real Romney believed”, offering mutually contradictory takes.
It was an amazing political feat. It’s one thing to blend into a single background, but to somehow blend into clashing backgrounds to fit virtually every viewpoint in the GOP was….just impressive.
In the end, he managed to almost become a platonic ideal: “The Generic Republican”. An empty suit into which every Republican voter would project their ideal candidate.
he’s still tacking and shifting with the winds, but I think he decided that — long term — it was better to be anti-Trump than to try to fit in for four years of basic insanity.
I think, like Clinton, he has really underestimate the size of the basket.
But it’s not like he’s alone. I’ve been told by multiple conservatives that those aren’t Real Republicans and aren’t Real Republican views, despite them being held by Real Republican Governors, Senators, Congressmen, and even the party platform in places.
(Who can forget Trump’s one, sole personal change to the 2016 platform? Not Putin, for sure)Report
Yes, as I added above, every version of Romney seems to be *the* version or Romney. He seems like a very modern man to me; a Mormon Rex Mottram.
I see it as a radical character flaw; but it’s never served him poorly…Report
Oh I absolutely see it as a character flaw. He took a requirement for a politician — having flexible views, being willing to bend to public opinion, and being able to sell yourself to diverse groups that wanted many things, often contradictory — and turned it up until the knob broke.
Your average politician has an ideology. They have things they believe in, things they don’t, things they’ll compromise on and things they won’t.
A good politician realizes he can’t be everything to everyone, but that his job is a bridge — to try to get the most for the most, to broker compromises.
Most politicians MUST be deal-makers. You can have your fiery ideologues, sure. You have to have some — poles against which to measure when a deal is “too far”.
Romney struck me as a man who had no use for ideology. I’m not even, to this day, sure why he was running for President. He seemed to run for the same reason an 18 year old might follow in his dad’s footsteps — that’s just what he was told he should do, he needs that on his resume, it’s the next step up, just a thoughtless step based on inertia.
Like you can see why Obama ran. Or Reagan. Or Biden. Or even Trump.
To this day, I couldn’t tell you why Romney wanted to become President or what he wanted to do with the Office.
Obama? Biden? Trump? I could tell you. I could give you a reason I thought they sought the office. (Maybe it’s not the ‘real’ reason, known only in their own hearts, but I can look at them, their words, their actions, and come to a coherent narrative that says “Why this person sought this position”).
Romney? Got to have a Republican run, guess I’m it?Report
It was common for the nutjobs on both sides to say that a president would declare martial law instead of leaving when it was his time to go. Clinton, W, Obama, all of them. Romney wouldn’t have been an exception to the accusation, but no one with any sense would have believed it.
But Trump? He said about every election he was in that he could only lose because of fraud. You could see it coming.Report
Someone wrote a book about the first election claiming (supposedly with inside info) that Trump had never actually planned on winning the election.
He’d lose and claim fraud.
Then he’d be able to claim victimhood with (and soak money from) his followers forever.
He gets massive attention, money, and none of the responsibility for actually doing anything productive.
That sounds like a perfect job for him. He’d be able to drama this for the rest of his life and HRC was the perfect foil to run this against.
Him setting himself up for a drama filled retirement makes a LOT more sense and is a LOT saner than him trying to overthrow the country with a riot.
That is what I saw coming.Report
This is a great point. The broader trend of declaring everything THE. WORST. THING. EVER. has real consequences.Report
Except the wolf-criers were right, at least with respect to the Republicans.
Republics never fall from one worst thing, they fall from a series of things which are the worst thing up to that point.
It’s a series of breaking this norm or that tradition or some unwritten agreement.
America didn’t go from Eisenhower to Trump in one move.
We didn’t go from a high trust and collaboration to illiberal oligarchy in a single step.
We had Nixon exploit the backlash to the 60s by inaugurating the drug war and war on crime and the Southern Strategy.
At the time that was in fact the Worst Thing Ever, up to that point.
Then we had Reagan make an alliance with the illiberal theocratic of the Religious Right, and G H W Bush pardons of the lawless group of Iran-Contra operatives.
And that, too, was the Worst Thing Ever, up to that point.
Then W ushered in a war of aggression and institutionalized torture and lawless imprisonment, and purged the Justice Department of anyone who wasn’t a loyal Party member.
This was another in the Worst Things Ever, and continued the incremental steps from republican democracy to corrupted un-democracy.
The next Republican administration will also be the Worst Thing Ever.Report
Just by coincidence, there is a post up over at LGM in which the treatment at a secret American torture chamber is described.
A secret torture chamber set up and administered before Trump, under the administration which is sarcastically being described as the Worst Thing Ever.
This is the lawless corrupt world that Trump entered.
All the tools and apparatchiks of a autocratic regime were already in place, with all the cloaks of secrecy and unaccountability already secure.Report
This is laughably wrong. Big picture history is a story of things getting better.
With a straight face you’re claiming that “The Southern Strategy” was much worse than openly backing the KKK, disallowing blacks voting, and turning a blind eye to lynching and terrorism.
In terms of governmental repression, loyalty checks, and the misuse of law enforcement we can talk about J Edgar Hoover or the House Un-American Activities Committee.
I could go on and on just from how awful history really was by our standards, but I’ll also point out that Team Blue had more than a little bit of involvement in most of history and more than a little bit of control over even the current nastier elements.
We don’t see pictures of children cages because the media doesn’t want to embarrass Biden. Given that the policies mostly haven’t changed, just the messaging, we still have them.Report
If your frame of reference is the entire history of America then yes, things have been worse and getting better.
If your frame of reference is the Boomer postwar period, then things have been better and getting worse.
But all that means is that America has never really been a republican democracy because there have always been horrors and injustices.
I won’t dispute that point.
But then that leaves us with the point that the claims that Trump is the Worst Thing Ever are irrelevant because well, things have been awful for a long time.Report
“Things have been going downhill since the 50’s”
Who said this?
A: Someone Progressive
B: Someone moderately Liberal
C: Someone moderately Conservative
D: Someone ReactionaryReport
E. Someone Stupid.Report
Boomer post war puts us at 1946+.
What yard stick are you using?Report
I started with Eisenhower as a baseline by which to measure Trump.
The Boomers have Ike and the postwar worldview as their frame of reference.
Although it is certainly true that the postwar era had a lot of injustices, it was also a time of relatively high levels of trust and cooperation in maintaining our democracy.
Since then its easy to see a trend line downward in the Republican Party of ever-increasing radicalization, grievance and disenchantment with democracy.
This was in response to the idea that there is such a thing as crying wolf, because its never the case that everything is fine, then just one day suddenly the republic just implodes.
The Roman Republic is a good case study, where historians trace a steady erosion of norms and trust and cooperation culminating in Augustus becoming the first emperor in all but name.
If you want a modern day data point, notice how little pushback my comment about secret American torture chambers got.
No one jumped in to hotly deny that America would ever do such a thing.
The idea that the American government has and may still run secret lawless sites where people are taken to be tortured or murdered, is just part of our landscape now, as normal and natural as the Washington Monument.Report
1) I don’t try to prove negatives
2) You could easily have been talking about things we’ve put people in prison over.
3) It’s unclear what your definition of “torture” is and any push back will end up with you moving the goal posts.Report
Did you read the well documented accounts of the torture at the black site?
This isn’t an allegation, it is history, and now part of the court record.Report
Radicalization, grievance, and disenchantment are major planks of Team Blue and have been since the 60’s.
More importantly, the gov was a lot less important postwar.
When you insist on one size fits all solutions for all social grievances and injustices, you’re massively increasing the stakes on who controls the gov. If you’re going to insist that “Democracy means my side gets to tell yours what to do”, then you need to expect pushback and a lack of trust.
Similarly, the expansion of the gov into all other aspects of life has raised the stakes and created elites whose only job is to interact with the gov. Those elites are pretty openly self-serving and corrupt by non-legal standards.
There are lots of examples; The children of high-level politicians magically get to turn worthless skills into $600k a year jobs. Fortune 500s have lobbyists who write laws. The tax code isn’t humanly understandable. The police can’t be convicted of murder without a riot. Union contracts have the force of law in NY.
If you want to decrease disenchantment with democracy, lower the stakes. Let the States decide a lot more. Texas gets to keep its abortion laws. New York it’s gun control. Entitlements should be state level programs.Report
You’re not bothering to refute the charge of decreased disenchantment with democracy, and “state control” is exactly the tool used to destroy democracy and liberalism.
It isn’t just federal agents who are militarized, it is the local police.
It isn’t federal agents murdering innocent people, it is the local police.
And it is state governments which are doing the most to ban books and gerrymander themselves into permanent minority rule.Report
you forgot state level Republican Party operative coordinating with a loosing Presidential candidate to keep power illegally.Report
More and more the States only carry out the will of the federal gov. In other conversations you’ve pointed to the federal gov as the directing source for most of the points you’ve raised.
And banning books is almost entirely a local gov thing.
Big picture an increase in authoritarianism and decrease in support for democracy is a side effect of the increase in the power of the gov.
The iron rule of bureaucracy applies, and we’re building massive bureaucracies to enforce the will of the state. https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
The Fortune 500 understand that their profits go up a LOT if they hire armies of lobbyists. It’s a no brainer. Similarly companies hire the children of important gov figures for the same reason.
Elections have less and less meaning because no election is actually going to change things.
As the gov gets more and more control, the stakes go up and it becomes more and more important that your tribe control those levers. Thus the hysteria when the other side picks a Supreme or wins the Presidency.
It becomes so important that your side wins that you start breaking the norms, and then the rules. Trust goes down. At some point you start court packing or ignoring elections.Report
You’re ascribing a mechanistic cause to a societal problem.
There isn’t any iron law that decreases public trust in each other and democracy.
For example, the size and power of the federal government was higher in the WWII era and its immediate aftermath, when trust in democracy was at its highest.
The embrace of authoritarian regimes by Trump and the Republicans didn’t come about as a result of liberals at the federal level. They grew into this role all on their own as social mores changed against them and their need to prevent them grew more desperate.Report
If you need to point to an existential war and include military spending, then yes, the gov was bigger. However, that was viewed as a one off by everyone.
I guess if you’re going to go with “big intrusive gov is always Good”, then you’re stuck with “The other Team is Evil” for explanations.
However, that has no predictive or explanative power and doesn’t take you anywhere for solutions.
If you want another example of lack of faith in democracy, the Civil War is great, but that also proves my point. Control over the gov meant controlling whether or not your tribe’s way of life survived, so when the wrong side won things fell apart.
If you’re going to use democratic institutions to force and enforce cultural cramdowns on people you don’t like and cultures you despise, then you shouldn’t expect those people to trust the gov. So Southern Blacks in the 1950’s probably didn’t much trust the gov.
Worse, when who is controlling the gov is viewed as defining who gets ahead, then we should also not expect much trust.Report
In terms of predictive solutions…
1) Outlaw worthless jobs given to family of politicians.
2) Outlaw members of Congress and their families engaging in insider trading.
3) Push some of the big cultural flashpoint items down to the states.
4) Make institutions race neutral, i.e. prevent it’s consideration for all sorts of things.
5) Serious reform of the regulatory state is needed but I don’t know how to sum it up into one sentence. A lot of companies are using the gov to limit competition. I don’t know how we outlaw regulatory capture with more regulation.Report
Romney is the only candidate for political office who was ever criticized unfairly.
Also Bork was the only guy not to be confirmed for the Court.Report
Hey, politics ain’t beanbag!
Wait, why did Trump win?Report
Because American voters are blackhearted, shallow, stupid people.Report
Hey. Politics ain’t beanbag.Report
The point is ALL of them are unfairly criticized, including (amazingly) Trump.
If you have already described Romney as Trump, then everyone is Trump.
The fair and useful criticisms you could use on Trump are lost in the ocean of wolf calls.Report
Likewise if some party ever nominates a pro-terrorist socialist who was born in Kenya.Report
Faced with a Trump v HRC contest, the 3rd parties didn’t explode with votes.
3rd parties broke 5%.
What’s the explosion baseline? Wallace in 1968 (because he won states)? Or merely Perot in 1992 because he got double digits?
But 3rd parties hadn’t broken 5% in 20 years.Report
Good point.
In 2008 the two main parties got 98.58% between them
In 2012 it was 98.3%
So we have about 4% of the population who voted that way.
So it’s only about 95% or more of the population who is willing to ignore ethics.
Well, probably more. I’m in the 4% but didn’t vote for Trump because of his stances on free trade and immigration.Report
In a two party system, there is a world of difference between “knowing” and “approving”.
This is a fair distinction, and some fraction of Trump voters surely pinched their noses while voting for him.
However, I would generally contend that strong Trump supporters like the awful shit. It’s a mainstream idea within the GOP, and I’d guess it probably applies to about half his support base, giving us just about a quarter of the country.
A bit shy of 27%, even.Report
Only 66% of adults vote.
I suspect his base is more like 40% of the GOP. That’s wrath of god when the other 60% is split and not united.
That’s more like 13.2%.
Now if you’re talking about strong support and you count that as half his base, then we’re at 7%.
23 million people.Report
When I said “support base”, I meant the 40-45% of people who approved of him through most of his term, and who voted for him.
And strong support (based on polling, usually) tracked about half his overall approval ratings during that time.
I definitely should have picked my words more carefully.Report
After all this chitchat, what hasn’t been disputed is that somewhere around 35-40% of the American electorate will vote for the criminal again.
It doesn’t matter who the Democrat is.
It doesn’t matter how skillfully they campaign.
It doesn’t matter how good their messaging is.
About 35-40% of the American electorate prefers the illiberal opponent of democracy.
The very best the Democrats can hope for is that they can move the small sliver which separates the two parties, and eke out a narrow win.Report
Oh, come on, you know the only reason that no one’s disputed your point is that I’ve disputed it literally hundreds of times before. It’s like one of those speeches on the floor of the House after hours. You can feel good that you read it into the record, but you can’t tell yourself that you won over the crowd.Report
True that.
Carter got 41% when he was crushed by Reagan.
Mondale was at 40.6%
Trump would be doing very well to do better than Carter, and your math suggests he’ll do worse.Report
I could see Trump beating, for example, Harris.
I imagine that Chip would see this as an indictment against the American People.
That is certainly one of the indictments it would be.Report
Maybe not all of them, but certainly those that vote for him.Report
No matter the candidate, Trump will pull at least 40% of the vote and will very likely get north of 45%.
THAT is the indictment of America.
Anyone is free to dispute this point, but show your work.Report
I don’t think he’d get 45% (5 points higher than Carter). I think we’d have a LOT more support for 3rd parties and a lot of the GOP would stay home.
I think he’d get about 5 points lower than Mondale which puts him at about 35%.
Deep into “crushing defeat”.Report
I think Harris would beat him. Not that she’s especially strong or accomplished, but she doesn’t seem to have the over the top problems that some of the others do.Report
This is pretty much Trump SOP isn’t it? Lawfare with as an attempt to defraud? Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses… but there’s always a lawyer willing advocate for some angle. Repair the ECA. Republicans should abandon Trump because he betrays everyone who ever gets near him. I guess we’ll always have lawyers.
On a slightly more delicate matter… our customs and mores have moved to an expectation of the direct election of the President… and as long as we’re all sharing the same legal and political illusion it works great. But the fact remains that the Presidency is a construct of the States and their Electors. Sometimes England’s ‘unwritten’ constitution has benefits, sometimes it doesn’t…Report
tell me you didn’t grow up in the tri-state area without telling me you didn’t grow up in the tri-state area.
his fecklessness, philandering, and willingness to burn contractors big and small on construction jobs was literally the background radiation of my childhood.Report
Dark Matter:
It’s impossible to warn people of wolves when the nature of our politics means everyone on the other side is called a wolf.
And if everything is a wolf then nothing is.
I’m not for a second denying that Team Blue wolf claims are a low specificity test for Team Red wolfiness.
But there was a lot of other information out there that was a lot less likely to give you false positives, like complaints from Team Red electeds should have much better PPV. There were also more than a few high profile Team Red commentators who opposed him, which is not something that happened with Romney, who was pretty much Mr Generic Republican, or W, who was hugely popular with his party until his second term really hit the skids.
There’s also, like, the crap Trump said about himself.
And Trump got scads and scads of attention.Report
During nomination his rivals and their supporters threw mud at him. “Never Trump” took that to an extreme but changing the GOP into the party of xenophobia (stealing that issue from Team Blue) was always going to cause problems. (That’s why I didn’t vote for him the first time).
Team Blue isn’t the only ones who can scream wolf.
If you interact with politics as though it were entertainment and personality, then Trump is the guy for you. No One is better at focusing the spotlight on himself, and if he actively enjoys spinning up Team Blue, well that’s probably a good thing.
Maybe more importantly, the basic idea that this could be a problem wasn’t there. Scumbag politicians is hardly a new thing. Ditto corrupt ones. Ditto sociopathy. Ditto cult of personality.
I was expecting the lack of ethics but not ignoring an election. I didn’t see this coming. The Capitol Hill police didn’t see the riot coming. Congress, both sides, seems to have been caught flat footed.
The idea that this was easy to see and should have been expected is probably faulty.Report
This is what I was referring to about the big brained intellectuals who spoke warmly of eugenics, then were shocked, shocked, when the camps were discovered.
Really, Mr. Big Brain Politics-Knower? That when a known criminal and con man whose claim to fame is scorning decency and moral norms is given the power of the highest office in the land, is isn’t possible to see where it leads?
Seriously??Report
Are you talking about Trump or the Clintons?Report
Objection your Honor, hearsay.Report
Well, except for the fact that for months before the election Trump said openly the only way he could loose was if the election was stolen by fraud. And then as the election drew closer, he not only repeated that claim, but said he and his supporters would have to fight to keep America intact.Report
It’s the sort of thing that only seems obvious and clear after the fact. That’s a human thing. When you try to do that with day trading it doesn’t work.Report
Like I’d say I saw about half of it coming.
The brazenness and directness was shocking.
The bit where Trump whipped up violence for political ends was not.
That was one of the things that really set him apart from his predecessors, and from any President in living memory. And he was at it as early as his 2016 campaign.Report
I’m older and more technophobic than Eastman and even I know better than to send what are supposed to be privileged emails on someone else’s computer system.Report
Even drug dealers in Baltimore know better than to take notes on a criminal Effing conspiracy.Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGo5bxWy21gReport
Man I haven’t watched that show in ages.
Fucking sublime.Report