ggBarabajagal

I agree they'll do their best, but how? With what? Are they going to try to refute Trump's crazy tweets with other crazy Trump tweets?

Among the most damning aspects of Trump's public statements is their lack of consistency -- the OP meme we're discussing is an example. I don't think this aspect will be refuted by his lawyer demonstrating even more inconsistency.

The only thing Trump has been consistent about on social media is lying about the 2020 election and personally attacking anyone who says anything against him. I don't see how either of those behaviors are going to help his lawyers refute anything either.

"Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

As a fellow fan of syndicated daytime television, I'm sure that Mr. Trump is as familiar as I am with this above quote by Detective Lenny Briscoe, N.Y.P.D. So a re-post from him like this is puzzling to me….

Trump will testify under oath or take the Fifth -- he'll be forced to do one or the other. My guess is that he will "exercise his right against self-incrimination" in all pending and yet-to-be-announced cases against him.

Without any live testimony given by the defendant, prosecutors will be free to present any part of any of Trump's public statements and social media posts as testimony.

Prosecutors will be free to pick-and-choose whatever public comments they want, to show Trump in whatever light they want to show him in. Trump won't be able say anything back about it, because he'll've already invoked his constitutional right to not say anything at all.

Public comments (including endorsement by "re-truth"ing like this) are not made under oath, so they're not legally binding, but they are still things that Trump said out loud and on purpose.

However much they gin up support from his base of voters, they also add to the threat of Trump's own words being used against him later in a court of law. Used against him in the general election, too, if he somehow manages to make it that far.

Trump is all too familiar with the millions of Americans who love him for what he says, but I don't think he has any true notion about the millions more American voters who have come to despise him for what he has done. I'm not sure he ever will.

Good point!

For the sake of accuracy, Hulu is owned by Disney which also owns ABC, as well as ESPN, Marvel, and Fox Entertainment (but not Fox "News").

Meanwhile, a couple years ago, CBS and Viacom merged to become "Paramount Global" which owns both CBS and the Paramount (streaming) Network (obviously) as well as a slew of cable channels including Showtime, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, Comedy Central….

And as noted, Comcast owns Universal which owns NBC. Their streaming service is "Peacock," which has yet to demonstrate that it can compete against Disney's Hulu (or CBS's Paramount).

This may soon change, however, as licensing agreements expire and corporations begin to run their own content exclusively on their own networks. Disney-owned content will stream on Hulu, Universal-owned content will stream on Peacock, and Paramount-owned content will stream on Paramount. Same goes for all their respective cable TV channel subsidiaries.

This consolidation in media ownership gives more power to the corporations to compete against one another in the emerging streaming-service market, but it also takes power away from the people who create the content. This is a big reason why the screenwriters and SAG are on strike.

I've been trying to do my part by watching reruns of The Nanny in demonstration of my support.

Fuck the fascists? For sure. I fucking hate all those motherfuckers.

Except that, just about the worst thing of all about fascism is the way that it goes out of its way to dehumanize other people, just so as to make it easier to hate them.

So how about, "Fuck fascism" then? I could get behind that. But maybe still try to save some small modicum of love, as well, for all the poor souls who've been weak or gullible enough to have fallen for it?

Maybe give them one more chance to come out of their holes, if they're brave enough? When I can, I always try give them one more chance to do that. In any small way whatsoever.

I don't mean to purposefully give them "one more chance" to troll, or spew their rhetoric, or stoke hate -- even though we all know that's what they'll do again, 99 times out of 100.

I don't mean supporting some reddit echo chamber I am ideologically opposed to just to feed my own ego and provide them all fodder for more echo-chamber bullying and false validation. I mean using a forum for good-faith communication among honest strangers. The way forums have always been intended to be used (but never always have) since the beginning of the internet 30 years ago.

I just mean that, when thinking of another person instead of another person's ideology, I always want to give them just one more chance to listen to me, and one more chance to talk to me, as a fellow person

One more chance to hear another point of view, one more chance to come to understand and communicate and cooperate from a place of their own standing, as opposed to just snapping back defensively from the place that their fascism has conditioned them to react from.

One more one-in-a-hundred chance that my purposeful efforts to humanize my adversary may somehow lead him to humanize me as well.

Fuck fascism, for sure. But I try not to hate a person for their good intentions. It's said the road to hell is paved with them, but they're still usually a whole lot more respectable than bad intentions.

I agree.

Christie knows that we know that he knows that he has essentially no chance of winning the '24 GOP nomination. That's not why he's running. As he's (overdramatically but not inaccurately) said himself, he's running to "save his party."

Christie knows that there's tons of money and power in Republican politics that's all still going to be there if-slash-when Trump's influence falls. Those GOP donors with all that money and power know that Trump's chances against Biden in the '24 general are already worse than they were in '20.

The GOP donors with the money, as well as the GOP politicians who know how to spend it to best serve the GOP, they all already see that Trump is a bad investment. While they're stuck waiting for the GOP electorate to catch up with that idea -- while they're waiting for Trump to lose, again, one way or another -- they might as well try to better position themselves to win next time around.

If-slash-when the influence of Trump's extremism finally falls, the GOP could be well served by adopting a more moderate, civil-libertarian, anti-authoritarian, neoliberal (or at least flag-waving necon) image. An image that looks like Asa Hutchinson, maybe.

For now though, Christie looks like exactly the guy they need, to plant the seed of an idea in the American subconscious: that "GOP" does not have to mean the same thing as "MAGA" henceforth and forevermore.

Christie is smart, shrewd, and mean. He knows how politics works and he knows how Trump works. I disagree with Christie's positions on many issues, and I disdain his scandalous behavior while governor, but I agree with him 100% when it comes to favoring a constitutional democratic republic over a fascist-y authoritarian kleptocracy.

I sincerely hope he continues to poll at the percentages he'll need to get on the debate stage.