If I supported a lying, rapacious, treasonous fascist that already tried to overthrow the government once, I sure hope my family would hold me to account, and if need be, tell me to fuck off in every way possible until I got the message.
But hey, everyone has different standards, right?
All good responses from you and your fellow posters. There are different levels of ignorance about the meaning of the Law. Take for instance the Mara-Lago documents case. Despite all the painstaking effort since the early Cold War, when they discovered the Cambridge Five embedded in British intelligence, there must be a wide assortment of ignoramuses who don't understand "secrecy". They might not even understand how -- if they're loyal citizens -- how people like them having access to what we don't want our adversaries to know might make it possible for that very thing to happen. So then, they blame the government for being a "Deep State" and depriving them of factual information.
You can see how this applies to simply sitting there in the White House, or making a speech encouraging followers to go to the Capitol, then encouraging in one way or another the law-breaking that took place there, injuring the Capitol Police, stealing documents and other aspects. Despite the gathering of facts done by Jack Smith and his team, they continue to believe this is just a politically-motivated attack on their beloved leader. The law-breakers of January 6 were just "tourists", despite being prepared with guns, pepper-spray and battering rams.
Or then, the matter of violations against federal election law, or the "Stormy Daniels" affair and the hush payments. To them, these don't seem like real crimes. "there shouldn't be any 'federal elections law'!" they probably say. And again, the charges brought in Georgia, just because "the President said stuff over the telephone to the Georgia elections official" -- asking him to magically "find" the precise number of votes the Pres needed to win. After all, "just talking" can't be a crime, can it?
Perhaps, then, their idea of "crime" is limited to simple things like bank robbery, murder, fraud (maybe!) or simple matters in which people are physically harmed. But in that case, how could they ignore the civil suit finding that Trump had raped a woman in a department store? "Oh, it's all he-said-she-said -- that's not a real crime." And "It was a long time ago! . . "
Of course, if it were found that Biden and Pence had kept documents also, it's not important to them to distinguish whether they lied and obstructed the return of those documents, as Trump did several times to make those charges against him. They apparently don't realize that the government has an accounting mechanism for managing those documents, and Trump didn't realize it either -- nor perhaps did it occur to even Biden or Pence, but then -- the latter cooperated in getting the documents back to the National Archives. But only an idiot or a fool would say that keeping a strict accounting of classified documents is a bad idea.
So the same law-breaking persists even now with inserting Musk and the other minions into government agencies that have a congressional charter to operate as they do. Here we are with the matter of shuttering US AID -- Secretary Rubio at least comes to the rescue, but Congress is not letting that go -- nor should it fail in its obligations.
Griping over the $40 billion US AID budget seems big and important for the total sum, but it's about a penny-and-a-half for each taxpayer. Why would you object to offering a penny-and-a-half to a country plagued by famine? Never mind that the termination of the aid now harms our standing among developing nations and favors the Chinese and Russians who see the opportunity to pick up the slack.
Ultimately, the Trump follower doesn't really care about the wisdom of spending the money for any number of things. They just don't want any of the tax obligations common to us all.
So to observe that Trump is a criminal -- it's just political persecution. Never mind the Law or common-sense responsibility and accountability for it. It still amazes me that they cannot observe that all of this law-breaking never occurred to any significant degree over a half-dozen presidencies, other than Watergate or Iran-Contra in which much of the law-breaking was done by others merely working for Nixon or Reagan, but they probably think those things were just "political persecution" as well. And you have to ask -- how is it that all the law-breaking seems to come from one side of the political spectrum?
It was obvious from the beginning of the Obama presidency, when he could actually be quoted to say his administration must be "squeaky clean", that at least another presidency had a serious regard for the law. You couldn't much complain about Bush, either -- one of his VP's appointees -- Scooter Libby -- went to jail, but that was about it. Bush had below-average indictments against him of any GOP president. Eric Holder, Obama's AG, was impeached but not removed from office -- and then resigned anyway.
But speaking of political witch hunts -- the Clinton scandal -- and the entire history of investigations into Whitewater, Travelgate and other issues, ultimately hinged on the difference between DC law defining "sex with another party", Clinton's court testimony -- thus "perjury" -- and it all came down to the administration of a blow job. Congress spent a lot of money fretting over a spooge-stain on a dress.
Clinton WAS impeached, but not removed from office. Yet, for the severity of real criminal activity, we've come a long, long way. You can't compare an insurrection, theft of classified documents, attempting to falsify election results, creating panels of false electors to subvert the will of voters in the States -- to lying about a blow-job. Can you ? All of the recent criminal charges have been based on facts -- observable by multiple or independent people as being True and Factual. So then, we have True Believers who can't acknowledge these facts as proving the occurrence of crimes. It must be a witch-hunt -- a political persecution!
If partisan affiliation were not significant in coordinating decisions and actions, and especially if it was more important for this or that elected official to simply represent their district or state, we wouldn't be spending money or time (which is money) on a lot of these things. here, in this case, it all boils down to whether you care if there's a Criminal in the White House, or you choose to imagine that there weren't any "real" crimes. If you delude yourself into thinking that there weren't any real crimes, it seems unfair to call Trump a Criminal.
Even if he'd been breaking the law with tax-fraud, housing discrimination and any number of other things long before he was first elected. Tax-fraud can't be a crime, can it? At least the New York AG -- Letitia James -- did her job, and Trump owes a bundle as a result. But! It's just all political persecution!
You've got the New York AG, the Atlanta District Attorney, the DOJ with Jack Smith -- even during Trump's first term! -- the Manhattan DA --- all "conspiring" to politically persecute the Great Leader. If you can't prove that one, you have a helluva fantasy. And fantasy it is.
What the rest of us see is a one-man crime wave, and a threat to the Constitution we are all supposed to obey.
Whether I share this with my brother at this point -- is a decision "on hold".
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