Been saying that for years. It’s been a quarter millennium, how about we get the best and brightest minds from every field of academia, science, philosophy, and yes, even *shudder* religion, to get together and literally hold a constitutional convention? Just toss that old scrap of parchment out and re-write it from scratch, with modern language that is unambiguous and straightforward. If the rights enshrined in the Constitution that we hold so dear to us are actually that important, I’m sure they’ll make the cut for Constitution v2.0. But while we’re in there, we might as well clarify some stuff. Let’s clarify that 14th amendment, let’s define what a “well regulated militia” is, and so on.

Of course, the people in power like the ambiguity. It means that as long as someone somewhere could interpret the constitution in some way that is favorable to them, they can have it mean whatever they want when it suits them and as long as they keep the populace at each other’s throats with an unending culture war they know we’ll never organize enough to change that. It’s a bit of a pessimistic outlook. Our fates are controlled by people who like the dysfunction and that sucks because we could very easily fix a lot of the problems by unifying, but I don’t know if that’s possible at this point.

Has he tried claiming that he hasn’t been excommunicated and storming the Vatican?

I think this is unironically how they need to spin it. Convince the Republican base that this ruling is actually better for Biden than it is for Trump by repeating their own false narratives back to them - that the Biden Crime Family will get away with everything. Albeit, the things he could actually get away with are limited to what the court determines is an official act, and given the current makeup of the SCOTUS it’s unlikely that they would side with him even if there were precedent, but he would be still almost untouchable under this new ruling no matter how you spin it.

Have a case against Joe Biden? Sorry, all of that evidence is now inadmissible in a court of law because it happened while he was president. Too bad, Republicans! Maybe if you were to… I dunno, pass a constitutional amendment that revoked that privilege. But oooooh nooooo, that would be horrible! Please, anything but that! All our nefarious plots would be undone and Biden would go to prison!

Correct. There’s absolutely nothing stopping Biden from doing exactly what Trump already tried and failed to do. He could put pressure on Governors to “find x number of votes”, submit a fake slate of electors to cast doubt on the results, outright threaten people if they don’t comply with his wishes. I’m sure this SCOTUS will find a way to interpret any of Biden’s would-be illegal actions as actually illegal, but tiptoe around Trump’s sedition and fraud.

I can’t believe that the prevailing opinion of the times is that the president can literally break the law, even ones specifically meant to bind them and only them such as campaign finance laws, and be immune from consequences under almost any circumstance as long as the court says it’s official. Congress effectively can no longer act as a check against the Executive. Only the Judicial can say what is official or unofficial.

This isn’t power anyone should have.

Except for the whole retiring from public life part. I wish Trump would just retire from life entirely.

You are correct. I retract my statement.

The feeling of helplessness is overwhelming.

If they toss out this guilty verdict, I’m going to burn it all down. No justice, no peace.

What Biden needs to do, like right fucking now, is pack the courts. AOC trying with a token effort to get them impeached is cute, but will ultimately fail because Republicans won’t turn on their own. The Senate is tied (if you count Bernie as one of the dems) and Harris has the tiebreaker. The house is controlled by the Republicans, but only 7 individuals need to break from their party in order to get a simple majority to save the future of America.

Biden could expand the SCOTUS from 9 seats to 13 and immediately submit 4 liberal justices for confirmation to be seated. Expanding the court doesn’t require congressional approval, so Biden could do this unilaterally and as long as he is able to get butts in those seats, they’re there to stay even if Trump squeaks his way back in. They could then challenge and overturn the immunity ruling, as well as all the other dogshit rulings that have come out in the last couple of years like Dobbs.

He threatened to do it before. He needs to actually pull the trigger.

We’re waiting at this point for the lower courts to to decide which of Trump’s egregious crimes were “official” or not. In the meantime, all his trials get suspended. In January, if he takes office, they will vanish when he becomes a dictator on day one (his words).

Like seriously, I’m tired of whining on the internet about this shit. Where can I go to learn about joining a protest? It’s better that doing fuck all by tut-tutting the establishment hellbent on fucking us over while they count their money.

I’m clairvoyant and I can see the future: They won’t. It’s always been all bark and no bite when it comes to armed revolution here in the states.

I mean, if you want an answer to that you could just stop using your smartphone for a few weeks and see what your brain comes up with. Here’s a short list of some examples that were popular when I was a kid and smartphones did not exist yet:

Magazines, the daily newspaper, books, going out and exploring, shopping at malls, doing a hobby or craft, personal projects, television, chit-chatting with friends or even strangers, video games, puzzles, play with your pets, exercise, play sports, sitting quietly and being alone with your thoughts.

The problem is he would never put his support behind anyone other than a corporate approved neoliberal. If he does step down, the person he picks is 110% going to be contentious among base Democrat voters especially among the younger voters. We’re not getting Bernie or AOC, full stop.

I also think Democrats are the worst about their purity tests and will turn their noses up at anyone for the slightest reason. When put into that perspective, I’ll take the chances with Biden.

Literal last minute decision on this one. SCOTUS is definitely running interference for Trump, without a doubt.

Biden should declare Trump a national security threat and have him assassinated. That’s an “official act”, is it not? Sure, it helps Biden immensely, but now who is to determine where an official act ends and a private self-serving one begins? Are those two necessarily mutually exclusive?

After the tenth contempt citation.

Not sure why you cut that out of my original paragraph as if I didn’t already mention it.

I doubt he’ll make this particular mistake another time, mostly because he’s got too much media scrutiny to still run around with high end call girls.

Oh no, Trump has learned a valuable lesson, just not the one he was supposed to learn. He was supposed to learn “I should not commit fraud”, but instead he learned “Why bother with fraud when my idiot supporters would have voted for me anyway?”.

All the rest of the cases are either dropped or delayed until after the election. Either way, there’s not going to be a “next conviction” before it no longer matters.

Which is why it’s all the more important to keep him out of office. I understand the cynical outlook on the judicial process, especially after what we’ve seen so far. Between sympathetic judges treating Trump with kid gloves and him getting released on bail after stealing classified documents, it really does highlight that we are living in a two-tiered justice system. But I still believe that the process is working despite it’s obvious flaws, and that sooner or later, justice will catch up to Trump and he’ll be out of free passes.

A lot of people said that we would never even get as far as we have. It was “Trump will never be indicted”, which gave way to “There won’t ever be a trial”, to “He won’t be found guilty” to “they won’t sentence him to any prison time”.

We can only wait and see next month what they decide to do.

I’ll change my mind about .webp when Microsoft Teams can recognize it as an image and display it correctly.

Trump isn’t a sitting president yet, he’s still a former president.

Judge Merchan said that before the guilty verdict, when Trump violated his gag order 10 times consecutively. His next words after “I don’t want to put you in jail” were “…but I will if you continue to jeopardize the judicial process.” (paraphrasing). Obviously, the judge did not want to resort to jail for criminal contempt because the case had a lot of eyes on it and jumping to jail before issuing warnings and fines gives the impression of impropriety or bias, which could have been grounds for a mistrial had he taken Trump’s bait.

Most people think he’s going to walk on the basis that he has no prior criminal convictions and that he’s the presumptive Republican nominee, but there’s also the fact that he’s shown no remorse for his crimes even after the verdict and that allowing him to escape a prison term with a slap on the wrist house arrest or a fine will not realistically deter him or others from committing the same crime.

I’d say it’s still a good possibility that he sees jail. Probably not for the max 3 year sentence, but some token amount of incarceration would be appropriate. He’ll likely be out before taking office should he actually win, and they’ll probably make special provisions for him to continue campaigning, so he probably won’t even spend that much time in an actual cell.

The real kicker is his next conviction will mean he has to contend with a criminal history, which will vastly increase his chances of receiving actual prison time. That all hinges on him not getting elected and pardoning himself for all the federal crimes he’s accused of, the most severe of which being his role in the J6 insurrection and the classified documents case which could easily land him in prison for the rest of his life.

If you’re counting on one of them dying before the election, keep dreaming. FFS, Trump might very well run while incarcerated and it probably won’t dissuade anyone who is already committed for him.

The moderators were less moderators and more like living sheets of lined paper with the questions printed on them. Human teleprompters with no willingness or ability to engage with the speakers, only desiring to feed them question after question. There was no point to having them there. We traded actual moderation for the semblance of decorum by cutting off a microphone.

At the end of the day, that’s the main takeaway here. It’s not so much the men themselves, but the people they intend to appoint to positions of authority. Biden will appoint experts and professionals to run the country for him. Trump will appoint sycophants and yes-men to do whatever he wants to do, even if it flies in the face of reason or standard procedure, and unlike last time he won’t allow anyone who isn’t 100% loyal to him to work in his administration.