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Why does this guy get to run for president when he appears to have committed millions of dollars in fraud? Shouldn’t that be jail time for anyone else?
Because we elected a black dude and holy shit did that break the right.
Obama really did open the floodgates on all the racists. I guess I was really naive, but I had no idea there were so many racist everywhere.
As a white guy with a beard in a blue collar industry, I'm shocked at what strangers will just assume I'm cool with hearing out of their mouths. They truly have no shame anymore. It's fucking wild.
Add tattoos. Yea. People are awful. "I like Alex Jones". I have never wanted to punch a coworker so much in my life.
The way I respond is always 'neutral' but calling them what they are. So for Alex Jones I might say 'oh the dude who lied about dead kids?' the key is to sound neutral and then just disengage if they try to start a conversation about it. 'yea I don't care dude'.
'tate? The rapist and woman beater? OK.' just disengage on that topic. Make it see like you're stating a fact, because you are and there's no room for them to argue or engage.
For real. It's like they completely don't get that it sounds so bad when you just stick to the facts.
Yeah: “Isn’t he the guy who [insert atrocious fact or quote from whichever asshole here]” either gets them confused, usually resulting in a “but Hunter’s laptop” response, no matter the topic. Or they quiet down and move on in my experience.
I usually do the same thing in relation to donnie with magats that start up and don't know me - I don't engage on any of their latest insider ragebait too-online/too much Faux Cinematic Universe, and usually feign general uninterest in politics, but ask questions like - "Isn't Trump the guy that was convicted of rape?"
If I really want to go there and there are not children around, I'll ask if Trump isn't the guy that wants to fuck his own daughter? I do the same "many people are saying" tactic that donnie himself does and it usually shuts them right the hell up because if they want to start up with nonsense about Biden, I'll just feign ignorance about any of their latest poutrage porn that they consume all day and ask why they don't know that donnie wants to bang his own daughter.
For the magats that are terminally online/in their own little magat bubble, someone saying this in such stark terms really tends to shock them for a few minutes. They might be used to trying to debate "nice" liberals/leftists on their terms, or with their framing, or hoping they can flip it into a conversation about something else....
My colleagues and I are all mechanical or industrial engineers. We travel around the country to project sites. I'll be on a job site and hear all the trades guys saying the most vile shit. And be completely shocked I tell them to knock it off or I'll tell the general contractor to get someone else out.
The part that pisses me off the most though is how often they're union members.
My favorite is when racists say "We've had a black president so we can't be a nation of racists."
Like....somehow having a black president now makes it okay for all of the shit conservatives want to do.
"Thanks Obama"
They did it on CNN. I remember some Republican prick saying, "you know why we're not racist? Obama."
It just so happened that the racists got outvoted. Their party really seized upon being racists though.
Oh, so did that repub vote for Obama, then? I realize that was on tv, but when I hear that IRL, I'll ask if they voted for Obama. If they did, could they explain why the hell we had the birtherism shit? And why donnie, who is king of the birthers, is the choice of the cons and how did he get into office?
We never had a reckoning for slavery, for segregation, redlining, employment discrimination. Or any of the thousands of other racist touchstones of our country. In fact, far too many Americans still blame the victims and their descendants for the struggles they still experience. Too many Americans blame their own struggles on the victims as well. Obama opened no floodgates. These people were always wildly racist. They'd just not had such an opportunity to so vocally and visually demonstrate it.
My ignorance of just how much it permeated my childhood and young adult years was terrifying. Even colloquial phrases and sayings picked up in my youth were coded with racism. And with how little we promote understanding and learning. It's easy to see how so many getting called out for it rather than stopping to learn. Just push back and double down self-righteously. America is a wildly racist country, and always has been.
It's to the point where some of them are now trying to find ways to make it worse to call someone racist than being a racist.
The US failed to hang traitors in the 1860s and now here we are.
And again with the business plot.
This all goes back to those neighborhood apps where everyone was openly racist. All around the time of BLM. Download anyone of them today to find out how racist your neighbors are.
Which ones?
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkbymk/nextdoor-knows-its-users-are-racist
Yeah but come on. He wore a tan suit once. What did you expect? It's like we were asking for this.
So did Reagan and both Bush’s but “that’s okay”. /s
Don't forget the terrorist fist jab.
And the feet on the desk! And the latte salute!
Also, also, also! The looooooong form biiiiiirth sertifikate! We never saw it! He is the Kenyan usurper! And The Storm is still coming for Hillary and Obama and Hunter, by gawd.
This is what I come back to. The right's crazy was in check somewhat beforehand, but when Obama won it went off the cliff.
Remember when Bush was, what we thought, the lowest we could go? Dude is loveable by current standards.
I shudder to think what the repug party will manifest after donnie. It should be obvious that donnie did not make the repug party any different; they were always bad and on a trajectory of getting worse. People like Newt and Rush accelerated that for sure, along with platforms like hatriot radio and Faux "News".
I doubt they'll course correct after mainlining someone like donnie for years, they will be chasing that dragon ever after and will never settle for methadone like ronnie raygun or Bush Sr/Jr or Romney or McCain...I imagine at some point donnie himself will be declared "woke" or a "RINO", especially when I see him claiming he won't vote for a federal ban on abortion.
I just think they have a better megaphone now, and the liberal (lol) Big Tech seemingly has algorithms that prioritize engagement - and the crazy shit tends to get people angry and therefore, more engaged in, let's be honest, rehashes of John Birch Society and Protocols of the Elders of Zion levels of horse manure. Let's face it - there is very little new that's under the sun, it just gets new packaging.
They were crazy over the Clintons in the 90s. Hatriot radio didn't have algorithms though, and neither did USENET/BBSes or the very early web. Going further back, they didn't have Faux news or even BBSes; they had to stand out on a corner and try to hand out bullshit like Jack Chick tracts or Bircher literature. It'd be nice if they had to revert back to that level of spreading their nonsense.
Some went crazy before, but then the crazy took over when Obama won.
I definitely think they were able to be a lot more bold in their dogwhistles. I'd be interested in seeing surveys that had questions that serve as ways to suss out how it waxed and waned over the years...my guess is that their numbers may have actually gone down over the years, but they are more visible/have more influence in relation to their numbers.
I think that is indeed true - they got somehow even worse than they were before, but honestly, after Clinton, they would have done the same thing. They'd let a WAB like donnie the vain Manhattanite born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a 2-hour beauty regime get away with nearly anything, because they think he's a bigly strong businessman and one of them, lol.
They were spreading all kinds of BS in the 90s about Clinton and thought he should have been executed - and that's even before these weird freaks found out about the BJ. The fact that he "got away" with a BJ drove them up the wall.
Weirdly, it wasn't a criminal case, purely civil. The criminal side of the case was against the Trump organization and he had a fall guy for that:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/10/politics/allen-weisselberg-sentencing-trump-organization/index.html
He served 3 months.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-weisselberg-jail-tax-evasion-6b4e0bbad6d9c92d792cbbcb785882af
But they just hit him again:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-fraud-weisselberg-perjury-0101a9972cefd1e1fb4ba6d36e69fecb
I understand the idea was that they can score easily on the civil suit and a criminal complaint is still possible.
To actually give an answer, it's because the Constitution very deliberately does not allow criminal convictions to disqualify someone. This was done because it was, and in plenty of places still is, common practice for a government to simply make up charges and arrest any opposition, thus disqualifying them from running.
You always have to look at this kind of stuff from the other side. Would you really want a Trump to be able to disqualify an opposing candidate for running a red light once twenty years ago?
I think it's good that Trump can technically run - but it's fucking embarrassing that he's managed to retain so much support.
Correct, but I think it's important to add that this is showing that the other systems of checks and balances that were supposed to be in place for frivolous crimes drummed up in the scenarios you're mentioning, are supposed to stop someone like trump from running.
Specifically the RNC and the Electoral college. Both of which have miserably failed in their jobs to prevent a dictator from taking power in the united states. As did our legislative side, fail to convict him on 2 airtight impeachment cases.
This is because the smaller half of our government (republicans), have completely sold out to trump, and there's no turning back from them. They're going to ride this ship into the ground.
You're correct, but the fundamental blame for that does lie with the voters, at the end of the day. No amount of structural protections can protect democracy from voters that do not care about it. At that point, they're just ink on a page.
Agreed.
Which is why voting is so incredibly difficult to do for the people who are the most exploited and marginalized in this country.
He still has enough money to not have laws apply.
Because he was found guilty in a civil trial and not a criminal one. Think of OJ, convicted of civil wrongful death but not murder in a criminal court. Lose money, but don't go to jail.
Why is fraud against the state considered civil? It seems to be a crime for everyone else
Not sure what answer you're looking for, but because the attorney general brought a civil case. Perhaps they couldn't prove criminal fraud, since criminal trials have a higher burden of proof. Perhaps they could satisfy certain elements of criminal fraud, but not all of them. Perhaps they could demonstrate that the actions (actus reus) took place but not the intent (mens rea) required. These would all be questions for the NY AG.