For Republicans, It’s Time to Panic
Photo by Office of Congressman Kevin McCarthy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The important takeaway from the Georgia indictment is that Fani Willis is using Georgia’s RICO law to show a vast criminal conspiracy that includes pressure on election officials, tampering with voting machines, creating fake slates of electors, and lying to state officials. It is an expansive indictment that goes far beyond Trump’s phone call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
I’m not going to go into all that. However, I do want to point out a few inconsistencies in the reactions from the Republican right.
First off, as you listen to Republicans, listen closely to what they say. I’ve heard very few Republicans argue that Trump did not do what he is accused of. That applies to the documents case as well as the election cases where a lot of Trump’s defenders argue that he had the right to maintain the classified material, not that he didn’t have it and refused to return it.
With respect to the election cases, what I’m hearing is that it is unprecedented to indict a former president, not that Trump didn’t commit the act for which he was indicted. And while it’s true that the indictments are unprecedented, it’s also true that it is unprecedented for a lame-duck president to refuse to leave office and try to overturn the election. The latter is my main concern.
There also seems to be a newfound concern about divisiveness among the Republicans who have been hard chargers when it comes to alleging that President Biden is corrupt (and who, I might add, called President Obama everything from a closet Muslim to a noncitizen to a would-be dictator) despite the fact that, as I noted last week, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee admitted on Twitter that Hunter’s business deals did not actually provide any access to then-Vice President Biden. However, for many, it is an article of faith, despite the lack of evidence, that Joe Biden is corrupt, even as they lament the “witch hunt” against Donald Trump.
Others worry about establishing a new precedent. Ben Shapiro tweeted, “Political opponents can be targeted by legal enemies. Running for office now carries the legal risk of going to jail — on all sides.”
Yet Shapiro literally wrote an entire book calling for the prosecution of Barack Obama under… [wait for it]… the RICO Act. Yes, friends, “The People Vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against the Obama Administration,” published in 2014, called for criminal prosecution of the then-president for such crimes as obstruction of justice, bribery, deprivation of rights, unauthorized disclosure of information, and general abuses of power. If those charges sound familiar, they should because Trump has been accused of similar abuses of power. Shapiro added espionage, involuntary manslaughter, and violation of internal revenue laws to the mix.
Note that Shapiro was calling for the prosecution of a sitting president, not a former one. If there is any doubt, he also penned an article in 2014 titled, “Prosecute the President,” in which he lamented that impeachment was a nonstarter.
In that piece, Shapiro wrote, “Thanks to presidential immunity and executive control of the Justice Department, there are no consequences to executive branch lawbreaking. And when it comes to presidential lawbreaking, the sitting president could literally strangle someone to death on national television and meet with no consequences.”
Et tu, Ben? You’ve become part of the problem. A big part.
Then there’s Erick Erickson, who does admit that Trump is guilty. Erick is one of the few Republicans that I’ve heard acknowledge that fact. But Erick still shifts the focus back to the Democrats for “radicalizing” Republicans by “delegitimizing Trump’s win by claiming he was a Russian plant and advancing the Steele Dossier with an assist from politicized FBI agents. To this day, many Democrats and members of the press insist Russia stole the election, which is a fiction.”
For the record, I don’t know a single person who says that Russia stole the 2016 election for Trump. They may be out there, but they are few and far between. [Russia did interfere in the election on behalf of Trump as even Trump Administration security officials acknowledged, but that is a different claim from saying that they stole it.]
Erickson then suggests that, in order to de-escalate the situation, Trump leave public life and that Biden “pardon the old man on the right and bring all pressure to bear on the two state prosecutors, both of whom are Democrats, to stop their prosecutions too.”
While Erickson admits that this won’t happen, I see the whole suggestion as disingenuous. If the partisan roles were reversed, I am 100 percent certain that Erickson would not be advocating that a Republican president pardon a Democrat for attempting to steal an election and bringing the country to the brink of civil war, much less interfere with state prosecutions. That would be doubly true (200 percent certain!) if the Democrat in question was as unrepentant and untrustworthy as Donald Trump.
For that matter, Erick does not call for suspending the ongoing investigations into the Bidens, even though House Republicans admit that they’ve got nothing. If Democrats should pardon Trump for the good of the country, shouldn’t the Republicans stop their divisiveness also?
The “law and order” party seems to be forgiving only when the offender is Donald Trump. Beyond The Former Guy, the attitude is more typically expressed by the shirt of a woman that I saw in Lowe’s yesterday: “It’s Time To Take Biden To The Train Station,” a reference to extrajudicial executions in the series, “Yellowstone.”
When it comes to House investigations, sometimes what Republicans choose not to investigate is more interesting than what they do dig into. For example, with the new indictments, it has become obvious that a lot of people still believe the stolen election allegations, but when Republicans grabbed the reins of the House, they declined to delve into Trump’s claims about election irregularities. Why would congressional Republicans choose to delve into Biden’s son’s business activities during his vice presidency rather than the much more recent and allegedly egregious massive election fraud?
The simple answer is that they know the allegations are false and investigating them would be quickly revealed as a waste of time. Some Republicans will still talk about the “stolen election.” These Republicans are lying to you. Most, however, just want to change the subject.
Well, maybe this post wasn’t as short as I thought it would be. The bottom line is that Republicans are realizing – and some have realized for a long time – that Donald Trump is in big trouble. Pointing the finger at Hunter Biden isn’t going to salvage the GOP or keep Donald Trump out of jail.
Panic is setting in, especially as Ron DeSantis’s campaign simultaneously implodes, at the thought of a probable Biden second term. The Republican Party is between a rock and a hard place as the legal walls close in around Donald Trump, a man who can’t lose the Republican primary but can’t win the general election.
Donald Trump deserves to spend the rest of his life behind bars for what he did in the 2020 post-election. I can’t guarantee a conviction, but in a perfect world, a president who ended the 244-year tradition of peaceful transfers of power would be held accountable.
Republicans should panic. And they should feel guilty because the problem they are facing is one of their own making. And they’re still trying to extricate themselves from the mess without scaring off Trump’s MAGA voters, who are the new Republican base.
Yes, for Republicans, it’s time to panic.
Welcome to the left side of the aisle. We have better cookies.Report
Nope. We on the right side can vote against Trump to showcase he was a bad idea.
Hopefully the GOP will get their act together next cycle.Report
In the 1950s, as the evidence of Soviet atrocities and repression became undeniable, Western socialists faced a crisis. The USSR was the first test case of the theory they believed in so fervently and was championed as the inevitable future.
Western socialism split into two camps; Some were able to break with the USSR and condemn them while still holding on to their belief that socialism would work, if given the chance.
Others however couldn’t break with their idol and defended it with tenacity bordering on delusion, and subsequently earned the nickname “Tankies”.
The one who broke were able to fashion an argument that the Soviet Union was not at all socialist since the theory demanded a liberal respect for the will of the people and human rights. Even today these sorts of socialists are regarded as misguided but still well-meaning and honorable.
Which leaves the question of why the tankies were unable to break. It’s not like they didn’t have ample evidence that the Soviet leaders were behaving exactly in a manner like the capitalists they hated. They could have easily condemned the Soviets from within the language of socialism itself and preserved their belief system.
Which is why I have the suspicion that tankies embraced the Soviets not in spite of the authoritarianism, but because of it. The authoritarianism was, all along, the allure.Report
Wow, we went from “1950s” to “Tankies” really quickly there.
Were supporters of East Germany in the 1960s “tankies”?Report
Probably:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie#:~:text=The%20term%20tankie%20has%20been,Joseph%20Stalin%20and%20Mao%20Zedong.Report
So you’re using books from, at the earliest, the 90’s as evidence?Report
It could hardly be otherwise, if Dictionary.com is correct:
The term was recorded as early as 1983 in Marxism Today, the CPGB’s magazine from 1957–91.Report
So only 3 decades, then.Report
You can find it in 70s literature from the CPGB.Report
As someone who vaguely remembers defenses of East Germany in the 1980’s, I find it shocking that the CPGB would have been calling East Germany defenders “tankies”.
Do we have any evidence of this or is this “well, the term was used for people who were still defending Stalin in the 1970s and I’m smooshing that together with what you’re asking”?Report
The use of “Tankie” is, as you might expect from young leftists, is complicated. At some point in the 70s, it became a popular insult among English leftists, and was used pretty willy-nilly, but the origin is obviously in reference to ’68, and was at least initially intended to refer to uncritical support for the Soviet Union and especially its more Imperialist tendencies. Outside of the UK, it was retroactively applied to earlier supporters of the Soviet Union in the face of evidence of Stalin’s atrocities (think Sartre, in his split from Camus and disagreement with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, on the Soviets).
I imagine going back to the 70s, uncritical support for the East Germany Communist regime would have been labeled “Tankies” by some people, though I assume pretty much anyone in the 70s who was uncritical in their support of East Germany would have been uncritical in their support of the Soviet Union, so it’s not like it would have been meant to specifically indicate something related to East Germany.
The important word there, by the way, is “uncritical” support. Plenty of people then, and now, who are not “Tankies” by the old definitions would support the Soviet Union and East Germany critically, at least in some ways. I am writing this in a home room with two pieces of Soviet art , in a home with a handful of others (along with posters from the Frente Popular, French May 68 stuff, a Rosa Luxemburg portrait, etc.), and I don’t think many leftists would call me a “tankie.”Report
So the way to dodge the label is to give grudging support, after acknowledging excesses, and maybe pointing out that the person criticizing East Germany is being hypocritical because of stuff like Arkansas?Report
The best way to dodge the label today is to not talk to conservatives. Assuming someone’s already doing that, then the best way to dodge it is to not be a Stalinist.
I don’t know about others, but if I were going to talk about what was good in East Germany, I wouldn’t feel the need to mention Arkansas, or the US generally, at all, and I also wouldn’t feel the need to defend the Stasi in talking about what was good, because it’s possible for a place to have good things and bad things going on at the same time.Report
Obviously, it’s a very British term, as you can probably tell from its construction. Its important to imagine it being lobbed as an insult in a West Midlands accent by an unkempt grad student at The University of Warwick circa 1977.Report
I think you are on to something. And ironically I think Haidt is informative here. His insight that conservatives tend to respect for hierarchies, leaders, tradition and authority, tells us why so many won’t let go of Trump. That and he allows them to be bullies and to inflict pain on outgroups in ways they felt were being taken from them (the much ballyhooed “loss” of American culture).
That he MAGA crowd would end up acting just like socialist tankies is also a huge laugh – especially since so many MAGA’s would never admit to the similarities no matter how many time they are shown it.Report
“conservatives tend to respect for hierarchies, leaders, tradition and authority…”
hey, back in 2020, who was it that said “we should turn on TV and do whatever the man in the white lab coat says” and who was it that said “we should come up with our own ideas about how much risk we’re willing to accept”?Report
You can accept all the risk you want, and you can listen to what the people in the lab coats say because they did, and still do, know more then you. If you were correct then Haidt would be an idiot, and so far, the only people who think that are on the left side of the aisle.
Tell me – what’s your theory on all this?Report
I think Haidt’s generally right on this, but needs to dig deeper. Everyone bows to authority more than he realizes. The conservative is more likely to accept the idea of authority, and I think to accept a moral authority or an elder. The liberal is just as likely to follow an authority but tends to prize credentials. I don’t think that fits a classic liberal/conservative model, but people are people. They’re likely to obey someone.Report
Well done.Report
This is all the more ironic because Republicans have had plenty of chances to expunge Trump: They could have picked a non Trump candidate to unite behind. In the 2016 primary, they could have impeached Trump in 2017 for abuse of power vis a vis Ukraine and most poignantly, they could have impeached him in 2021 for his role in the January 6 insurrection and prevented him from running for President again.
But they didn’t period they knew better all along and refused not only to do the right thing, but even to act in their own long-term self-interest (regardless of truth, law, or morality). There were exactly 2.5 profiles encouraged in the Republican party: Justin Amash and Liz Cheney, and Mitt Romney split his vote.
So here we see the fruits of their cowardice. And they’re still probably going to take the Senate anyway. SMGDH.Report
Once again, I am remembering a line from twfkna Twitter:
“We don’t want to change the GOPe, we want to (verb) the GOPe. Trump is the (verb) weapon.”Report
The right in a nutshell. I am afraid to ask because it feels like jinxing it but if Trump goes down to an L in 2024, and I think if ol’ Joe keeps keeping on Trump will go down to an L in 2024, then what comes next on the right?Report
They hold 24 governorships and 26 state legislatures. Defacto control of the US is not that out of reach for the GOP whether they have the White House or not.Report
I’m not asking politically per say- politically it’s obvious the GOP and the right will never disappear- but more ideologically. It just seems like this level of incoherent fury is not sustainable. Like a star when it ceases fusing light enough elements, as soon as the force of “hope for winning nationally” vanishes it seems to me like the whole thing will implode in on itself.
What is the succeeding ideology? Libertarianism sits exposed of being not even hated but utterly disdained by those that it once claimed to represent. Social conservativism is a swirling vortex of “head for the catacombs” panic and “Integralism forever!” derangement. Neoconservatives sit utterly discredited, universally despised and their great international bugaboo raison d’etre are proving neurotic, inept and… well… lacking in scariness.
Obviously the old stool is defunct. What’ll the new one be? Even the new kids on the block on the right are fundamentally wobbly. Identarianism is already looking like it’s on the wane so anti-identarians are going to run out of easy windmills to joust at. Anti-Immigrationism is, basically, one legislative bill away from being defanged at any moment and weakens every year that unemployment remains low.
What is the new coalition on the right?Report
It’s unclear what replaces the old coalition, but you’re right that a replacement is underway. We’re still working out what that replacement is. IDK what the replacement will be, it will only be obvious after it happens.
This has happened before and it will happen again.Report
On that we are both in agreement.Report
The author dismisses the precedent risk by using Ben Shapiro as an example.
While I can appreciate the irony of Shapiro’s recent comments and the title of his book – I think we should all recognize that advocating prosecution and actually using the levers of power to prosecute are two very, very different things.Report
So do you believe Trump never actually did those things, or that he shouldn’t be prosecuted for them?Report
I believe Trump and Biden are both guilty of many, if not most, of the things they are being accused of. I don’t know how many of those things are provable and/or illegal.
However, I also believe the enforcement precedent being established is leading our country down a Banana Republic path. It will ultimately do far more damage to this country than any potential “justice” can justify.Report
Both Sides can’t fail, it can only be failed.Report
So you’d be perfectly content with him reoccupying the White House, eviscerating the apolitical civil service, shredding what’s left of democracy and then refusing to leave after his second term ends? Because that a real probability if he is not convicted.
As t Joe Biden – if he’s guilt legally of anything, why didn’t Republicans investigate him when they held the Executive and Legislative branches in Trump’s first term? SO far the few allegations against him have been rendered (absent evidence I might add) against his work as Vice President. If there was any “There” there it seems ot me it could have been sorted by now.Report
The only way Donald J. Trump can win the next election is by making him a martyr, which is what it seems the left-controlled levers of justice are hellbent on doing.
You are rallying people who do not like Trump to his side. You understand that, right? I mean, it’s a great way to not have to go against a Republican who has a chance in the general, but it’s the left who seem perfectly content to risk what they fear most.
And my dude, “the big guy” 100% benefitted from Hunter’s dirty deals. Please stop.Report
If I as a fed had mishandled classified documents as he did, and then actively hidden them from the FBI and NARA, I’d already be locked under the jailhouse. He gets no pass.
And again – if Joe benefitted why wasn’t that investigated by Trump when he had a chance?Report
You mean those few months between the laptop misinformation-misinformation campaign and when he was out of office? I don’t know. Why didn’t this year’s indictmentpalooza happen 2 years ago?
I assure you, when the GOP takes back control of the DOJ – and that day will come – they will go after the Bidens. And you will dismiss any and all evidence of their guilt and call it political retribution.Report
Note the unending invocation of Murc’s Law here.
Democrats are forcing- FORCING, do you understand- Republicans to vote for a corrupt authoritarian.
They don’t want to. They really, really want to vote for someone honest and who supports liberal democracy.
But the Democrats, by prosecuting Trump for his crimes, are using their Jedi mind tricks to compel Republicans to vote for Trump.
If only the Democrats could use those powers for good!Report
No, it’s not Murc’s Law – it’s just good old fashioned irony.
I know that you all truly believe democracy is in peril and that convicting the Orange Devil will help save the Republic for which we stand. I don’t doubt that is the motivation driving all of this.
It’s just that I also know you ‘re all blind to how the actual result has the potential to be the exact opposite of the result you are intending.
The simulation is funny like that.Report
SO we are supposed to let Trump get away with breaking multiple laws – including inciting an attack on the US Capitol – in the vein hopes that no one would vote for him? I mean the 74 million who voted for him the last time sure aren’t going to swing any other way, and the GOP is clearly not up to dumping him.
Nice fantasy world you live in sir.Report
Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.
And you know nothing of my fantasy world, sir!Report
So you aren’t a rule of law conservative are you?Report
That’s precisely what Murc’s Law entails, the implied threat that the behavior of Republicans is only and ever a reaction to actions taken by Democrats.
But of course it is laughably illogical.
If we prosecute Trump, Republicans will vote for him;
If we don’t prosecute him, Republicans will…still vote for him.
The idea behind Murc’s Lw is for people who are embarrassed to say they support Trump to have a way to say “The Devil made me do it”, escaping responsibility for their actions.Report
Republicans and Democrats hold their nose and vote along their party line all the time. It’s called picking lesser of two evils. I don’t really get your projection about escaping responsibility.
Anyway, there is a direct correlation between Trump’s polling numbers and the moment the first indictment happened. This isn’t some sort of conspiracy. It literally is what’s happening. Unlike Roe being overturned, this isn’t self-inflicted damage.Report
Republicans have always had half a dozen Republican candidates to choose from.
And out of all these candidates, they choose Trump, every time.Report
Pinky’s Proposition – Authoritarian leftists believe anything with a formal name, even if they made it up.Report
CJColucci’s Corollary: Conservatives believe putting a Capital Letter (literal or metaphorical) on a banal concept turns it into a serious idea.Report
We would be a banana republic if we didn’t prosecute people, no matter their station, for crimes committed.Report
Agreed.Report
If we started objectively investigating and prosecuting every politician in government, we wouldn’t have politicians in government.
Maybe you’re on to something.Report
Do remember that a lot of things we find distasteful about modern politics and politicians are all perfectly legal.Report
Do remember that politics attracts people who are interested in collecting and asserting power and influence and are very often willing to sacrifice whatever is convenient to benefit and enrich themselves above all else.Report
I don’t think that’s true, though. At least not so obviously true as to be treated as a given. Generally the ones who make it higher are the ones who are willing to break rules, but even that’s not a universal.Report
I wouldn’t have a problem with a constitutional amendment that says everyone in high office has to spend a year in club fed after their term limit ends, just to even the scales a little for whatever they got away with.
Anyway while I’m not totally unsympathetic to what your saying here I think Trump in particular has forced this. It isn’t like we don’t have a pretty thoroughly established culture of ‘looking forward, not backward’ after every administration rides off into the sunset to quietly take up painting and their next phase of self enrichment. My guess is plenty of people would still be happy to so just that but for the insanity that followed Trump’s defeat in 2020 and his insistence on continuing to make it and himself an issue. None of this should be seen as a defense of the status quo ante before Trump. Maybe it was just the price we had to pay for peaceful transfers of power in a big, polarized country. But as not great as that is it is better than tolerating someone who won’t go away peacably when the time comes, and on balance letting that go is IMO much more dangerous.Report
I agree with you. Trump is absolutely courting this response on purpose. And the powers that be are dutifully playing along giving him exactly what he wants.
Unfortunately the die has been cast and I don’t see any possibility outcome that is “good” for the longterm state of this country. And I’m talking beyond any possible election result.Report
It is good for the long-term status of the country to prosecute people who break the law. It’s how we keep the rule of law in play.Report
Do you consider Austria a banana Republic?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/18/europe/sebastian-kurz-austria-false-evidence-intl/index.htmlReport
I dunno. Are they? Not interested in taking this conversation overseas.Report
Then perhaps comparing America to a banana republic isn’t your best move. See we know what banana republics are. And democracies too for that matter. And a great many democracies – like Austria – that aren’t banana republics prosecute their politicians all the time.Report
Ok, thanks for the tip.Report
We have prosecuted our politicians before too. Something like half of Illinois governors end up in prison for various corruption charges. The last national news one was the guy selling Obama’s former Senator seat.
Three of the Four cases against Trump are serious enough that we’d do it (and more importantly, should do it) against anyone.
The Stormy thing doesn’t and should be dropped. We’ve already gone through that train wreck once with someone else and the jury refused to convict.Report
Michael Cohen was criminally convicted for his party in the Stormy Daniels saga. She lost a civil suit against Trump over it, though in her defense it appears her lawyer was an idiot of the highest publicity seeking order.
What the NYC probe alleges is the payments coming when they did were a potential violation of campaign finance laws. It may be the weakest case of the bunch – I think the Georgia one is the strongest – but it’s not actually been prosecuted that way before.Report
Michael Cohen plead guilty to the campaign finance charges. In that sense, the legal theory of whether he violated Campaign Finance laws wasn’t contested or therefore tested.
Mostly it seems he was pleading guilty to his IRS crimes, which seem rather cut and dried.
But a vigorous defense against the theory that they were campaign finance violations was never mounted, so we’d be extracting too much from his subsequent conviction — which also was not appealed. So there’s no ‘precedent’ that such a thing is the correct use of the law.
Just another guy who took discretion as the better part of valor in our legal system.Report
He was also guilty of lying to Congress and so on. IDK if him making a deal with them was part of him making deals with all of his other charges, however it’s a marble in a bag of marbles.
None of which means that I’m OK with the legal concept that lying about your sex life is a offense against campaign finance rules if and only if it’s not something you’d normally do.Report
Sure, I’m not saying that he wasn’t guilty of a bunch of stuff he agreed he was guilty of.
Just putting dampers on the bias confirmation that ‘convicted’ of something means other people who might mount a vigorous defense of the thing might ironically demonstrate that the person who plead guilty to crime plead guilty to something that, in court or in appeal, others agreed was *not* a crime.
I think the ‘issue’ with the Daniels thing isn’t the sex (that’s another issue) but in this era of branding and monetization, then anything is a campaign finance violation… endorsements, public appearances, use of logos/brands and locations, etc. Everything is basically contribution in kind. George Cluny may be exercising his first amendment rights to endorse someone; but let’s be honest, we know what George Cluny is paid to endorse things… so on the books it must go.
I mean, will no one consider the value of Four Seasons Landscaping to the Trump Campaign?Report
The Four Seasons thing… man… sometimes I wonder if the entire Trump presidency wasn’t a warp into the pilot of some kind of biting social satire. Not really Tom Wolfe but like a really long episode of Seinfeld or early Simpsons or something.Report
Pretty sure it’s the sequel to Veep.Report
Lie all you want do. The crossing of the line comes if you choose to use campaign donations to pay someone else to stay quiet – to lie for you. Not the same thing.Report
As far as I can tell, the State did not charge him for using campaign donations… he used a Personal HELOC and was reimbursed by Trump Corporation directly.
He plead guilty to ‘coordinating’ with the campaign… but the summary implies that the campaign he coordinated with was Trump himself. So, BAU.
Of course money is fungible, the candidate is also the campaign, and everything and anything is related to the project of the candidate getting elected.
Which is why campaign finance laws are probably not the thing you want to beat candidates with for things that are not financed by the campaign.Report
Their definition of “campaign donations” is the problem. The way the law works is ANY PAYMENT to someone in this context counts as a campaign donation.
So the “crossing of the line” is any monitory effort to keep your sex life secret, because that counts as an attempt to influence the election.
But it doesn’t count as an effort to influence the election if you have some other reason to keep your sex life secret other than the campaign. So the previous time this came up it was argued he didn’t want his wife to know.Report
The way the House GOP did not immediately start subpoenaing anything that wasn’t nailed to the ground re: the 2020 election should have been the end of all this conspiracy. That eg Tucker Carlson and Trump never dragged McCarthy for not doing so SHOULD have been the end of it for smart MAGAs. This article is about the only time I’ve ever heard anybody mention it. I even bet my MAGA, election-was-stolen-believing parents, in the days after the GOP won the House, that starting mid-January, McCarthy would NOT investigate the 2020 election, and for them to start thinking on that fact. It didn’t seem to work. I myself am a moderate lefty who didn’t believe the Russia collusion thing from the start, though i wavered for a bit around the Xmas when the Mueller Report was about to drop (but listened to discerning voices right after it dropped. So I learned I was basically correct at the beginning). The point being I gave my parents an example w Russia-collusion how u don’t need to believe the craziest stuff from yr side, still be on that side, and when the truth comes out, u look great for standing alone….But they are full election deniers. Something broke in them since Trump. They were young Ross Perot voters, for reference.Report
Yup. Some Congress types will lose their elections and deserve it. Others might get arrested and deserve it. They also need to figure out how to ban all abortions without actually banning all abortions.
Shrug. It’s fine. I’ll vote for Joe to showcase that they needed to do something about Trump.
Ideally Trump will die or retire or be in jail in the next 4 years so we don’t need to do this again. Even more ideally all of his crew will be in prison for various crimes.
They deserve to lose so they will.Report
You place way too much faith in your fellow Americans.Report
Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.
– Winston ChurchillReport