Good god, I had to stop watching after the abortion question.

Trump actually has managed to keep his composure so far. Sure, he's spouting out lie upon lie that CNN is allowing to continue un-fact-checked. But he at least sounds like he knows what he's talking about, and is showing something resembling energy.

Biden looked like a nursing home patient that should've been guided out by his nurse. He sounds even worse. That freeze-up at the end with him stuttering and just blurting out a random "I beat Medicare" or whatever that was is going to fuel the entire Republican campaign for the next 5 months. That is literally the exact moment Biden lost this election, mark my words. The man is performing like he's sundowning.

If he gets better, God bless him. But I cannot see how anyone can have confidence in that man after that performance. He doesn't look like he'll make it another 4 months let alone another 4 years.

From the article:

“There is a difference between a resource-wasting and delay-producing ‘mini-trial,’ on the one hand, and an evidentiary hearing geared to adjudicating the contested factual and legal issues on a given pre-trial motion to suppress,” Cannon wrote.

Yeah, you fucking cunt. You're doing the former while trying to call it the latter and using Trumpian doublespeak and circular logic to justify it.

Trump’s lawyers say they believe the wording used in the search warrant to authorize agents to seize “national defense information” and “Presidential Records” wasn’t specific enough, and Cannon agreed that there were “ambiguities.”

“The Court determines that some of the terms in that document do not carry ‘generally understood meaning[s]’ such that a law enforcement agent, without further clarification, would have known to identify such material as ‘seizable’ property,” the judge wrote on Thursday.

I don't even know where to begin here. Is she literally entertaining the idea that FBI agents are too stupid to know what national defense information and Presidential records are? What the fuck is that?

I can't even.......seriously.....I just can't. This is a level of stupid that I did not think was achievable by sentient human beings that are allowed to go outside without adult supervision.

Please, PLEASE tell me that this is finally an appealable issue. It HAS to be, right? Right? The 11th circuit or whatever appeals court oversees her will be able to bitchslap her again and hopefully remove her from the case, right? Or is all hope truly lost and we're destined to spend the next several months trying to figure out if the FBI knows what national defense information is until she finds the next excuse to delay the case for another eleventy billion years?

Serious question, for anyone masochistic enough to still be watching: Has Biden's performance improved enough to negate the moment that will be on every GOP attack ad for the next 5 months, or does he still look like he needs to be walked back into his room and told that no, it's not 1975 any more........

And until he says something more memorable than answering the first question with a bunch of stuttering, ums, uhs, and then a random "I beat Medicare!", whatever that means, then none of that will matter to most people. That soundbyte was an absolute disaster that he may not recover from.

I don’t know who the answer is - my personal preference remains Bernie and I think he would be an easy sell

I have to disagree here. All Biden had to do was alleviate fears among independent voters about his age and health by simply not walking out there looking like a dementia patient that wandered off again. He failed at that, miserably, which only magnified and reinforced the exact fears among independent voters he was supposed to be alleviating. And, as expected after that disastrous performance, there were a lot of people waking up this morning saying "See, I told you. He's too old for the job."

Regardless of Sanders' mental fitness, health, competence, political positions, etc., replacing Biden on the ticket with somebody even older than he is would absolutely be the most tone-deaf thing they could do.

Policies aren't the problem. If these people cared about policy, they'd just stick with biden regardless of age.

If anybody hasn't figured it out, she doesn't stand for anything. She rage-tweets on Twitter about anything Democrats could even mildly support just to increase her brand recognition. If and when she ever gets kicked out of Congress, she'll have an even bigger payday waiting for her as a right-wing talking head for the likes of OAN, Newsmax, and whatever conspiracy theory sites rise up to replace Infowars.

Excuse me, your honor. I think we need to have a hearing on what the definition of fact-finding is. Actually, I think we need three separate hearings. One is to define the word fact, then the word finding, and the last to define fact-finding with regards to the scope of this case. Oh, and that reminds me......we need to define the word scope as well. I mean what kind of scope? A periscope? A telescope? And how do we define definition anyway? I think we need a hearing on that as well...........and what does constitute a hearing, anyway? Has that been defined anywhere? See how complex this case is? You're confused, your clerk quit an hour ago, and even your stenographer confessed to Nixon's disappearance and went to jail rather than suffer through this any more. So how do you expect a jury of my peers to undestand this. And what do we mean by "peers" anyway.......

Am I reading this right or is she seriously entertaining the notion of dismissing the case because Jack Smith spent too much money investigating? And what happens, does the defendant just get to walk away if they go over budget?

"Your honor, the sheriff drove to my home to arrest me for this crime. This cost the American taxpayer approximately $1.07 in gas and $.15 worth of wear and tear on a government vehicle. This was not appropriated in the investigation budget so I demand the case be thrown out!"

Judge: "Agreed! Case dismissed!"

It's sad how right-wing extremism seems to be gaining popularity not only in this country, but around the world. I guess the desire to be able to blame "them" for your own shortcomings really is that much of a driving force that people will vote against their own self-interests so long as they can continue to blame "them" for everything. Maybe Trump was right, and the easiest way to rise to power is just to be charismatic and give the rubes a boogeyman to hate. Seems to have worked for him so far.

Maybe if major news networks had started this in 2015, we wouldn't be in the situation we're in now.

Should've hung up a dime. Much smaller.

Both digits are after the decimal point.

A couple of important details that got overlooked.

• Don Jr. and Eric Trump do not have to put up the $5 million each that they were fined. Those collections are being paused as well.

• The restrictions against Don Jr. and Eric Trump that would prevent them from running the business for 3 years has been lifted.

So much for that accountability. Can't wait to hear about the entire judgement getting tossed because an appelate judge decided that the Susan Collins rule of "He learned his lesson, and he pinky swears it won't happen again" applies.

I actually consider this a very big win for Trump.

Literal decades of fraud that netted him billions in profits and he only has to pay back $300 million.

Little decades of fraud, and he's only banned from being an officer or director for 3 years. He gets to keep everything else.

Once again a very rich person got away with decades of crimes and only had to give back a portion of the profits. $355 million is only a small portion of the money he has made in the past four decades.

Guy should have been forced to cough up the full 375, and then permanently banned from doing any more businesses in the state. Anything else is a gift.

Well, this should be no surprise.

She's been bending over backwards for Trump since day one, and she's spent this entire time dragging her feet on even the most basic of issues. She created delay after delay, and is now using the delay she created as the justification for granting the postponement that Trump has been seeking all along.

"Mid November." What a god damned coincidence. The rotting corpse of Hellen Keller could have seen right through that load of bullshit.

The whole point of things like this is to dilute the impact of the words being used. This way, when they get caught doing the exact same thing, it won't seem "bad" in the eyes of their constituents.

It's one of the reasons the GOP are pushing so hard to impeach Biden. So when people say that Trump was impeached twice, the MAGA crowd can just say "Yeah, so was Biden. So was Clinton. Presidents get impeached all the time. They never get removed. It's all for political show anyway, it's no big deal. The next guy will probably get impeached too."

It's why GOP politicians are trying to frame even minor incidents of protest as "insurrections" or "coups". They know it sounds ridiculous. That's the whole point. If you water down words like "insurrection", "coup", "sedition", and "treason", then the MAGA crowd can just say "January 6th wasn't an insurrection. The country is still here. Quit calling every protest an insurrection. We're not in the 1780s any more."

Same thing with the RICO charges. Why do you think Miller and MTG were tweeting "RICO?". Charge everybody with RICO charges and Trump being charged no longer seems like a big deal.

It's a long term strategy. Make the idea of being charged with crimes just a normal part of the political process, and make everybody think it's not that bad. That way, when they're caught engaging in the corrupt acts they routinely accuse others of engaging in, it'll be considered "normal" and "no big deal", and make it almost impossible to remove them.

Hold on.....

You mean to tell me that a Trump deal was shady from the start, a whole bunch of people involved in it are under investigation and facing criminal charges, and in the end a whole bunch of people are going to lose their shirts and another business will go bankrupt?

Surely you jest! This has never happened with any of Trump's transactions before!!!!!

What he and others who make this argument refuse to comprehend is this: If the VP were allowed to pull a stunt like this, then we are essentially saying that the VP picks the next President of the United States. No need to hold an election; might as well just have Harris declare Biden the winner of 2024 already and let's just skip right to the swearing in. Heck, let's be efficient about it -- who wants to be President in 2028? Might as well have Harris declare the winner of that election too. Look at that; we've got the Presidency sorted out for the next decade or so, and we can spend the next few years prepping someone like AOC for the White House in 2032.

I mean that's the way it works, right? The VP can just unilaterally declare who did and didn't win the election, right GOP? Because if this is the rule you're gonna set forth, we might as well take full advantage of it......

I think one of the most important statements McCarthy has said in this entire ordeal is this:

“I’m a Republican. I’m a conservative that wants to get things done. I know we live in – our government’s designed to have compromise, but look, we are in the majority. You don’t surrender,” he said..

This is another example of Republicans saying the quiet part out loud. Again. He blatantly and specifically said that the party knows they're supposed to be compromising, but they just don't want to.

It's sad to say, but this is what politics has become in this country. You're either in the majority or you might as well just stay home. But McCarthy himself has now said that compromise with the minority party isn't a thing, Democrats need to remember this next time they have full control. Fuck even attempting to compromise with Republicans as they've made it clear that they have no intentions of compromising with you when the shoe is on the other foot.

The Democrats need to seize full control in 2024, and when McCarthy isn't in power any more and complains about the Democrat majority, they can just respond by throwing his own words back at him.

Biden should just send Seal Team 6 to whatever courthouse Trump's hush money trial is at and tell them to sit on the steps. If anyone asks why they're there, just saying "Waiting for the Supreme Court ruling". Maybe park another team on the Supreme Court steps with a sign that says "Waiting for Clarence Thomas."

Biden would not be committing an illegal act. He'd be ordering the teams to sit on the steps and wait. Further orders would only come after the Supreme Court ruling, so Biden would be covered by the very same Presidential immunity that Trump just fought for.

How would this be a surprise to anybody? He's already been proven to have numerous ties to Epstein. His base simply doesn't care.

Bullshit. 100%, Grade A Bullshit.

None of these judges or prosecutors have "taken off the gloves" or anything else for that matter. He has been warned more times than anyone cares to count. Despite those warnings, he continues to spread lies, openly call for violence against justice officials, and insult and threaten communities in order to taint the jury pool. The warnings he's been given have all been completely ignored. The guy doesn't even bother to leave the courthouse any more before openly defying the latest warning and all but daring judges to do something about it. And so far, nothing has been done.

Trump has been proven as a threat to national security. He commits crimes on the daily that would have literally anyone else thrown into a federal supermax with the key shot into the sun. As long as this man continues to breathe free air and is allowed to continue making threats with impunity, any statement saying that "the gloves are off" is absurd on its face.

When you revoke Trump's bail and slap him with new charges of jury tampering and witness intimidation, then we'll talk about whether the gloves are off or not. But if all you've got are a bunch of empty threats, don't bother with the bravado.

Wow. So, so many things wrong here.

• This would be a blatant first amendment violation, along with a violation of several other rights centered around non-discrimination.
• The GOP really don't give a flying shit any more about the Constitution, do they?
• Apparently, "censoring conservative viewpoints" (known to normal people as "not being racist and bigoted) is bad, but literally trying to express liberal viewpoints is somehow "indoctrination" and should be a criminal offense. Yeah, I know. They wear the hypocrisy as a badge of honor and campaign on it.

I still want to know how an NDA that says you can't talk to law enforcement is (a) allowed, and (b) enforceable. If I were an investigator and heard about that, I'd want to know exactly what the company needed to hide so badly that they had to add that clause in.

And I said this in another post, but if you are ever asked to sign an NDA that says you can't cooperate with law enforcement, hand in your resignation and seek legal counsel. They're not asking you to sign it to protect you. They're asking you to sign it so when shit hits the fan (and it WILL hit the fan), you'll be the lackey who's stuck falling on their sword unless you want to be subject to a penalty that far exceeds what you were offered when you signed the NDA in the first place.

If they're saying "Here's a shitload of money, don't talk to the cops.", there's a reason for that. And it's probably not going to end well for you.

If he's down to needing "only" 10-20 holdouts, he's actually gaining significant ground. This should worry you.

The moderates of the party are simply growing tired of all of this and are more likely to vote for him simply because there are no other viable options. The problems with this are: Jim Jordan becomes speaker of the House. The MAGA wing gets rewarded for causing this mess by having one of their own elected speaker once the dust settles, emboldening them to do it again in the future. And it also reinforces how effective the strategy of forcing people out of office by making the position untenable for anyone who actually wants to do the work, leaving only the crazies to fill the void is.

My only real hope is that Jim Jordan is incompetent enough and so hyper-focused on partisan grievance politics that he won't cause too much damage. That, and he only has just over a year in office. The bad thing is that if you think these people are crazy, remember that they're simply paving the way for those who will come after them, many of which are even crazier than they are.

Two things:

1. Jack Smith has to file a motion to have her removed at this point. I understand that under normal circumstances, you don't want to piss off the judge. But how much more adversarial can she be at this point? She's literally trying to have him removed from the case. At this point, Smith has nothing left to lose. What else could she do to him? Have him deported?

2. This has got to be appealed if/when she rules that he has no authority to prosecute. If she rules that special prosecutors have no authority to bring these cases and that ruling were allowed to stand, wouldn't it invalidate other cases brought by special prosecutors? Or at the very least give those convicted grounds for having their convictions thrown out?

Floridians outraged by shameful anti-worker heat law. Here’s how it happened

1. The GOP, under Mitch McConnell, abandoned all policy issues in favor of just being literally against anything the Democrats are in favor of, under any and all circumstances.

2. The GOP ramped up the already simmering culture war against immigrants to ridiculous extremes during the Trump administration and conditioned their base that open racism is now acceptable.

3. The GOP realized that these same immigrants are the ones that do the majority of the fruit picking, landscaping, carpentry, etc., often outside in the scorching heat for 12+ hours per day.

4. Big businesses, capitalizing on the new-found racism streak in the Republican party which is further amped up in Florida already, lobbied lawmakers to block any and all laws regarding heat management in the state so they could save a few bucks.

5. Republicans in the state, seeing an opportunity to both make a fuckton of money in bribes "campaign contributions", stick it to brown people at the same time, and make the newly emboldened racist voters in their state happy and therefore more likely to re-elect them, gleefully jumped at the chance to oblige.

That's how it happened. Anything else is a lie.

This tells you how far our government has fallen. This is literally the definition of revenge porn, using these pictures to intimidate, humiliate, and embarrass both Hunter Biden and his father. This woman should have been immediately dragged out of the House in handcuffs and charged with too many federal and state charges for me to count.

This isn't a political stunt. There were multiple crimes committed here. If Hunter Biden somehow stumbled upon MTG in similarly embarrassing photos and started publishing them all over Twitter, she'd be screaming about the weaponization of government by the Biden crime family and demanding that Hunter be immediately sent to Gitmo.

This is a new low, even for the GOP. Even for MTG. But sadly, it shouldn't be surprising. The entire GOP is on a gleeful race to the bottom to see who can out-crazy who. MTG is a national embarrassment.

Judge: "Don't do the thing or there will be serious consequences." Trump: Does the thing anyway. Judge: Does nothing. Trump: Smirks.

Judge: "I'm serious this time. Don't do the thing again or there will be serious consequences." Trump: Remembers what happened last time, does the thing again anyway. Judge: Does nothing. Trump: Smirks.

Judge: "I'm super duper serious this time. Don't do the thing again or there will be serious consequences." Trump: Remembers what happened last time, does the thing again anyway, says "what are you going to do about it?". Judge: Backs down, Does nothing. Trump: Smirks.

Judge: "I'm super duper serious this time. Don't do the thing again or there will be serious consequences." Trump: "Fuck off, I'll threaten anyone I want." Judge: Backs down, does nothing, again.

The next judge: "That's it, this is your final warning!" The media: "The courts are sick of this! They'll put a stop to this next time!" Everyone else: Presses X to doubt. Trump: "Fucking lol."

The chonky fascist was whining about being silenced and then decides not to take the stand.

Just like all the other times, he never had any intention of taking the stand. That was show for his base -- the same base that now believes that the gag order somehow prohibits him from testifying. He's appealing to the dumbest of the dumb because they're going to stick by him no matter what, and are also the ones who are likely to make the most noise and most likely to commit acts of violence in his name.

This should be no surprise, Lauren Boebert is a piece of shit of a human being.

I hold on to the hope that she won't get re-elected and her place in history will ultimately be treated with the same level of respect as she just treated this child's memory and family.

She deserves nothing less than to be treated the way she treats others.

Let me translate this batfuck stupidity into plain english:

"Yeah, we all know that Trump is a traitor. But if y'all think that I'm gonna be the one to open up that can of worms and then enter the witness protection program for the rest of my life, y'all are fucking nuts."

She couldn't care less. She's aiming for a Supreme Court pick if Trump gets re-elected. She'd be a perfect replacement for Clarence Thomas.

Ever seen that scene from Liar, Liar where Jim Carey objects, and says "Because it's devastating to my case!"?

This is that scene, but actually being attempted in a real courtroom. This has got to be the most desperate thing I have ever seen.

we’re all supposed to sit here and entertain its plausibility.

We're all here because more than one of these judges is entertaining its plausibility. Listening to some of the questions coming from a couple of these judges, there is a very real possibility that they actually declare Trump at least partially immune, leading to the lower courts having to re-litigate the issues again (which would delay Trump's trials by years), or outright giving him enough immunity to make his current cases go away.

It's important to note that this would include the state cases. If Trump were to return to office, he could in theory pardon himself and make the federal cases go away but can't do anything about the state ones. If the SC were to rule he's immune, the state courts can't touch him either.

Honestly, I think the judges are just trying to figure out how they can rule narrowly enough to make sure Trump walks away scot-free while also ensuring that Biden and other future presidents don't get the same treatment.

The man is such a pathetic loser that he has to resort to completely making up new awards out of the blue and awarding them to himself. Seriously, you can't make this shit up.

And a sizeable portion portion of the people in this country treat this man as a demigod. That fact alone should tell you how bad the meth and fentanyl problems are in this country, because a brain rotted by meth and fentanyl are the only explanations I can think of why thinking that anything Trump says even makes sense, let alone has value.

We're not sleepwalking into anything.

There's an increasing number of people who are sprinting towards it at top speed, an increasing number of people willing to let it happen because they're mad at Biden over Israel or upset that he's not the embodiment of the perfect candidate, and then those of us who are blaring the warnings from our bullhorns, only to find that half the crowd is blaring right along with us and the other half has no interest in what we're saying.

"Biden's old and Israel is bad now, so clearly the obvious solution is to vote for a Trump dictatorship. Surely that's the most common-sense solution and absolutely nothing can go wrong. The leopard certainly won't eat my face, right? Right?!?!?" -- an increasing number of independent and Democrat voters

I still continue to fail to understand the logic these people are trying to use.

I completely understand the dissatisfaction with the Biden administration and his support for an ally who is currently committing genocide on the daily. And if there were a candidate who wasn't a completely batshit wannabe dictator, I'd at least understand why they'd vote for anyone else over Biden, if not agree with it.

But this is not the case. What these people fail to understand because they're literally blinded with rage is that the only other option is exponentially worse. Trump isn't going to stop Israel from bombing Gaza into oblivion. He's said as much. He basically wants to glass the entire area. Do these people not realize that what Trump wants to do is exponentially worse?

Voting for Trump because you don't like Biden's policies on Israel and Gaza isn't shooting yourself in the foot. It's shooting yourself in the foot, then reloading the shotgun when you realize you missed a few toes, then wondering why the hell your foot hurts and you're bleeding all over the place.

I understand the rationale of "I cannot in good conscience vote for a man who has supported and partially funded a brutal genocide." But at the same time, you're advocating for a man who's literally campaigning on "I'll genocide harder!". Why?

If you think Trump is, in any situation, a viable option for anything, please seek professional help immediately. There is never a situation where Donald Trump's decisions or actions are ever going to make your life better. Full stop.

Just want to throw this out there:

Donald Trump:

• Survived not one but two impeachment trials because senators feared for their safety if they voted to remove him.

• Has had at least one judge say that Trump deserves special treatment, with that judge continuing to run interference on Trump's behalf to this day.

• Went on CNN and publicly defamed E. Jean Carroll for a second time, less than 24 hours after a judge ordered him to pay $5 million for doing it the first time.

• Was declared an insurrectionist by a Colorado judge, but allowed to stay on the ballot anyway despite being Constitutionally disqualified because the judge feared retribution if he were to remove Trump from the ballot.

• Has violated multiple gag orders on multiple occasions, including violating one gag order right outside of the courtroom minutes after it was issued. He has faced fines totalling $15,000, which wouldn't even qualify as a rounding error on his taxes if he could be bothered to actually pay taxes. No judge has been willing to impose any sanctions or even warn Trump of the possibility of incarceration for fear of backlash, even though they admit any other defendant would have been jailed for the same behavior.

• Has made so many credible threats against judges, prosecutors, witnesses, staff, potential jurors, and their families that any developments in any of his cases are now often preceded by lockdowns, significant boosts in security, and even personal security for those involved out of fear of retribution or violence.

From the article:

"In a brief order, Cannon slammed prosecutors for not following the court’s rules by failing to meaningfully confer with Trump’s defense lawyers about a potential gag order before making the request."

Maybe it's just me but this sounds an awful lot like she's denying the motion because the prosecutors......didn't ask the Trump team for permission to file the motion? Am I reading that right? The prosecution needs permission from the defense to file a motion for a gag order?

Lawyers, please tell me that Cannon is once again just being extraordinarily stupid. This can't be normal, right? To me, this is like a domestic abuse victim having to ask the abuser for the right get a restraining order.