Scrutable

dyqik wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 5:49 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 5:46 pm Does the context of Trump's words actually matter that much? How many Trumpists will listen to the whole thing, versus twitter parler-friendly snippets?

It potentially matters for building a criminal case, showing intent and mindset.

Not that you'd go _that_ deep into it there.

Fair dos. I don't envy whoever is given the task of demonstrating Trump's mindset - you might as well try to nail a blancmange to the wall.

Bird on a Fire wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 6:10 pm

dyqik wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 5:49 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 5:46 pm Does the context of Trump's words actually matter that much? How many Trumpists will listen to the whole thing, versus twitter parler-friendly snippets?

It potentially matters for building a criminal case, showing intent and mindset.

Not that you'd go _that_ deep into it there.

Fair dos. I don't envy whoever is given the task of demonstrating Trump's mindset - you might as well try to nail a blancmange to the wall.

Trump will never face prosecution. He will just pardon himself.

Herainestold wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 7:18 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 6:10 pm

dyqik wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 5:49 pm

It potentially matters for building a criminal case, showing intent and mindset.

Not that you'd go _that_ deep into it there.

Fair dos. I don't envy whoever is given the task of demonstrating Trump's mindset - you might as well try to nail a blancmange to the wall.

Trump will never face prosecution. He will just pardon himself.

He can’t after he stops being president, surely?

Grumble wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 7:35 pm

Herainestold wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 7:18 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 6:10 pm

Fair dos. I don't envy whoever is given the task of demonstrating Trump's mindset - you might as well try to nail a blancmange to the wall.

Trump will never face prosecution. He will just pardon himself.

He can’t after he stops being president, surely?

He gives himself and his family a blanket self pardon before he leaves.

I don't know if he can really do that, but there is speculation that he will try.

If the president can self pardon, President Biden could go get some homies together, kit themselves out with body armour and automatic weapons and start shooting the Trump family, all of the Republican senators and reps Rambo style. All he has to then do is keep uttering the magic words “I pardon me and all my friends!” with every magazine he empties and has to suffer no consequences.

I don’t see the supremes being cool with that. And if they are, well Rambo Biden can always go kick some serious butt.

bjn wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 8:08 pm If the president can self pardon, President Biden could go get some homies together, kit themselves out with body armour and automatic weapons and start shooting the Trump family, all of the Republican senators and reps Rambo style. All he has to then do is keep uttering the magic words “I pardon me and all my friends!” with every magazine he empties and has to suffer no consequences.

He'd have to do it on Federal land: Washington DC, a military base, one or two other areas. Otherwise state laws have precedence and there is no Presidential pardon for crimes under those. Hence why what the Southern District of New York (aka NYC) prosecutors have on Trump is so important.

Georgia too now.

Yes, "State crimes" has such a nice ring to it.

sTeamTraen wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 8:35 pm

bjn wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 8:08 pm If the president can self pardon, President Biden could go get some homies together, kit themselves out with body armour and automatic weapons and start shooting the Trump family, all of the Republican senators and reps Rambo style. All he has to then do is keep uttering the magic words “I pardon me and all my friends!” with every magazine he empties and has to suffer no consequences.

He'd have to do it on Federal land: Washington DC, a military base, one or two other areas. Otherwise state laws have precedence and there is no Presidential pardon for crimes under those. Hence why what the Southern District of New York (aka NYC) prosecutors have on Trump is so important.

Still, Rambo Biden could do a fair bit of damage just in DC.

A MSNBC host is pointing out that it's been 4 days since the most significant attack on the US seat of government since 1812, and there's not been a Federal law enforcement or government briefing yet.

Nice Tiktok video

https://twitter.com/Tucker5law/status/1 ... 3382910981

shpalman wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 9:51 pm Arnie speaks

Yes that was good. Especially about the trauma the families faced

shpalman wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 10:54 pm No-fly

That was the nice tiktok video I linked to

jimbob wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 10:31 pm Nice Tiktok video

https://twitter.com/Tucker5law/status/1 ... 3382910981

So much for “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” and “Live Free or Die”.

I can only assume had mobile phones been ubiquitous in the 40s we’d have thousands of hours of crying Nazis complaining about how mean the Allies are being.

To loosely quote Colbert “If you launch a failed violent coup in countries which actually are like what the Trumpists claim the US is now, you don’t get get to cry about it afterwards on social media ... because they’ll have cut your f.cking head off!”.

ETA: anybody fancy speculating wildly on what this lad’s likely opinion is regarding the death penalty and extraordinary rendition for terrorists?

The Revolution Will Be Televised









At the end Trump appears to be watching the unfolding carnage wearing boxing gloves, presumably for the same reason Arnold J. Rimmer wears them in bed.

JQH wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 4:18 pm I can't help wondering what would have happened if Trump had in fact marched with the insurrectionists and ordered the cops to stand down or even assist in apprehending his enemies. Illegal orders to be sure but what would the cops getting them direct from the President in a stress situation do?

If Trump wasn't a coward this coup could have succeeded.

If the only change was that Trump had marched, it might have resulted in more violence, and possibly him getting shot. But if he were competent, he wouldn't have staged a coup in this way at all. A successful coup depends on having the support of the right powerful people - not the support of a disorganised rabble and the contempt of the powerful.

Millennie Al wrote: Mon Jan 11, 2021 2:36 am

JQH wrote: Sun Jan 10, 2021 4:18 pm I can't help wondering what would have happened if Trump had in fact marched with the insurrectionists and ordered the cops to stand down or even assist in apprehending his enemies. Illegal orders to be sure but what would the cops getting them direct from the President in a stress situation do?

If Trump wasn't a coward this coup could have succeeded.

If the only change was that Trump had marched, it might have resulted in more violence, and possibly him getting shot. But if he were competent, he wouldn't have staged a coup in this way at all. A successful coup depends on having the support of the right powerful people - not the support of a disorganised rabble and the contempt of the powerful.

Well yeah, it was really only a pseudo coup. Any kind of strategic planning is beyond Trump's capabilities. He is the master of chaos. Throw a bunch of sh.t into the air and see what happens. Realistically it could never have worked, but a lot more people could have died.

About 90 people arrested so far. A thread on them: https://twitter.com/nickturse/status/13 ... 25986?s=21

It was an attempted coup, but a very different type of attempted coup. Trump in his usual pattern of thinking felt that he could bully Pence and the Republicans into disallowing the electors from the 6 states delivering him up the Presidency, by threatening them with his supporters. After all Eric Trump had already that day threatened to have all the Republicans who didn't vote for the objections primaried. Trump has done this consistently over the last 4 years and every time, the Republican Party has buckled and done what Trump wanted.

It must have come as a huge surprise to Trump that it didn't work this time.

Not surprisingly, Trump was most concerned not with the deaths of a few of his supporters or the deaths and injuries to the police, not even with the damage to a national monument, but that the behaviour of his rag-tag army of white supremacists inside the White House made him look like a loser.

Jnr on Parler, just posting pictures of him holding big guns, without comment or context.

He really is an absolute husk of a human being.

A coup needs to be creative as well as destructive. It needs to attack and destroy key areas and create new power channels. Power in the USA is obviously highly dispersed, not least across 50 states, and the crazy structure of different police forces and armed forces means no single force can attack one single point of weakness. What could possibly be done to create new lines of control?

What Trump attempted remained within the existing legal structure so never had a chance of succeeding. There was not a single scenario that lead to him beginning a new term on Jan 20th. Attempted to distort the electoral formalities was pointless as nothing ever led to him being declared victor. Only a scenario where around 150 House reps and 60 Senators were executed or detained would lead to him having a majority of votes.

It was always a fantasy.

This is why that Seth Abramson thread is a dud. It makes out that Trump is constructing an intricate coup attempt with cleverly chosen words. It has Trump carefully changing the tense of verbs to get across subtle meaning, using hidden metaphors that supporters will recognise, using tone of voice in a sir story, calibrating outrage levels and building "propaganda scaffolding". Abramson claims "university courses in propaganda will be discussing it for decades to come" and that "Trump is masterfully weaving a narrative for his army".

In fact it was the usual rambling, going off topic mid sentence and typical Trump word salad. It was a confused speech, just as it was a confused coup.

The good news, though, is there are sufficient sentences within his 75 minute speech that can be spun as calling for insurrection and presented at trial. No need to mention that these sentences were followed by him rambling about how much the governor of Georgia weighs.

I don't really mind everyone pretending this was a coup, because that's the way to destroy Trumpism. But it's obviously not and history won't record it that way once the crisis is over.

lpm wrote: Mon Jan 11, 2021 9:16 am ...
I don't really mind everyone pretending this was a coup, because that's the way to destroy Trumpism. But it's obviously not and history won't record it that way once the crisis is over.

Coup "a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government."

Wednesday was definitely an attempted coup under this definition. Badly thought out and organised as has been said but a coup none the less.

JQH wrote: Mon Jan 11, 2021 9:26 am

lpm wrote: Mon Jan 11, 2021 9:16 am ...
I don't really mind everyone pretending this was a coup, because that's the way to destroy Trumpism. But it's obviously not and history won't record it that way once the crisis is over.

Coup "a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government."

Wednesday was definitely an attempted coup under this definition. Badly thought out and organised as has been said but a coup none the less.

Nah! As lpm says, even if they burst in with trump at the head , killed some senators and sat in all the offices with their feet on the tables, they'd still be nothing more than a bunch of tw.ts sitting in someone else's office: they would never come any where close to being in power. You're not in power until you are responsible for ordering imports of cheese. When there is no king to depose, when you are already a republic, waving a flag out the window and shouting Long Live The Republic is hmm problematical.