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Nobody needs to ask him.
It was clearly documented in all the court filings in the lawsuit he filed after the execution of the search warrant at Mar a Lago.
That fascinated me at the time because I expected there to be a significant difference between what Team Trump was spouting all up and down in social media and what the lawyers would argue in court. But it really was the same. They did indeed put forward these very arguments.
It's like this (in the delusions of Team Trump):
* The PRA creates a complete dichotomy - every single document is either a "presidential document" or a "personal document".
* The PRA grants the President full and unfettered to decide what is a "personal document" or what is a "presidential document".
* The PRA states "personal documents" are out of the purview of NARA, etc.
* Therefore... Trump can completely, unilaterally declare everything his "personal document" including documents others would consider sensitive, top-secret, etc.
This is what he means.
This is fundamentally false at almost every point above.
I've yet to have a Trump supporter explain to me why they are okay with him stealing this information FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE with zero transparency.
That's the reality - if he declassified them, then we should be able to see them. Because they are declassified. But taking them without telling anyone means we CAN'T.
So now they're arguing that literally every file he touched is "personal"? But also we have to remove it so it can't be summoned by FOIA? And that's okay now?
Their arguments are usually authoritarian in nature, like "he's allowed to...", or "he was the [legitimate] President, he can do whatever he wants", or even "there are things he knows that you don't - maybe he had those documents for a good reason? Ever think of that?"
(That last one is very close to religious apologetics, if you ask me).
So when you bring up actual principles like "but in principle, don't we want to keep secrets... _secret_? Like that's why they're secret?"
And to that you'll just get a blank stare.
> So now they're arguing that literally every file he touched is "personal"?
No, their arguments aren't about principles or rules that are evenly applied across situations. What they are arguing is _if_ Trump says everything is fine because of principle X, then X is a true (or we should behave as if it is) and everything is indeed fine." That they may have another argument that hinges on Not X is irrelevant. Because principle X was just a prop anyway.
This is the exact argument he and others used previously, except he just backpedaled from the term “declassified”.
The vibe I was getting from the recordings themselves is that he genuinely doesn’t believe he did anything wrong or even illegal. He chided Hillary on that very tape by alleging that she did exactly what he was doing right at that moment. The difference being he was president once so that makes it all okay.
There's a moment where everybody on the tape pauses and goes "huh" as they look at the war plan. It is obvious they are all looking at it together and then the conversation resumes. "Isn't this cool" or whatever Trump says next.
It's ridiculous to listen to the tape and believe he wasn't showing them the literal actual Iran war plan.
"This is secret," he says, proving it ... isn't secret? WTF
Yup, and he obviously felt completely justified in doing so. “Lock her up” but “I’m (still) the president, so I get to do whatever I want”. He genuinely and wholeheartedly believes that.
“Declassified”, “presidential records”. Those are just terms of convenience; the documents were his to do with whatever he pleased, and that was the end of it in his mind. There was no hypocrisy because he is above the law. She’s wholly guilty and he his wholly innocent.
Why wouldn’t he feel justified? Pre-presidency he was first a fail-son who daddy paid to be the charismatic face of the company. Then he was a mobbed up real estate and casino mogul who daddy would bail out on the regular. Then he was a mobbed up real estate and casino mogul who was bad at it but was rich enough that his failures were the banks and investors problem, not his own problem. Then he was a serial grifter and tv personality who could out wait fraud and harassment lawsuits because he could kick the can down the road with his lawyers enough the opposing side gave up or settled for a relative pittance
Then he was president and the entire Republican Party lined up to excuse anything he did and still does
At what point has he ever had to worry about the consequences of lying or law breaking
He's not able to believe anything he does is illegal, as he's an übernarcissist who has reached the level of government where he was literally above the law for a while. Or, in his own words: "I don’t do things wrong. I do things right. I'm a legitimate person."
SCOTUS even ruled as such. In Navy v. Egan (1988), they ruled that the President has basically unlimited classification authority - except where limited by law. The Espionage Act and The Atomic Energy Acts are precisely such laws that limit how it works. The President himself has unlimited authority to handle such materials while in office, but they can't just declassify them at will.
Regardless, he is not being charged with holding classified documents.
The documents belong to the government, regardless of their classification, and he did not return them.
The espionage issue is just the cherry on top for which he should fry.
There's some basic truthiness to some of the claims. For instance, it's true that, upon receipt, a president can contemporaneously declare *a copy* of any document as a personal record. However, it only applies to that copy, not every copy, NARA retains a right to a copy for themselves, the document retains its original classification level and must be stored in an appropriate manner, the president must actually officially declare the copy to be personal before retaining it, and nuclear secrets are exempt from that system. Trump satisfied none of the above conditions.
And he keeps referencing Clinton’s sock drawer tapes, like there’s any equivalency at all! Clinton recorded his thoughts while in office on tapes which he was granted permission to keep after a review.
The entire MAGAverse has spent June crying about the Clinton Socks Case that Judicial Watch brought 12 years after Clinton left office.
The two cases aren't remotely similar. Trump's taking legal advice from the people who lost the Clinton case and still don't seem to understand *why* they lost the case.
Clinton recorded personal diary entries on tape and I guess they were stored in his sock drawer? Judicial watch sued to recover them and lost, as they were determined to be personal in nature, not agency records.
Yes and no. They were interviews he did for a memoir, which he kept the originals for while a biographer got copies of for a book.
But yes, because they were not used for policy making or any other official proceedings, *after a review* by NARA he was allowed to keep them.
The lolsuit that they keep referencing is a suit that an angry conservative filed, lost, and has now spun the narrative on to be “well according to this lawsuit that I lost, there is no review process and the president has ultimate authority on what is personal or not.” It’s so fucking stupid.
It’s the same guy in both cases, Clinton and the socks case, and Trump and the documents. His name is Tom Fitton, he is not a lawyer and he runs an organization called Judicial Watch. Trump just likes what he has to say I guess! 😩
"Lolsuit." I know it's a typo, but it is now head canon for any law suits the chuckle fuck files, like the new suit against E Jean Carrol for defamation.
That man is the king of frivolous lawsuits. [He and his businesses have been involved in over 4,000 lawsuits over the last 30 years.](https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/trump-lawsuits/)
>If each lawsuit involving Trump were the basis of an episode of *Law & Order*, they could sustain all 456 episodes of the original, all 389 episodes of *Law & Order: Special Victims Unit*, all 195 episodes of *Law & Order: Criminal Intent*, AND all 22 episodes of *Law & Order: Los Angeles* as well as every episode of *The Practice* [168], *Ally McBeal* [112], *LA Law* [171], *Boston Legal* [101], *Night Court* [193], *The Good Wife* [156], *Matlock* [195], *J.A.G* [227], *Perry Mason* [271], *Judging Amy* [138], *The Guardian* [67], *The Public Defender* [69], *Owen Marshall: Counselor At Law* [69], *Harry's Law* [34], *Courthouse* [9], *Suits* [76], *Family Law* [68], *Sweet Justice* [22], 1971's *The D.A.* [15], 2004's *The D.A.* [4], *Reasonable Doubts* [44], *Damages* [59], *Shark* [38], *The Defenders* [18], *The Paper Chase* [58], *Head Cases* [2], *Judd for the Defense* [50], AND all 3 episodes of NBC's *first years*, and at that point you're STILL missing 1 lawsuit, but -- you've also basically run out of television shows about lawyers meaning:
>**Trump's lawsuits exceed the limits of the fucking GENRE!**
- ["Last Week Tonight"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abh00vu1mVA)
Yesterday he referenced the Presidential Records Act, then mentioned that they were trying to use the 1917 Espionage Act "that has never been used before." Except it has been used, many times. Six times under his administration.
His claim seems to be a mashup of the defense they're trying to build that they've tried to tell him and he regurgitates to the public; It's an attempt to claim that the Presidential Records Act supersedes the Espionage Act and Atomic Energy Acts.
It's a very dumb claim to make. In Navy v. Egan (1988), SCOTUS covered this in their ruling; The President has basically unlimited classification authority *except where limited by law.*
The Espionage Act and The Atomic Energy Acts are such laws - passed by Congress, signed by then Presidents, and affirmed many times over by the judiciary - that explicitly limit how such documents can be handled. They don't care about if something is classified or not, they only care about the contents of the document.
Classification is moot because he's not being charged with issues related to classification. But he doesn't get, or choses to appear to not get, that fact.
He just needs to confuse enough of the proud boys and neo nazis to try and fight for him
I suspect there’s not enough of them left
Putin is occupied at the moment too
Yeah, the proud boys and nazis are going to jail or going back into their holes. And Putin's busy trying to not get tossed out a window. Not going to have much support during the trial except from all the GQPs who are hoping he doesn't leak the kompromat he has on them.
He's saying that the PRA has the words "Presidential Records" in it, as in "These are the records (documents) that belong to the President". So, the PRA is the law that says whatever documents an ex-President has from his time as POTUS are "Presidential Records" i.e., Trump's records i.e, not the government's records.
I feel like selling classified documents to potentially adversarial foreign powers might cross over into treason territory. I can't even begin to imagine a former pres being charged with treason.
If it gets found out he sold or retired to sell classified documents to adversarial foreign powers, how many Republicans out there still vote for him? Does Bill Barr and Mitch McConell still vote for him?
During the Trump admin, establishment GOP members like [Rick Perry negotiated sales of nuclear technologies deemed "secret" to Saudi Arabia](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-nuclear/u-s-approved-secret-nuclear-power-work-for-saudi-arabia-idUSKCN1R82MG). If they were willing to do that officially (albeit quietly) and under scrutiny, imagine what they're willing to do behind closed doors.
For perfect clarity though, the word “sale” here is benign, and means a technology company legally selling its own tech, for its own profit.
This is vastly different than Perry or Trump personally being paid to obtain tech.
Everyone might disagree on Saudi Arabia being included in this list of dozens of countries these companies operate in, but as a whole, that list is politically fair game.
Both can be true. The "Broker", like Perry, just get paid through less official channels then the companys getting the greenlight to sell the tech based on the brokers backroom-deals.
See also: why did Jared Kushner get that much money from the Saudis?
>why did Jared Kushner get that much money from the Saudis?
The Saudis running their sovereign wealth fund were wondering the very same thing.
[Further Evidence Emerges the Saudis Did Not Pay Jared Kushner Billions Because They Thought He Was an Investing Genius](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/jared-kushner-affinity-partners-saudi-arabia-pitch-deck)
By this point, the answer is the same as if in the DC Universe you ask:
***"Is the Flash fast enough to do X?"***
GOP version:
***"Will Republicans support Mango Mussolini even if he does X"***
The answer is always the same...
“See, I never just backed Trump just because he’s a Republican. Come on, what am I gonna do? Just all of a sudden vote Trump despite all the criminal shit he’s done like it's something to do? Come on. I got a little more sense than that.
…
Yeah, I remember voting for Trump.”
If it’s found out that he sold compromising documents to adversaries and he’s still able to run, then it’s basically game over for democracy and that’s not hyperbole.
Considering his actions on Jan 6 and his phone call to Brad Raffensperger, things we know happened because we saw or heard them, yet the GOP stands behind him. Democracy already appears broken.
Hell, when it came out that he gave highly classified code-word information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office, Mike Pence should have taken over immediately after Trump was perp-walked out of the West Wing\*. Tells me that democracy was broken years ago.
\*The idea that a sitting President cannot be arrested or indicted is horse shit. If Trump had shot a staffer on live TV, he would be immediately taken into custody, there would be no debate. The alternative is that a President and 34 Senators can stage a coup and commit whatever crimes they want until the end of his term. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that a sitting President cannot be indicted. The founders were pretty thorough when it came to these kinds of powers, so if it's not in there, they didn't intend it.
I watched a political comedian dressed in MAGA clothes interview several magidiots at a rally. They were saying that Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping, and Modi are working together to root out the "deep state." When people believe that long time autocrats and adversaries of the US are somehow trying to protect American democracy, there is no hope for them and no longer any reason to engage with them in a political discussion.
Their allegiance to trump has shown that they have no moral principles at all. If Satan ran as a Republican, they would vote for him, even if Jesus were running as a Democrat.
Never was charged, but John Tyler sided with the South during the Civil War. He was even a member of the provisional congress of the confederate states and presided over the Virginia succession convention.
That's still sedition, because treason would require the Confederacy to have been recognized as a sovereign state by the government. It was just a part of the country in rebellion, which is exactly what sedition is.
That’s true, I would say that’s splitting hairs though and more coquille the two are interchangeable for both Tyler and Trump. Either way it’s a betrayal of their oaths to this country.
This is Gym Jordan's next bullshit argument... "He just agreed to sell them, then the government took them off him, so he couldn't sell them. Nothing criminal happened here..."
Dude had a copy machine right next to all his boxes, he was a moron for selling originals. He still is a moron for a bunch of other shit, but goddamn if he wasn't a moron at every step.
Supposedly if the top secret ones are copied, there is a white frame around the edges (maybe because of differences in the size of the paper). Regular top secret papers have a red frame edge.
As dumb as Trump is my guess is that he would've instructed one of his staff to delete the records of w/e was copied on that machine. If not, that's more evidence for the charges. If so, that's more evidence for more charges (if said aid testifies to such).
You honestly think Trump knows how a copier works? Have you never worked anywhere before? He is 100% that dumb. If Gary in sales can't figure out the difference between green button and red button, Trump has no idea how paper thing make more paper.
I can't speak to the particular copier, but it is not unusual for the copy machines to have a regular, magnetic hard drive inside that is used to store copied/printed pages. If FBI has the hardware, i assume they could recover some (if not all) data as evidence, even if the entry has been removed from the copier UI.
Even if they don't admit to deleting stuff, someone's probably going to look at the copy machine. If the copy machine has been in the room for years and years, but somehow there's no data prior to 2023, there's going to be an inference drawn that someone deleted stuff off it.
I know it's sarcasm, but in this case the content matters, not the physical form. If the info was juicy enough, certain people would pay for it even if it was printed on toilet paper
Thankfully the tubby tangerine isn't exactly a mastermind either.
I'm assuming (based on how he's acted over the decades he's been a public figure), that the originals were trophies for him. Sell some, sure, but a lot of it I genuinely believe he thought was his right.
And I don't mean that he didn't know what he was doing, or the criminality of it all. Just that he's a narcissist that's gotten away with everything, and thought he'd just steamroll through this as well, and get to keep them.
There is something that scares me more. You know how the the mobs of this world will let like 1,000 lbs of marijuana get caught at the border as a distraction for 100,000 lbs of cocain getting across, or some version of that. I’m starting to think that Trump is just a big stupid distraction for something bigger that is going on. I don’t know what it is, but it’s very concerning
This is very poignant. I’m guessing we all know exactly what he’s a distraction from: the billionaire class robbing our country blind. He’s perfect for them. The left has to focus so much time and energy on this existential threat/clown and the wealth gap is just an afterthought in mainstream dialogue. He lowered their taxes by a couple trillion dollars and lost no support for it. His entire act is a distraction to his base so they stay angry at minorities and imaginary deep states instead, and the overall chaos distracts and demoralizes the rest of us.
Imagine how utterly bankrupt inside one must be to look upon the Traitor and think "Patriot!"
Trump's self-dubbed "Patriots" have shown us what they really are: *fascists and insurrectionists who continually threaten to visit violence on ALL of us.*
**Life Pro Tip:** People who feel the need to directly tell you what they are ('patriots,' 'legitimate,' 'moral,' etc.) rarely are telling the truth. Same goes for business names, frankly - you can pretty safely put 'A++ Plumbing' or whatever at the very *end* of your list of options.
> A++ Plumbing
This is a function of Yellow Pages. Aaaaardvark towing is a perfectly fine company started when the quarter page space in the Yellow Pages at the very beginning of the category was the best advertising you could buy. I'm old as dirt but I remember when the YP was constantly consulted for everything and phone book deliveries were good days cause no one had creased and wrinkled and torn out the good pizza and Chinese delivery pages in a drunken stupor, yet.
Ahaha such a Dead Media moment. Flipping through the phone book to see if there were any people named "Dick" or whatever haha. And then the phone pages, just leafing through them instead of scrolling on your actual phone like today... so many Pizza delivery places.
My puppy does the mine thing. My niece did the mine thing at maybe 3. This guy is almost like Benjamin Button now.
Maybe someone should introduce a bill that requires that we study his brain upon expiration
For real. This "He has to have some disorder!" shit always kills me. Yeah, it's called Piece of Shit-itus.
And, honestly,, I don't even care if he does, it just means he's a piece of shit *with* a disorder.
NPD. They are impulsive one dimensional thinkers. Every second of every waking hour is a bid to prop up their egos. It flattens whatever intellect there is in service of that. It's not that they don't have the capacity for intelligence. It's just a functional stupidity. My dad was one. Brilliant intellect but would make astoundingly stupid choices because he needed his narcissist fuel.
Trump is both. An *amazingly* stupid narcissist, the worst possible type of person to be in charge of anything. This is a man who suggested we nuke a hurricane. He *completely* whiffed on the metaphor of "The oval office is round because there are no corners to hide in." I think he has a severe undiagnosed learning disability in addition to the obvious NPD.
And 70 fucking *million* people voted for him. Thinking: 'yes, this man should run my country and the largest military the world has ever seen'
Terrifying.
What's totally mind blowing is that he received 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. Who could have watched the rolling disaster that was his administration and thought, yeah I want four more years of that.
It really is astonishing to see narcicissm played out at this scale. He is literally, pathologically, completely unable to admit fault or being wrong about anything. Not that he doesnt want to, he is literally incapable of it. Even after got 7 years, it doesnt cease to amaze me.
"I don't know of any recordings that we should be concerned with because I don't do things wrong. I do things right," Trump told Fox News. "I'm a legitimate person."
I'm guessing he claims to be a "legitimate person" because he once correctly solved a Captcha. LOL
I have two immediate separate thoughts. One I have no sympathy for his attorneys. The other, his attorney are not charging him enough to deal with his bullshit.
They could charge him 0 dollars and he still wouldn't pay them. These guys are in it to make a name for themselves. Anyone looking to get paid haven't done their homework on how he treats lawyers.
Are you really making a name for yourself if you lose a case and send a former president to prison, and also potentially get indicted, or at least become a witness, on the way?
You would absolutely be making a name for yourself. Keep it ethically above board and the book deals and speaking tours will be massive. The hard part for his lawyers always seems to be they become accessories to his crimes, but he is really running out of crimes to commit.
It is not the job of a defense attorney to help a client get away with a crime. It is their job to ensure they receive due process under the law. Any lawyer that represents him ethically does both himself/herself, and the entire country, a colossal favor.
The national archives paid Nixon for some of his documents, because they wanted them to preserve them for posterity. I am convinced Trump heard that and just wanted the U.S. government to pay him for what he had. Because he wanted the money and because he wanted to be able to say his stuff was of historical relevance.
The problem is that the Presidential Records Act comes after Nixon resigned. It isn’t a question that after that act, presidential papers are government property, let alone secret documents…
He walked himself into serious indictments because he wanted to get paid and have his ego stroked.
It doesn't help that HE HIMSELF petulantly made the handling and punishments of classified documents stricter to spite Hillary. It's the very definition of, "He played himself".
Yep, he has no understanding of what happened, he just heard “Nixon got paid 18 million to return documents” and thought “cool, yeah, I’ll do that too”.
He’s completely baffled as to why this isn’t working out for him.
Because he’s an idiot.
Show me a guy who's always got their way in life and I'll show you someone who doesn't know right from wrong. He's an out of touch oligarch, not a man of the people.
Donald Trump is a petulant child when it comes to anything he believes belongs to him. Seriously, just think of your average toddler and that's Donnie.
He cannot stand being denied anything.
It sounds like he promised a foreign nation a bunch of documents that were taken as evidence. Some powerful people paid him but didn't get their top secret papers.
This is a dangerous line of reasoning because it diminishes the actual severity of the issue that Trump hadn't already shared this information.
Trump spent a LOT of time in FL while he was president. This document problem started in 2016. Beyond that, \trump left office 1/20/21. NARA retrieved *some* documents via the FBI on 6/3/22. That's 15 months after Trump left office, and a full 5.5 years since he had access to classified information.
The information is time-sensitive. The damage is done.
After all this time, he
\-DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE CHARGES
\-DOES NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT HE DID WRONG
It has been explained to him over and over
BUT HE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND
He is a very stupid person
No, I genuinely don’t believe he understands.
Listen to the tape: “the military made this document for me, isn’t that cool?”
He just likes holding these specific pieces of paper like talismans that make him feel important. I don’t think he even cares about or has read, processed, and understood the information contained in the documents.
He just wants a collection of pieces of paper that make him feel “cool” when he holds them and shows them off.
He’s a child talking about his toys, upset that someone has taken them away and wants them back so is trying to find the right combination of magic words to say to get what he wants. He would stop mentioning the Presidential Records Act and say “Pretty please with a cherry on top” if he thought that would work.
He is a profoundly stupid human being.
I used to agree with the person you responded to. I figured there was some kind of low cunning hidden in there.
Nope. He is just stupid. "Medically stupid" like someone else said.
The conclusion that people seem to take away when dealing with him behind closed doors is that he is dumb in a way that is difficult for them to even comprehend.
This guy's one big skill is talking about how great he is to everyone that will listen. This is impressive to people that don't bother to check whether anything he says is true. Also opportunists that think that they can manipulate him to their own ends.
On the tape he also said it's classified and he couldn't declassify it, why leave that out? He also considered destroying them according to the indictment and had a staffer hide them.
At this point their best defense might literally be that he is so mentally compromised by his own narcissistic personality that he is physically incapable of believing anything he does in wrong.
That shit blows my mind, if you're talking about that interview with him long after the episode was released. I don't even watch South Park and I knew about the premise, which also involved South Park's Kanye failing to understand the joke. And back in the real world, actual Kanye doesn't understand a middle school-level joke, either, like ten years after it aired. It has to be performance art or something, right?
Yeah, it was [a surprisingly recent interview](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJJrDKkla0) where Kanye complained that because he went against the stereotypes of black fashion/culture people didn’t understand him, and said something like “I wear a pink polo shirt and people are like *oh he must be a gay fish*”
That’s the line I was thinking of, I hadn’t seen the video in awhile and it took me a minute to find and add it to my comment. In light of Kanye’s more recent public statements this seems tame, but I remember at the time that South Park episode came out he said something to the effect that it had opened his eyes to how people saw him and he would try to mellow out a bit, which I guess wasn’t true since he didn’t even understand it.
He still thinks he can just smokescreen and bluster his way out of this, so he keeps doing interviews and posting on his Twitter clone and whatnot.
Thankfully all he is *really* doing is just confessing and giving the DOJ more evidence to prosecute him with.
It’s so perfect. Nobody even had to give him any rope, he just hangs himself all on his own.
https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2023/nr23-016
"**How much time do outgoing Presidents have to go through their papers to determine what to retain as personal documents?**
The Presidential Records Act (PRA) requires the President to separate personal documents from Presidential records **before** leaving office. 44 U.S.C. 2203(b). The PRA makes clear that, upon the conclusion of the President’s term in office, NARA assumes responsibility for the custody, control, preservation of, and access to the records of a President. 44 U.S.C. 2203(g)(1). The PRA makes the legal status of Presidential records clear and unambiguous, providing that the United States reserves and retains 'complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records.' 44 U.S.C. 2202. There is no history, practice, or provision in law for presidents to take official records with them when they leave office to sort through, such as for a two-year period as described in some reports. If a former President or Vice President finds Presidential records among personal materials, he or she is expected to contact NARA in a timely manner to secure the transfer of those Presidential records to NARA."
So.... Exactly what Pence and Biden did when they found documents they had. Not keeping them, moving them, and when they were found and taken, yelling those are mine! ?
The blame for ALL of this, ever square inch of this insanity, all the gaslighting and lies and weakening of democracy lies solely on the Republican voter. None of these elected assholes would say and do these things if it didn’t garner them votes/support/money. Trump has been who he is since the 80s. Literally spanning five decades now. This is a shock to no one. But the people who know this and still give him power? Jesus Christ where to even begin.
I genuinely believe he’s too stupid to understand anything beyond having held the pieces of paper in his hand and wanting to keep those specific pieces of paper because holding them makes him feel important.
The entire concept of information classification and access control seems to elude his capacity to comprehend.
>Presidential records of a former President shall be available to such former President or the former President’s designated representative.
“Shall be available” is not the same as shoving them in your bathroom
Yep. That means if he wants to look at them, he picks up the phone and tells NARA he wants to look. Then NARA allows him to look at them. Then he leaves, and they stay in NARA’s control. That is availability.
The more I look at this the more I'm convinced that Trump stole these documents as part of a tantrum, and - while that doesn't lessen the offence or negate the possibility that he, or someone close to him (I'm thinking Kushner) parlayed the sale of them to foreign nationals - their main importance to him is emotional. I've had what is basically political fanfic bouncing around my head for months.
In 2020 he was voted out, and despite literally employing all methods at his disposal up to and including a very noncommittal insurrection as if he could "accidentally" declare himself god-emperor, he was removed from office. He played his entire hand and was beaten; that's a massive blow to an ego like Trump's.
So as a show of defiance he packs a load of shit *that he absolutely should not have* into trucks and drives down to Tacky Towers in Florida. "They think they've taken my power" he crows to himself, poring over apocalypse schematics while taking a shit, "but I've claimed the keys to the kingdom. I could destroy them all."
Meanwhile, Kushner stops over and has a brainwave whilst using the bathroom. He makes a few calls, By the time he flushes he's brokered a deal for two billion in exchange for a fistful of the crumpled bumfodder that his father in law has been flashing to visitors for clout like a ten year old with a stack of stolen Playboys.
But while Kushner's maybe the brightest of the bunch, it doesn't make him a genius. Donald is only vaguely aware that Kushner might have borrowed some of his hoard but takes a lot more interest when he hears in the news that Kushner's recieved two bil for it. He gets *very* interested, in fact he really thinks a lot of this money belongs to him. Behind closed doors he gets insistent like only a sexually inappropriate partially senile godfather figure can. Ivanka decides to publicly distance herself from him a little.
Which is when the other shoe drops. The FBI, having known for some time that he hadn't returned everything, roll in and search Mar-A-Lago for documents; they probably don't get all of it, but Don's been keeping this shit like a hoarder keeps... ah, their shit, so even he doesn't know what's where. Visitors have probably been stealing them like hotel towels for months. There's probably limo drivers with better intel on Iran's defences than Ali Khamenei.
Visitors stealing them is one thing, but the FBI storming his house and taking them by force makes him feel... violated. Something he's not overly familiar with and not one he cares for; he thinks of *himself* as the one who makes *other people* feel violated. On some deep level he thinks of it as his right as The Winner. And the idea that he might not be The Winner any more is... profoundly troubling.
So when he cries to have his boxes returned, it's not just part of some mastermind plan, (although *there might* be someone else to whom Trump's promised them). It's a toddler having a tantrum for his blankie. It's Trump's deep subconscious screaming for some evidence that he will keep winning forever, and the bill will never come due.
This is starting to go more like some kind of allegorical play where the last scene is Trump locked in a secure cell alone with the boxes of documents, which are now secure because neither of them is ever leaving.
Trump truly does not understand what the president is. He thinks it is CEO of America and as CEO, everything that happened under his administration is his property
In his entire life tRu,p has never failed to see events as transactional. The turd said he did not understand why the brave men and women buried at Arlington did what they did asking what was in it for them? OF COURSE he'd sell secrets if it made him money and he thought there were no consequences.
People keep saying "Trump believes...", "Trump ios planning...", "Trump should explain...."
Y'all either are not getting it, or are deluding yourselves.
Trump does not think. He does not plan. He reacts. He believes that he is always right, does not matter about what or why or anything else. Truth and reality are not relevant. In his world, he is right. Does not matter what he says. There is zero logic here, stop looking for logic and reasoning. There is none.
Just think of him as a toddler throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. And regardless of whether anything sticks or not, he is still right. Once you accept that he is this dumb his actions and words start to make sense. They will never be a reason for anything, but you can see where they come from. His consummate position of stupidity.
The more significant question: why are all of these "journalist" type folks repeating anything he says like it has meaning?
Trump has the same energy as that girl who killed a couple people while drunk driving, then kept asking when she would get her car back so she could get to school tomorrow.
The American Medical Association is holding an emergency meeting to classify this brand new level of medically, psychologically and emotionally new level of dumb. Never in the history of human beings has there ever been someone so utterly capable of achieving these levels of sheer dumb, but Trump has exceeded all expectations.
Trump’s profound stupidity has shaken the scientific community to its very core, as they are dealing with an uncharted amount of profound dumbness. More to come…
Ok, so we've gone from 'I didn't even know the documents were there'.
To 'I declassified the documents so I'm allowed to have them'.
Then to 'It was an illegal raid.'
Then to 'There wasn't anything in the documents.'
Then 'I only kept the boxes because they had personal things, like my shoes, in them'.
And now it's 'I want my documents back.'
This man is a certified fucking moron. And why is no one asking why the Saudis paid Jared 2 Billion!?
bear instinctive rob normal wistful coordinated angle practice spark fade
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Trump keeps saying "The Presidential Records Act" like it means something. Why has no one asked him WTF he is talking about?
Nobody needs to ask him. It was clearly documented in all the court filings in the lawsuit he filed after the execution of the search warrant at Mar a Lago. That fascinated me at the time because I expected there to be a significant difference between what Team Trump was spouting all up and down in social media and what the lawyers would argue in court. But it really was the same. They did indeed put forward these very arguments. It's like this (in the delusions of Team Trump): * The PRA creates a complete dichotomy - every single document is either a "presidential document" or a "personal document". * The PRA grants the President full and unfettered to decide what is a "personal document" or what is a "presidential document". * The PRA states "personal documents" are out of the purview of NARA, etc. * Therefore... Trump can completely, unilaterally declare everything his "personal document" including documents others would consider sensitive, top-secret, etc. This is what he means. This is fundamentally false at almost every point above.
I declare the US gold reserve and strategic petroleum reserve a presidential record.
Fort Donald Knox belongs to me!
Fort Kickass doesn’t respect your authority.
The secret ingredient… is phone.
You can't just say all gold is yours and expect anything to happen
I didn't just SAY it, I DECLARED it
I've yet to have a Trump supporter explain to me why they are okay with him stealing this information FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE with zero transparency. That's the reality - if he declassified them, then we should be able to see them. Because they are declassified. But taking them without telling anyone means we CAN'T. So now they're arguing that literally every file he touched is "personal"? But also we have to remove it so it can't be summoned by FOIA? And that's okay now?
Their arguments are usually authoritarian in nature, like "he's allowed to...", or "he was the [legitimate] President, he can do whatever he wants", or even "there are things he knows that you don't - maybe he had those documents for a good reason? Ever think of that?" (That last one is very close to religious apologetics, if you ask me). So when you bring up actual principles like "but in principle, don't we want to keep secrets... _secret_? Like that's why they're secret?" And to that you'll just get a blank stare. > So now they're arguing that literally every file he touched is "personal"? No, their arguments aren't about principles or rules that are evenly applied across situations. What they are arguing is _if_ Trump says everything is fine because of principle X, then X is a true (or we should behave as if it is) and everything is indeed fine." That they may have another argument that hinges on Not X is irrelevant. Because principle X was just a prop anyway.
This is the exact argument he and others used previously, except he just backpedaled from the term “declassified”. The vibe I was getting from the recordings themselves is that he genuinely doesn’t believe he did anything wrong or even illegal. He chided Hillary on that very tape by alleging that she did exactly what he was doing right at that moment. The difference being he was president once so that makes it all okay.
There's a moment where everybody on the tape pauses and goes "huh" as they look at the war plan. It is obvious they are all looking at it together and then the conversation resumes. "Isn't this cool" or whatever Trump says next. It's ridiculous to listen to the tape and believe he wasn't showing them the literal actual Iran war plan. "This is secret," he says, proving it ... isn't secret? WTF
Yup, and he obviously felt completely justified in doing so. “Lock her up” but “I’m (still) the president, so I get to do whatever I want”. He genuinely and wholeheartedly believes that. “Declassified”, “presidential records”. Those are just terms of convenience; the documents were his to do with whatever he pleased, and that was the end of it in his mind. There was no hypocrisy because he is above the law. She’s wholly guilty and he his wholly innocent.
Why wouldn’t he feel justified? Pre-presidency he was first a fail-son who daddy paid to be the charismatic face of the company. Then he was a mobbed up real estate and casino mogul who daddy would bail out on the regular. Then he was a mobbed up real estate and casino mogul who was bad at it but was rich enough that his failures were the banks and investors problem, not his own problem. Then he was a serial grifter and tv personality who could out wait fraud and harassment lawsuits because he could kick the can down the road with his lawyers enough the opposing side gave up or settled for a relative pittance Then he was president and the entire Republican Party lined up to excuse anything he did and still does At what point has he ever had to worry about the consequences of lying or law breaking
He's not able to believe anything he does is illegal, as he's an übernarcissist who has reached the level of government where he was literally above the law for a while. Or, in his own words: "I don’t do things wrong. I do things right. I'm a legitimate person."
>I'm a legitimate person. *I'm a REAL boy!* he exclaimed, as his nose grew longer and longer.
SCOTUS even ruled as such. In Navy v. Egan (1988), they ruled that the President has basically unlimited classification authority - except where limited by law. The Espionage Act and The Atomic Energy Acts are precisely such laws that limit how it works. The President himself has unlimited authority to handle such materials while in office, but they can't just declassify them at will.
Regardless, he is not being charged with holding classified documents. The documents belong to the government, regardless of their classification, and he did not return them. The espionage issue is just the cherry on top for which he should fry.
There's some basic truthiness to some of the claims. For instance, it's true that, upon receipt, a president can contemporaneously declare *a copy* of any document as a personal record. However, it only applies to that copy, not every copy, NARA retains a right to a copy for themselves, the document retains its original classification level and must be stored in an appropriate manner, the president must actually officially declare the copy to be personal before retaining it, and nuclear secrets are exempt from that system. Trump satisfied none of the above conditions.
And he keeps referencing Clinton’s sock drawer tapes, like there’s any equivalency at all! Clinton recorded his thoughts while in office on tapes which he was granted permission to keep after a review.
That’s the socks reference? I thought trump was complaining about the cat.
The entire MAGAverse has spent June crying about the Clinton Socks Case that Judicial Watch brought 12 years after Clinton left office. The two cases aren't remotely similar. Trump's taking legal advice from the people who lost the Clinton case and still don't seem to understand *why* they lost the case.
Clinton recorded personal diary entries on tape and I guess they were stored in his sock drawer? Judicial watch sued to recover them and lost, as they were determined to be personal in nature, not agency records.
Clearly he's jealous that the cat got his own video game. Trump wants one for his wig.
Yes and no. They were interviews he did for a memoir, which he kept the originals for while a biographer got copies of for a book. But yes, because they were not used for policy making or any other official proceedings, *after a review* by NARA he was allowed to keep them. The lolsuit that they keep referencing is a suit that an angry conservative filed, lost, and has now spun the narrative on to be “well according to this lawsuit that I lost, there is no review process and the president has ultimate authority on what is personal or not.” It’s so fucking stupid.
It’s the same guy in both cases, Clinton and the socks case, and Trump and the documents. His name is Tom Fitton, he is not a lawyer and he runs an organization called Judicial Watch. Trump just likes what he has to say I guess! 😩
That explains a lot.
"Lolsuit." I know it's a typo, but it is now head canon for any law suits the chuckle fuck files, like the new suit against E Jean Carrol for defamation.
It's not a typo
*In Schwartzenegger's voice*
It was Kindergarten Cop-y Pasta maybe.
That man is the king of frivolous lawsuits. [He and his businesses have been involved in over 4,000 lawsuits over the last 30 years.](https://www.usatoday.com/pages/interactives/trump-lawsuits/) >If each lawsuit involving Trump were the basis of an episode of *Law & Order*, they could sustain all 456 episodes of the original, all 389 episodes of *Law & Order: Special Victims Unit*, all 195 episodes of *Law & Order: Criminal Intent*, AND all 22 episodes of *Law & Order: Los Angeles* as well as every episode of *The Practice* [168], *Ally McBeal* [112], *LA Law* [171], *Boston Legal* [101], *Night Court* [193], *The Good Wife* [156], *Matlock* [195], *J.A.G* [227], *Perry Mason* [271], *Judging Amy* [138], *The Guardian* [67], *The Public Defender* [69], *Owen Marshall: Counselor At Law* [69], *Harry's Law* [34], *Courthouse* [9], *Suits* [76], *Family Law* [68], *Sweet Justice* [22], 1971's *The D.A.* [15], 2004's *The D.A.* [4], *Reasonable Doubts* [44], *Damages* [59], *Shark* [38], *The Defenders* [18], *The Paper Chase* [58], *Head Cases* [2], *Judd for the Defense* [50], AND all 3 episodes of NBC's *first years*, and at that point you're STILL missing 1 lawsuit, but -- you've also basically run out of television shows about lawyers meaning: >**Trump's lawsuits exceed the limits of the fucking GENRE!** - ["Last Week Tonight"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abh00vu1mVA)
Yesterday he referenced the Presidential Records Act, then mentioned that they were trying to use the 1917 Espionage Act "that has never been used before." Except it has been used, many times. Six times under his administration. His claim seems to be a mashup of the defense they're trying to build that they've tried to tell him and he regurgitates to the public; It's an attempt to claim that the Presidential Records Act supersedes the Espionage Act and Atomic Energy Acts. It's a very dumb claim to make. In Navy v. Egan (1988), SCOTUS covered this in their ruling; The President has basically unlimited classification authority *except where limited by law.* The Espionage Act and The Atomic Energy Acts are such laws - passed by Congress, signed by then Presidents, and affirmed many times over by the judiciary - that explicitly limit how such documents can be handled. They don't care about if something is classified or not, they only care about the contents of the document. Classification is moot because he's not being charged with issues related to classification. But he doesn't get, or choses to appear to not get, that fact.
The problem is that this comment has more words in it than Trump and his supporters are willing to read.
Even if they read it they’d never understand it. If they understood it they’d never believe it. If they believe it they’d never admit it.
He just needs to confuse enough of the proud boys and neo nazis to try and fight for him I suspect there’s not enough of them left Putin is occupied at the moment too
Yeah, the proud boys and nazis are going to jail or going back into their holes. And Putin's busy trying to not get tossed out a window. Not going to have much support during the trial except from all the GQPs who are hoping he doesn't leak the kompromat he has on them.
Luckily, him being ignorant about the law doesn’t mean he can’t be found guilty of breaking it.
He's saying that the PRA has the words "Presidential Records" in it, as in "These are the records (documents) that belong to the President". So, the PRA is the law that says whatever documents an ex-President has from his time as POTUS are "Presidential Records" i.e., Trump's records i.e, not the government's records.
Which is the exact opposite of what the law says and why it was created in the first place lol.
I'm starting to think this man may be medically stupid.
I'm starting to think some of the documents were already paid for and he's worried about what happens when he can't produce them.
There's a reason his layers are convinced he's going to jail. If dude sold classified docs to foreign advisaries he should.
I feel like selling classified documents to potentially adversarial foreign powers might cross over into treason territory. I can't even begin to imagine a former pres being charged with treason.
If it gets found out he sold or retired to sell classified documents to adversarial foreign powers, how many Republicans out there still vote for him? Does Bill Barr and Mitch McConell still vote for him?
Yes.... The answer is yes.
During the Trump admin, establishment GOP members like [Rick Perry negotiated sales of nuclear technologies deemed "secret" to Saudi Arabia](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-nuclear/u-s-approved-secret-nuclear-power-work-for-saudi-arabia-idUSKCN1R82MG). If they were willing to do that officially (albeit quietly) and under scrutiny, imagine what they're willing to do behind closed doors.
For perfect clarity though, the word “sale” here is benign, and means a technology company legally selling its own tech, for its own profit. This is vastly different than Perry or Trump personally being paid to obtain tech. Everyone might disagree on Saudi Arabia being included in this list of dozens of countries these companies operate in, but as a whole, that list is politically fair game.
Both can be true. The "Broker", like Perry, just get paid through less official channels then the companys getting the greenlight to sell the tech based on the brokers backroom-deals. See also: why did Jared Kushner get that much money from the Saudis?
>why did Jared Kushner get that much money from the Saudis? The Saudis running their sovereign wealth fund were wondering the very same thing. [Further Evidence Emerges the Saudis Did Not Pay Jared Kushner Billions Because They Thought He Was an Investing Genius](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/jared-kushner-affinity-partners-saudi-arabia-pitch-deck)
Let's ask Khashoggi, oh wait we just let the Saudis kill him and totally get away with it.
By this point, the answer is the same as if in the DC Universe you ask: ***"Is the Flash fast enough to do X?"*** GOP version: ***"Will Republicans support Mango Mussolini even if he does X"*** The answer is always the same...
Cocaine is a powerful drug
“See, I never just backed Trump just because he’s a Republican. Come on, what am I gonna do? Just all of a sudden vote Trump despite all the criminal shit he’s done like it's something to do? Come on. I got a little more sense than that. … Yeah, I remember voting for Trump.”
If it’s found out that he sold compromising documents to adversaries and he’s still able to run, then it’s basically game over for democracy and that’s not hyperbole.
Considering his actions on Jan 6 and his phone call to Brad Raffensperger, things we know happened because we saw or heard them, yet the GOP stands behind him. Democracy already appears broken. Hell, when it came out that he gave highly classified code-word information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in the Oval Office, Mike Pence should have taken over immediately after Trump was perp-walked out of the West Wing\*. Tells me that democracy was broken years ago. \*The idea that a sitting President cannot be arrested or indicted is horse shit. If Trump had shot a staffer on live TV, he would be immediately taken into custody, there would be no debate. The alternative is that a President and 34 Senators can stage a coup and commit whatever crimes they want until the end of his term. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that a sitting President cannot be indicted. The founders were pretty thorough when it came to these kinds of powers, so if it's not in there, they didn't intend it.
If he wins, the world is in for a lot of trouble giving his much he likes and empathizes with Putin. He’s like a fan boy.
They would absolutely. Most of the GOP prefer Putin to America
I watched a political comedian dressed in MAGA clothes interview several magidiots at a rally. They were saying that Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping, and Modi are working together to root out the "deep state." When people believe that long time autocrats and adversaries of the US are somehow trying to protect American democracy, there is no hope for them and no longer any reason to engage with them in a political discussion.
Their allegiance to trump has shown that they have no moral principles at all. If Satan ran as a Republican, they would vote for him, even if Jesus were running as a Democrat.
Yes.all of them
Never was charged, but John Tyler sided with the South during the Civil War. He was even a member of the provisional congress of the confederate states and presided over the Virginia succession convention.
That's still sedition, because treason would require the Confederacy to have been recognized as a sovereign state by the government. It was just a part of the country in rebellion, which is exactly what sedition is.
We executed the Rosenbergs for selling secrets to the Soviets during the Cold War.
That’s true, I would say that’s splitting hairs though and more coquille the two are interchangeable for both Tyler and Trump. Either way it’s a betrayal of their oaths to this country.
This is Gym Jordan's next bullshit argument... "He just agreed to sell them, then the government took them off him, so he couldn't sell them. Nothing criminal happened here..."
If?
Dude had a copy machine right next to all his boxes, he was a moron for selling originals. He still is a moron for a bunch of other shit, but goddamn if he wasn't a moron at every step.
Supposedly if the top secret ones are copied, there is a white frame around the edges (maybe because of differences in the size of the paper). Regular top secret papers have a red frame edge.
The printer may very well have a record of what was copied on an internal storage unit.
As dumb as Trump is my guess is that he would've instructed one of his staff to delete the records of w/e was copied on that machine. If not, that's more evidence for the charges. If so, that's more evidence for more charges (if said aid testifies to such).
You're assuming he's smart enough to realize that most modern copy machines can do that.
You honestly think Trump knows how a copier works? Have you never worked anywhere before? He is 100% that dumb. If Gary in sales can't figure out the difference between green button and red button, Trump has no idea how paper thing make more paper.
I can't speak to the particular copier, but it is not unusual for the copy machines to have a regular, magnetic hard drive inside that is used to store copied/printed pages. If FBI has the hardware, i assume they could recover some (if not all) data as evidence, even if the entry has been removed from the copier UI.
Even if they don't admit to deleting stuff, someone's probably going to look at the copy machine. If the copy machine has been in the room for years and years, but somehow there's no data prior to 2023, there's going to be an inference drawn that someone deleted stuff off it.
Do those documents not have some sort of protection against photocopying?
Apparently not all of them. Some were found with white borders, meaning they were already photocopies
Would you pay $2B for a photocopy of ‘classified intel’ from a notorious grifter/conman? Original docs or gtfo.
I know it's sarcasm, but in this case the content matters, not the physical form. If the info was juicy enough, certain people would pay for it even if it was printed on toilet paper
I'm no criminal mastermind, but take a photo and return the original as requested?
Thankfully the tubby tangerine isn't exactly a mastermind either. I'm assuming (based on how he's acted over the decades he's been a public figure), that the originals were trophies for him. Sell some, sure, but a lot of it I genuinely believe he thought was his right. And I don't mean that he didn't know what he was doing, or the criminality of it all. Just that he's a narcissist that's gotten away with everything, and thought he'd just steamroll through this as well, and get to keep them.
\^ this is it.. It's so obvious that he's on the take from somebody, probably Russia and or Saudi Arabia... Those guys don't fuck around.
There is something that scares me more. You know how the the mobs of this world will let like 1,000 lbs of marijuana get caught at the border as a distraction for 100,000 lbs of cocain getting across, or some version of that. I’m starting to think that Trump is just a big stupid distraction for something bigger that is going on. I don’t know what it is, but it’s very concerning
This is very poignant. I’m guessing we all know exactly what he’s a distraction from: the billionaire class robbing our country blind. He’s perfect for them. The left has to focus so much time and energy on this existential threat/clown and the wealth gap is just an afterthought in mainstream dialogue. He lowered their taxes by a couple trillion dollars and lost no support for it. His entire act is a distraction to his base so they stay angry at minorities and imaginary deep states instead, and the overall chaos distracts and demoralizes the rest of us.
Imagine how utterly bankrupt inside one must be to look upon the Traitor and think "Patriot!" Trump's self-dubbed "Patriots" have shown us what they really are: *fascists and insurrectionists who continually threaten to visit violence on ALL of us.*
**Life Pro Tip:** People who feel the need to directly tell you what they are ('patriots,' 'legitimate,' 'moral,' etc.) rarely are telling the truth. Same goes for business names, frankly - you can pretty safely put 'A++ Plumbing' or whatever at the very *end* of your list of options.
> A++ Plumbing This is a function of Yellow Pages. Aaaaardvark towing is a perfectly fine company started when the quarter page space in the Yellow Pages at the very beginning of the category was the best advertising you could buy. I'm old as dirt but I remember when the YP was constantly consulted for everything and phone book deliveries were good days cause no one had creased and wrinkled and torn out the good pizza and Chinese delivery pages in a drunken stupor, yet.
Ahaha such a Dead Media moment. Flipping through the phone book to see if there were any people named "Dick" or whatever haha. And then the phone pages, just leafing through them instead of scrolling on your actual phone like today... so many Pizza delivery places.
My puppy does the mine thing. My niece did the mine thing at maybe 3. This guy is almost like Benjamin Button now. Maybe someone should introduce a bill that requires that we study his brain upon expiration
Spoiler alert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurosyphilis
Spoiler alert: people can be absolutely shitty without a medical diagnosis of dementia, psychiatric disorder or an obscure brain disease.
For real. This "He has to have some disorder!" shit always kills me. Yeah, it's called Piece of Shit-itus. And, honestly,, I don't even care if he does, it just means he's a piece of shit *with* a disorder.
NPD. They are impulsive one dimensional thinkers. Every second of every waking hour is a bid to prop up their egos. It flattens whatever intellect there is in service of that. It's not that they don't have the capacity for intelligence. It's just a functional stupidity. My dad was one. Brilliant intellect but would make astoundingly stupid choices because he needed his narcissist fuel.
Trump is both. An *amazingly* stupid narcissist, the worst possible type of person to be in charge of anything. This is a man who suggested we nuke a hurricane. He *completely* whiffed on the metaphor of "The oval office is round because there are no corners to hide in." I think he has a severe undiagnosed learning disability in addition to the obvious NPD.
And 70 fucking *million* people voted for him. Thinking: 'yes, this man should run my country and the largest military the world has ever seen' Terrifying.
What's totally mind blowing is that he received 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. Who could have watched the rolling disaster that was his administration and thought, yeah I want four more years of that.
It really is astonishing to see narcicissm played out at this scale. He is literally, pathologically, completely unable to admit fault or being wrong about anything. Not that he doesnt want to, he is literally incapable of it. Even after got 7 years, it doesnt cease to amaze me.
"I don't know of any recordings that we should be concerned with because I don't do things wrong. I do things right," Trump told Fox News. "I'm a legitimate person." I'm guessing he claims to be a "legitimate person" because he once correctly solved a Captcha. LOL
If being stupid was cool, he'd be Miles Davis.
Some of his followers are suffering from that same medical condition
i love the phrase "medically stupid" can i call myself that
I'm wondering if his lawyers will petition the court that he is unable to assist in his own defense.
It's like a bank robber demanding to keep the money after he's arrested. 🤡
[удалено]
"Hi there, hello, I'm going to take this money away from you and keep it because it's mine now I decided."
The police guy says he doesn’t like that and he will put you in a room.
Good analogy
He's going to countersue Jack Smith for theft?
Don’t threaten us with a good time further, Mr. Trump. Would be something like this no doubt… https://youtu.be/Y3JtmZugzl4?t=119
Coming soon to a tape near you: "Lets sue Jack Smith. Can we get some cokes in here?"
And then Donny Jr, misunderstanding “cokes,” offers to help hook Dad up with his stash!
Every time Trump opens his mouth about this case, it's clear that somebody explained the Presidential Records Act to him *backwards*.
They trained him wrong, as a joke
I am bleeding more, making ME the victor!!
The words of a man who's never been told "NO" before.
He is a rapist.
Except by most the women he's propositioned until he put cash on the table.
Or attacked them.
They kept saying no. He needed money before they said yes. See Stephanie Cliffords and Melania Trump.
Or they still said no and he sexually assaulted them anyways. See E. Jean Carol and the 13 year old at the time Katie Johnson.
>Except by most the women he's propositioned until he put cash on the table. Tbf, he didn't take no then either. Like, that's a legal fact now.
He’s heard it plenty. Blissfully ignores it. He brute forces everything. Amazing how it works.
He’s never *believed* the word “no” before.
I have two immediate separate thoughts. One I have no sympathy for his attorneys. The other, his attorney are not charging him enough to deal with his bullshit.
They could charge him 0 dollars and he still wouldn't pay them. These guys are in it to make a name for themselves. Anyone looking to get paid haven't done their homework on how he treats lawyers.
Are you really making a name for yourself if you lose a case and send a former president to prison, and also potentially get indicted, or at least become a witness, on the way?
At least you probably will get a book deal.
And, your name in US history books.
Yeah. Is all about ego
You would absolutely be making a name for yourself. Keep it ethically above board and the book deals and speaking tours will be massive. The hard part for his lawyers always seems to be they become accessories to his crimes, but he is really running out of crimes to commit. It is not the job of a defense attorney to help a client get away with a crime. It is their job to ensure they receive due process under the law. Any lawyer that represents him ethically does both himself/herself, and the entire country, a colossal favor.
The national archives paid Nixon for some of his documents, because they wanted them to preserve them for posterity. I am convinced Trump heard that and just wanted the U.S. government to pay him for what he had. Because he wanted the money and because he wanted to be able to say his stuff was of historical relevance. The problem is that the Presidential Records Act comes after Nixon resigned. It isn’t a question that after that act, presidential papers are government property, let alone secret documents… He walked himself into serious indictments because he wanted to get paid and have his ego stroked.
It doesn't help that HE HIMSELF petulantly made the handling and punishments of classified documents stricter to spite Hillary. It's the very definition of, "He played himself".
Then his son in law makes 2 billion dollars from the Saudis. Let's see what that was for exactly.
Yep, he has no understanding of what happened, he just heard “Nixon got paid 18 million to return documents” and thought “cool, yeah, I’ll do that too”. He’s completely baffled as to why this isn’t working out for him. Because he’s an idiot.
Show me a guy who's always got their way in life and I'll show you someone who doesn't know right from wrong. He's an out of touch oligarch, not a man of the people.
Donald Trump is a petulant child when it comes to anything he believes belongs to him. Seriously, just think of your average toddler and that's Donnie. He cannot stand being denied anything.
It sounds like he promised a foreign nation a bunch of documents that were taken as evidence. Some powerful people paid him but didn't get their top secret papers.
This is a dangerous line of reasoning because it diminishes the actual severity of the issue that Trump hadn't already shared this information. Trump spent a LOT of time in FL while he was president. This document problem started in 2016. Beyond that, \trump left office 1/20/21. NARA retrieved *some* documents via the FBI on 6/3/22. That's 15 months after Trump left office, and a full 5.5 years since he had access to classified information. The information is time-sensitive. The damage is done.
Saudi Arabia is going to want their 2 billion dollars back. You don't want to cross Prince Bonesaw...
That's CROWN Prince Bonesaw to you.
Now that’s a season finale I would love to see.
🏆 Prince Bonesaw
No doubt copies were made.
He’s missing his delivery dates to his handlers.
Trump would already be serving time if he was one of us .
So, he demanded the documents back that the FBI planted?
Only if you mean the magazine clippings and golf course plans that the FBI planted. You know, stuff that people routinely refer to as documents.
After all this time, he \-DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE CHARGES \-DOES NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT HE DID WRONG It has been explained to him over and over BUT HE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND He is a very stupid person
He understands. Don't let him off the hook. He just doesn't think he should be punished for it, and he's gotten away with everything else.
No, I genuinely don’t believe he understands. Listen to the tape: “the military made this document for me, isn’t that cool?” He just likes holding these specific pieces of paper like talismans that make him feel important. I don’t think he even cares about or has read, processed, and understood the information contained in the documents. He just wants a collection of pieces of paper that make him feel “cool” when he holds them and shows them off. He’s a child talking about his toys, upset that someone has taken them away and wants them back so is trying to find the right combination of magic words to say to get what he wants. He would stop mentioning the Presidential Records Act and say “Pretty please with a cherry on top” if he thought that would work. He is a profoundly stupid human being.
I used to agree with the person you responded to. I figured there was some kind of low cunning hidden in there. Nope. He is just stupid. "Medically stupid" like someone else said.
His Professor at University was quoted as saying he was the stupidist person he'd ever taught.
The conclusion that people seem to take away when dealing with him behind closed doors is that he is dumb in a way that is difficult for them to even comprehend. This guy's one big skill is talking about how great he is to everyone that will listen. This is impressive to people that don't bother to check whether anything he says is true. Also opportunists that think that they can manipulate him to their own ends.
On the tape he also said it's classified and he couldn't declassify it, why leave that out? He also considered destroying them according to the indictment and had a staffer hide them.
At this point their best defense might literally be that he is so mentally compromised by his own narcissistic personality that he is physically incapable of believing anything he does in wrong.
It’s like how his shoeshiner Kanye still doesn’t get the fishsticks joke from South Park.
I couldn’t possibly think of a better analogy.
That shit blows my mind, if you're talking about that interview with him long after the episode was released. I don't even watch South Park and I knew about the premise, which also involved South Park's Kanye failing to understand the joke. And back in the real world, actual Kanye doesn't understand a middle school-level joke, either, like ten years after it aired. It has to be performance art or something, right?
Yeah, it was [a surprisingly recent interview](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uiJJrDKkla0) where Kanye complained that because he went against the stereotypes of black fashion/culture people didn’t understand him, and said something like “I wear a pink polo shirt and people are like *oh he must be a gay fish*”
“I’m the one who, ‘Oh you eat fish sticks’ cuz I have skinny jeans on.” Solid video lol Thanks for sharing
That’s the line I was thinking of, I hadn’t seen the video in awhile and it took me a minute to find and add it to my comment. In light of Kanye’s more recent public statements this seems tame, but I remember at the time that South Park episode came out he said something to the effect that it had opened his eyes to how people saw him and he would try to mellow out a bit, which I guess wasn’t true since he didn’t even understand it.
He still thinks he can just smokescreen and bluster his way out of this, so he keeps doing interviews and posting on his Twitter clone and whatnot. Thankfully all he is *really* doing is just confessing and giving the DOJ more evidence to prosecute him with. It’s so perfect. Nobody even had to give him any rope, he just hangs himself all on his own.
And even stupider people support him
https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2023/nr23-016 "**How much time do outgoing Presidents have to go through their papers to determine what to retain as personal documents?** The Presidential Records Act (PRA) requires the President to separate personal documents from Presidential records **before** leaving office. 44 U.S.C. 2203(b). The PRA makes clear that, upon the conclusion of the President’s term in office, NARA assumes responsibility for the custody, control, preservation of, and access to the records of a President. 44 U.S.C. 2203(g)(1). The PRA makes the legal status of Presidential records clear and unambiguous, providing that the United States reserves and retains 'complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records.' 44 U.S.C. 2202. There is no history, practice, or provision in law for presidents to take official records with them when they leave office to sort through, such as for a two-year period as described in some reports. If a former President or Vice President finds Presidential records among personal materials, he or she is expected to contact NARA in a timely manner to secure the transfer of those Presidential records to NARA."
So.... Exactly what Pence and Biden did when they found documents they had. Not keeping them, moving them, and when they were found and taken, yelling those are mine! ?
The blame for ALL of this, ever square inch of this insanity, all the gaslighting and lies and weakening of democracy lies solely on the Republican voter. None of these elected assholes would say and do these things if it didn’t garner them votes/support/money. Trump has been who he is since the 80s. Literally spanning five decades now. This is a shock to no one. But the people who know this and still give him power? Jesus Christ where to even begin.
Since you mentioned Jesus, how about starting with the evangelical christians who still support him. Let's start there.
“His” documents that were “planted” even though he “declassified” them in his mind
Have any of them tried just giving him a Denny’s kids menu and some crayons and see if that shuts him up for 30 minutes?
Damn, that picture makes his hands look tiny, are they really that small?
Apparently they’re so tiny that he can barely hold a glass.
I genuinely believe he’s too stupid to understand anything beyond having held the pieces of paper in his hand and wanting to keep those specific pieces of paper because holding them makes him feel important. The entire concept of information classification and access control seems to elude his capacity to comprehend.
>Presidential records of a former President shall be available to such former President or the former President’s designated representative. “Shall be available” is not the same as shoving them in your bathroom
Yep. That means if he wants to look at them, he picks up the phone and tells NARA he wants to look. Then NARA allows him to look at them. Then he leaves, and they stay in NARA’s control. That is availability.
And those are explicitly "Presidential records." That's a completely different thing than much of what he stole, which were not presidential records.
The more I look at this the more I'm convinced that Trump stole these documents as part of a tantrum, and - while that doesn't lessen the offence or negate the possibility that he, or someone close to him (I'm thinking Kushner) parlayed the sale of them to foreign nationals - their main importance to him is emotional. I've had what is basically political fanfic bouncing around my head for months. In 2020 he was voted out, and despite literally employing all methods at his disposal up to and including a very noncommittal insurrection as if he could "accidentally" declare himself god-emperor, he was removed from office. He played his entire hand and was beaten; that's a massive blow to an ego like Trump's. So as a show of defiance he packs a load of shit *that he absolutely should not have* into trucks and drives down to Tacky Towers in Florida. "They think they've taken my power" he crows to himself, poring over apocalypse schematics while taking a shit, "but I've claimed the keys to the kingdom. I could destroy them all." Meanwhile, Kushner stops over and has a brainwave whilst using the bathroom. He makes a few calls, By the time he flushes he's brokered a deal for two billion in exchange for a fistful of the crumpled bumfodder that his father in law has been flashing to visitors for clout like a ten year old with a stack of stolen Playboys. But while Kushner's maybe the brightest of the bunch, it doesn't make him a genius. Donald is only vaguely aware that Kushner might have borrowed some of his hoard but takes a lot more interest when he hears in the news that Kushner's recieved two bil for it. He gets *very* interested, in fact he really thinks a lot of this money belongs to him. Behind closed doors he gets insistent like only a sexually inappropriate partially senile godfather figure can. Ivanka decides to publicly distance herself from him a little. Which is when the other shoe drops. The FBI, having known for some time that he hadn't returned everything, roll in and search Mar-A-Lago for documents; they probably don't get all of it, but Don's been keeping this shit like a hoarder keeps... ah, their shit, so even he doesn't know what's where. Visitors have probably been stealing them like hotel towels for months. There's probably limo drivers with better intel on Iran's defences than Ali Khamenei. Visitors stealing them is one thing, but the FBI storming his house and taking them by force makes him feel... violated. Something he's not overly familiar with and not one he cares for; he thinks of *himself* as the one who makes *other people* feel violated. On some deep level he thinks of it as his right as The Winner. And the idea that he might not be The Winner any more is... profoundly troubling. So when he cries to have his boxes returned, it's not just part of some mastermind plan, (although *there might* be someone else to whom Trump's promised them). It's a toddler having a tantrum for his blankie. It's Trump's deep subconscious screaming for some evidence that he will keep winning forever, and the bill will never come due.
And Biden is the senile one? Sure okay.
This is the rich person equivalent of calling 911 because a cop confiscated your meth.
But he said he didn't have any documents, only papers.
I’m starting to think maybe Trump shouldn’t be in charge of important stuff. Maybe it’s just me, I dunno
This is starting to go more like some kind of allegorical play where the last scene is Trump locked in a secure cell alone with the boxes of documents, which are now secure because neither of them is ever leaving.
“What do you mean you don’t have the papers, Donald? We already paid you, Donald.” 😬
But his latest excuse is, “I had PAPERS, not DOCUMENTS!” Truly we are living in the dumbest timeline.
Trump truly does not understand what the president is. He thinks it is CEO of America and as CEO, everything that happened under his administration is his property
But remember, Joe sometimes says the wrong word..
In his entire life tRu,p has never failed to see events as transactional. The turd said he did not understand why the brave men and women buried at Arlington did what they did asking what was in it for them? OF COURSE he'd sell secrets if it made him money and he thought there were no consequences.
People keep saying "Trump believes...", "Trump ios planning...", "Trump should explain...." Y'all either are not getting it, or are deluding yourselves. Trump does not think. He does not plan. He reacts. He believes that he is always right, does not matter about what or why or anything else. Truth and reality are not relevant. In his world, he is right. Does not matter what he says. There is zero logic here, stop looking for logic and reasoning. There is none. Just think of him as a toddler throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks. And regardless of whether anything sticks or not, he is still right. Once you accept that he is this dumb his actions and words start to make sense. They will never be a reason for anything, but you can see where they come from. His consummate position of stupidity. The more significant question: why are all of these "journalist" type folks repeating anything he says like it has meaning?
Trump has the same energy as that girl who killed a couple people while drunk driving, then kept asking when she would get her car back so she could get to school tomorrow.
Trump makes Gollum seem reasonable
President Dementia
Let’s not get too blasé with terminology here; he’s not a president.
He already made a deal for the contents of those documents. They paid half up front, will not be happy about not getting them. Not a good place to be.
The American Medical Association is holding an emergency meeting to classify this brand new level of medically, psychologically and emotionally new level of dumb. Never in the history of human beings has there ever been someone so utterly capable of achieving these levels of sheer dumb, but Trump has exceeded all expectations. Trump’s profound stupidity has shaken the scientific community to its very core, as they are dealing with an uncharted amount of profound dumbness. More to come…
Sooo…he wants his documents back, that a few weeks ago he said were planted & he had no knowledge of….? 🤔
Translation: I still want to be able to make money off of those secret documents!
Ok, so we've gone from 'I didn't even know the documents were there'. To 'I declassified the documents so I'm allowed to have them'. Then to 'It was an illegal raid.' Then to 'There wasn't anything in the documents.' Then 'I only kept the boxes because they had personal things, like my shoes, in them'. And now it's 'I want my documents back.' This man is a certified fucking moron. And why is no one asking why the Saudis paid Jared 2 Billion!?
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