Yes. With Rump EVERYTHING is self-referential. He is unable to take his eyes off himself for a second to see someone else, never mind acknowledge their greatness. Rump wouldn't fit inside John Lewis' pinkie toe...
My God, I hope you are not right. Pardoning Rump would be as outrageous and infuriating as pardoning Roger Stone -- a travesty. Most of the country wants to see him walk out of the WH in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit if necessary...for the majority of Americans who possess a moral code, they need to see this grifter/con artist (and his whole sickening grifter family) finally be accountable. I agree that all the other Presidents were fundamentally good men, took the job seriously and were patriots in their own ways. After nearly 4 years of a weak-kneed GOP we need to see justice finally served...this outrageous Con Man has escaped accountability far too many times in his crooked life.
It is possible Trump will be too mentally ill to serve time. It doesn't mean he will be pardoned. I would assume they are 2 different things. His offspring and offspring in-laws might serve time through.
Trump won't survive for long wherever he lands. [content removed] But the world needs to see him behind bars, no matter his condition. The public won't stand for him to live out his life in a nice place somewhere. If we did, what kind of message do we send to our children and the world about accountability. That's my 2 cents.
Count me as a member of the camp that has no desire to see the Windigo-in-Chief tried and imprisoned. Think about it. If we went down that route, we'd be creating one more media spectacle centered on a man who has thrived and kept himself relevant precisely by making his life a spectacle. We'd just pour fuel on a dying flame, and #45 is in fact dying. As a partisan of the prison abolition movement, I'm generally disinclined to the "throw him in prison!" impulse. But the man is already in a jail of his own making, and the more we refuse to give him attention, the further he will sink into his pit of no return.
Also, the statute that only mentally competent individuals can stand trial exists for a reason. It's to prevent abuse (many developmentally disabled black men in the Jim Crow South were sent to their deaths based on flimsy courtroom evidence). We can't say "but we can ignore that rule this one time because we're dealing with a very, very bad man." The T White House is a morass of arbitrary exception-making and rule-breaking. Let's stop the ethical disregard right here.
It is possible Trump will be too mentally ill to serve time. It doesn't mean he will be pardoned. I would assume they are 2 different things. His offspring and offspring in-laws might serve time through.
I agree. Especially in New York, the plea bargain for non compis mentis or what they refer to as "Dim Cap" -Diminshed Capacity, is frequently used. I could totally see that being part of his eventual plea deal.
@mas1581 I agree that Trump is a category of bad until himself. But I think you are too kind and forgiving in your description of Bush as a good man or the positives about Ronald Reagan. Perhaps the nightmare of the last four years makes people forget the damage and bad will of GW Bush and Ronald Reagan. Well I don't think people should forget what they did lest it happen again.
For the record: GW Bush. He may be a nice guy at a party. He may enjoy doing art now because it's another fun adventure in his vacuous privileged life.
But he came into the presidency as an arrogant rich kid, a spoiled brat, who thought, what the hell, I can be president even though I never studied in school and don't know much of anything. Bush clowned around in the front of the cameras on the day he launched a bloody attack on Iraq under false pretenses. For him, the presidency was a lark. He was religious, and said about his decision to attack Iraq, that he "prayed about it." Over million innocent people died because of what he claims God told him to do. He is also a war criminal.
Reagan ran a hate campaign against the poor, deregulated the banks, and large corporations, was anti-environment and ramped up climate change and climate denial. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House because of important research that showed that some time in the early 21st century, we would be heading towards an apocalypse because of what we were doing to the earth.
But Reagan, denying the science and pandering to the oil barons, took down the solar panels and opened us up to the climate denial movement.
Reagan ruined our chances of saving ourselves from global warming. He reversed the bipartisan movement that had started to protect the earth.
He also opened the floodgates to billionaires to run this country. They harmed the country and ruined lives. He also presided over special operations in Central America that propped up corrupt regimes and the murder of innocent people.
Neither of these two men have apologized for what they did. They do not earn the title of good men who meant well.
@jeanne-mayell I couldn't stand either one of them, although I'm sure that they weren't evil.
I never understood Bush going after Saddam instead of Osama - I mean, what was that bait and switch about? How Bananatown was that? And what bothers me is people went along with it. I thought well, I must have been wrong about 9/11 - until Obama said the same thing in a debate. Crazy.
My sister is a conservative, though not a Trump person at all, tried to explain to me that Republicans are for big business because it means employing people and growing the economy. Well I'm sure that was true in the '40s. Now these corporations take the money and run. This isn't the Republican party of my grandparents, that I know.
The reason that Shrub didn't go after OBL was because OBL was Saudi, from a wealthy oil family, and the Saudi Royals and the Bush family have a long relationship. And Cheney would have never allowed it either. Oligarchs all.