I mean Trump making a claim about Comey, as the same claim you made about Patel is absolutely the same. I know and trust both of you about the same.
When I say Trump has an entrapment strategy, I don't mean I trust what he says, but I understand his intent. He's outraging on purpose, that outrage is trustworthy because I get the intent. For example, when Trump stated he would deport illegals, did you believe him? When Obama made the exact same claim did you believe him?
I have never called Trump a genius, what he is is a great representation of the US public. I'm not sure ivlf you've travelled extensively, or lived there, but for every statesman Obama there are 150 Trump type people. They are loud, brash and arrogant.
Well the claims about Patel were literally in a book he published, it's not hidden or supposition, he wrote it himself and made it public. The claims about Comey were Trump simply spewing about people as he always does. Given the sheer volume of people Trump has targeted and been targeted by, you can either conclude Trump is innocent and all the stuff he says is true about these people or he's not innocent, the things said about him are true and he's the liar. Occams razor indicates it's far more likely that one person (who I'll note had been involved in proven fraud before even hinting at being president) is a liar than hundreds of others are.
Again I don't think Trump has this "entrapment" strategy you talk about. I don't think there is any intent to try to outfox people by being outrageous. I think he says outrageous things because he has outrageous views and has no filter. History is loaded with such people who still go on to have success without it being indicative of any higher level strategizing. I think that evidence of strategy is doing something in some sort of methodical way with clear goals and means. Simply acting on impulse is not strategy. For you to claim it is some strategy, that would require thinking he only acts that way because he's calculated it to be advantageous and that he wouldn't act that way if he didn't think that. There is zero evidence to suggest that's the case.
You may not have called Trump a genius but you have claimed you don't become a billionaire or president if you are stupid. I disagree. There are varying degrees of intelligence and intelligence in one area does not mean it applies to another. However, there are some phenomenal idiots throughout history who inherited or otherwise obtained wealth and power with little of their own input. I firmly believe Trump is one of these. His father was also a man with very poor morals but he was the brains behind the Trump brand, he was that one that created it. Donald Trump inherited a successful business and brand. He needed just enough intelligence to realise the other people in the business knew what they were doing. To invoke Godwin's law, WW2 Germany fared better militarily when Hitler left the military design and strategy to his generals and industrial advisors. The more he got personally involved, the worse it got for Germany because Hitler was actually a ******* moron when it came to grand strategy. If we look at the ideas in which Donald Trump was clearly the instigator (ie moving outside real estate), they were failures. The one success was the Apprentice, and I will give Trump credit in that he knows how to be a showman. Personally I think he's as convincing as a 2nd hand car salesman but I can understand the appeal. It is that which got him the presidency, not some grand strategic thinking or acting in a specific way intending to lay traps, he acted exactly as came naturally and did it at a time where the American people were receptive to such attitudes after the rise of the tea party and the abandonment of reasonable discourse by the Republicans.
You can deny MAGA claims all you like, but to acknowledge Clinton and Abrams claims as fact, and MAGA claims as not your showing your not looking at the the entire picture objectively. There are 100% claims that are accurate AND nonsense on both sides.
Not correct at all. The 3 things I listed in the Abrams case are straight up facts. We can debate the impact they may or may not have but there is no debate about whether they were true or not, they happened. The MAGA claims however are severely lacking in facts. What of the claims regarding election fraud that were spread in 2020 were factual? Again they are simply not the same. Abrams may have been wrong in overstating the impact of these things but she was not wrong in stating those things happened. MAGA claims however have been wrong in that they didn't even establish the things they claimed happened did happen. All the vote switching, ballot dumps, dead people voting, illegals voting, hacking by the Chinese and Italians etc, none of that was actually shown to be true. We can't even debate the impact of these because they simply didn't happen to begin with.
says you, the other side argue that it is because the scale of election fraud is more than ever before, and there is evidence for both of these positions!
No, says the CATO institute. They are self described Libertarians and had close ties with the Ayn Rand Institute, these are not what would now be called as "left wing" at all. The scale of election fraud is miniscule. It has not been proven that there has been enough fraud anyway in the entire USA to flip even one seat. Voter disenfranchisement and gerrymandering on the other hand has had a massive impact on elections and definitely flipped many seats (or at least resulted in a distribution of results that is not representative). Have a check which party out of Democrats and Republicans are the ones consistently pushing for voter disenfranchisement and which have the most heavily gerrymandered districts. I think you should already know the answer.
no it doesn't, it ignores 100 years of history, and only discusses 3 specific cases as you well know!
The 3 cases most cited by both-siderists as examples that the 2 sides are identical. Given the ideological flip that occurred a few decades ago between Democrats and Republicans, it muddies the waters and becomes a point of irrelevance if you go back too far. 3 primary cases are given to claim Democrats are worse than Republicans so it addresses those 3 primary cases. If Republicans listed more cases of Democrats even further back in history then no doubt they would have addressed those too.
See Reagon, WTF are you talking about?! 22 is only illegal until it is overturned, which numerous precious presidents advocate for, why are you playing ignorant?!?!
Reagan argued that the amendment should be repealed, which is the legitimate way to establish a president should have a 3rd term. Other presidents have also advocated it. This is not an issue because this is the correct way to do it. Trump, as well as advocating a repeal, is also looking for loopholes and achieving additional terms through non-legitimate means. Reagan and other presidents did NOT do that. That's the difference. You keep ignoring this distinction. There is a correct way to try to establish a 3rd term that is not fundamentally authoritarian and there are incorrect ways that are authoritarian. One is doing it within the bounds of the law, the other isn't. Trump is also the only president to have tried to cling to power illegally. He was at the centre of the fake electors plot, which is unprecedented. He is at the centre of demanding the VP not certify the results, again unprecedented. He was at the centre of having Representatives refuse to recognise the electors, also unprecedented. He was a major driver of the insurrection, again unprecedented. All these were attempting to prevent a lawful transfer of power that no other president has tried. That's the difference.
And what was he convicted of?! It doesn't matter, as I've said 20 times, and I am getting more tired of telling you, no president / candidate or former president gets convicted of mishandling, misusing, obstructing, or conspiring to destroy of classified documents... because they have pretty much all done it! The same way Biden wasn't prosecuted because he was a senile old man.
He was indicted for 31 counts of retaining
and failing to deliver national defence documents under the espionage act, 5 counts of conspiracy to obstruct justice and 1 count of false statements. Key part underlined and in bold. He was not indicted purely for his possession of them, it was for possession and then his subsequent refusal to return them. Mishandling of documents implies an error of judgement, Trump's actions were not an error of judgement as he intentionally blocked all attempts to retrieve the files afterwards. If it was a genuine error, why was he obstructing all attempts to get them back? Biden didn't obstruct any attempts to get the documents he had back. I told you not to make out he was simply doing the same as Biden and yet here I am repeating it again to you. He was
NOT prosecuted just for having the documents, he was prosecuted for his obstruction when attempting to retrieve them. If you think that's the same as Biden then by all means point to where Biden obstructed attempts to get his documents returned.
Why are you pretending it's the same?
