The Trump Cesspool Thread- a place to drop misc Trump turds

[Citysnaps]

Trump literally told Nauta to move the boxes in order hide the docs from his own lawyer, Corcoran, who was looking for them in order to comply with a court order.

One would have to be pretty brainwashed to think there’s any similarity.

And I have to wonder about the motivation for having them in easily accessible areas of Mar-a-Lago to begin with. For special guests?

 

[Cmaier]

And I have to wonder about the motivation for having them in easily accessible areas of Mar-a-Lago to begin with. For special guests?

Oh, i think that was just sloppiness and lack of caring. He thinks they are his to do with what he pleases, and doesn’t give a shit about whether they can hurt the country if disclosed.

 

[MEJHarrison]

Since Clinton wasn’t prosecuted, the should Trump not be?

I'm of the belief that it doesn't matter what someone else did or who got away with something similar in the past. That's not how our legal system works. He should be tried for the crimes he's accused of and let the system do its job from there. If someone else was let go for something similar, that's just too bad. One (or more) bad judgements shouldn't invalidate the laws for others down the line.

Also, as has been pointed out, I don't think those two committed the same crimes. But even if they had, I'd still stand by what I said above.

 

[Citysnaps]

If someone else was let go for something similar, that's just too bad.

Also... trump was not charged with respect to secret documents he returned voluntarily, similar to Biden's cooperation.

He could have exercised that option with the rest of his documents trove, instead of obstructing, possibly making the whole issue go away. He had a chance and instead doubled down on obstruction. It's all on him.

 

[AG_PhamD]

From HuffPost, How Trump’s Classified Documents Case Differs From Those Of Clinton, Biden And Pence :

"Four investigations revealed that Clinton did not have forethought in her retention of classified information, just three of the emails on her server were even marked as classified when they were received and she complied with the Justice Department’s investigation fully. This is almost the exact opposite of what Trump is alleged to have done."

The differences in the two cases are huge. Trump had forethought because he for months didn't respond to the Archives request to return the documents. There were hundreds of classified documents, some with the highest level of classification. He obstructed the return of the documents by defying a subpoena and lying about what he had, as well as moving the boxes around to hide them from the DOJ as well as his own lawyers.

I think that’s vastly underplaying the facts of the case.

Straight from the horses mouth (Comey)
“From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent.”

And I don’t think that includes another 5 emails marked classified, sent to Human Abesin from Clinton, that ended up on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

On top of that you have 30k deleted emails of which the contents are unknown. Maybe they were irrelevant, maybe not. And let’s not forget these e-mails were deleted after being subpoenaed.

Classified documents and information that may later be classified is just one inherent problem when you create your own private email server to handle government communications. Not to mention the illegality of doing that in the first place and suspicious reasons one might opt for a private server.

Clinton got off by the FBI accepting this was just a mere case of mere negligence. From what we know about Pence and likely Biden, those were cases of negligence. Most of us don’t accidentally put email servers in our house, use them for government communication, and then destroy the contents when the government comes looking. It’s not like she would not have been aware of the laws.

So I think there are a lot of parallels between these too cases. But if you read my post, I do think Trump’s situation rises to a greater level of severity. And in that case I think it’s very hard for people who believe Clinton should have been prosecuted can now say Trump should not be.

And just because someone, sometime was not prosecuted for murder despite compelling evidence doesn’t mean no murder suspect should ever be prosecuted. If the law worked on that basis no one would ever be prosecuted for anything.

 

[AG_PhamD]

He could have exercised that option with the rest of his documents trove, instead of obstructing, possibly making the whole issue go away. He had a chance and instead doubled down on obstruction. It's all on him.

He undoubtably handled this the wrong way entirely. Allegedly there are often debates and comprises between NARA and outgoing administrations. Even if we say Trump had the right to play hardball, once you get into lying to NARA, moving boxes around in what appears to create deception, mislead your lawyers, and potentially share military information that you admit has not been declassified with 3rd parties, you’re getting into a whole new territory.

It would be one thing for Trump to say we have XYZ documents, I want them, we’ll settle this in court or whatever process exists to moderate. I’m sure there also must exist a mechanism for NARA to store documents while the ownership rights are debated. But once you get into lies and deception, there’s no way for the government to do its job and understandably they must escalate.

I’m kind of trying to understand Trump’s logic in handling the this way he did. Given how other elites are treated, someone in his position might believe they are above the law. But Trump knows he is target. Maybe he figured the government is too incompetent to notice missing documents. I think the answer comes down to a lifetime of getting your way, the unbelievable amount of luck that falls into his lap at every turn, and the pathologically narcissistic personality Trump posses (no doubt created or emboldened by the aforementioned).

 

[MEJHarrison]

I think that’s vastly underplaying the facts of the case.

This is a 30 minute long video. It is also 7 months old and came out just after the Mar-a-Lago raid. I think it's fair to say things have only escalated on that case.

But for Hillary, he (a Lawyer) goes into detail about the facts of the case from a legal stand-point. He goes into the investigations and the results of those investigations. He clearly explains why Hilary wasn't prosecuted. If you wonder why she was let go, I highly recommend watching this.

 

[Citysnaps]

This is a 30 minute long video. It is also 7 months old and came out just after the Mar-a-Lago raid. I think it's fair to say things have only escalated on that case.

But for Hillary, he (a Lawyer) goes into detail about the facts of the case from a legal stand-point. He goes into the investigations and the results of those investigations. He clearly explains why Hilary wasn't prosecuted. If you wonder why she was let go, I highly recommend watching this.

That was an excellent and thorough analysis - thanks!

 

[shadow puppet]

This is making the rounds. The look on the email lady's face is priceless.

 

[shadow puppet]

The internet is indeed forever. This is why I have zero sympathy for this man, nor will I ever.

Any pile of muck he finds himself in, he did to himself.

 

[Citysnaps]

This is making the rounds. The look on the email lady's face is priceless.

View attachment 24267

Nice to see his bathroom is well-stocked with interesting reading material. Though I'd hate being the Mar-a-Lago servant who has to read to him.

 

[Roller]

He undoubtably handled this the wrong way entirely. Allegedly there are often debates and comprises between NARA and outgoing administrations. Even if we say Trump had the right to play hardball, once you get into lying to NARA, moving boxes around in what appears to create deception, mislead your lawyers, and potentially share military information that you admit has not been declassified with 3rd parties, you’re getting into a whole new territory.

It would be one thing for Trump to say we have XYZ documents, I want them, we’ll settle this in court or whatever process exists to moderate. I’m sure there also must exist a mechanism for NARA to store documents while the ownership rights are debated. But once you get into lies and deception, there’s no way for the government to do its job and understandably they must escalate.

I’m kind of trying to understand Trump’s logic in handling the this way he did. Given how other elites are treated, someone in his position might believe they are above the law. But Trump knows he is target. Maybe he figured the government is too incompetent to notice missing documents. I think the answer comes down to a lifetime of getting your way, the unbelievable amount of luck that falls into his lap at every turn, and the pathologically narcissistic personality Trump posses (no doubt created or emboldened by the aforementioned).

Since when has Trump applied conventional logic to anything he does? He’s a malignant narcissist and pathological liar who’s only guided by what benefits him, with no regard for the norms of behavior or discourse, let alone the rule of law. If that weren’t the case, he wouldn’t blast Jack Smith on social media against the advice of his own lawyers.

He’s a clear and present danger to the country and the world. Sure, Hillary Clinton and others have mishandled sensitive documents, but not with the intent to deceive or wanton carelessness as Trump.

 

[AG_PhamD]

This is a 30 minute long video. It is also 7 months old and came out just after the Mar-a-Lago raid. I think it's fair to say things have only escalated on that case.

But for Hillary, he (a Lawyer) goes into detail about the facts of the case from a legal stand-point. He goes into the investigations and the results of those investigations. He clearly explains why Hilary wasn't prosecuted. If you wonder why she was let go, I highly recommend watching this.

I have seen his videos before. I think he’s very thorough and often makes very interesting points. He does cover some things very fairly, but in others he has very apparent political bias highlighted by smugness. His Kyle Rittenhouse coverage was extremely biased IMO. It’s also worth noting he sued the Trump administration over a FOIA request intended to reveal wrongdoing of Trump in censoring John Bolton or something, but the case was dismissed.

I don’t mind if people take the same circumstances and perceive things differently- and I respect any opinion that someone takes the time to craft an argument for. In fact, I enjoy hearing the other sides of arguments. I also am not a lawyer so have to defer to opinions of lawyers such as himself. I just don’t think he’s consistently objective when it comes to political matters.

He casually glosses over the details of the case in a manner that suggests there’s nothing inappropriate or suspicious with what happened in Clinton’s case. And Comey should have left the decision to an actual prosecutor to decide whether or not charges were appropriate. Even if we chalk all of this up to negligence, how does one differentiate between “carelessness”(how Comey described her behavior) and gross negligence (an offense). And I’m not sure Comey should have been the one to decide upon prosecution, that sounds like the job of an acting prosecutor.

For me, the mere fact of relying on personal email for government business goes beyond carelessness. It’s not hard to imagine that you might be sent classified information (or information that could become classified), especially as Secretary of State. If we take Clinton’s word, she, ultimately the sole custodian of this all data, didn’t have the operational control to have files deleted or removed when requested and failed the confirm such actions. How can it happen your lawyer requests emails and some technician deletes them?

If we say the Clinton scandal was merely carelessness with no underlying nefarious actions, compare to the case of former CIA director John Deutsch. After leaving the CIA and returning his multiple agency computers, it was he had many classified documents on multiple internet-connected CIA-owned computers not setup for classified information handling and later floppy discs in his home- btw this was 1996 and they were concerned about hacking. Deutsch never was found to have a criminal motive, never deleted evidence, AFAIK cooperated entirely, but was nonetheless ultimately lost his security clearance and was offered a misdemeanor plea deal w/suspended sentence to which was to be accepted, but was pardoned by Bill Clinton at the 11th hour before the case was filed. That seems like a pretty close parallel. It also suggests Hillary Clinton would probably be well aware of the records laws having lived through this scandal.

Esquire Legal Eagle claims Clinton’s case is unlike others prosecutions of gross negligence (which I’m not sure the study included cases that did not go to trial or only involves those involving the espionage act and not lesser changers) because she never knowingly destroyed evidence. I think that requires some deeper consideration. Clinton and her lawyer evidently marked personal emails for deletion and the claim is only those were deleted. (And can I mention how odd it is to delete all your personal emails). But what about the emails with classified info on Anthony Weiner’s laptop not on Clinton’s server? That would lead me at the very least the deletion process was not executed carefully enough and there’s likely other documents that were not retain- which is at a minimum seems negligent. And Legal Eagle’s anti negligence statue argument seems pretty weak considering it exists in other parts of criminal law. It’s fair to say using your own server commingled with personal email creates a lot of issues that would be apparent to Clinton (a lawyer herself) and her team.

I think it’s fair to say if it’s you or I who did something like Clinton, we would not have the same outcome. I’ve met people who have far more serious consequences for lesser infractions within the government- stories for another time. But understandably law enforcement will usually be caught between a rock and a hard place dealing with potential criminal charges of a candidate right before an election.

That said, even if I think Clinton was guilty, it doesn’t mean I necessarily think the consequence should be jail time. But there should be consequences for elites. At the end of the day I suppose the election served in some respect as the Jury in this case… though I can’t say having Trump elected was any sort of justice.

I really don’t want to re-litigate this though. It won’t change the past and won’t have a bearing on the future. I’ve made my points. Regardless, Trump is at a level beyond Clinton and deserves the case against him.

 

[shadow puppet]

I'm sorry. But there is and never will be, anything fairly covered by a narcisist like Trump.

 

[AG_PhamD]

Since when has Trump applied conventional logic to anything he does? He’s a malignant narcissist and pathological liar who’s only guided by what benefits him, with no regard for the norms of behavior or discourse, let alone the rule of law. If that weren’t the case, he wouldn’t blast Jack Smith on social media against the advice of his own lawyers.

He’s a clear and present danger to the country and the world. Sure, Hillary Clinton and others have mishandled sensitive documents, but not with the intent to deceive or wanton carelessness as Trump.

Wanton carelessness sounds like an an oxymoron. But I get your point.

I have to disagree though. His actions regarding handling the cases are the complete opposite of careless. It seems to me there was likely a lot of intention behind what he he retained from his office, where he put it, where he moved it, what he allegedly destroyed, the admission he had classified docs he never declared declassified, etc. Even the sharing of the Iran document with the journalist was intentional, to bolster his complaints about Miley. Which is probably why he saved it.

Locking documents in Mar-a-lago I don’t believe is as careless as people make it sound- it’s a private club with full time security and secret service presence (It also happens to be very convenient to Trump to access). Other past president’s files are held in seemingly odd places- like GHW Bush keeping his files in a strip mall.

Creating a private server and using it for both personal and official high level government communication at the very least is negligence as there’s clearly foreseeable problems that could arise and the laws are well known.

Commingling classified documents among loads personal documents and throwing them in boxes in your garage sounds like carelessness. Especially when kept at a house presumably has no security detail (VP’s get 6 months of SS detail?)

Trumps decisions are unquestionably stupid every step of the way, but he was not careless. His actions were intentional. Carelessness is accidentally not returning a library book and losing it in your house. That’s not the case here with Trump, despite his supporters often using that analogy. His case is more akin to stealing a library book, denying he ever took it while claiming it belonged to him the entire time while also claiming he’s the librarian.

It would be fascinating to pick Trump’s brain to dig into his personality and the life experiences that created what is evidently a deeply flawed person. And how these extreme personality traits/pathologies motivate him and play a role in his successes.

Narcissistic traits are over represented in politicians and leaders in general- as are sociopathic traits. In the case of personality disorders, such negative traits often occur concurrently/as a result of other PD’s. Unfortunately, humans are often attracted to narcissists as leaders and jobs like POTUS are going attract the people who think so highly of themselves that they believe they are qualified to be the most powerful man/woman on the planet. Do you we really believe anyone is truly “qualified” for that role? (in the sense an accountant is qualified to your taxes).

Trump clearly was unlike any narcissist in US politics I’ve ever seen- to the point of completely eclipsing what would normally be blatant narcissism in others, making them seem normal. HRC strikes me as incredibly narcissistic too, among the worst in recent memory- with some parallels to Trump’s behaviors in fact. Trump obviously at least an orders of magnitude worse in severity though.

Let’s just put it this way, we all know losses can be deeply upsetting and difficult, but when someone cannot accept an objective loss, cannot identify + admit any personal responsibility in their loss, and cannot even plan for the possibility of losing, you are are not fit for president or any position of serious leadership. Period.

 

[Roller]

Wanton carelessness sounds like an an oxymoron. But I get your point.

I have to disagree though. His actions regarding handling the cases are the complete opposite of careless. It seems to me there was likely a lot of intention behind what he he retained from his office, where he put it, where he moved it, what he allegedly destroyed, the admission he had classified docs he never declared declassified, etc. Even the sharing of the Iran document with the journalist was intentional, to bolster his complaints about Miley. Which is probably why he saved it.

Locking documents in Mar-a-lago I don’t believe is as careless as people make it sound- it’s a private club with full time security and secret service presence (It also happens to be very convenient to Trump to access). Other past president’s files are held in seemingly odd places- like GHW Bush keeping his files in a strip mall.

Creating a private server and using it for both personal and official high level government communication at the very least is negligence as there’s clearly foreseeable problems that could arise and the laws are well known.

Commingling classified documents among loads personal documents and throwing them in boxes in your garage sounds like carelessness. Especially when kept at a house presumably has no security detail (VP’s get 6 months of SS detail?)

Trumps decisions are unquestionably stupid every step of the way, but he was not careless. His actions were intentional. Carelessness is accidentally not returning a library book and losing it in your house. That’s not the case here with Trump, despite his supporters often using that analogy. His case is more akin to stealing a library book, denying he ever took it while claiming it belonged to him the entire time while also claiming he’s the librarian.

It would be fascinating to pick Trump’s brain to dig into his personality and the life experiences that created what is evidently a deeply flawed person. And how these extreme personality traits/pathologies motivate him and play a role in his successes.

Narcissistic traits are over represented in politicians and leaders in general- as are sociopathic traits. In the case of personality disorders, such negative traits often occur concurrently/as a result of other PD’s. Unfortunately, humans are often attracted to narcissists as leaders and jobs like POTUS are going attract the people who think so highly of themselves that they believe they are qualified to be the most powerful man/woman on the planet. Do you we really believe anyone is truly “qualified” for that role? (in the sense an accountant is qualified to your taxes).

Trump clearly was unlike any narcissist in US politics I’ve ever seen- to the point of completely eclipsing what would normally be blatant narcissism in others, making them seem normal. HRC strikes me as incredibly narcissistic too, among the worst in recent memory- with some parallels to Trump’s behaviors in fact. Trump obviously at least an orders of magnitude worse in severity though.

Let’s just put it this way, we all know losses can be deeply upsetting and difficult, but when someone cannot accept an objective loss, cannot identify + admit any personal responsibility in their loss, and cannot even plan for the possibility of losing, you are are not fit for president or any position of serious leadership. Period.

One can be intentional and careless at the same time. In Trump’s case, his actions were intended to achieve his goal - keep the documents for whatever purpose - but he didn’t care about the grave national security repercussions. I think that applied to pretty much everything during his presidency. That’s why he presents such a threat.

 

[GermanSuplex]

Probably an actual crime, not just a random story.

 

[Eric]

Probably an actual crime, not just a random story.

It's okay because Trump gave Kid Rock security clearance with his mind. He can do that you know.

 

[GermanSuplex]

It's okay because Trump gave Kid Rock security clearance with his mind. He can do that you know.

Retroactively, even.

 

[Yoused]

This is odd: a truck has a problem of some sort, its load bursts into flame, and an I-95 overpass collapses from the conflagration, leading to some inconveniences for a few people. The odd part (vaguely relevant to this thread) is that the incident happened about a block and a half away from Four Seasons Total Landscaping.