This might be the easiest Ethics Dunce pick ever; at least I am certain that there couldn’t have been an easier one. When I heard which ever Democratic Party hack it was introduce Robert DeNiro as a featured speaker for the Biden campaign’s Trump Hate presser outside the Manhattan courthouse where this kangaroo kaper is inching to a conclusion, I thought, “No! They can’t be this crude, obvious and stupid. They just can’t be.”
DeNiro isn’t a shrewd political analyst or a serious activist with any identifiable acumen or credibility. He’s not even as smart as the thugs he plays on screen. His now familiar rhetoric, as he has engaged in vulgar ad hominem attacks on the former President in mostly Hollywood Left gatherings for years now, wouldn’t have been acceptable in any respectable political setting before and is only acceptable now to the perhaps terminally Trump-Deranged.
DeNiro’s rants are ugly and simple-minded. Even a rudimentary understanding of the Cognitive Dissonance Scale should have led Biden’s campaign to the conclusion that associating with DeNiro makes the campaign look as repugnant as he is.
The actor doesn’t (and yesterday didn’t) make arguments; all he does is spew hate and derision. That’s all he can do: He’s not very bright, and is barely educated. He’s been a full-time actor since he was a teenager: this isn’t Sam Shepard we’re talking about here, Jimmy Stewart (A Princeton grad), or even John Wayne. DeNiro’s only claim to being a useful Biden supporter is that he’s a famous actor, and one who mostly plays killers, crooks and assholes. Brilliant.
Who is DeNiro going to convince who isn’t already an anti-Trump fanatic? On the other hand, the Biden campaign using him as if he’s a Daniel Patrick Moynihan (credible because he was a thoughtful and courageous intellectual) or a Tom Hanks (credible because he’s an ostentatiously patriotic and non-partisan artist) reeks of panic and desperation. That the Biden campaign would even consider such a bone-headed spokesperson reinforces the conclusion that there are no levels low enough that it will not stoop to in its efforts to stop Donald Trump.
Morons. Unethical morons, and those are the worst kind.
Ethics Alarms 
Jimmy Stewart was also a USAF brigadier general and, more importantly, a fairly moral person and a GOP voter. He wouldn’t get involved in this garbage. Most of the time DeNiro played the bad guy, but that probably shouldn’t be held against him, some actors are just better at that, like Dennis Hopper, M. Emmet Walsh, Jack Nicholson, and the ultimately unctuous Alan Rickman. Basil Rathbone got lucky and got the role of Sherlock Holmes, or he’d be pretty much a (sometimes deliciously hammy) villain too.
This wasn’t a speech, this was just a hate-spewing rant. I hate to say it, but I can think of at least two political parties in history that resorted to this kind of tactic. One wore a lot of red, and the other’s leader wore a mustache you don’t see much anymore.
Still, actors who play villains are never used as candidate spokespersons for obvious reasons. Nobody asked for Boris Karloff or Jack Palance or Anthony Perkins to endorse them for office.
Hah! The treasured Tony Perkins endorsement! Why didn’t anyone think of that!
Multiple sources have reported that Biden plans a national address from the White House after the Trump trial verdict is announced. I’m still hoping for acquittal but it seems unlikely given all the circumstances.
Clearly there’s been a war room in the Biden White House coordinating this legal warfare since day one. You’d think some reporter would want to make a career out of finding out about it and disclosing it. Modern day Plumbers.
If I were a district attorney or a state’s attorney, I would prosecute Democrats for felonies, regardless of collateral damage, regardless of the evidence, regardless of the law, regardless of Brady v. Maryland, regardless of the United States Constitution.
If I were a cop investigating a crime, my reaction would depend on if the suspect is a Democrat or a Republican.
If a Republican, I would do my best to destroy any evidence showing guilt, by hook or by crook.
If a Democrat, I would do my best to destroy any evidence showing innocence, by hook or by crook.
We are at war.
The rules have changed.
I wish it were not that way, but it is.
The rules have changed.
Do you remember Maraxus?
Because I will never forget Maraxus.
https://www.quora.com/Is-Trump-correct-when-he-said-that-The-answer-is-you-have-no-choice-because-they-re-doing-it-to-us-in-response-to-an-interviewers-question-about-locking-up-his-enemies-Will-Americas-prisons-become-Trumps-Gulags-of/answer/Michael-Ejercito
***START QUOTE***
You’ve asserted that public officials must be held to a higher moral standard than the rest of humanity. First, I’d like to know why that is the case.
She did uphold the law. She was arrested, went to court, pled guilty to the charges (i.e. she accepted responsibility for her actions), and was punished accordingly. She could have pulled a Perry and attempted to use her position to get out of the DUI charge, but instead she had enough integrity to accept responsility for her actions.
See, when we elect a district attorney, we trust them to do one thing: prosecute crimes. So long as they prosecute crimes, and do that properly and well, they’re doing what we asked them to. They are doing the bare minimum of what we expect from them- correctly using the powers of their office to perform the assigned duty. Driving drunk may reflect poorly on the DA’s character and mean they should not have been elected… but it doesn’t mean they have failed to do the actual job the public trusted them to do. We didn’t elect this DA to be sober, we elected them to prosecute cases.
Seriously, she made a bad decision and followed it up by doing the right thing. What’s blowing my fucking mind is apparently we have shitheads on this board that are attempting to justify Rick “The Dick” Perry making a blatant attempt to shove a shill appointee into one of the few effective anti-corruption enforcement agencies in the state of Texas.
Plus, if you actually read my arguments (which I doubt), you would have to notice that IT DOES NOT MATTER whether Lehmberg has lots of integrity or no integrity. Perry is not being charged with “thinking Lehmberg has no integrity.” He is being charged with misusing the power of his office and threatening to misuse taxpayer money, in order to coerce an elected official into acting in a certain way.
It DOES NOT MATTER that you think Perry was justified in doing so because this particular elected official was dishonorable and inferior. It is not Perry’s place to hire or fire Lehmberg, and it is not his place to threaten to defund a law enforcement operation in an attempt to blackmail her into resigning against her will.
Your appeals to “common sense” do not impress me. Give me a good reason why a moral failing, which incidentally has nothing to do with investigating corruption, should automatically disqualify a person from holding office. You assert without cause that this is the case. Please provide evidence that Lehmberg’s DUI has harmed the PIU’s integrity in any way. If you can’t do this without repeating some version of your “DUIs are rly bad guys” silliness, then maybe you should just go away.
And as for The Hammer, that’s true. He did get his conviction overturned by the Texas Supreme Court, an elected body that consists almost entirely of conservative Republicans. They didn’t think DeLay actually did all that stuff, and Texas doesn’t really have much in the way of campaign finance laws anyway. It makes no matter, though. He was still a cancerous growth on Congress’ asscheek, begging for a public fall from grace. And when he got convicted the first time around, we as a nation are better off for it. Ronnie Earle did humanity a favor when he realized that DeLay broke campaign finance laws, and he did us an even greater one when he got DeLay convicted. Whether or not “justice” was actually served against him isn’t so important. The fact that he no longer holds office though? That’s very important.
Of course! And the people on the Travis Commissioner’s Court would have tossed Lehmberg out on her ass a long time ago. They’re not doing it because there are, frankly, more important things at stake. In a state like Texas where the GOP has historically run roughshod over the Dems, they cannot afford to lose powerful positions like this. Considering the number of cases coming out of the PIU, including, incidentally, a Perry-allied ex-official who channeled millions of dollars to some of his big contributors, the Travis DA’s office has more influence than just about any Democrat in the state. If Perry didn’t have the right to appoint her replacement, and he almost assuredly would have appointed a fairly right-wing replacement, I’m sure the Travis County Dems would like to tell Lehmberg to take a short walk off a long pier. Unhappily, there are more important considerations at hand.
***END QUOTE***
Back in 2014, this was an extremely fringe belief. There was no way Maraxus’s ideals could become mainstream.
Now it is clear that the Democratic Party adopted Maraxus’s ideals.
The Democratic Party is the party of Maraxus, now.
In the animated series Gargoyles, there is a character called Demona, whose schtick was vengeance against those who hurt her and her kind.
To deal with Maraxus, we must become the party of Demona!
For this is war.
I recommend you watch A Man for All Seasons again.
The rules have changed.
I wished they had not, but they did.
I repeat my last comment. Paul Scofield’s performance is much more elegant and easy to understand than anything I could say.
The Devil and His subhuman hordes already cut down every law.
We have to fight without restraint or be herded into the gas chambers.
There is no third option.
We’re just going to keep going in circles, so I’ll end with this. If you want to act exactly as the other side does, then there is zero reason for you not to join them.
They want to send me to the gas chambers that they are planning to build.
Yes, yes. I’m certain that *they* want to send **you** to their special gas chamber. They’ve made a little list, yes, they’ve made a little list. You’ve top billet on it.
Extra points for the Gilbert and Sullivan reference.
Ironically, I think they chose DeNiro because he’s a prototypical New York City wise guy, or at least that’s his shtick when he’s off script. He’s a living Bronx cheer directed toward Trump and any non-Democrat. The irony is that Trump is always painted as the quintessential ugly, crass New Yorker who must be despised accordingly. DeNiro is truly the pot calling the kettle black.
Pot to.kettle… pot to kettle…you are black, that is all.
When these actors inevitably out themselves as horrible human beings and their well cultivated public persona turns out to be just one more acting gig and their true self emerges – I find it quite interesting that comparing their real selves to their characters – more and more I don’t see a huge difference. Do most actors end up really just being themselves on screen?
It’s too bad, Robert De Niro seemed like such a versatile actor, able to portray a wide range of guys – from the comically buffoonish criminal in Home Alone, to a mafia family mastermind in the Godfather, to the comic book genre with his portrayal of the Penguin in Batman Returns, even rounding things out with his clever mix family antics in TV sit comes like Who’s the Boss. Never will forget that old Robert De Niro we all loved.
COME ON! The 2nd Paragraph is FUNNY.
Well there’s another actor’s cinema output I need to avoid for awhile.
A man is known by the company he keeps. Seems fitting for both Biden and DeNiro, they deserve each other.
The public should pay attention. They won’t, but they should.
The tragedy is that far too many Americans actually care about what DeNiro thinks with respect to politics and, in particular, Trump. The confirmation bias is strong enough to tear the moon from orbit, and the cognitive insufficiency enough to bring tears to a thinking man’s eye.
Funny. It seems to me a person who would say of DeNiro, “Hey! That guy’s one of us!” would under normal circumstances say the same of Trump.
I’m seeing it as an opening Salvo in a one two punch of jury intimidation and then Supreme Court tampering. Between the Alito flag scandals and the sudden press chatter about loading the SupremeCourt, I think they’re planting seeds that if this trial doesn’t go their way, they’ll MAKE it go their way, so everybody better toe the line, due process be hanged.
I just can’t believe they’d have the bright idea of literally hanging a ‘this is political’ sign across the street from the courthouse right before the jury goes in. This whole time, they’ve been distancing themselves from the trial, trying to pretend it was impartial – and they’ve just blown it out of the water.
I thought maybe you were going to also mention that this should put to bed any dem denials that the White House is not involved in the anti-Trump lawfare. The incidents of prosecutors & etc., like Fani Willis and “Rasputin Jack” Smith meeting with Biden lackies wasn’t yet enough, it seems.
Shouldn’t this interference right outside of court while the trial was ongoing add to evidence for an appeal, if needed?
Ooops, should have left out “not”…. and typing while Aaron was posting.
Any guilty verdict is guaranteed to be overturned. There are so many grounds it’s ridiculous.
Jack they don’t care. They want to label him a criminal for election purposes. This is no different than calling Trump supporters insurrectionists. It is all about labels. I can only hope that the American people see this as a politically motivated hit job and respond accordingly in November.
Merchan’s jury instructions are obviously an attempt to give a directed verdict of guilty while cloaking it with the appearance of being a jury verdict.
It is my understanding that the SCOTUS has oversight of all courts federal and state. If Robert’s does not intervene soon I will have no faith that my Constitutional rights will ever be protected in the future and we will no longer have a third branch of government in the Judiciary. We will only have handmaidens for the totalitarians of the left.
If I were a juror, I would vote to acquit if the defendant was a Republican, even if he confessed in open court.
If I were a juror, I would vote to convict if the defendant is a Democrat, even if there was ironclad video evidence from three angles proving innocence beyond a reasonable doubt.
The rules have changed.
This is not a party game; this is life. We can not just take our toys and go home simply because we do not like the change in the rules.
We now know that Democrats are subhuman vermin whose rights are not worthy of respect. We have a holy, moral duty to hate all of them, collectively and individually, with our entire being, the way Demona from Gargoyles hated humanity.
Democrats are subhuman vermin whose rights are not worthy of respect.
I hope Republicans prosecutors and cops frame them for felonies, especially capital felonies. I would do that if I were a prosecutor or a cop.
That is what they, to quote the film Joker, “fucking deserve”.
Apparently Maxine Waters was too busy…? Good thing DeNiro has nothing but time. I don’t know…I guess I pretty much completely agree with your assessment.
It’s one thing to have someone speak (whether actor or no) that can offer up sound reasoning as to why President Trump is a bad choice to lead again; and we all know there are sound reasons. But to have someone that has historically just been mindlessly crude and vulgar speak…and then right outside the courthouse?
Well, I mention Maxine Waters because I believe she did the same thing at the end of the Chauvin trial (spouting off outside the courthouse) and they got the verdict they wanted. If it worked before…
https://x.com/becketadams/status/1795479913765450056?s=46&t=hYBRdyKc75ixaD6bBbzJZw
“The kids won’t believe this, but there was a time before social media and 24-hour news content when De Niro’s reputation was that of a mysterious, reserved genius—an artist of quiet dignity and incomprehensible depth. The Italian Daniel Day Lewis.
Boy, that seems like a long time ago.”
This certainly looks like an unforced error. It was critical, critical, that the Biden administration counter the impression that this was a politically motivated prosecution. Instead, they pretty much advertised that it was.
And for what? Did they seriously think New York City was going to vote Republican? And of all people, why Robert deNiro? I honestly can’t fathom the strategy behind this stunt.
“And for what? Did they seriously think New York City was going to vote Republican? “
That is the irony in the trial itself. Bragg is using a law that claims Trump conspired to defraud voters by withholding information about his character. This apparently is the crime that allows the use of the expired misdemeanor charge of falsifying business records to elevate the crime to a felony so that he can be charged with a crime for each accounting entry. That is how they get to 34 charges. It is like charging a tax evader the same charge for each dollar of income not disclosed and untaxed.
Trump did not win New York in 2016 so who was defrauded. Does anyone think that Bragg is concerned one whit about Republican voters. That is the real fraud.
So does this rise to the level of another constitutional violation in this political show trial? Here we have the president’s representative imploring a conviction as a public spectacle right outside the trial. Isn’t that a six amendment violation due to unfair publicity against the defendant?
Indeed, this was an unforced error.
There was nothing to gain by sending any campaign representative there.
What we now know is that all Democrats are subhuman vermin, with no rights worthy of respect, and that it is our holy, moral duty to hate them.
Welp.
Now not only am I not feeling ashamed voting against Biden this fall-
I’m actually feeling spiteful and vindictive voting *for* Donald Trump this year.