Politics Thread

[PLATO]

Conservatives, is this something you want a president to pursue? Does it sound "conservative" to you?

Nope. Real Conservatives want less government at the federal level and more power closer to the people (State and Local Level). Consolidating extensive bureaucracy into the hands of an authoritarian President is a recipe for disaster.

[BeBMan]

Not a conservative, but from the article it looks like Trump plans to fight the Deep State with Big Government.

[Geronimo]

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

Conservatives, is this something you want a president to pursue? Does it sound "conservative" to you?

[-Jrabbit]

He tried to walk his statements back as just reporting statistical frequency of groups Covid hit hardest, but he's a longtime conspiracy theory guy.

[BeBMan]

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dished out wild COVID-19 conspiracy theories this week during a press event at an Upper East Side restaurant, claiming the bug was a genetically engineered bioweapon that may have been “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.
(...)

https://nypost.com/2023/07/15/rfk-jr-says-covid-was-ethnically-targeted-to-spare-jews/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/17/robert-f-kennedy-jr-covid-condemned

[Ming]

Berz, again no proof he didn't enter the capital and not treated like those that did. Using your logic, since all he did was incite, they should arrest Trump. And no proof of 100s of agents.
and remember Trump watched and did nothing

[-Jrabbit]

Doesn't additional scrutiny increase trust in the results? He challenged the results "legally" from what I can see and his Georgia phone call was to be expected from any candidate falling just short.

1. Trump got his additional scrutiny through recounts -- and lost ground in the process. In fact, Georgia counted its votes THREE times before certifying Biden’s win. Which, according to you, should have "increased trust in the results." Talk about hypocrisy!
2. The phone call itself was legal, but the content -- such as specific request of "I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than [the 11,779 vote margin of defeat] we have, because we won the state" -- is questionable at best. A grand jury will decide whether it's actionable.
3. Another lovely Trump quote from the phone call: "So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break."
4. During the call, Trump also suggested (falsely!) that Raffensperger may have committed a criminal offense by refusing to overturn the state's election results. But you say pressuring someone to break the law (because that's what it would have taken, as the recounts and video evidence proved) is just fine because the count was close.
5. Also from Trump's call: "And the people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated." Sorry, but that semi-veiled threat is clearly asking Raffensberger to simply declare him the winner despite 2 months of recounts and lawsuits that disagree.
6. When that didn't work, he went schoolyard bully on Raffensberger: "...they’re going around playing you and laughing at you behind your back, Brad, whether you know it or not, they’re laughing at you..."
7. Later, he went to straight-up threats: "So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election and it’s not fair to take it away from us like this. And it’s going to be very costly in many ways."
8. More threats and blowhard braggadocio: "But your numbers aren’t right. They’re really wrong and they’re really wrong, Brad. And I know this phone call is going nowhere other than, other than ultimately, you know — Look ultimately, I win, okay? ... Because you guys are so wrong...You treated the population of Georgia so badly. You, between you and your governor, who was down at 21, he was down 21 points. And like a schmuck, I endorsed him and he got elected, but I will tell you, he is a disaster. And he knows, I can’t imagine that people are so angry in Georgia, I can’t imagine he’s ever getting elected again I’ll tell you that much right now. But why wouldn’t you want to find the right answer, Brad, instead of keep saying that the numbers are right? Cause those numbers are so wrong.
9. The phone call was one full hour long -- most of which was Trump pressuring Raffensberger to simply change the numbers on his (Trump's) say-so -- thinking his words would go no further (like a similar but unrecorded call he made to Arizona). That does not sound like a simple request to any reasonable observer.
10. Let's not forget that Georgia is a red state with a GOP governor and Secy of State.

If you want to relive the entire phone call, especially the juicy parts with Trump making claims all over the map, changing his numbers constantly -- claiming he won the Georgia by 300,000, 400K, and half a million at various points -- here's the transcript: https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/03/polit...ipt/index.html

Then, there's today's news:

The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a long shot legal bid from former President Donald Trump to essentially shut down the Fulton County criminal probe into his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia.

The court said in a five-page opinion that Trump hadn’t demonstrated the “extraordinary circumstances” that would require their intervention at this time. Trump had asked the Georgia justices to throw out the wide array of evidence collected so far in the Fulton County investigation and to block state prosecutors from ever using that material in any future criminal or civil proceedings.

“(Trump) has not shown that this case presents one of those extremely rare circumstances in which this Court’s original jurisdiction should be invoked, and therefore, the petition is dismissed,” the ruling said.

The decision was unanimous. Eight of the nine members of the Georgia Supreme Court were appointed by Republican governors.

So here we are, 986 days after the election, and Trump is still trying to litigate the result that only he and his personal lapdogs won't admit that he clearly lost. Similarly, he's doing the same thing with the Presidental records case. Clearly, he's just trying to run out the clock in hopes he can get back into the White House and stay out of jail.

This grift is so transparently self-serving and so full of already disproven lies, it beggars belief that anyone can't see it for what it is. But apparently, you're just fine with putting this silver-spoon, self-serving assh0le back in the White House.

Incredible.

OK, that's it for me this week. Back to work.

[Berzerker]

I'm NOT saying he didn't egg on the crowd.
I am saying PROVE HE WAS A GOVERNMENT AGENT and THAT THERE WERE 100's OF GOVERNMENT AGENTS spurring on the crowds. There is absolutely NO PROOF of either. All you are posting is just more opinions and wild theories.
I would love to see proof that we what all saw on video was really Dems trying to make the MAGA crowd look bad.
Frankly, the Maga crowd doesn't need any help in looking bad.

But they got help just like the Michigan kidnappers and Epps did much more than that, he told a man to leave a weapon behind when they go in or risk getting shot by the cops. That proves he was planning a breach shortly before he whispered into the ear of another man when they shoved the barrier aside and rushed the capital. He was on the FBI's list of people wanted for Jan 6 and then removed from the list and the Democrats assured us he's clean. Now why is that? The Democrats are throwing the proverbial book at people for wandering around the capital while defending this guy.

As for the other govt assets, I dont imagine many were told to incite or help a riot. The ones with connections to the Proud Boys - like Epps - were probably using their anger. Course after BLM maybe they thought riots were an acceptable form of protest. I doubt 1/6 would have happened if not for over 500 BLM riots before the election. I would like to know how many assets were on hand and if they were told to stand down and observe or help the cops. How many undercover or confidential sources? The added variable being the division of labor in the secret service between Trump and the capital. Hell, there must have been thousands of people they could have called upon to end the riot.

The people in charge of security should testify publicly under oath

[-Jrabbit]

The Dems are not defending Epps.
Epps, a private citizen, is suing Fox News and Tucker Carlson for ruining his and his wife's lives.
Try to pay attention.

[-Jrabbit]

It's amazing how all the Trump fans here fail to understand that they are the deranged ones.
This lack of self-awareness might even be called a "syndrome"...

[Broken_Erika]

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

Donald Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Joe Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since FDR’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.

“Our current executive branch,” McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Trump and his advisers are making no secret of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website, describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.

The strategy in talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” before the election, Vought said, is to “plant a flag” — both to shift the debate and to later be able to claim a mandate. He said he was delighted to see few of Trump’s Republican primary rivals defend the norm of Justice Department independence after the former president openly attacked it.

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, said in a statement that the former president has “laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.” He added, “Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all.”

The two driving forces of this effort to reshape the executive branch are Trump’s own campaign policy shop and a well-funded network of conservative groups, many of which are populated by former senior Trump administration officials who would most likely play key roles in any second term.

Vought and McEntee are involved in Project 2025, a $22 million presidential transition operation that is preparing policies, personnel lists and transition plans to recommend to any Republican who may win the 2024 election. The transition project, the scale of which is unprecedented in conservative politics, is led by the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that has shaped the personnel and policies of Republican administrations since the Reagan presidency.

That work at Heritage dovetails with plans on the Trump campaign website to expand presidential power that were drafted primarily by two of Trump’s advisers, Vincent Haley and Ross Worthington, with input from other advisers, including Stephen Miller, the architect of the former president’s hard-line immigration agenda.

Some elements of the plans had been floated when Trump was in office but were impeded by internal concerns that they would be unworkable and could lead to setbacks. And for some veterans of Trump’s turbulent White House who came to question his fitness for leadership, the prospect of removing guardrails and centralizing even greater power over government directly in his hands sounded like a recipe for mayhem.

“It would be chaotic,” said John Kelly, Trump’s second White House chief of staff. “It just simply would be chaotic, because he’d continually be trying to exceed his authority but the sycophants would go along with it. It would be a nonstop gunfight with the Congress and the courts.”

The agenda being pursued has deep roots in the decadeslong effort by conservative legal thinkers to undercut what has become known as the administrative state — agencies that enact regulations aimed at keeping the air and water clean and food, drugs and consumer products safe, but that cut into business profits.

Its legal underpinning is a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory.

The legal theory rejects the idea that the government is composed of three separate branches with overlapping powers to check and balance each other. Instead, the theory’s adherents argue that Article 2 of the Constitution gives the president complete control of the executive branch, so Congress cannot empower agency heads to make decisions or restrict the president’s ability to fire them. Reagan administration lawyers developed the theory as they sought to advance a deregulatory agenda.

“The notion of independent federal agencies or federal employees who don’t answer to the president violates the very foundation of our democratic republic,” said Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, adding that the contributors to Project 2025 are committed to “dismantling this rogue administrative state.”

Personal power has always been a driving force for Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Trump made the remark in reference to his claimed ability to directly fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia inquiry, which primed his hostility toward law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He also tried to get a subordinate to have Mueller ousted, but was defied.

Early in Trump’s presidency, his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, promised a “deconstruction of the administrative state.” But Trump installed people in other key roles who ended up telling him that more radical ideas were unworkable or illegal. In the final year of his presidency, he told aides he was fed up with being constrained by subordinates.

Now, Trump is laying out a far more expansive vision of power in any second term. And, in contrast with his disorganized transition after his surprise 2016 victory, he now benefits from a well-funded policymaking infrastructure, led by former officials who did not break with him after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

One idea the people around Trump have developed centers on bringing independent agencies under his thumb.

Congress created these specialized technocratic agencies inside the executive branch and delegated to them some of its power to make rules for society. But it did so on the condition that it was not simply handing off that power to presidents to wield like kings — putting commissioners atop them whom presidents appoint but generally cannot fire before their terms end, while using its control of their budgets to keep them partly accountable to lawmakers as well. (Agency actions are also subject to court review.)

Presidents of both parties have chafed at the agencies’ independence. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose New Deal created many of them, endorsed a proposal in 1937 to fold them all into Cabinet departments under his control, but Congress did not enact it.

Later presidents sought to impose greater control over nonindependent agencies Congress created, like the Environmental Protection Agency, which is run by an administrator whom a president can remove at will. For example, President Ronald Reagan issued executive orders requiring nonindependent agencies to submit proposed regulations to the White House for review. But overall, presidents have largely left the independent agencies alone.

Trump’s allies are preparing to change that, drafting an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review. Trump endorsed the idea on his campaign website, vowing to bring them “under presidential authority.”

Such an order was drafted in Trump’s first term — and blessed by the Justice Department — but never issued amid internal concerns. Some of the concerns were over how to carry out reviews for agencies that are headed by multiple commissioners and subject to administrative procedures and open-meetings laws, as well as over how the market would react if the order chipped away at the Federal Reserve’s independence, people familiar with the matter said.

The Federal Reserve was ultimately exempted in the draft executive order, but Trump did not sign it before his presidency ended. If Trump and his allies get another shot at power, the independence of the Federal Reserve — an institution Trump publicly railed at as president — could be up for debate. Notably, the Trump campaign website’s discussion of bringing independent agencies under presidential control is silent on whether that includes the Fed.

Asked whether presidents should be able to order interest rates lowered before elections, even if experts think that would hurt the long-term health of the economy, Vought said that would have to be worked out with Congress. But “at the bare minimum,” he said, the Federal Reserve’s regulatory functions should be subject to White House review.

“It’s very hard to square the Fed’s independence with the Constitution,” Vought said.

Other former Trump administration officials involved in the planning said there would also probably be a legal challenge to the limits on a president’s power to fire heads of independent agencies. Trump could remove an agency head, teeing up the question for the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court in 1935 and 1988 upheld the power of Congress to shield some executive branch officials from being fired without cause. But after justices appointed by Republicans since Reagan took control, it has started to erode those precedents.

Peter L. Strauss, professor emeritus of law at Columbia University and a critic of the strong version of the unitary executive theory, argued that it is constitutional and desirable for Congress, in creating and empowering an agency to perform some task, to also include some checks on the president’s control over officials “because we don’t want autocracy” and to prevent abuses.

“The regrettable fact is that the judiciary at the moment seems inclined to recognize that the president does have this kind of authority,” he said. “They are clawing away agency independence in ways that I find quite unfortunate and disrespectful of congressional choice.”

Trump has also vowed to impound funds, or refuse to spend money appropriated by Congress. After Nixon used the practice to aggressively block agency spending he was opposed to, on water pollution control, housing construction and other issues, Congress banned the tactic.

On his campaign website, Trump declared that presidents have a constitutional right to impound funds and said he would restore the practice — though he acknowledged it could result in a legal battle.

Trump and his allies also want to transform the civil service — government employees who are supposed to be nonpartisan professionals and experts with protections against being fired for political reasons.

The former president views the civil service as a den of “deep staters” who were trying to thwart him at every turn, including by raising legal or pragmatic objections to his immigration policies, among many other examples. Toward the end of his term, his aides drafted an executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” that removed employment protections from career officials whose jobs were deemed linked to policymaking.

Trump signed the order, which became known as Schedule F, near the end of his presidency, but Biden rescinded it. Trump has vowed to immediately reinstitute it in a second term.

Critics say he could use it for a partisan purge. But James Sherk, a former Trump administration official who came up with the idea and now works at the America First Policy Institute — a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials — argued it would only be used against poor performers and people who actively impeded the elected president’s agenda.

“Schedule F expressly forbids hiring or firing based on political loyalty,” Sherk said. “Schedule F employees would keep their jobs if they served effectively and impartially.”

Trump himself has characterized his intentions rather differently — promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.

“We will demolish the deep state,” Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-allies-forge-plans-increase-114639311.html

[Ming]

I'm NOT saying he didn't egg on the crowd.
I am saying PROVE HE WAS A GOVERNMENT AGENT and THAT THERE WERE 100's OF GOVERNMENT AGENTS spurring on the crowds. There is absolutely NO PROOF of either. All you are posting is just more opinions and wild theories.
I would love to see proof that we what all saw on video was really Dems trying to make the MAGA crowd look bad.
Frankly, the Maga crowd doesn't need any help in looking bad.

[Berzerker]

"We Need to go into the capital" - Ray Epps

"Why wasn't he arrested" - Tucker Carlson

"Tucker Carlson is promoting a conspiracy theory" - Media

"I'm suing him" - Ray Epps

https://www.dailywire.com/news/ray-epps-told-nephew-he-orchestrated-january-6

“I was in the front with a few others. I also orchestrated it,” he said.

Investigators pressed Epps to explain his wording.

“I just meant that I got — you have to understand our relationship, uncle-nephew. We hunt together. We fun with each other [sic]. We do that kind of stuff,” he said. “What I meant by ‘orchestrate,’ I helped get people there.”

He claims to be a peacemaker but they have video of him whispering into another man's ear seconds before a few men push the barrier out of the way and he runs up behind them like infantry breaching a wall. And he claims he thought the building was open to the public lol.

[-Jrabbit]

Since you seem to love a good game of Whataboutism: How about The Donald literally talking about wanting to fvck his own daughter? After cheating on all his wives and divorcing them. Oh, and hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein. Creepy enough for you?

[-Jrabbit]

So you're giving Trump a free pass on asking GA (and likely AZ) to "find" the EXACT NUMBER of votes he needs?
Let's see what the Georgia grand jury says.

I won't even dignify your revisionist history of the 2000 election with a rebuttal beyond these words: Roger Stone's Brooks Brothers Riot.