I say this not to be mean but I read that manifesto and the only thing I came away with was 'Wat' too.

I honestly could not discern the point you were trying to make and was baffled why you had written that but rather than be mean, for something you took such time with, I just moved on.

i suspect others did similar.

If you really want a thoughtful reply I suggest you remove all the emoting stuff (ex. your 'like' of Trump family), get rid of the poker nonsense (ex 'not bad to fold a Royal flush) and get rid of all the celebrity gossip girl stuff (Paris Hilton, etc) as none of that is conducive to you getting a reply. I had no idea that is why you were now posting links to celebrity gossip and would recommend the Mods send it all off to the great beyond.

Its all nonsense.

Oh, right, we should just go back to the halcyon days of feudalism.

I was a little confused by all the celebrity gossip as well. Sure, celebrity and money can distort prosecution decisions and the outcomes of criminal cases. But that can cut either way. I'm sure I could find plenty of articles about celebrities who got a pass in situations where a normie would not have gotten a pass. Like your celebrity gossip stories, those stories wouldn't tell us much about whether Trump should be prosecuted.

If you think that the threshhold for prosecuting ex-presidents should be very high because we don't want to set a precedent for partisan prosecutions, I understand the argument. As I said before, a failed prosecution is much worse for the world than no prosecution at all.

But all this other stuff seems juvenile. Who cares whether you liked The Apprentice or whether Trump's kids take nice family photos? Also, it's virtually impossible to be highly critical of Trump at this point without also being highly critical of Ivanka and Don Jr. The most accurate word I can use to describe either of them at this point is "complicit".

There's a lot to unpack here. None of that is nonsense cuepee.

I am paraphrasing, what could be considering butchering, something that David Sklansky wrote a long time ago. My paraphrasing/retelling of what he wrote is that: folding a royal flush is widely considered the dumbest worst mistake you could make in poker because you have the best hand possible and cannot lose. But that is not really true because you get a royal flush at such a rare frequency that folding a royal flush is a very minor mistake in the long run for a poker player. Instead a major mistake is calling too much in bad spots because a poker player might make that mistake dozens of times a day.

The analogy is apt to me because whether or not Trump gets prosecuted, hes only one man who will only be president once, under bizarre circumstances that will likely never happen again. His personal legal troubles should not be the cornerstone for political discussion or receive the amount of plotting on both liberal and or conservative forums that it has.


A suspects character is very relevant to a criminal case in America. This can make or break a case. It can inform whether or not a case gets filed, dismissed, or how a prosecutor decides to handle and charge a case. Since no one is defending Trumps family history, I thought I would take a stab at it. This element of my argument cannot be removed because it is foundational to the point im making.



and then there's this.....

America has the highest incarceration rate for women in the developed world .
I feel very stongly that celebrities are over prosecuted and its about to become a big issue. I notice you did not object to any of the males I listed but instead described Paris Hiltons legal troubles as "gossip girl stuff" which I find to be sexist. I could write a book about what happened to Paris, but I find it to have been an outrageous miscarriage of justice. Donald Trump is a celebrity first and foremost. One of the primary reasons I don't think he should be prosecuted is because celebrities are over prosecuted and I think that should carry weight in deciding to file a criminal case in this instance.

Please don't call my thoughts nonsense again.

Rococo, from my point of view the reason Trump is being treated differently on this issue than the other 44 presidents before him is because of his celebrity background and what that entails. Which I find to be very troublesome. I think if he were treated like the other 44 presidents very few people would even be talking about this.

If Trump is being treated differently w/r/t prosecution than past presidents, and I'm not at all convinced that he is, it's because of how reviled he is. Trump of course was viewed as a preening buffoon before he was president. But it is his behavior as president that has caused him to be reviled.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports...e_table_1.html

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/women/2018.html

No I don't think that's true because how reviled a president is by the public has little to do with whether or not he gets tried, but instead how he is viewed in the courtroom. Donald Trump has a higher approval rating than Bush by the general public at the end of his term.

I think Trump is wayyy more likely to get prosecuted because the way that he says things annoy powerful institutions and the reason he says things the way that he does is because instead of a states-person he is a celebrity

I'm personally of the opinion that the best explanation for why Trump is more likely to be indicted after leaving office than other recent Presidents is because he committed more crime and the type of crime that is more easily prosecuted.

what do you think he'll be prosecuted/charged with?

That is certainly the most plausible explanation.

I don't buy that Trump committed more crime than other presidents. I think part of being president is that Americas system is so complex that the system has "corruption" built in. I think the president who committed the most crimes are people like thomas jefferson, richard nixon, andrew johnson. people like that.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to have an independent view, but I'm close to a lawyer in the Federalist Society who believes the tax/bank fraud investigations by the Manhattan DA and NYS Attorney General are serious based on the publicly available evidence.

That makes sense. Like I said in my explanation post I had talked to some smart people about this and they think its either obstruction of justice or tax fraud.

If it is tax fraud, I would hope his case is handled with great dignity and care and that certainly isn't the kind of charge that needs to be tried at the hague.

You've written more unsuccinct nonsense here that is not worthy of a thoughtful reply.

You need to fix that or accept, and not complain when people mostly gloss over what you wrote.

You're kind of a dick, huh.

Ya, my initial reply to him was indeed meant to be constructive, as no one replied, as he whined about, and I tried to explain why, from my view.

He replied back with that dismissive admonishment order and I replied very purposely in kind. Dickish for dickish.

People aren’t taking about charging a President for crimes he committed in the course of doing his job, for which there is really no historical precedent. We are talking about prosecuting a guy for mundane financial and tax crimes for which thousands of people have been prosecuted. This guy happens to be a former president but that is not relevant as far as the law goes.

Trump does not talk and act the way he does because he is a celebrity. Trump's behavior is mostly a product of his narcissism and his lack of decency, not his celebrity. Reagan and Schwarzenegger were both celebrities. There is reason to criticize the tenures of both, but neither behaved in office the way Trump has behaved.

The primary "powerful institution" that Trump is annoying is the media. And he is annoying the MSM because (i) he attacked the media from the very beginning of his candidacy as a political strategy; (ii) he has repeatedly accused the MSM of making stories up out of whole cloth; and (iii) he lies all the time, even about stupid things, and then responds histrionically when the MSM questions him about the lies.

Well, first off I don't know for sure he did a crime, from what I have seen it certainly seems more than possible, but I'm not even sure whats in his taxes and his financial dealings are so complicated and involve so many foreign agents and countries and possible tax codes and possible exemptions that its hard to say, especially someone who had at some point the wide legal authority of the presidency.

Having said that there are a lot of alternatives to prosecuting a tax crime that often happen. With Willie nelson there was an arrangement that involved him paying off his taxes over time even though he clearly broke the law. And there are whole heaps of cases that never get filed or get dismissed. I know that sometimes at least, even when you technically broke the law, the irs just sends you a slip that says to pay back taxes in a certain way in a certain time frame. I think we could work something out like that, especially since it would probably cost a lot of money just to incarcerate. With a good deal millions of dollars could be recovered that is more or less from foreign parties, maybe.

Nixon was quite a bit smarter than Trump. Trump is probably a better retail politician than Nixon. But in most other respects, they are strikingly similar.

You said earlier that you were very confident that Trump hadn't done anything that would satisfy your standards for prosecution.

In my opinion it actually goes into what I'm saying about over prosecution of celebrities being a trend. Let's take Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton was an extremely well qualified candidate with a track record that goes all the way back to very important connections she made at law school. Donald trump is basically a Tv host and a steak salesman during this time.
so for 40 years HRC worked with high level officials on a daily basis while Trump was pretty much selling waffles. Trump being an outsider celebrity is going to have a much less robust knowledge of how to defend himself in cases that may come up during his presidency and a much less robust group of powerful people who are willing to do what needs to be done to protect him.

Yes, thats true. What I meant was, I don't think Trump should be prosecuted for Tax Fraud even if he "may" have done it. So I don't think Tax Fraud automatically means prosecution.It certainly doesn't "mean " this if it was up to me.