Asked by Glenn Beck in an interview “[I]f you’re president again, will you lock people up?”, Donald Trump, the supposed champion of democracy and heroic foe of the Democratic totalitarians, answered, “The answer is you have no choice because they’re doing it to us.”
Dingdingdingdingding! This is signature significance, just like his earlier musings about suspending the Constitution. As I wrote earlier this year, “As divided as Americans are, it doesn’t appear that enough of them care about preserving democracy to do anything to preserve it. They only differ on the means by which they are willing to let it collapse.” Electing Donald Trump as President, with his sick “tit for tat,” “Do unto others as they do to you,” “vengeance is mine” approach to ethics magnified by his “the ends justify the means” orientation can’t possible “save” democracy. The most it can do is maximize the chances that the totalitarians we end up with aren’t socialists, anti-white bigots and addicted to toxic woke fantasies. That shouldn’t be good enough. It isn’t good enough, not for this nation. That so many still think it is depresses and frightens me greatly.
Trump has not even attempted to talk or act appropriately for a national leader since his 2020 loss. He isn’t interested in letting the public have a chance to make an informed choice, so he’s refusing to debate his rivals. He doesn’t want to engage in substantive policy discussions, so he simply uses ad hominem attacks instead. Now he openly says that he’ll “lock up” his political opponents.
Are you really comfortable with that? You really want to vote for someone like that? Wow. Don’t tell me he’s the “lesser of two evils”: if he thinks behaving like a South American dictator is appropriate because “they” did it first, he is not “lesser,” he’s the same evil. That means, or should mean, that Donald Trump is not an option. If he’s not an option, the Republican Party will find someone else. It will not be difficult to find someone else who is a more responsible choice for President of the United States than Joe Biden…or Donald Trump.
It is not ethical—or rational—to want to elect Donald Trump to punish the Left for, among other offenses against democracy, decency and the Constitution, criminalizing politics if he has made it clear that he will do the same. Stop it. Snap out of it. Be responsible.
Reject this ethically-inert asshole and find someone else.
Ethics Alarms 
Empirically you are right, Jack. However, practically, there is no way around a second Trump run. The man is in a unique position, because he commands a hardcore cadre of followers who will follow him to hell and back. This cadre, however is not enough for him to get elected on his own. It is enough to torpedo any other Republican. The only way he exits the picture on a permanent basis is if he gets his second term and maxes out. He and the traditional Republicans need each other to win, otherwise they’ll just split the non-democrat vote and guarantee whoever the Democrats run another four years. That whoever is guaranteed to be Biden, since no one else is looking to run. I don’t want a repeat of Biden’s time. We’ve already seen what it’s like with him in charge, and there’s a very real question as to whether he would make it to the end of a second term, which means his vice president would become president for some period of time. If Trump had died while in office it would have meant we got Pence as president. He might have had some issues, but he was at least competent. We all of us know that Harris is simply not competent to be president or most other offices. I’m not against female chief executives, I voted for a woman as governor of New Jersey twice and would not change those votes. As I was with Hillary, however, I am against this woman in high office. Her record in office speaks for itself. I have determined that the current administration must not get a second term, and I will vote accordingly, though it means voting for the Devil 👿 himself, which Trump definitely is not.
The long term, primary problem with Trump is his inability to hire competent people. If he wins, he’ll once again be facing the wrath of the entire government with goofball people populating his administration. The Dems will take back the house and impeach Trump on November 9th.
I agree that Trump isn’t the right guy. However, based on what Dems have put us through under JB, there is no way I will vote for them. Unfortunately, Trump is merely promising to do to the Dems what they are currently doing to him. By your logic, both sides are DQ’d. So, we have to make a choice about what is best for the nation. While Trump is a buffoon, his policies were unarguably good for the country. Under Dems – well, unless your head is squarely up your ideological ass, there is no objective measurement that can be used to claim JB is a competent President. So I’m with Steve-O, I hope the GOP comes up with another viable candidate, but if they don’t, I’m voting AGAINST the Dem party.
They’ll come up with a new candidate if everyone makes it clear they won’t vote for Trump. And not until then.
Not going to happen. He has too many hardcore followers.
If we nominate a candidate that is not President Trump, does President Trump run as a 3rd-party candidate? What are the odds of that happening? That would be disastrous.
Of course he will. Screw it. Nobody should be nominated through extortion. He can’t win as a third party candidate, and if that makes a Democrat President, he’ll be a historic villain. And will deserve that designation.
…and extortion is a pretty apt term.
President Trump believes – whether it’s true or not still remains to be seen – that he holds all the power and that he has the Republican Party cornered. Either the Republican Party embraces him and takes its chances with him, or it rejects him and takes its chances with him as a 3rd-party candidate (which is an almost certain defeat).
I don’t believe even Sec. Clinton had that kind of power over the Democratic Party in the year leading up to 2016, where she could say, “I’ll be the nominee or I’ll run on a 3rd-party ticket”. I’m not sure, but that’s what I think.
And the rest of us will still suffer. That’s a tough price to pay. I’ve still got 12 years to go before I’m eligible for Medicare.
“If they can think, they can learn.” Clarence Darrow
Are you suggesting that any Republican, if elected president in 2024 may not investigate abuses of office?
There was a much more nuanced answer he could have given.
Unfortunately the Left has opened the Pandora’s box of political prosecutions What you have argued is very much an appeasement strategy. The Left relies on those not to punish them out of some sense of protecting our democratic processes. Before I agree that this statement is disqualifying I want someone to offer an alternative strategy that will effectively dissuade the Left from using the judicial process to target political enemies going forward.
Please to don’t interpret this comment as promoting tit for tat prosecutions, but I cannot rule out the necessity of appropriate prosecution of crimes that can be proved.
The Left is using the judicial process to bully political opponents. In my whole life I’ve never known a single bully who has ever backed off because I took the high road or appealed to their better nature. History is full of examples of failed appeasement strategies. Bullies back off when their targets hurt them more than it’s worth to them to continue to bully. Imho, Trump is right to go after the Left. It’s unfortunate he is the one to be the champion, but the persecutions won’t stop without holding the guilty to account.
I never reasoned my way out of being bullied. However, kicking a bully in the balls or banging his head against the concrete was very effective.
Wow!!. Staying on your good side 😉
Ahaha, that’s not something I do now, but I did do it when I was a kid fighting bullies, because the bullshit about ignoring bullies was just that, bullshit and ineffective, but a concussion was a different matter. However, after three fights in which I used this tactic, the third one involving me banging a jerkass classmate’s head four times against a concrete stairwell (I would have done it more, but I was prevented), my dad took me in the backyard, made me look really hard at the brick wall of the house, and said that if I banged anyone’s head against anything again, he was going to bring me back there and bang MY head against the brick wall until I died. Apparently, the last classmate’s parents had made noises about suing (they never did since their kid provoked the fight and they knew ass-kickings don’t just drop out of the sky, they happen to someone who was fucking with someone else and overreached), and he told me he’d rather I die than endanger his good name and his retirement wealth. Yeah, that shit was about to get real.
I’m not sure about locking them up per se, but a push back is definitely needed. A little MAD (mutual assured destruction) will go a long way in reestablishing some normalcy and restraint to our political landscape.
I’m not fan of Trump, and not excusing his actions, but if Trump is to be prosecuted for mishandling classified documents then Biden, Hillary, and other should be too. If Trump is to be tried for (allegedly) trying to subvert the will of voters then Gore, Hillary, etc. should too. If Trump is to be prosecuted for inciting violence on J6 then the Dems who cheered and assisted BLM insanity in 2020, and before them Obama for echoing the BLM BS rhetoric (which incited, among others, the shooting of Dallas PD officers) should be prosecuted too, and all these prosecutions should be done (if possible) in GOP leaning venues, as the Dems are doing to Trump.
MAD is the most effective deterrent.
Wasn’t it St. Barack of Obama who said, “If they bring a knife to a fight, we bring a gun”?
You’re “not sure about locking them up per se”????????????????
I’m sure. That vendetta ride thing is looking better and better.
I guess what I’m trying to say that Trump should articulate his thoughts in a way that make it hard for the left to focus and use his words (to further scare the sheep) while ignoring the message.
Rather than say “locking them up”, which feeds into the left’s disingenuous claims that Trump is fascist, dictator, despot, etc., just say we will use the law and all governmental institutions in the same manner, and hold Dems to the same standards they claim to apply.
I will not vote for Trump in the primaries.
In this case though, he is absolutely right. The fact is, we were dragged across the line. The rules are different, now. We must play by the rules as they are, not by how we wish they were. And I wish the rules were different.
In the animated series Gargoyles, there is a character called Demona. her schtick was seeking vengeance against those who harmed her and her kind, at any and all costs.
I explained in comments on other posts how the Democratic Party became the party of Maraxus.
We must become the party of Demona.
We need Demona to deal with Maraxus.
As a fellow Gargoyles fan, I’d like to point out that Demona’s vendetta ruined her. Because she made the easy but unethical choice every time, she ended up a bitter, immortal outcast. On the other hand her ex, Goliath, had much the same hardships she did, but he chose to be forgiving and compassionate instead, and him and his clan stronger for it.
My counter-point here is that Trump is not credible.
While that is typically a bad thing, especially with politicians (who we don’t believe anyway), it works for Trump.
Outlandish claims are his MO.
I have to remind myself that, when he was being indicted, many of his detractors said, “remember when he encouraged chants of ‘Lock Her Up’?”
My response was, “Yeah, but he was not stupid enough to do it.” He was boasting, posturing, playing to the baser inclinations of his audience. He was campaigning.
Should I give him more credibility now?
I think you need to find some kind of exception to Signature Significance—and it might just involve some variation of the Julie Principle.
-Jut
Brilliant, Jut.
“When people tell you who they are, believe them.”
Jack, that platitude does not work with Trump. He probably tells us that he is the greatest President in a generation, and other such things.
I don’t believe him.
-Jut
Do you believe that he has any concept of what is legitimate Presidential power or the values of a democracy? Because no one who does would say something like that out loud.
Yes, but I will grant you that he thinks more like a businessman than a politician. He has an authoritarian mind-set and talks like it.
That’s a problem. Puffery is part of business. In politics, puffery is lying.
-Jut
I think the right term is “salesman.” That’s always been Trump’s primary skill, and it translates into politics, and even leadership. But leaders have limitations on its use, and Trump can’t grasp that.
YOU are quoting Maya Angelou?
BTW in the original she said show rather than tell.
Hey, it’s the message, not the messenger.