What felonies? Per SCOTUS nothing he does in office is a crime. Also he can simply pardon himself.
We've been saying this stuff since 2016, and it feels like some autotherapeutic, self-convincing gibberish that a victim chained in the basement whispers over and over. And when the rapist comes kicking in the door, they be like "but, but... this ain't right..."
We should stop hypothesizing and assume he'd do the worst, because as the (recent) history shows, he'd do much worse than anyone ever expected. Because the guy is a psychopath. He doesn't care about laws, words, or ethical norms.
What the fuck are you guys even talking about? Have you not following the news of the past (not even years, months and weeks)?
He's been routinely breaking the rules.
- Two impeachments landed nowhere.
- Mueller report - at least 10 episodes of obstruction of justice, DOJ gave him not even a slap on the wrist.
- Border wall national emergency declaration.
- Executive actions and shuttering agencies. USAID, the Department of Education, CFPB, USAGM/Voice of America. Several courts ruled these actions unlawful, and what? Where's USAID today?
- Challenging election results. He openly pressured Pence to reject certified electors.
- Illegally kidnapping sitting president.
- Illegal war.
- Illegal deportations.
- National Guard deployment in Los Angeles.
- cutting Harvard's funding.
- January 6 pardons and other pardons of allies.
- Firing sitting FBI director.
This isn't even a comprehensive list. Imagining just about any other president doing any of that, walking free and keeping the power seemed inconceivable before. Check and balances clearly not fucking working! Not with this motherfucker.
For example, as far as I know the war is not technically illegal. And wars of this nature have been done by many previous Presidents.
I don't know why firing the FBI director would constitute getting past the system. Trump's the head of the executive branch after all.
Executive actions have been widely used by previous Presidents. Should they be more limited? I think so, if it was up to me I'd probably reduce the power of the Presidency in general. But Trump wouldn't be able to, for example, use an executive action to allow himself to run for a third term. If he tried, people would just laugh at him.
National Guard deployment in Los Angeles is within the President's normally agreed-on authority and did not lead to any sort of danger to democracy.
Etc.
If you're not seeing "any sort of danger to democracy", you're either deliberately blind to what's going on, or you're simply supporting the regime, in which case I see no difference.
Yes, but Nazi atrocities would not be legal in our system. And Trump does not have enough hard-core supporters to make it legal to send his political opponents to concentration camps.
>If you're not seeing "any sort of danger to democracy", you're either deliberately blind to what's going on, or you're simply supporting the regime, in which case I see no difference.
I see potential dangers to democracy coming from the Trump administration, but no serious ones. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to fight against the potential dangers, it just means that the chance that Trump will actually end democracy in the US is very low.
I'm not a Trump supporter, I just don't believe that the system is at any serious risk from Trump.
As I already pointed out, shit doesn't have to be "legal" (or otherwise) to be bad or immoral. Separating migrant kids (just one of the many examples) from their parents is not "legal", yet it has happened, it is happening now, and will continue - that's the deliberate plan for this admin.
> I just don't believe that the system is at any serious risk
I assure you, US citizens who were deported and got separated from their kids do have a completely different perspective. Democracy is essentially and practically dead in the US, at least for some categories of Americans.
Has Trump done things that are questionably legal or flat-out illegal? Yes. Has Trump ever managed to come close to overthrowing US democracy? No. None of his partial or full violations of the law have come anywhere close to overthrowing US democracy.
There is a certain poem that you should read.
Hypothesizing? He has failed to pardon people convicted in state courts already, because he doesn't have the power to do it. This isn't some untested hypothetical. He issued a pardon for Peters in Colorado and it didn't stand. Why? Because she was convicted in a state court.
Stop spewing nonsense.
dafuk you're saying? We have a nonsensical president in office and I'm pretty sure the way the midterms are seemingly going, he's not going to accept the results. You don't need to have a wild imagination, at this point it's the most sense-making assumption. We have a guy who broke the law before, breaking the law as we speak, and guaranteed to break the law again. That is not nonsense - that is at this point common sense.
What I wrote in my first comment (restated for clarity):
> Trump cannot pardon people for state crimes.
You responded suggesting that I'm just hypothesizing. Suggesting that you believe he can pardon people for state crimes.
I responded with a comment pointing out that he has tried to pardon people for state, not federal, crimes and failed. That's dafuk I'm saying. I'm not hypothesizing, he has tried to do it, and failed to do it. You're the one hypothesizing about things that are the opposite of what has happened in reality.
He does not have absolute power. Is he a terrible president? Yes. Has he committed crimes? Certainly. Is his power absolute? Again, no. You're not operating in reality if you think it is. He has been checked on numerous things during this term. Enough things? No, but he does not have absolute power. So stop acting like he does.
And that's the point! He's inflicting SO MUCH damage even without it. I don't even want to imagine what he'd do if he'd had it.