US General Election 2016

I suppose if you're getting a million a year to protect a client, a fraction of that is worthwhile to convince said client you're worth keeping on the payroll.

{{Maybe motivation enough for the lawyer- but given there is stonewall denial of an affair at all that leaves us to believe Trumps lawyer gave a porn star 130,000 for, well nothing at all! (Thats even more incredulous than hush money!) }}

Though I'm inclined to believe the affair happened, to play the devil's advocate she had been talking about it before the 'hush money', which means it could be something more akin to squelching a defamation attempt. Though admittedly Trump would be more likely to sue in such a situation.

{{Its certainly more than a little muddy as to who is telling the truth about what- she was on Kimmel(?) apparently and said to the signed statement saying the affair with Trump didn't happen "does that look like my signature?" and then claimed to never have seen the statement before.
Today her lawyer tweeted she was just having fun with the host and he had witnessed her signing two statements to the effect it didn't happen.
But then why give her $130,000 for something that didn't happen? Was it 'Give a Random Porn Star A Fortune Day' and I just missed it?

But with the Porter wife beating issue and all the lies spun around it and Trumps tweets all but openly siding with Porter and sympathizing with him without mentioning the wives once, and now the porn star thing, how has Trump maintained his support among the Evangelicals? He seems the furthest thing from such a group imaginable! }}

I think your answer is in the facebook post printed in this story.  The fact that they are evangelicals has nothing to do with it, it's that evangelicals typically happen to be part of a certain segment of the population, and I think the post summarizes their feelings perfectly.  But most people won't say it aloud, because it's insular "us versus them" that leads to outrage and resignations due to pressure from outside this cultural component.

Note that the web link presents a pre-interpreted view of the post.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/deputy-mayor-resigns-racist-facebook-rant-immigrant-raccoons-extermination/

Why does this seem so familiar?

Holy crap, Hope Hicks just resigned.  This will have a significant impact on the emotional state of our president: who else will clip out positive press coverage for him?

Trump mentioning yesterday, in that open and televised meeting, that he thinks due process should come second has really made me think about where I get off the Trump Train. And he wanted to put Feinstein's semi-automatic weapon ban in the legislation? Did you see how excited she got? So we'll put everything the democrats want in, but Steve Scalise's (who by the way was the victim of a mass assassination attempt by a Bernie supporter) suggestion was batted away? What the fuck kind of bizzaro world did I wake up to? What does Trump think he's going to get out of this? He's still going to be hated by the left, and people on the right will turn on him, because the republican president was the one to pass comprehensive gun control reform. Seriously though, due process comes second? The left couldn't destroy Trump; he can only destroy himself, and this is how it starts.

The signs that Trump is reactionary rather than procedural were there all the time, in his approach to immigration, in his support to destroy environmental regulations that threatened business without regard to why they were there in the first place, and his tendency to jump on campaign style motifs (like taking the knee) that he ran with only because they got a good reaction at his post-presidential "rallies".

Though I approve of a "republican" president actually addressing gun control,  the idea of due process coming second is not a good approach (to put it mildly) and may do him in even among his strongest supporters.  Note that the border patrol has felt emboldened to act without due process more and more since Trump became president, but that didn't bother his supporters one whit.

I thought Ben Sasse summed up the situation pretty succinctly (source):

We're not ditching any constitutional protections simply because the last person the president talked to today doesn't like them.

We've been through this cycle a number of times before, most recently with Trump's conflicting comments about DACA. I have no doubt that he will return to the GOP party line or something close to it in short order.

Though this puts me in the unfamiliar position of agreeing with Ben Sasse about something (not disregarding due process).

I do have to say in Trump's defence that someone can be arrested on reasonable suspicion right now; the "due process" of a trial comes later, and so long as the suspect is charged they can be held in jail if they don't make bail.

Isn't holding someone in jail before trial somewhat equivalent to taking away their guns before trial, or do I have something wrong here?

Generally to arrest someone you need a warrant issued by a judge. Trump's proposal is to give the police the power to seize weapons without a court order (see the link in my previous post).

Um, police pull you over and if you seem to be drunk, can arrest you without a court order. Police can arrest someone in the process of committing a crime without a court order.

The problem to me seems to be arrest on suspicion of a future crime, not on suspicion of commission of a crime.  This isn't due process, it's something else.

Trump's whole comment was about dealing with people who haven't committed a crime yet but who are deemed to be a risk. Obviously if police catch someone in the act of committing a crime or in the immediate aftermath it's a different situation. Generally speaking though, to restrict someone's rights (excepting cases where the person is caught red-handed) you need an order from a judge or a mental health professional, depending on the circumstance. Trump's suggestion is to do away with that, which people on both sides of the aisle are rightfully bothered by. But again, I'd be surprised if Trump is still advocating for this by next week, if it even takes that long.

Eldorion wrote:I'd be surprised if Trump is still advocating for this by next week, if it even takes that long.

Make that just over ten hours from the time of my last post to the time that the director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action tweeted this:

Chris Cox wrote:I had a great meeting tonight with @realDonaldTrump & @VP. We all want safe schools, mental health reform and to keep guns away from dangerous people. POTUS & VPOTUS support the Second Amendment, support strong due process and don’t want gun control. #NRA #MAGA

https://twitter.com/ChrisCoxNRA/status/969393625611333632

Donald Trump wrote:Good (Great) meeting in the Oval Office tonight with the NRA!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/969408165308747777

This is my shocked face:

We'll see what comes out next.

We'll see what comes out next.- Halfy


{{Nothing- business as usual- shock and outrage for a few days after the fact then silence and everyone quietly sweep the topic under the carpet until it happens inevitably again. Besides Trumps to busy trying to distract everyone by starting international trade wars- if there is retaliation to his moves, and there will be, I expect to see US agriculture in particular take a trade hit- hope that doesn't effect you too badly Dave! }}

Edit:

Finally got to the bottom of how two sides can have two different numbers for illegal immigrants and crime.

https://reason.com/archives/2018/02/01/immigrants-and-crime

{{Interesting vid what Ive watched so far Bungo- essentially a country sized prison.

On the subject of which Trump fired Tillerson for not agreeing with him, or for pointing the finger for the chemical poisoning in London squarely on Russia, or whatever it was and replaced him with a nutjob by the name of Pompeo, a man who thinks torture is fine and those who conduct it are 'patriots' which is an odd word to use for torturers in breach on International Law and the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of War. He apparently fully agrees with Trump the Iran deal needs torn up (whilst presumably praising Saudi who even as we speak are committing massive human rights violations, conducting wars and is the source of the modern form of jihad Islam that led to ISIS and its offshoots) and god alone know what he wants to do about N Korea. Russia will probably be fine though. }}

I saw Pompeo interviewed a week ago and he seemed rather reasonable and stable, but the interview was informational about something (I don't remember what) and not explorational about himself. If he backs Trump's policies he doesn't have his personality flaws. The loathing of Trump comes not so much from his policies as the combination of policies with a childish personality and intellect: there's little chance of rational discussion. With Pompeo I think that rational discussion can be held.

My main beef with Tillerson was that he chased so many career diplomats out of the service, people who had faithfully served all manner of presidents. Will they come back with Pompeo? I tend to doubt it. A major outreach effort would be needed.

This is what I like to see, elections going to moderates instead of far right or left wingers.  Part of Pennsylvania that went strongly for Trump swung for the center this time.

The Democrat, Conor Lamb, is a 33-year-old former prosecutor and Marine who ran as a moderate unbeholden to Washington Democrats and without saying much about Trump.

He led state legislator Rick Saccone, a devout conservative and Trump enthusiast. Trump twice campaigned for Saccone, including a visit on Saturday, and Republican-supporting groups poured in more than $10 million to try to save what they once considered a safe seat.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pennsylvania-sends-tough-message-republicans-130126020.html

Well, this is interesting.  Most of Trump's eventual catchphrases were tested by Steve Bannon with Cambridge Analytica before Trump even came on the scene. Trump actually didn't like "drain the swamp", but they kept pushing it on him, and when it worked he adopted it.

https://thinkprogress.org/trump-drain-the-swamp-cambridge-analytica-steve-bannon-nrcc-09152b7a90b9/

{{{I think one of the most insightful things in that article is the following-

'Wylie added that the only foreign politician tested at that time was Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Cambridge Analytica found that right-leaning Americans had surprisingly favorable views of him.
“The only foreign thing we tested was Putin,” Wylie told the Post. “It turns out, there’s a lot of Americans who really like this idea of a really strong authoritarian leader and people were quite defensive in focus groups of Putin’s invasion of Crimea.”

This goes someway to explaining Trumps popularity with conservatives.
Also fits with an other study released recently looking at long term voting trends based on childhood- with their being a marked correlation between children who had fearful or hurtful upbringings being much more likely to be right wing as adults and those with happy childhood more likely to lean left. Fear leads to wanting a strong leader to protect and safeguard. }}}