The Frankish Reich

Let's go back in time. Summer 2016. Trump opines on that Leader of the Free Press, the National Enquirer: "There was a picture on the front page of the National Enquirer, which does have credibility," Trump said to a room of volunteers and staffers in Cleveland, adding that the tabloid "should be very respected." In May, Trump had said to Fox News, "You know, his father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being -- you know, shot....Right prior to his [Kennedy's] being shot, and nobody even brings it up. I mean, they don't even talk about that. That was reported and nobody talks about it." The story Trump referenced had appeared in the National Enquirer and was immediately debunked. The Washington Post said Trump had made "a ridiculous claim." Politifact concurred, saying that the photograph was "too degraded to offer much confidence," and experts it consulted "consider Trump's claim implausible at best and ridiculous at worst." So now we know that Trump and that "credible" supermarket checkout rag were in cahoots, planting and killing stories all in service of Trump and at the expense of his competitors. Ted Cruz was incensed in 2016, but now he's ... weirdly quiet. Not a peep out of him since it was revealed at Trump's trial that the Enquirer just photoshopped Cruz's father into a photo of Oswald. The manly Senator just bends over and takes it now. Maybe he wants to be Attorney General. Cruz figured it all out in 2016: “The CEO of the National Enquirer is an individual named David *****,” Cruz said at a [2016] campaign event. “Well, David is good friends with Donald Trump. In fact, the National Enquirer has endorsed Donald Trump, has said he must be president.” The senator lamented that his young daughters would someday “read these lies, these attacks that Donald and his henchmen, that his buddies at the National Enquirer spread” about their father. After the tabloid went after Cruz’s father, and Trump seized on the story, the senator also told reporters that the future president was a “pathological liar,” adding in reference to Trump, “He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth.” The mainstream media - and Cruz himself - nailed it at the time. It was a preposterous lie, and this time planted by Trump and his "alt media" supporters.

Wow, what a new concept! We used to call it "governing."

And they both had illegitimate children! (allegedly)

Revealed in court today to have been a total photoshopped fake story, put in the National Enquirer with the encouragement of Trump. Yes, ladies and gentlemen (and various non-binary sorts), this is your presidential nominee. For the third time.

I don’t think there is. But there is a legal requirement to not knowingly file false financial statements. If Trump has written out a personal Donald John Trump check I suppose we wouldn’t be here. But he was afraid that such a payment would come to light and ruin his electoral chances so he buried it through a falsified legal expense, using Cohen as a conduit. Look, you can argue all you like about whether it was wise or prudent or political or whatever to bring this case. I don’t think it was a good idea to bring it for various reasons. But the case is pretty compelling on the facts (yep, this is what Trump and Cohen actually did, and there is evidence that they did it at least in large part to avoid a story coming out that could damage his campaign), and reasonably well thought out with respect to the legal theory.

Yes, that is exactly what the Stare of New York is suggesting. Indeed, charging. The payment was laundered through Michael Cohen as a legal fee when it was nothing of the sort.

You need to get out more. The key point of today’s testimony: Packer (I know I’m spelling it wrong to avoid the auto censor) said Cohen discussed with him what Packer could do to help “with the election.” In short, there’s the evidence that suppressing stories was for the purpose of furthering Trump’s campaign. To spin this as favorable testimony for Trump is just ridiculous. MSM 1, Alt-Nut coverage 0.

Watch this and tell me that Josh is not the second coming of Roman Gabriel. What a talent.

To me, Allen’s closest comp is still Roman Gabriel. He was past his prime by the time I started watching football, but I’ve seen the old video. Rocket arm, huge guy, excellent foot speed, just the whole package. I hope Allen gets the championship that evaded Gabriel ….

There is a new day rising.

I doubt anyone scripted that thing about how his uncle was eaten by cannibals.

NC Bills Fan, was this you? https://heavy.com/news/max-azzarello-5-fast-facts-you-need-to-know/ The manifesto makes accusations against Peter Thiel and mentions former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as well as Trump. “That Bill Clinton was secretly on (former CIA Director) George H.W. Bush’s side, and that the Democrat vs. Republican division has been entirely manufactured ever since: Clinton is with Bush; Gore is with Bush; Trump is with Hillary, and so on,” it reads, claiming, “As it turns out, we have a secret kleptocracy: Both parties are run by financial criminals whose only goals are to divide, deceive, and bleed us dry.” The New York Post reported that left “a rambling, incoherent 2,648-word manifesto. Bears the hallmarks. Rambling. Incoherent. Angry. RIP, buddy.

It is before the Supreme Court of New York State, which despite its name is the trial level court of general jurisidiction. County courts are lower level, handling the stuff you talk about. Because it is INCONCEIVABLE that your God Who Walks The Earth could doze off during an incredibly boring court proceeding.

Ask the guy who started the "Uniparty" thread. Unless he's currently a crispy critter, that is.

Well, there really was no such thing as people here illegally at the time, since the USA was birthed in a time of open borders. So there is that ...

Good point. This is what economists would call the moral hazard problem. If the fees are capped at a low amount, we'd all love to think that someone carrying significant credit card debt would save that $25 difference and all consumers would be better off. But as you point out, that's not necessarily what happens. And a larger point: I don't like throwing these credit card fees in with Biden's general attack on "junk fees." I'm in favor of that because it ought to relate to those annoying/unjustifiable fees on things we can't opt out of - the classic $30 "resort fee" that I'm charged every night (and can't opt out of) that allows me to do ordinary things like make local telephone calls (who does that on a hotel phone anymore?) and access the hotel swimming pool. The idea is that if I can't opt out, you've got to wrap that fee into the disclosed nightly rate. That makes sense as a consumer/advertising fairness issue. Things like paying a credit card bill late are not the same thing.

I could agree with that. It would seem to be a fair result in those individual cases. There are various reasons the government brings prosecutions, and only one of them is punishment for a crime. Sometimes it's to deter other people from trying the same thing again, and I have to say that the deterrent effect should be clear.

I went to a talk by a legal historian many years ago. And that was exactly his point: the right to be tried by a "jury of your peers" traditionally meant being tried by the townfolk who no doubt knew you, or at least knew your family and knew who you were. It's only in modern urban times and places that we assume some kind of anonymity.

Remember the conservative approach to statutory interpretation: we give effect to the words of the statute - the text - and don't try to probe the minds of the representatives and senators who passed the statute decades ago. And here, the Government wins: the words of the statute clearly encompass the conduct of those convicted under it based on their J6 activities. So maybe they should also prosecute Jamal Bowman. Sure. Fine. But that doesn't mean the prosecutions/convictions of the J6 rioters were illegal. Gorsuch is generally pretty firm on the law and the meaning of the words, so it's a little jarring here to see him go for a purely political point.

Hey, keep your story straight. It was hush money, but it was just to save Melania and the kids from embarrassment. Seriously though ... I'm not interested in another Trump trials thread. I'm interested in what people thought of the process and whether they think they would up with a fair and attentive jury.

Interesting stuff (at least to me) about jury selection in the hush money case. Anyone here have any first-hand experience?

True. If Melania cared about marrying an uber wealthy philanderer, she never would've married Trump. Trophy wife gonna trophy wife.

Your geopolitical considerations are, I'm afraid, pretty compelling. Take a look at the last Trump Administration proposal for linking Gaza to the West Bank. Gaza would be connected to the rest of the Palestinian independent state by a tunnel. t was pretty clearly never going to work. I guess something similar worked for two or three decades with West Berlin, but still ... "unstable" is the keyword. (And by doing this, I'm not specifically targeting the Trump plan; no other plan has had any acceptable way of dealing with Gaza)

Good question that remains largely unanswered after 230 some years.

Oh, look at who's back in TrumpWorld's good graces! None other than Steve Bannon. And the very very truthful and adept "Mike Davis" is happy to appear on his show to praise the treasonous former prez and his family. Trump on Bannon: “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.” Trump continued, “Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base - he’s only in it for himself.” Bannon on Trump: Stephen K. Bannon — Trump’s former top strategist, who now heads the conservative Breitbart News — describes a meeting that Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner had with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” The book also quotes Bannon as describing Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, as “dumb as a brick.”