Miscellaneous Top Secret Documents sounds like a very vague McGuffin in a bad novel: “We’ve got to get those miscellaneous top secret documents back Jim ! The future of the free world depends on it, you distract security and I’ll climb in through the bathroom window”
The list didn’t provide any more details about the substance of the documents. Mr. Trump’s lawyers argue that the former president used his authority to declassify the material before he left office.
I wonder what is their evidence to support that assertion. Perhaps Trump thought of it as he boarded the helicopter? But those who tried to stage the insurrection will no doubt believe it.
Presumably a President's power to de-classify papers involves some process, consultation and a record of this having been done. And presumably that power ends when his term ends.
Presumably a President's power to de-classify papers involves some process, consultation and a record of this having been done. And presumably that power ends when his term ends.
Precisely this. The defence is nonsense. If he had declassified them, there would be a record to this effect and the investigation would never have got as far as a search warrant. (Based on the legal experts, I follow).
Presumably a President's power to de-classify papers involves some process, consultation and a record of this having been done. And presumably that power ends when his term ends.
Precisely this. The defence is nonsense. If he had declassified them, there would be a record to this effect and the investigation would never have got as far as a search warrant. (Based on the legal experts, I follow).
Indeed, there is a process, and it involves much more than just saying “Oh, I already declassified them.”
Trump doesn't seem to have grasped the fact that his term has ended...
If the non-grasping-of-the-facts by trump is genuine, maybe he took some papers away so when his continuing presidency is recognised he'll be up to speed on that secret military stuff and he can nuke places he doesn't like or which don't support him without undue delay.
Precisely this. The defence is nonsense. If he had declassified them, there would be a record to this effect and the investigation would never have got as far as a search warrant. (Based on the legal experts, I follow).
Not necessarily. None of thestatutescited on the warrant [PDF] (see Attachment B ) depend on the classification status of the documents involved. It just looks really bad in a way that's easily comprehensible to people who aren't political junkies.
For what it's worth I'm most interested in the citing of 18 USC § 1519, which usually relates to obstruction of justice. If that's the case, what other matter was Trump's possession of these documents obstructing?
Of course the obvious question is "if these documents are declassified, why aren't they released to the general public?" This seems to be a case of declassification for me but not for thee, which is just an obfuscatory way of saying no law applies to Donald Trump.
Trump doesn't seem to have grasped the fact that his term has ended...
If the non-grasping-of-the-facts by trump is genuine, maybe he took some papers away so when his continuing presidency is recognised he'll be up to speed on that secret military stuff and he can nuke places he doesn't like or which don't support him without undue delay.
I did rather wonder about that. The odious man is certainly a loose cannon...
I thought I had heard that there are some top secret documents that even a president cannot declassify. Hoping to hear about this from you folks who have much more knowledge of these things, is this correct?
But we're all missing the point: for The Donald, it's "l'etat, c'est moi" (the state is me, or I am the state). Apologies if I've mangled the French, as it's a language I don't have. And apparently, in The Donald's mind (what there is of it), he and the U.S. presidency are coterminous.
This point may have been raised before, so please excuse me if it has, but with all these lawsuits and whatnot, is Trump actually going to have the time to devote to running again for the presidency?
Even for him, there are only 24 hours per day, and 7 days per week...
...added to which, of course, is the fact that he is an old and obese man, with only a limited life span (probably - IANAD).
This point may have been raised before, so please excuse me if it has, but with all these lawsuits and whatnot, is Trump actually going to have the time to devote to running again for the presidency?
Even for him, there are only 24 hours per day, and 7 days per week...
...added to which, of course, is the fact that he is an old and obese man, with only a limited life span (probably - IANAD).
Are you sure? With an apparently endlessly renewable supply of gullible, greedy, nefarious, and/or lickspittle willing co-conspirators, a Donald can accomplish anything, surely
I thought I had heard that there are some top secret documents that even a president cannot declassify. Hoping to hear about this from you folks who have much more knowledge of these things, is this correct?
As I understand it, stuff related to nuclear secrets is not de-classifiable by a president acting solo, and it's fairly clear even from his own outraged tweets that there was some of that at Mar-a-Largo.
Though to be sure this whole "I declassified it" thing is bullshit, as there are procedures, and even a president cannot simply go "I declassified them in my heart, ha ha" and get away with it.
Since they have no defense, the Trumpers are basically throwing sh*crap*t on the wall to see what will stick. First they claim they had turned everything over, then they said they were working with the Feds to hand over the remaining documents, then they said the raid was unlawful, then they claim the FBI planted evidence, then they said the president had the right to declassify the papers, now they are saying "What about Obama, he took 390,000 documents with him when he returned to Chicago?" (No, the National Archives sent the documents to Chicago and are holding them in storage until the Obama library can be built--and even then, they will be under the control of the Archives while in the Presidential library.)
Notice, how the raid plays into the grifter mind of Trump. He has already started sending out emails asking for people to contribute even more to the Trump defense fund.
But we're all missing the point: for The Donald, it's "l'etat, c'est moi" (the state is me, or I am the state). Apologies if I've mangled the French, as it's a language I don't have. And apparently, in The Donald's mind (what there is of it), he and the U.S. presidency are coterminous.
Sort of. I think he sees it as a prize that he won and should be able to keep. The way he talked about "my generals" was creepy.
At least one lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump signed a written statement in June asserting that all material marked as classified and held in boxes in a storage area at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and club had been returned to the government, four people with knowledge of the document said.
The written declaration was made after a visit on June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by Jay I. Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in the Justice Department’s national security division.
The existence of the signed declaration, which has not previously been reported, is a possible indication that Mr. Trump or his team were not fully forthcoming with federal investigators about the material. And it could help explain why a potential violation of a criminal statute related to obstruction was cited by the department as one basis for seeking the warrant used to carry out the daylong search of the former president’s home on Monday, an extraordinary step that generated political shock waves.
Assuming that "four [ anonymous ] people with knowledge of the document" are correct, this seems problematic. Lying to the FBI is usually a crime. Lying to the FBI through your lawyer also sounds unwise. What's the degree to which your lawyer is assumed to be acting on your behalf in situations like this?
Possibly, or perhaps probably he views the presidency (if he can get himself elected before he is convicted of an offence that debars him from office) as his 'Get Out of Jail Free' card; give himself a free presidential pardon? Running for the presidency would if successful both vindicate him and free him from the taint of Loser, which he can't abide. President for life?
The New Yorker Magazine, in its "Letters From Washington," had a very interesting article on Trump and His Generals. Basically, they never got along. A couple of examples 1) when Trump went to France during Bastille Day, Macron put on a large military parade to impress Trump. Trump liked it so well, he wanted to put such a parade on in Washington during the Fourth of July. The generals all pointed out how expensive it would be and how the streets of Washington would be torn up. Trump still wanted it, so Chief of Staff Mark Kelly told him, the General of the Air Force Paul Silva would be in charge. Silva had already came out against such a parade. Nevertheless Trump told Silva he expected a good parade. Silva, though, had grown up in Portugal during a dictatorship. Silva replied, "Only dictators put on military parades to show the people who had the guns." Trump still did not get it.
The other example; Trump was so frustrated with the generals he once asked CoS Kelly way his generals could not be like the German generals of WWII. Kelly had to tell him the German Generals of WWII had tried to kill Hitler four times while he was in power.
Read the article. It is not behind a paywall at least here in the US, but every couple of minutes the magazine will want you to subscribe to them.
Just to be clear, this was what the article actually said:
In the summer of 2017, after just half a year in the White House, Donald Trump flew to Paris for Bastille Day celebrations thrown by Emmanuel Macron, the new French President. Macron staged a spectacular martial display to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the American entrance into the First World War. Vintage tanks rolled down the Champs-Élysées as fighter jets roared overhead. The event seemed to be calculated to appeal to Trump—his sense of showmanship and grandiosity—and he was visibly delighted. The French general in charge of the parade turned to one of his American counterparts and said, “You are going to be doing this next year.”
Assuming that "four [ anonymous ] people with knowledge of the document" are correct, this seems problematic. Lying to the FBI is usually a crime. Lying to the FBI through your lawyer also sounds unwise. What's the degree to which your lawyer is assumed to be acting on your behalf in situations like this?
Reports I have read have variously referred to the document in question as a “statement,” a “declaration” and a “letter.” A “declaration,” at least as used in federal courts, is a document signed under penalty of perjury, similar to an affidavit. So if this was a “declaration,” then the issue is likely whether the attorney knew the representation made was false.
Otherwise, the issue is likely the basis for the lawyer’s representation. If the lawyer was relying solely on what his client told him and didn’t know that what the client told him was false, then the lawyer was (probably) doing what lawyers do as a matter of course—speaking on behalf of his client. That doesn’t mean the lawyer is personally responsible for false statements. (Though why anyone would take the word of this particular client is totally beyond me.)
If, on the other hand, the lawyer relied on more than information from his client—if, for example, he undertook examination of the records himself and knew, or should reasonably have discovered, that all classified documents had not, in fact, been returned, then the lawyer could be on the hook for making false statements to the FBI.
Rudy Giuliani, who served as former President Donald Trump's personal attorney, has been informed that he is a target of the criminal probe in Fulton County, Georgia, regarding the 2020 presidential election, according to The New York Times.
One of Giuliani's attorneys confirmed to The Times that the former New York City mayor had come up as a key figure in the investigation being led by Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, which takes in most of Atlanta.
<snip>
Per The Times, prosecutors asked witnesses in front of a special grand jury about Giuliani's talks before state legislative legislative panels in December 2020, when Trump was in the midst of convincing GOP leaders in Georgia to overturn Biden's victory in the state.
Giuliani is set to testify before a special grand jury in Atlanta on Monday, according to The Times.
federal judge in Atlanta has denied GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham's motion to quash a subpoena, ruling that he must testify before a Fulton County grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
In her written decision on Monday, US District Judge Leigh Martin May sent the case to the Superior Court of Fulton County to hear further proceedings on the US Constitution's "Speech or Debate" clause, the centerpiece that Graham's attorneys argued immunized the US senator from South Carolina from having to testify in this case.
Graham, of course, has recourse to a higher court at this point, of which he will doubtless avail himself. Still, I'm getting the impression that the various levels of the judicial system have simply lost their patience with Trump's hangers-on and their insistence that the law doesn't apply to people like them.
According to reports in the UK, the main effect of the search so far has been to inflame the lower depths of Trump's base to threaten civil war.
That's true, as far as it goes, I'm sure. However, it's lazy journalism and doesn't really cover what's happening. A court issued warrant for a search of a former president's home is a big deal. The FBI director would have to have approved it, as would the Attorney General (a fact, subsequently confirmed by Garland) and more importantly, the Judge must have been satisfied there was much more than probable cause here. All of them would know the political ramifications and how Trump would spin this for his sycophantic followers.
Therefore, the inescapable conclusion is that Trump is in significant legal jeopardy.
Moreover, consider that neither the FBI, nor any other part of the Department of Justice has leaked anything at all about this. We only know about the search because Trump announced it.
According to reports on the BBC and in the Times, the FBI has a second search warrant for Mar-a-Lago in connection with an unrelated enquiry. If that is correct, aparat from making one wonder what on earth is going on, it seems to raise the risk that Trumps fanatical supporters will turn up en masse (mob-handed) and armed to the teeth, and attempt to prevent the execution of the warrant on their leader's sacred soil.
According to reports on the BBC and in the Times, the FBI has a second search warrant for Mar-a-Lago in connection with an unrelated enquiry. If that is correct, aparat from making one wonder what on earth is going on, it seems to raise the risk that Trumps fanatical supporters will turn up en masse (mob-handed) and armed to the teeth, and attempt to prevent the execution of the warrant on their leader's sacred soil.
I hope not. I daresay if they did try it, they'd be quickly worsted...
According to reports on the BBC and in the Times, the FBI has a second search warrant for Mar-a-Lago in connection with an unrelated enquiry. If that is correct, aparat from making one wonder what on earth is going on, it seems to raise the risk that Trumps fanatical supporters will turn up en masse (mob-handed) and armed to the teeth, and attempt to prevent the execution of the warrant on their leader's sacred soil.
As far as I can tell, ever since 1/6 got broken up, Trump's violent supporters have operated either as lone wolves, or as groups of about half a dozen, at most.
Remember the predictions that the inauguration would turn into a 1/6 redux? Didn't happen, largely, I think, because the kind of people drawn to MAGA are the types with something to lose(jobs, mortgages), and 1/6 proved that actually, no, you CAN be arrested and federally charged for smashing up major government buildings, even if you thought you thought you were just protecting democracy.
None of which is to say that things won't get pretty wild is Trump is arrested, but it's more likely to be stuff like eg. assholes driving their cars into federal governnent buildings, than orchestrated militias showing up to do battle with the FBI.
My understanding is that there have been handfuls of people with flags and etc. parading around the Mar-a-Lago grounds, and staff begging them to go away, as it's annoying the guests. So there's that.
According to reports on the BBC and in the Times, the FBI has a second search warrant for Mar-a-Lago in connection with an unrelated enquiry. If that is correct, aparat from making one wonder what on earth is going on, it seems to raise the risk that Trumps fanatical supporters will turn up en masse (mob-handed) and armed to the teeth, and attempt to prevent the execution of the warrant on their leader's sacred soil.
As far as I can tell, ever since 1/6 got broken up, Trump's violent supporters have operated either as lone wolves, or as groups of about half a dozen, at most.
Remember the predictions that the inauguration would turn into a 1/6 redux? Didn't happen, largely, I think, because the kind of people drawn to MAGA are the types with something to lose(jobs, mortgages), and 1/6 proved that actually, no, you CAN be arrested and federally charged for smashing up major government buildings, even if you thought you thought you were just protecting democracy.
None of which is to say that things won't get pretty wild is Trump is arrested, but it's more likely to be stuff like eg. assholes driving their cars into federal governnent buildings, than orchestrated militias showing up to do battle with the FBI.
It could, of course, tip over into the latter at any point. The lesson of the last few decades of the GOP is that overblown rhetoric has a worrying tendency to drift into reality.
Well, he's told them to 'lock and load', apparently, whatever he means by that.
The only reference I can find to Trump himself saying something like "lock and load" is from 2019, and and it was in relation to foreign-policy, saying the US was "locked and loaded" against Iran.
In regards to recent events, it appears the phrase was used by some of Trump's followers on social media who were criticizing the Mar-A-Lago raid.
Seriously, I think people worry about the wrong things. Republicans are more likely to trash democracy via gerrymandering and voter restrictions, rather than getting armed militias to attack the state en masse.
Well, he's told them to 'lock and load', apparently, whatever he means by that.
The only reference I can find to Trump himself saying something like "lock and load" is from 2019, and and it was in relation to foreign-policy, saying the US was "locked and loaded" against Iran.
In regards to recent events, it appears the phrase was used by some of Trump's followers on social media who were criticizing the Mar-A-Lago raid.
Seriously, I think people worry about the wrong things. Republicans are more likely to trash democracy via gerrymandering and voter restrictions, rather than getting armed militias to attack the state en masse.
The Republican apparatus may want to trash democracy through gerrymandering and voter restrictions, but Trumpests hear the lock and load command as a signal to be ready to attack.
Seriously, I think people worry about the wrong things. Republicans are more likely to trash democracy via gerrymandering and voter restrictions, rather than getting armed militias to attack the state en masse.
Mainstream media reporters are having a hard time fully explaining the link between the increasingly violent rhetoric from Republican media figures, on the one hand, and violent acts like Thursday’s attempted attack on an FBI office in Cincinnati.
The phrase they’re looking for is “stochastic terrorism.”
It may not trip off the tongue, but it needs to become part of the media lexicon.
Stochastic terrorism means terrorism that’s statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. In simpler language, it means that when Trump or his allies encourage violence — when the say the kind of stuff they say all the time now — it is not just possible that someone at some point will do something about it, it’s damn near inevitable.
I think seeing stochastic terrorism as distinct from gerrymandering and voter restrictions, rather than as two fronts of the general hostility Republicans have for democracy, is missing the big picture. We saw this in action on January 6, where an "inside coup" of corrupt legislators and officials working to subvert the Constitution was synchronized with an "outside coup" of violent riots that served to both encourage members of the inside coup to toe the line and intimidate anyone else from objecting too much.
Stochastic - that's an interesting use of the term. So many things are like that - smoking and cancer, for example, or CO2 emissions and extreme weather events. It reminds me of those cases (this comes to mind for me from something at work) where people assume something is 'random' when it is entirely deterministic, but just bloody complicated and hard to pin down in its fine detail. Sometimes 'call it random' will do as a model, but when you do that, you can miss a lot.
"Stochastic terrorism" is a phrase I've thought about a few times since Trump was elected, I'm pleased to see it in wider circulation again (I'm trying to remember whether I first saw it used in relation to white supremacists or Islamophobes). Even if it's not entirely correct the idea it describes is a valuable one.
On a slightly different point, perhaps a tangent, the other day a BBC reporter was interviewing a Republican politician (I think she was an es-Deputy Attorney-General of New York State, who was extolling the foreign policy achievements of Trump's administration. The reporter asked her, politely if perhaps provocatively, what she thought people abroad thought of his foreign policies. 'Why should I care what foreigners think?' she snapped back. End of interview.
This makes me wonder how a visitor the USA can reply honestly when asked for their opinion of Trump, without running the risk if being thrown out/punched in the face/shot? If one was to say one regards him in much the same light as our departing Prime Minister, would that be safe?
On a slightly different point, perhaps a tangent, the other day a BBC reporter was interviewing a Republican politician (I think she was an es-Deputy Attorney-General of New York State, who was extolling the foreign policy achievements of Trump's administration. The reporter asked her, politely if perhaps provocatively, what she thought people abroad thought of his foreign policies. 'Why should I care what foreigners think?' she snapped back. End of interview.
This makes me wonder how a visitor the USA can reply honestly when asked for their opinion of Trump, without running the risk if being thrown out/punched in the face/shot? If one was to say one regards him in much the same light as our departing Prime Minister, would that be safe?
There's something beautiful about this isn't there? At the same time, Trump had many foreign policy successes and it does not matter what anyone in the rest of the world thinks...
Now, granted this is not strictly speaking a logical fallacy but given that Americans in general, see themselves as a people who threw off an imperial yoke rather than empire-builders, it is a position that was almost certainly arrived at by a mixture of arrogance and stupidity.
Comments
Marcy Wheeler, who knows quite a bit about this kind of thing, thinks Box A-73 is Top Secret / Sensitive Comparted Information (TS-SCI) documents, which is serious stuff. Basically anything that's both top secret and need-to-know.
I wonder what is their evidence to support that assertion. Perhaps Trump thought of it as he boarded the helicopter? But those who tried to stage the insurrection will no doubt believe it.
Precisely this. The defence is nonsense. If he had declassified them, there would be a record to this effect and the investigation would never have got as far as a search warrant. (Based on the legal experts, I follow).
AFZ
If the non-grasping-of-the-facts by trump is genuine, maybe he took some papers away so when his continuing presidency is recognised he'll be up to speed on that secret military stuff and he can nuke places he doesn't like or which don't support him without undue delay.
Not necessarily. None of the statutes cited on the warrant [PDF] (see Attachment B ) depend on the classification status of the documents involved. It just looks really bad in a way that's easily comprehensible to people who aren't political junkies.
For what it's worth I'm most interested in the citing of 18 USC § 1519, which usually relates to obstruction of justice. If that's the case, what other matter was Trump's possession of these documents obstructing?
Of course the obvious question is "if these documents are declassified, why aren't they released to the general public?" This seems to be a case of declassification for me but not for thee, which is just an obfuscatory way of saying no law applies to Donald Trump.
I did rather wonder about that. The odious man is certainly a loose cannon...
Even for him, there are only 24 hours per day, and 7 days per week...
...added to which, of course, is the fact that he is an old and obese man, with only a limited life span (probably - IANAD).
Are you sure? With an apparently endlessly renewable supply of gullible, greedy, nefarious, and/or lickspittle willing co-conspirators, a Donald can accomplish anything, surely
As I understand it, stuff related to nuclear secrets is not de-classifiable by a president acting solo, and it's fairly clear even from his own outraged tweets that there was some of that at Mar-a-Largo.
Though to be sure this whole "I declassified it" thing is bullshit, as there are procedures, and even a president cannot simply go "I declassified them in my heart, ha ha" and get away with it.
Notice, how the raid plays into the grifter mind of Trump. He has already started sending out emails asking for people to contribute even more to the Trump defense fund.
Sort of. I think he sees it as a prize that he won and should be able to keep. The way he talked about "my generals" was creepy.
Assuming that "four [ anonymous ] people with knowledge of the document" are correct, this seems problematic. Lying to the FBI is usually a crime. Lying to the FBI through your lawyer also sounds unwise. What's the degree to which your lawyer is assumed to be acting on your behalf in situations like this?
The other example; Trump was so frustrated with the generals he once asked CoS Kelly way his generals could not be like the German generals of WWII. Kelly had to tell him the German Generals of WWII had tried to kill Hitler four times while he was in power.
Read the article. It is not behind a paywall at least here in the US, but every couple of minutes the magazine will want you to subscribe to them.
Point taken,
Misplaced "not" there, right?
In the summer of 2017, after just half a year in the White House, Donald Trump flew to Paris for Bastille Day celebrations thrown by Emmanuel Macron, the new French President. Macron staged a spectacular martial display to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the American entrance into the First World War. Vintage tanks rolled down the Champs-Élysées as fighter jets roared overhead. The event seemed to be calculated to appeal to Trump—his sense of showmanship and grandiosity—and he was visibly delighted. The French general in charge of the parade turned to one of his American counterparts and said, “You are going to be doing this next year.”
Otherwise, the issue is likely the basis for the lawyer’s representation. If the lawyer was relying solely on what his client told him and didn’t know that what the client told him was false, then the lawyer was (probably) doing what lawyers do as a matter of course—speaking on behalf of his client. That doesn’t mean the lawyer is personally responsible for false statements. (Though why anyone would take the word of this particular client is totally beyond me.)
If, on the other hand, the lawyer relied on more than information from his client—if, for example, he undertook examination of the records himself and knew, or should reasonably have discovered, that all classified documents had not, in fact, been returned, then the lawyer could be on the hook for making false statements to the FBI.
Next up in the remora-like Lindsey Graham:
Graham, of course, has recourse to a higher court at this point, of which he will doubtless avail himself. Still, I'm getting the impression that the various levels of the judicial system have simply lost their patience with Trump's hangers-on and their insistence that the law doesn't apply to people like them.
On behalf of the remora, I must protest. Though I confess to not knowing Graham's height (or length), he is neither dark nor thin.
Tidied up quoting code. BroJames, Purgatory Host
I was referring more to Graham's behavior than to his physical appearance.
That's true, as far as it goes, I'm sure. However, it's lazy journalism and doesn't really cover what's happening. A court issued warrant for a search of a former president's home is a big deal. The FBI director would have to have approved it, as would the Attorney General (a fact, subsequently confirmed by Garland) and more importantly, the Judge must have been satisfied there was much more than probable cause here. All of them would know the political ramifications and how Trump would spin this for his sycophantic followers.
Therefore, the inescapable conclusion is that Trump is in significant legal jeopardy.
Moreover, consider that neither the FBI, nor any other part of the Department of Justice has leaked anything at all about this. We only know about the search because Trump announced it.
This is a hour long, in-depth analysis of what's in the public domain:
https://openargs.com/oa623-extra-more-on-mar-a-lago/
AFZ
I hope not. I daresay if they did try it, they'd be quickly worsted...
As far as I can tell, ever since 1/6 got broken up, Trump's violent supporters have operated either as lone wolves, or as groups of about half a dozen, at most.
Remember the predictions that the inauguration would turn into a 1/6 redux? Didn't happen, largely, I think, because the kind of people drawn to MAGA are the types with something to lose(jobs, mortgages), and 1/6 proved that actually, no, you CAN be arrested and federally charged for smashing up major government buildings, even if you thought you thought you were just protecting democracy.
None of which is to say that things won't get pretty wild is Trump is arrested, but it's more likely to be stuff like eg. assholes driving their cars into federal governnent buildings, than orchestrated militias showing up to do battle with the FBI.
It could, of course, tip over into the latter at any point. The lesson of the last few decades of the GOP is that overblown rhetoric has a worrying tendency to drift into reality.
The only reference I can find to Trump himself saying something like "lock and load" is from 2019, and and it was in relation to foreign-policy, saying the US was "locked and loaded" against Iran.
In regards to recent events, it appears the phrase was used by some of Trump's followers on social media who were criticizing the Mar-A-Lago raid.
Seriously, I think people worry about the wrong things. Republicans are more likely to trash democracy via gerrymandering and voter restrictions, rather than getting armed militias to attack the state en masse.
The Republican apparatus may want to trash democracy through gerrymandering and voter restrictions, but Trumpests hear the lock and load command as a signal to be ready to attack.
Definitely not en masse. More like stochastic terrorism.
I think seeing stochastic terrorism as distinct from gerrymandering and voter restrictions, rather than as two fronts of the general hostility Republicans have for democracy, is missing the big picture. We saw this in action on January 6, where an "inside coup" of corrupt legislators and officials working to subvert the Constitution was synchronized with an "outside coup" of violent riots that served to both encourage members of the inside coup to toe the line and intimidate anyone else from objecting too much.
This makes me wonder how a visitor the USA can reply honestly when asked for their opinion of Trump, without running the risk if being thrown out/punched in the face/shot? If one was to say one regards him in much the same light as our departing Prime Minister, would that be safe?
There's something beautiful about this isn't there? At the same time, Trump had many foreign policy successes and it does not matter what anyone in the rest of the world thinks...
Now, granted this is not strictly speaking a logical fallacy but given that Americans in general, see themselves as a people who threw off an imperial yoke rather than empire-builders, it is a position that was almost certainly arrived at by a mixture of arrogance and stupidity.
AFZ
Just imagine his failures from 2025.
Abraham accords?
I'm not sure that badgering brutal dictatorships into providing diplomatic cover for an apartheid state is a positive thing.