Donald Trump: Classic or Dud?

Cohen is an awful person, but I can't see how the jury could ever come to the conclusion that Trump didn't know about the Stormy Daniels payoff and wasn't across how Cohen was being reimbursed.

I think the challenge for the prosecution is that they have to satisfy the jury that, not only did Trump know about it, but that he authorized it with the intent to keep it from the voting public in order not to hurt his chances at getting elected.

I agree that Biden’s 4 album run of Crippling Inflation, High Gas Prices, Crime in our Streets, and Border Chaos were devastatingly heavy

Virginua State University, or another venue

'I have accepted a ninth debate invitation on ESPN, which will be broadcast live from Saratoga Golf Club! We'll see how good of a putter Crooked Joe really is...'

I mean *why* he did it is kind of immaterial here, like even if he was primarily thinking of his family (lol) there's no way he wasn't also thinking of his election chances

It's actually not immaterial at all, it goes directly to the question of criminal intent.

sure but there are several legitimate reasons he wouldn't want that story to get out

idk I just think the idea is absurd that the prosecution would build a case against a former president (and current nominee) that would all be unraveled if Michael Cohen, a lawyer so sleazy and dishonest that he became Donald Trump's right hand man, forgot some detail from 8 years ago. I mean the dude was being cross-examined for hours by a lawyer who was by all accounts flailing around in order to paint him as a liar, even if he did discover something that could be a real sticking point chances are the jury are just gonna forget about it over the long weekend. I think CNN is being stupid about this, like are we really ignoring the piles and piles of evidence they already have

Thankfully, CNN isn't on the jury (afaik)

One of the things i remember about the OJ trial is that one of the jurors was asked something like ‘why did it only take an hour to deliberate’ and they said something to the effect of ‘we were in that courtroom for 6 months we knew everything all we had to do is vote.’ They’ve heard from a bunch of people besides cohen already all that evidence is banked. It’s just whether they agree with the DA’s case or not

there's plenty of documentation about the alleged payoff, they essentially just needed Cohen to corroborate what went down

I guess it's not even 'alleged' anymore lol

Interesting how the evangelicals will absorb this.. we're at the stage now where they could present crystal-clear evidence of Trump sleeping with a 13 year old and it would be like 'Yeah, well Biden has done way worse!'

Nobody cares anymore

They either don't believe it or don't give a shit.

i can only imagine it as “there’s bigger truths in this thing. the lord isn’t blessing trump’s behavior, he is using him to give blessings to us. trump is just an instrument. The lord is like that— dumb as fuck and hypocritical. And mysterious, super mysterious.”

I’ve given up trying to figure the knots evangelicals tie their brains into to justify Trump. They’ve determined Democrats are Satan’s minions (abortion, gay marriage, communism, war on Christmas, whatever) and so Trump is their guy, end of discussion.

New York magazine has an article by Olivia Nuzzi, the only reporter more devoted to her subject than Maggie Haberman. It contains this paragraph:

Just as it was strangely true that each successive indictment seemed to make Trump a stronger candidate in the Republican primary, it is also the case that the trial is making him a better performer on the trail. At after-court stops and onstage at rallies, he has become a kind of SuperTrump, a monstrously turbocharged version of the original model. Quicker and noticeably happier. He even smiles.

I mean...this is demonstrably not true! There's video of his appearances! He looks like shit! He looks depressed! At his rallies he can barely get from one end of a sentence to the next without a series of rhetorical pratfalls that suggest multiple mini-strokes. I mean, what the fuck is this woman talking about?

has any human being ever embodied all 7 deadly sins more

there's plenty of documentation about the alleged payoff, they essentially just needed Cohen to corroborate what went down

the "affair" (which may have actually been rape) happened 10 years before the payoff, seems pretty obvious this was because of the election

has any human being ever embodied all 7 deadly sins more

I feel like he just made this all up

When Donald says he has agreed to all these debates he means that he has agreed with himself that he thinks these debates would be good to have, not that anyone else has agreed to participate in them.

watching some clips of this rally he's doing tonight, he's really rambly and mean and I'm kind of curious if the whole rally is shit like that or if people are just cherrypicking the crazy parts. like are we really living in a country where one of the two candidates for President is a guy whose campaign events are just rambling about electric cars for some reason until everyone leaves

Bad reviews, going to have to do his back to basics campaign next time

There's surely the social aspect of the rallies, where the crowd are bound together by aesthetic and camaraderie. But people say this about bands that appear to be well past their sell by date but draw bigger crowds than they ever did when they were considered to be good, does it really matter to people all that much?

O when a restaurant or cafe changes hands and the quality goes downhill a bit, but there's a lag time before it shows up in the reviews. And even then how much of it is the restaurant changing hands and how much of it is people finding out the restaurant changed hands and recalibrating their opinion based on that.

wtf, surely he didn't speak for 12 hours?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fH6Qv9ZqII

Its a loop

Guy puts on sunglasses at 31 mins and removes them 6 minutes later. Same thing happens again at 1:58 and 3:25

like a white noise machine for boomers with insomnia

oh phew - I only scrolled to a couple of points and it got darker/later in the day

like are we really living in a country where one of the two candidates for President is a guy whose campaign events are just rambling about electric cars for some reason until everyone leaves

― frogbs, Friday, May 17, 2024 9:29 PM bookmarkflaglink

The content doesn't matter, it's a show of strength and brand recognitions that helps people construct their desired consensus reality.

Have been. We are nearly in Jean Beaudrillard's hyperreality, where the strength of the signifier is more important to many people than what the signifier actually stands for, or whether it stands for anything at all.

It's encouraging that people still have a sense of "wtf" about it.

I think this has likely always been the case, that the label carries more weight than the labelled (and there are valid reasons why this might be the case too), though I think they are still think the label is tethered and not completely free-flowing and detached it just has a lot more room to grow and move than we might previously have thought (though I think it might be that the postwar period is the anomaly not the current period)

I think this applies to all groups of people to an extent, not just Trumpists - and brings in to play things like group dynamics, pattern recognition, social cues

Oh definitely. Possibly the signifier has become untethered from substantive ideas and values and reattached to tribes instead. I think this when arguments are based on alleged bad faith or attacking who else is advancing "talking points" than the points themselves.

This video explains some of that dynamic.

A friend who went to journalism school told me she was taught there isn't "one truth" in journalism. There is a process and set of conventions and that they are there to report the "truth" they see on the ground.

Perhaps it takes more humility to recognize the fact that our simple human brains are too stupid to process the 100 zetabytes of information on the internet than we want to accept. But the 2-party system in the US probably doesn't help.

yeah my priors on hyperreality were “always there.” tryna put it to the now, i think the amount of stimuli has now been massively increased again. stuff is still ultimately generally provable, but resistance can be strong. with deepfakism about to be amplified (at least i fear that dunno), info may get less proveable.

in my terrible non-statsy mind it’s like the std dev gets way worse, the size of the curve gets enormous, the falcon cannot hear the falconer and a beast (who looks like cthulu) takes a exit towards the new bethlehem suburb somewhere in texas but it may be near vegas i forget

looks like Blanche is jumping all over the place again trying to make Cohen look like a crook (which he obviously is, that's why Trump hired him), the whole "WHAT ABOUT THAT PHONE CALL" thing which CNN thought ruined the entire case has apparently not even been brought up again, and now the jury is getting bored

yeah this thing is almost over.

idk if the defense has any actual strategy here or if they're just fishing and/or trying to set things up for appeal but their line of questioning on Cohen had no real through line and it kept jumping to different points in time which is a good way to confuse the jury into just disregarding the whole thing, I know because pretty much this exact thing happened in the trial I was a juror on

The basic defense approach:

https://y.yarn.co/15402de3-05c0-43e5-9537-100b4a1c94f7_text.gif

I think every lawyer who works with Trump ends up losing the plot from the stress of having him bellowing terrible instructions at them from the unreality he lives in and telling them how they need to be more like Roy Cohn, while the case is going badly and their professional rep is in tatters. It's funny tho!

https://i.imgur.com/qnHKJ7O.png

lmao that CNN front page story looks dumber every hour

Trump is back in the courtroom, this time with Chuck Zito, the former president of the New York chapter of the Hells Angels

He's going to need some connections in prison.

looks like Cohen squared the circle:

https://i.imgur.com/n0JlHvF.png

forever president

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday floated the idea of a third term if he wins in November.

“You know, FDR 16 years — almost 16 years — he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?” Trump quipped at the National Rifle Association annual meeting, speaking before a crowd of gun rights supporters.

Please, please testify, Two-Peach! Please hold forth

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/20/trump-testify-hush-money-trial-00158756

there's no chance

How to win friends and influence people:

Susan Hoffinger, the prosecutor, is objecting to many of Emil Bove's questions, often successfully. Robert Costello had been ignoring the judge’s rulings, so Justice Merchan warned him directly to wait for a ruling before answering.

It happens again, and when Merchan sustains an objection, Costello says “jeez,” apparently meaning to question the judge's authority. “I’m sorry?” the judge asks, glaring down at the suddenly reddened witness. Costello mumbles something in return and testimony resumes.

there's no chance

otm. he thinks he has to make these noises because he claims he's pure and innocent and being unjustly hounded, but he won't take the stand.

going well

"I want to discuss proper decorum in my courtroom," Justice Merchan tells Costello.

"As a witness in my courtroom, if you don't like a ruling, you don't say 'geez,'" the judge says.

"You don't make a side-eye, you don't roll your eyes," Justice Merchan continues.

Geez

I'm sorry?