the MAGA people believe much crazier stuff
The crazier the platform that a 'mainstream' Republican presidential candidate feels they need to endorse to satisfy their base, the better it is for their opponents. There is broad residual support for a general anti-Democrat, anti-'Librul', pro Christianity ticket, but a much smaller, albeit very noisy group at the Q conspiracist end of the spectrum.
The upcoming mid-terms are, if anything, more important for the Democrats. They need to up their game and get their vote out.
This is the crux. Biden can’t go again.
I was hoping he'd make himself a clear one-termer, and start succession-planning earlier. But then again, then he's just a lame duck for the next couple of years, and there is a lot of work to be done.
Harris has been a lot quieter and less impactful than I was hoping she was going to be.
VP has always been a ceremonial role really. It's pretty bad, but I have thought it would be ideal if Biden, y'know, shuffled off...
Harris has been a lot quieter and less impactful than I was hoping she was going to be.
I think a lot of the left-wing of the Democratic Party don't understand why Biden appealed to voters. The centrist voters are not interested in a lot of the issues that drive the left - they don't want police to kill people, but they don't want to defund police, they don't care about student loans, they don't want "socialism" (even though nobody in America seems to actually know what the word means). Biden has a long career of being a centrist who could figure out what people in the center wanted, plus black voters trusted him much more than Sanders.
Harris just does not seem to know how to appeal to those voters. However, when it comes time to vote, there is a good chance that it will be a serious Democratic candidate and a clown Republican so those voters might just go for the non-clown candidate again.
News just in, the FBI have unfortunately destroyed the Trump Library at Mar-a-Largo
Both books are apparently beyond repair, and there are reports that he'd not yet finished colouring one in.
The other fun aspect of this is whether Trump announces his candidacy in the immediate future as a desperate attempt to deflect incoming indictments by claiming the DoJ/FBI is only after him because he is standing. That would place the GOP in a very difficult position - do you back Trump even though he could actually be potentially disqualified from office either before or shortly after the election?
I think a lot of the left-wing of the Democratic Party don’t understand why Biden appealed to voters.
He didn't appeal to voters any where near as much as Trump repelled them. The anti Trump vote won the election and motivated the normally disenfranchised. If the "centrists" think that offering the same business as usual politics that offer no hope for the tens of millions of disenfranchised voters they are going to be sadly mistaken.
LOL @nickc
He didn’t appeal to voters any where near as much as Trump repelled them.
No argument there, but Sanders got thumped in the Democratic primary because black voters overwhelmingly preferred Biden. I think Sanders would have been a much easier target for Republicans to portray as a lefty socialist and that would have made him a difficult sell to Republican swing voters.
Well, I hate to ever say this but I think Hannity is right.
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1556809389977309185
It's a weird world though. I mean Trump ran a campaign to politically investigate and presumably "charge" his opponent with a crime so that they could "Lock Her Up"
But otherwise this is a witch hunt?
It’s a weird world though. I mean Trump ran a campaign to politically investigate and presumably “charge” his opponent with a crime so that they could “Lock Her Up”
But otherwise this is a witch hunt?
Exactly
I normally “dot my I’s and cross my T’s”
Do they do it differently in the USA??
The far-right Libertarian press is banging on with the "If 'they' can do this to a billionaire, what could they do to you?" narrative. It's refreshing to see so many responses along the lines of "But I don't break the law".
The danger to democracy as we know it doesn't start and end with Trump, the entire billionaire class has forgotten how to be frightened of the working and middle classes.
But otherwise this is a witch hunt?
That and the use of the justice department to attack people he disagreed with.
Its always worth remembering with Trump though if you want to know what he has been up to/dreamt of doing before being told no just check what he is accusing others of.
The FBI director who almost certainly would have had to sign this off was appointed by Trump after he threw a strop with the previous one. Looks like his legendary skills at picking the best people is on display again.
There's still the question of what exactly they were after:
https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1557003553536974848
Looks like his legendary skills at picking the best people is on display again.
Seems that way! If i understand correctly the Sec of the DOJ who asked the FBI to carry out the search is a Trump appointee, and the Judge who was asked to sign the warrant for the search was also a Trump appointee.
Seems that way! If i understand correctly the Sec of the DOJ who asked the FBI to carry out the search is a Trump appointee, and the Judge who was asked to sign the warrant for the search was also a Trump appointee.
A good way to put distance between yourself and the orange buffoon's handiwork....
ah but that was just a trap by Trump so they would expose themselves as RINO's. He is playing 3d chess while the rest of us ae just playing draughts (iirc daddy got him a doctors note because he was too good for the draught)
The thread that keeps on giving...now seven years old and out lasting most of the old STW Big Hitters!
Please hurry up and die of an embarrassing illess (Trump that is, not this thread) so he doesn't turn into a alt-right hero or martyr
I can't wait to find out what they were looking for, and God knows I'm hoping they found it
Please hurry up and die of an embarrassing illess (Trump that is, not this thread) so he doesn’t turn into a alt-right hero or martyr
Gotta say, I’m rather hoping for prison. Then after the conviction the facts can be made public - after there’s no more “on-going investigation”.
They must be really really really confident they'd find something. Literally the heads of everything in America would have had to sign off on raiding an ex president regardless of who he was.
Trump is going to spend the rest of his life fighting some lawsuit or another, whether he ever sees time in jail is highly debatable.
Torn on whether I want him to throw his hat into the ring for another shot at the big job. The worry if he doesn't is someone else as mad/extreme but with better presentation skills takes the nomination instead and succeeds with the MAGA crowd. Watching some of the US commentary, they seem to be loading all sorts of official posts with full on Qanon wackos. Last times 'stop the steal' was just a practice.
They must be really really really confident they’d find something. Literally the heads of everything in America would have had to sign off on raiding an ex president regardless of who he was.
I think they had to take these back regardless
They are super-duper top Secret, Russia/China would love to get them
https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1556981527090716673?t=TklVdyYqPqqIrFxmAgYYuw&s=19
I think they had to take these back regardless
They are super-duper top Secret, Russia/China would love to get them
Hmmm - not saying that what they found does not look a bit like this but.....an FBI operation so disciplined that the raid took everyone by surprise and wasn't leaked, yet spills its guts to random professional tweeters within hours with the details of what was found.
an FBI operation so disciplined that the raid took everyone by surprise and wasn’t leaked, yet spills its guts to random professional tweeters within hours with the details of what was found.
Wasn’t it Eric’s Trump tweeting that alerted everyone to the fact the FBI had visited - I expect the rest is just speculation
I expect the rest is just speculation
That's my point - the fact that Brynn Tannehill can have 'an understanding' of what the fbi took away feels highly suspect.
eric trump - not the sharpest knife in the block
That’s my point – the fact that Brynn Tannehill can have ‘an understanding’ of what the fbi took away feels highly suspect.
Theres two parties with a knowledge of what was there to be seized: 'an FBI operation so disciplined that the raid took everyone by surprise' - and Trump and his dwindling team of reliably stupid hangers on. So there's more than one avenue for information to emerge.
Yep trump would have been given a list of exactly what was taken
Please hurry up and die of an embarrassing illess (Trump that is, not this thread) so he doesn’t turn into a alt-right hero or martyr
When he dies, the MAGA nuts will obviously claim he was assassinated. A medical report saying that he was grossly obese and unhealthy and died of natural causes will just be seen as evidence of a coverup - Trump himself said he was the healthiest person his doctor had ever seen and he followed up on that by walking down a ramp unaided.
One of the questions that serious journalists and lawyers have been asking is, how did the FBI know the documents were still on the premises, i.e. that there was an on-going crime. It seems likely that someone on the inside tipped them off. My personal speculation is that Trump kept a bunch of highly classified documents so that he could show off to special guests at MAL, probably offer to take them up to the office and show them the good stuff if they threw 100k into his campaign slush fund or something. He has a secret service escort and those guys work for the U.S. government, not Trump personally. They would be required to report any shit like that. Pure speculation on my part but I really do think Trump is dumb enough to try something like that.
https://twitter.com/BrynnTannehill/status/1556988407045406721
When he dies, the MAGA nuts will obviously claim he was assassinated.
A few of the trump/maga commentators have already expressed those thoughts, here’s one, newsmax guest Bernie Carrick here about 2.15 in
Scott Perry, seditionist Republican who asked for a pardon over his involvement in overturning election has his phone seized by the FBI.
https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1557127964982132739?s=21&t=Bs3ETf6ReDh-tRVt8Vi5wQ
So that means it is most likely Mark Meadows (white-house chief of staff under trump) who has turned for the FBI, I wonder who’s getting a knock at the door next?, the FBI must have irrevocable evidence that they have a valid and clear cut case to build otherwise this could destroy the organisation for years to come.
This is better than 24
This is pretty much the standard pattern. Impossible to deny that Trump did whatever was alleged so just try to distract by claiming that it's not fair to hold him accountable.
https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1557178383116767236
I enjoyed Trevor Noah's take on it. Seeing all the maga ****s lose their shit is worth it alone.
Utterly ridiculous speculation that is also completely plausible.
https://twitter.com/OrrellAEI/status/1557124342001147904
who has turned for the FBI
Yeah, thought the same thing. As soon as I heard this morning that the FBI has taken Perry's phone, I thought: The FBI has flipped someone from the Trump Whitehouse.
Someone posted a Twitter link in another thread as, well, I guess a source. Decided to take a closer look at that Twitter account and it turned into a full on Hard Right US account posting some absolute garbage.
But it did retweet this (which is also garbage), not being on the original site the video was posted too I wouldn't have seen the original.
But if youre interested in what Trump is currently saying see below
https://twitter.com/debostic/status/1556884777424265218?s=20&t=AFbgEZWzsQHZnWuIrQZh8Q
The FBI has flipped someone from the Trump Whitehouse.
Anyone heard anything from Jared Kushner lately? That would be delicious. After all, he's got his Saudi money, what does he need the old man for?
How to sum up the current state of Trump's loyal base:
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I thought this was quite amusing
how did the FBI know the documents were still on the premises
Because highly sensitive stuff is subject to protocols, has to be kept under lock and key, subject to access controls - it doesn’t just sit in a box marked ‘Top Secret’. Probably an audit revealed their last known location was the Whitehouse - when it didn’t show-up post-Trump, then pretty easy to guess where to look next. A Trump appointed judge and head of FBI signed-off the search warrant - this wasn’t a fishing expedition.
It would be ironic that a simple failure of protocol is what excludes Trump from the 2024 race.
I thought this was quite amusing
Yes, but it led on to the New Yorker shorts, which led to another, which led to another and not all of them amusing.
This is Trumps America, do not play loud if you have young kids listening
https://twitter.com/repswalwell/status/1557428889902895104?s=21&t=5bsAmYAIaPfEsc-sqs7DiA
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1557594456819376159?t=eG8Gwf_7ZRKr8oJ-YeibeQ&s=19
Ha taking the 5th is for losers
🤡
This is Trumps America, do not play loud if you have young kids listening
Well that caller seems a nice reasonable chap, puts across a rational well reasoned case 😬
I'm still going with the theory that he took them so he could feel important by inviting guests to his office and showing them that he had a safe full of classified documents.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1557880801240518657
Pretty much inevitable that Trumpist nutters would start shooting.
This is pretty much a done deal.
Trump broke the law by even taking classified docs to his home in the first place, let alone storing them there insecurely, let alone not returning them to the whitehouse when he'd finished "working" on them, or at the end of his presidency, or when the records people asked for them back.... several times.
The DoJ has now applied to have the warrant unsealed and made public, so everyone can see what the warrant was for. It will make clear I think that he has been effectively refusing to return classified docs (which he shouldn't have had in the first place)
Even just being found guilty of taking them home in the first place will legally exclude him from ever holding public office again. Everyone could have just looked the other way on that - but not now.
Like when he'd lost the election, he's now trying to whip-up a bit of social unrest to deflect from the fact that he's a busted flush.
This is apparently the guy who was killed attacking the FBI with a nail gun. There's gotta be tens of thousands more just like him, just ready to go off on the slightest provocation.
https://twitter.com/travis_view/status/1557853406055636992
I can't stop laughing that Trump has been shafted by legislation that he signed onto the books. It will never not be legitimately funny. Even if - according to the End of the world thread, I'll be crouched in a hell-scape fighting over scraps of mutant rat meat, this will still make me chuckle to myself
Who’d have thought that ‘appropriating’ boxes of nuclear secrets, keeping them in your basement with a view to selling them to a foreign state could get you in so much trouble? This stuff is so sensitive it gets given codenames and even the codename is sometimes secret - proper treadstone stuff.
Remember, if they can do this to Trump, they can do it to any one of you who has a safe full of stolen nuclear secrets.
Good job his family hasn't been getting billions in bungs from countries like Saudi Arabia who want US nuclear technology.
As if you needed any further evidence that Fox News is populated by halfwits and clowns, here's a picture they broadcast of the judge who approved the warrant photoshopped onto a pic of Epstein getting a footrub from Ghislaine Maxwell:
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1557926941646282752
Hope they get sued into oblivion.
Talking to a colleague in the US this afternoon, the story stateside is developing...... https://mobile.twitter.com/rulajebreal/status/1557900391328743425
Trump is suspected of selling nuclear secrets to the Saudis for personal gain (before or after leaving office, or both).
Speculation centers around why a few days after Trump left office, Jared Kushner was paid $2Bn by the Saudis (for what?)......and out of nowhere Saudis sponsor LIV golf centered on Trump courses........and suddenly Kushner issues with 660 5th Ave disappear, and Trump's challenges w debt disappear...
Trump is suspected of selling nuclear secrets to the Saudis for personal gain (before or after leaving office, or both).
Just remind me again the premise of all that bullshit about Hunter Biden?! 🙄
Its been unsealed. And Breitbart (of all outlets, guess it has kind of gone full circle, delicious irony there) has seen an advance copy. As follows:
former President Donald Trump is under investigation for criminal statutes:
18 USC 793 — Gathering, transmitting, or losing defence information
18 USC 1519 — Destruction, alteration, or falsification of federal records
18 USC 2071 — Concealment, removal or mutilation of federal documents
Assuming this is correct, the first one might well support the "he's been flogging the nuke stuff to the Saudis" angle. Rest of it seems more mundane, albeit still very serious and enough to see him disqualified from office and hopefully looking at a holiday in Sing Sing.
it's incredible stuff and really highlights the differences between people at the top and everyone else. It's quite likely he will get off with what would get anyone else locked up for a long time :(. Glad we have the TJ thread to fall back on for nicer news
Naughty boy - he's being investigated for possible violations of the Espionage Act, amongst other possible charges.
If Hollywood has taught me anything is that espionage carries the death penalty
How long before FBI/DoJ declare him a flight risk and confiscate his passport(s)...
Espionage eh? True patriot eh?
I guess he won't be running in the next election then? PSML
It's all lies and fabricated, planted evidence and and, who knows what else his lot will come up with. Fox news even brought up Hilary's emails yet again.
He's an idiot bringing all those documents with him to his golf club and I really hope this is the last we hear from him, I expect it won't be and Teflon Don gets away with it again.
And Breitbart (of all outlets, guess it has kind of gone full circle, delicious irony there) has seen an advance copy.
They sent out the unredacted one with the FBI agents names.
Bearing in mind one of his fruitcake followers has already attacked an FBI office.
Naughty boy – he’s being investigated for possible violations of the Espionage Act, amongst other possible charges
Yup its the first one - 18 USC 793 - that pertains to that.
Looks like he's been a very, very naughty boy (like we're surprised). Now we just need the bit where it turns out he's been Vlad the Invader's number one asset for the past decade or so..
He’s an idiot bringing all those documents with him to his golf club and I really hope this is the last we hear from him, I expect it won’t be and Teflon Don gets away with it again
He is a 100%, platinum plated, lifetime champion in the Mr Thick Thicky Mcthickface International Thick Awards, idiot. Fo' sho.
Not getting away with this though. It's one thing dodging impeachment with your almost equally as thick, sycophantic, corrupt mates to acquit you. This is a completely different level of jeopardy and he is going to be strung up from the nearest metaphoric lamp-post. The FBI hate him, and once they see which side the bread is buttered his cabal of crooks, grifters and conmen will start squealing in unison.
They sent out the unredacted one with the FBI agents names.
Bearing in mind one of his fruitcake followers has already attacked an FBI office.
Wasn't aware of that. Got the details from the Indy (not Breitbart, whose website I wouldn't even use to wipe my digital backside). They really are a different class of scumbag!
what do we recon ? offering us intelligence on Iran to the Saudis for cash ? with the saudi's grassing on Trump (would love the irony 🙂 ) cos they would expect to get it for free ?
Lots of speculation. The word Nuclear is being bandied about a lot. Not sure that DT would really be abreast of any docs that outlined the detailed tech that the US currently applies to its weaponry. So the angle that he's been letting the Saudis in on hot Intel re Iran and their nuclear program might well have credence. Whatever it is he's in a whole heap of trouble..
The Saudis and Trump administration have been trying to set up the transfer of nuclear technology since inauguration. Michael Flynn was up to his neck in it with plans for multiple new reactors in Saudi, presumably with uranium enrichment the end goal. Jared got his 2bn bung just recently. Maybe he ran out of time while in office because he was expecting a second term, not to mention the legal woes of Flynn etc. So he just thought he'd carry on with the plan anyway.
Seth Abramson is a good follow on Twitter, he's been onto this stuff for a few years.
I wonder whether Biden's visit to Saudi last month wasn't just about oil production, but included a few choice words to warn them off trying to acquire this stuff via the backdoor. I have no doubt that he would have been well briefed on the run-up to this week's events.
It really has been a spectacularly bad day for Donald. This today from the New York Times:
A Manhattan state court judge on Friday declined to throw out the criminal case against Donald J. Trump’s family business and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, clearing the way for a trial in the case scheduled for the fall.
Mr. Weisselberg and the business, the Trump Organization, were charged last year by the Manhattan district attorney’s office with having engaged in a 15-year scheme in which executives were compensated with hidden benefits so that they could evade taxes. The charges stemmed from the office’s long-running investigation into the company’s business practices.
In February, Mr. Weisselberg and the company filed motions to dismiss the charges, arguing that the case was politically motivated and that the defendants were charged only because of their link with former president Donald J. Trump.
And there's the civil suit around property valuations still rumbling around. Not to mention all the Jan 6th sedition stuff. It's like Top Trumps whack-a-mole!
Apparently some of the documents recovered are of a level of secrecy that they are meant to only be accessed in a special supervised chamber (SCIF). We'll never know even a hint of their contents, but keeping them in your office at a golf club is probably frowned upon. Someone is going to do serious prison time for this, so Trump needs a few fall-guys, quickly.
Fall guys?
He'll offer up kushner first then his kids.
I'm shocked to learn that a grifter might grift.