Trump Privately Frets He Could Be Headed to Prison

BobTheBoozer@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 652 points –
Trump Privately Frets He Could Be Headed to Prison
rollingstone.com
181

"Florida Man With 91 Felony Charges Worried He Might Serve Prison Time."

“Several millions of Americans worried he won’t”

To be fair, we're also worried that, if he does, his followers will go violent again. Not that this is a reason to excuse him him prison. It just means that it might not be all rainbows and puppies if Trump goes to prison. Our celebrations might be interrupted by home grown right wing terrorist attacks.

They won't go away if we pussy-foot around them.

I'm definitely not saying that we should go easy on Trump to appease them. We just need to keep in mind that Trump heading to prison won't be the end of this. We'll need be be ready to send those terrorists to prison as well.

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I'm definitely not saying that we should go easy on Trump to appease them. We just need to keep in mind that Trump heading to prison won't be the end of this. We'll need be be ready to send those terrorists to prison as well.

Only 91? Shit. AZ state and NJ federal indictments need to get here soon.

Is the NJ federal case about him stealing documents as well?

The audio recording of him allegedly showing off classified docs and admitting he hadn't declassified them took place in New Jersey.

Damn I thought that happened at mierda loco.

Many of us fret he won't.

I'd be okay with him going into exile in North Korea.

yeah. let him torture Kim for a while.

The realistic conclusion to that would be Trump spilling Top Secret info to North Korea. If not willingly, then via torture. But let’s be honest: It would probably be willingly.

Honestly, I don't think he has the awareness or attention span to be an accurate mole if he's limited to working from memory.

Real question. What information could he provide that would be of real value? Inside policy but I suspect if the policy makers knew he was spilling the beans, they would adjust as needed.

Technical information? I doubt he barely knows how to use a smart phone much less give details on a f35.

I would be curious what the intelligence community would consider high risk if a past president flipped.

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He’s such a narcissist all they would have to do is stroke his ego

This actually highlights one of the problems (as a strategy, ignoring humanitarian concerns) with torture- whether or not someone will break has nothing to do with whether they have real, useful information. Once they break, they will say whatever they think their captors want to hear.

The primary (strategic) alternative is to befriend them; convince them you're on their side. A tactic that has been shown to be extremely effective on Trump. He'll gladly spill whatever he thinks he knows as soon as they say something nice about him.

Good point. We should maybe abduct both of them, and turn it into a reality tv show. Like The Truman Show. but real.

Nope, he would absolutely thrive on something like that; anything less than consignment to the dustbin of obscurity is too good for him.

He absolutely wouldn’t thrive on being forgotten by everyone except his jailers.

He feeds off the attention.

Am I missing something? You suggested he and Kim should be documented 24/7 à la The Truman Show

Well. maybe not... 24...7... nobody wants to see, uh, most... of that...

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I think Guantanamo would be more appropriate.

Probably. But, like. just hear me out. They'd hate each other's guts. It'd be like Grumpy Old Men, except they're not fighting over a woman, and they were never actually friends.

And their narcissistic pride would force them to appear in public broing it up on the golf course.

i wonder which one cheats more....

"-4. Huh." -- North Korean caddy

Yeah, good point. I'm guessing Trump would be the sober one so he'd probably be a little more subtle about... no, this is an unsolved problem. I think we need to get them together and see what happens.

"Guys, what would really impress your long dead fathers and finally make them love you is if you both bare knuckle boxed, but in a bear pit. You can take the bear on together first or let the winner do it. That would be so cool."

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I was solidly in that boat for a while too, but seeing how many of his co-conspirators are tripping over themselves to testify against him lately gives me hope.
That's the problem with surrounding yourself with shady people who only have their own interests in mind. They're not loyal to him, he only kept them around because they told him what he wanted to hear, and they only told him what he wanted to hear because it helped them advance their own personal interests.

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I'll believe it when I see it. We will never see him behind bars. Two tiered justice system.

Absolute best case is house arrest imo, and I'm sure his lawyers will make sure it includes the entirety of his resort, so basically nothing will change

I'd love to be wrong, but I don't think I will

This is my hope as well. At least he can't hold hitler style rallies if he's confined to the resort though.

There's a lot of space at that resort for guests. I'd bet he'd set up stadium seating and sell tickets to his regular "Rallies" which MAGA types would absolutely flock too like it's the new Disneyland. Gross.

The orange gusher would spew crap daily at noon, more reliably than Old Faithful. It's be quite the sight.

This just made me think of a Trump animatronic in the hall of presidents 🤣

He won't go and both sides don't want him to go. It sets a presidence that they the rich ruling class is weak to the rules.

Nah, if you think, say, AOC or Bernie Sanders wouldn't love to see the door slam behind 45, I think you're mistaken.

Not say there aren't people in power who wouldn't be ok with, I'm saying the majority don't... otherwise more ruling class would have been in jail and Epstein wouldn't have been murdered in his cell.

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My hope is that he lives for another 5 or 10 years in solitary confinement.

he probably wouldn't last a year in solitary.

Solitary confinement isn't really solitary most of the time. It's far less pitch black rooms with a slat you slide a tray of slop into, and more of a lights always on, talking to your neighbor through the vents/shouting chess moves at each other.

Not that it isn't inhumane in its own way, but many people seem to think that you're basically sensory deprived and that's just not the case.

I mean, what would like to see- which probably is cruel an unusual, but I can be like that sometimes- is trump given a news feed and maybe social media, but he can't respond/post. he just gets to passively watch as the world moves on and forgets about him.

I would love for Trump to live to 120 with a totally sound mind and experience total irrelevance. That would be wonderful punishment. In a cell would be great, but I'd settle for him to be alone in a cheap motel room with cable TV.

I’ve been saying just that for years. It’s the only thing that fits, total destruction of his towering self image.

but only 'woke' news, not the cooker shit he consumes

naw. all of it. together. So he can see the slow slide to irrelevance.

And that's just the thing. The more the news moves on from Trump and talks about other people, the more Trump would label it as woke/liberal/socialist. FOX News could, five years post-Trump-imprisonment, spend all their time on the important right wing subjects of the day and Trump would think they've gone lefty because they weren't talking about him.

“When you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over?” Trump said, miming the physical motion of an officer shielding a suspect’s head to keep it from bumping against the squad car. “Like, don’t hit their head, and they just killed somebody — don’t hit their head,” Trump continued. “I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”

I hope the prison guards remember this, it's only fair.

Yes, I'm sure Rolling Stone has excellent insights into Trump's private fretting.

because media stalwarts like Meet The Press are doing so great at holding Trump to account huh?

jfc man, dunno if you noticed the hellscape that is modern media but RS is doing pretty good these days.

It's not like a Rolling Stone journalist went and asked. Journalists have these things called "sources":

While Trump publicly professes confidence, privately, three sources familiar with his comments say, he’s been asking lawyers and other people close to him what a prison sentence would look like for a former American president.

three sources familiar with his comments

That would never have gotten past any decent editor 20 years ago.

See, if you say one unnamed source, it's not quite as believable to people who lack critical thinking skills and reading comprehension. Better make it three. Five would be too many.

The yellow journalists also like to used "experts" (unnamed of course) to pedal their garbage talking points.

"Three sources familiar with some Rolling Stones writer's thinking say they like to smell their own farts"

See, I can make shit up too.

Actual journalism isn't quite completely dead, but it's on life support.

I predicted he would die in prison when he clinched the GOP nomination in 2016- there was no way, I decided, he wouldn't abuse his office and break a shitload of laws. The last 6 years has been a rude reminder that I seem to have wildly overestimated the capacity and will of America's political and law enforcement establishments to hold anyone like him accountable for even the kinds of crimes he's confessed to on the record.

See, I very naively thought that it would end with his impeachment. Like, I wasn't surprised by the law breaking, but I figured that he'd be ousted by a simpler thing like emoluments or something. Oh to be young again...

And the thing was the GOP establishment could have just let him hang himself. They hate that they've become a personality cult, but it's their own fucking fault for propping this guy up.

That's what I don't understand. They have had so many opportunities to get rid of him. They surely know he's going to lose the next election, I have no clue why they don't turn on him.

They've allowed him to build a personality cult. If they don't bend the knee they lose their seat in the primary.

I figure he knew where he was heading the moment he learned Hilary had conceded.

His (starving) brain worms have made an impact since then but I swear, from the look on his face, that he knew where he would end up.

The Trump team was definitely not expecting to win in 2016. Trump himself looked borderline despondent.

“They really don’t like me, they’re mean… they’re trying to send me to prison. They’d have done it too, though.”

Wtf. I can’t tell if this is a direct quote or you’re just making shit up for lolz.

It was me making shit up for lulz. but I like to think it's something he's muttered in the mirror. Instead of the "Gosh Darnit, People like me"

That sounds a lot like something he'd actually say.

Yeah we've really hit the point where it's impossible to tell if that's an actual Trump quote or made up.

You can tell if there's a big word that's used correctly that it's fake, beyond that it's anyone's guess

I think it's important to cover his trials but I wish we'd ignore these articles which are rooted in gossip and nothing more. It's just clickbait.

I understand your complaint, but I do relish the idea of Trump being worried shitless about this. And while the article's sources are obviously questionable and it is merely hearsay, I personally do think Trump is terrified of going to prison. This is a man who has known nothing but wealth and privilege his entire life; spending his remaining years in a jail cell means not just a loss of his favored lifestyle, but public humiliation as well, which—for a malignant narcissist like Trump—is probably the worst part of it.

That's a weird way of saying "support bad journalism that tells you what you want to hear, it's ok to keep watering journalism down"

Not what I was saying at all, but you obviously just see what you want to see in other people’s words, rather than trying to actually understand them.

Fuck off.

"I do understand your complaint, but - [let me write you a paragraph explaining why the article tickles my jollies, oh boy!]"

It's not hard to see why that sounds like a counterpoint being made. Especially since if it wasn't, then it's really just a pointless comment.

You may now fuck off.

So how does secret service work here

I assume he'd go to the lowest security safest place ever

More likely he'd go to an insanely high security place, he can't be trusted around other people.

ADX Florence is built for exactly that kind of prisoner: spies, terrorists, etc.

I think the chances are that he'll be on house arrest in Mar-a-lago. He deserves supermax, but when has what people deserve been relevant in the criminal "justice" system?

I feel like this might be the best case given the security requirements. Obviously, Mar-A-Lago wouldn't be allowed to operate as a club anymore. The Federal government could take it over and turn it into Trump Prison. Nobody would be allowed in unless they were working to support Trump Prison.

Strip one bedroom down to the bare walls and put a prison cot in there. Keep the door locked from the outside with guards posted 24/7. Trump stays in there all the time except for meals and an hour of "outside time." The room has no TV and he's not allowed any electronics so there wouldn't be any tweeting/"truthing"/etc from his home-turned-prison.

When he goes to eat, he'll walk past the bare walls that used to signify that he was the King Of The Complex. Now, they'll only signify glory days long gone. A bruise to the ego with every step. When he sits to eat, he'll be in the same dining hall where he used to get served fabulous meals. (Or, at least, what passed for "fabulous" at Mar-A-Lago.) Instead, he'll get standard prison food.

Even his "outside time" would be bittersweet to Trump. Instead of time outside talking with bigwigs on the way to go golfing, he'll be shuffling around with armed guards nearby and no bigwigs to lavish praise on him.

Trump would be an empty shell of a man living in an empty shell of a club.

Grounded for life. If that were the case, I’d be okay with it for sure, fits for a big sloppy baby like him.

They're not going to treat it like real prison for him - I'll be surprised if he doesn't have the run of the resort... Likely including daily golf.

I used to think that but it's a golf resort... Maybe house arrest somewhere else?

I'll be pleasantly surprised if he doesn't have the run of the resort.

We need our own version of the Tower of London

I'd personally like to see him mummified in gympie gympie... Embrace his Australian roots and whatnot.

I was really hoping for the presidential desk crammed in a cell. Him all dressed up like he’s still going to work every day… reduced to rubbing Cheetos on his face because he can’t get bronzer.

This is what I've always expected. He'll live the rest of his life like an arrested drug kingpin.

Apparently he just "ordered" congressional GOP members to shut down the government so they can't fund the DOJ lmaooo someone is getting desperate.

It's beautiful. Republican leadership knows they'll get the blame if there's a shutdown and they're trying to avoid it, and Trump tries to muck that up.

A large portion of the Republican Reps don't like Trump any more than the Democrats. I'm sure they are following his "orders"

Sure but they'll still suck his dick in hopes that he ejaculates a nomination.

But for 6 years they've propped him up, and now they're stuck with him. They could have let him hang himself and gotten President Pence (who the GOP would have loved) in the first year of Trump's term, but they didn't.

Source? I'd love to share that one in the group chat

If someone tells you they cannot let something enter their mind, that means they are thinking about it constantly.

club fed. that’s where you go when you commit federal crimes. he’ll still hate it.

There's a scene near the end of the Better Call Saul series where Saul Goodman is negotiating with the feds for better prison terms.

I feel like I heard somewhere that a meeting like this is not uncommon with high value/high risk criminals. In part to reduce everybody's legal fees and in part to get criminals to cooperate on other matters, such as getting the crazies in their orbit to chill out.

I could imagine that as the feds close in on Trump, such a meeting may become more attractive to him. And at long last he'll finally retire to a golden club fed with an escalator.

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What if he turns into a devout Muslim in prison?

For that to happen he'd have to be capable of worshiping something other than himself.

Shit, even if he tried to fake it; I doubt he'd be able to get up off the floor from prayer.

Nation of Islam is like "WE DO NOT ALLOW PORK TO WORSHIP"

I could see it happening tho, "I am no longer Donald Trump, I am Quarter-Pounder-with-Cheese Shabaz Mo Frommage"

but whenever anyone attempts to address him that way he looks confused.

I'm waiting for a Hallmark Channel redemption arc for him. He goes to prison, slowly befriends his fellow cell mates and empathizes with them, and emerges a changed man who gives up his fortune in order to fight the injustices against the common man.

Because prison always turns people into a better version of themselves

It’s hallmark fiction, so yeah. Also, he gets back with Melllania who dumped him, and they raise happy, perfect kids together.

Also this all happens at Christmas time because they ran into each other in line for a street vendor selling pumpkin spice lattes

Also there's a puppy in a christmas present with a bow on its head

Directly adjacent to the roasted chestnut cart

how could I forget the roasted chestnut cart. also the ice skating rink in the background. The script practically writes itself.

(mostly because hallmark scripts are copy pasta...)

Someone swap his blow with some Molly and see if he feels something for a change

Reads the constitution. After a thousand times, he starts to get it.
"Oh, I should be in prison."

He goes on to form a golf team with some of the inmates at his prison, and in a partnership with Vince McMahon they start up a prison golf league where the various prison teams play each other in an annual tournament. The winners get extra Little Debbie snacks from the prison commissary. Eventually they make a movie, and Donald Trump is played by Rosie O'Donnell.

The name of the movie would be something like "Par for the Course"

I still have more faith in vigilante justice; legal just will continue to spin its wheels in the mud until he succumbs to his decades long suicide-by-cheeseburger. Our official resources have thus far proven to be less than worthless.

I'd be fucking delighted to be wrong, though!

...then again, Trump seems to be fracturing the hell out of the GOP, so keeping him as a wrench in the spokes isn't without a silver lining, albeit unsavory.

He'll likely be playing tennis at minimum security Club Fed if it's federal, but Georgia doesn't seem to do special treatment. If he goes in on Georgia state charges, he could end up in a for real penitentiary.

I'd be shocked if he gets anything more than house arrest

Any sort of prison time would risk his neo Nazi army attempting monthly jailbreak attempts.

Which is not a reason to avoid locking him up.

His Neo Nazi army is a meal team 6 joke IRL, society should not fear them.

A Meal Team Six joke that took the Capitol.

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and the capitol was basically left undefended. intentionally. and Flynn's brother kept it that way throughout.

I’ve seen high schoolers breaking into school with more aptitude and discipline than these fools.

Me and two of my classmates did this. Not a story I get to tell very often in any sorta context. We found the janitor's porn magazine stash and replaced the on hold music CD with a Black Sabbath one. Besides for that we didn't do anything.

Got to admit the women's staff bathroom was disappointing. I don't know what 15 year old me was expecting to see but it wasn't just a slightly cleaner bathroom.

that took the capitol after Trump disarmed the security, refused the reinforcement of both capitol police and denied deployment of the national guard.

stop acting like they stormed the pentagon under fire.

Good. Those morons routinely put themselves in prison trying to pull this shit off.

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Look at the fucking state of him. I reckon a game of tennis would probably kill him!

Man hasn't done exercise since Stormy Daniels.

Suddenly, I've gained a lot of respect for Georgia.

Don't worry you will lose it. My bet

Some legislative 11th hour shenanigans removes the DA and the people who report to her. Until they find the one person who will drop all charges, in such a way that he can't go to trial again. And then when the case they were holding in reserve proceeds the new DA will sit on it. Night of long knives repeated.

I don't see him going to a state prison. If anything he'll have to serve time in federal. Being an ex president, the federal government will want to keep him under their watch.

Idc. If he's away for 30 years at club fed at least he's not destroying the country

Also, even a Club Fed prison would be a huge culture shock to him. Trump's used to doing whatever he wants whenever he wants. If he wants to go golfing, he does. If he wants to eat McDonald's for lunch and a burned steak with chocolate cake for dinner, he does. If he wants to fly somewhere, he goes. Sure, he might need to wait for mundane things like "filing a fight plan" or "food preparation," but he has people take care of it for him. To Trump it's just "I want X" followed by "Yes, sir. We'll get that to you ASAP."

The second Trump walks into a Club Fed, this freedom goes away. Yes, he'll have more freedom than if he went to a normal prison, but it's still vastly less freedom than he'd have in Mar-A-Lago. If he wants steak but the prison cafeteria is serving lasagna tonight, he can't have special food made for him because he's Donald Trump. If he wants to travel to his NJ golf course, he's not going to be allowed to.

Even a Club Fed prison would be a huge hit to Trump's ego since he won't be the Person in Charge anymore.

30? The guy has like 5 years at a push before that inevitable cardiac arrest catches up with him.

He's a big man, and he's out of shape.

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You know what I never worry about? Going to prison. I'm able to not worry about that because I don't go around breaking laws.

I do worry about going to jail because you can be convicted of crimes you haven't committed. Unlikely to be Trump's fate, but it could be mine.

Also, it's important to remember that jail =/= prison.

Jail is where you go while awaiting trial. Prison is where you go after you're convicted.

I'm pretty confident that I'll never do anything serious enough to be sent to prison for. However, it's plausible that I could be arrested for some alleged crime, held in jail for months pending trial, and then released (either after trial or when the charges were dropped).

Those months in jail would mean that I'd likely get laid off from my job and my family would need to burn through our savings. Plus, depending on how high profile the arrest is, everyone might think I was guilty no matter the outcome and refuse to hire me to another job.

The mere action of arresting someone and then dropping the charges can completely ruin someone's life.

I wouldn't say it's in my top 10 worries, but it's definitely there.

could be? he's definitely going.

I'll believe it when I see it. Our courts have a way of handling some people differently, and Trump is already getting treatment you or I would never dream of getting.

Wish I could be that confident. I won't believe he is until he's actually there.

Yeah, exactly.

Hes a slimy fuck that seems to always squirt out of whatever tight place he ends up.

Theres no guarantees with him being held accountable, so I will wait and celebrate when hes tried, convicted, and behind bars in a jumpsuit for a suitably long amount of time.

I'd be willing to celebrate the first day, as him being in prison for any length of time seems very unlikely at this point.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


As the criminal cases against him have piled up, the former president and 2024 GOP frontrunner has wondered aloud in recent months about what life would be like if he’s convicted, and if appeals fail.

While Trump publicly professes confidence, privately, three sources familiar with his comments say, he’s been asking lawyers and other people close to him what a prison sentence would look like for a former American president.

Habba told Fox News’ Shannon Bream last month that the former president was so confident he would be vindicated that he’s not even preparing for his various trials.

One former White House official who worked on the Mueller investigation said Trump was not remotely worried about consequences from the Russia inquiry.

The closest equivalent to Trump’s legal predicament lies in the 1973 federal prosecution of Nixon Vice President Spiro Agnew on charges related to bribes from his tenure as governor of Maryland.

But as the criminal investigation of him mounted, privately “Agnew was utterly terrified of going to jail,” his biographer Charles J. Holden told Rolling Stone.


The original article contains 773 words, the summary contains 177 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

And if you were wondering what happened to Agnew:

“ After months of maintaining his innocence, Agnew pleaded no contest to a single felony charge of tax evasion and resigned from office. Nixon replaced him with House Republican leader Gerald Ford. Agnew spent the remainder of his life quietly, rarely making public appearances. He wrote a novel and a memoir, both of which defended his actions. Agnew died at home in 1996 at age 77 of undiagnosed acute leukemia.”

Agnew wasn't even remotely as bad as Trump, and it still disgusts me that he never saw a prison cell from the inside.

He’s been publicly spooked for quite a while now. It’s so god damned enters it to watch!

Could be? Dude, you are toast.

I'll believe it when I see it. The last 7-8 years have really made me cynical, especially when it comes to Trumpty Dumpty. I laughed when he first ran and it broke me when he actually won.

Half the country must really love the taste of bullshit because they keep gobbling it up.

I totally understand. I just don’t see how you get off Scott-free when you are facing 91 felony charges. Just one conviction at his age and it will be a life sentence.

How? This is America is how. If you have money you live by different rules, and he was president so he has super special rules. If anything he will be banned from holding public office and house arrest at maralogo or some other trashy property he owns. He 100 percent will never go to prison.