“What do you think would have happened if Black Americans had stormed the Capitol? I don’t think he’d be talking about pardons.”
—President Biden, race-baiting for all he’s worth, at a campaign rally in Philadelphia.
Desperate. Panicked. Beneath contempt. Assholery exemplified.
The claim that Donald Trump is a racist is one of the most popular of the Big Lies used against him for decades, while the overwhelming evidence is that he treats people of all races equally badly. The “he’s going to do X” is one of my most detested methods of attacking anyone, and it’s a favorite of Biden’s (Mitt Romney was going to put blacks “back in chains,” according to Joe, if you recall). The “Trump’s going to say X” trope is even more revolting, but does anyone seriously doubt that Trump wouldn’t be as supportive of black pro-Trump rioting morons as he would white ones? You never know what Trump will do or say, but I’ll confidently wager that he would be making even a bigger deal over his support for the rioters if they were black. Of course he’d be talking about pardons. If you’re going to engage in gratuitous race-baiting, you can at least make sense.
That statement by Biden opens the door to literally any campaign cheap shots and low blows now. Biden supporters are ethically estopped from complaining if Trump, to offer a hypothetical, suggests that Biden is secretly lusting after his daughter based on her diary entries. Biden has given the green light to any slander, any libel, any lie and any kind of character assassination no matter how unfair or vile.
To say he’s in a glass house is a severe understatement.
Ethics Alarms 
I saw the quote and it simply confused me. What does he mean? What would the black people be attacking the Capitol for? Did black people think the election was rigged? Wasn’t it the truckloads of late arriving ballots from majority black districts in places like Detroit and Atlanta and Philadelphia that decimated Trump’s lead on election night and the following morning? It’s a hypothetical that makes no sense. Does he mean if Trump had won, black people would have attacked the Capitol and then he’d refuse to let them off? But in that case, would Biden have sent the black people to the Capitol? Just inexplicably confusing, at least to me.
Is it possible that what Joe means is, had Trump defeated Biden in 2020, and blacks had stormed the Capitol to prevent the election from being certified, that a current President Trump would never consider pardons for blacks? Again, that’s still race-baiting on a hypothetical that could not be observed (unless Trump does win this fall, and blacks do storm the Capitol next January…). But I’m willing to throw Biden a small bone on this one.
The ironic thing to me is that we’ve seen Trump in office, and we’ve seen Biden in office. Which one engaged in political prosecution? Which one collaborated with mainstream and social media to censor stories? Which one forked over billions of dollars (that could be welfare for black people) to illegal immigrants and housed them in places were blacks are fighting for housing? Which one… Well, maybe that’s enough. I think Trump has plenty of stones he can throw back at Biden purely on record.
I’m not willing. He wasn’t thinking it out, just saying that Trump would want to pardon whites but not blacks because he’s a racist. The context and details weren’t involved, just a simple, “He’s a racist.”
But Ryan, if Biden had lost (no way) and black people had stormed the Capitol, they would have been insurrectionists and Joe would have been fully culpable for failing to stop them from storming the Capitol, rendering Joe an insurrectionist and an existential threat to the Democrat party rule, er, Democracy.
You know, I was never that big on Sartre and the rest of the existentialists when they were all the rage in high school literature back in the ’60s. I wish “existential” had never reared its ugly head back then, only to be gleefully tossed around like confetti by the cognoscenti over half a century later in their dotage.
Point of clarification: An existential threat is a threat to the existence of something; that is, the possibility that something will stop existing for some reason. For example, an existential threat to humanity is a phenomenon or event that could cause humanity to become extinct.
An existentialist threat is a threat that forces us to take responsibility for how we respond to the situations in which we find ourselves. Some philosophers have less clarity of language than others, but to my understanding the point of existentialism is that we can only know things by how we can observe them. There is no “essence of chair” that exists independently of how we think about and interact with a thing we call a chair. Chair is as chair does.
An example of an existentialist threat would be, “If you hurt those people, it’s not because a cosmic being told you to. It’s because it made you feel good. What you do is all on you. All people have in this world is each other, and we can choose to make this world one that people want to live in, or one in which people suffer and hope for something better. Part of that is deciding what people can and can’t get away with. If you choose to hurt people, you’d better be prepared to have a very bad time, because no cosmic being will protect you from what we’ll do to you in response.”
As an applied existentialist, I break the human experience down into foundational concepts that people can use to figure out what they want to contribute to the world and how they can make it happen. I help people figure out how to build meaning out of the building blocks of conscious existence. And no, I’m not particularly impressed with the philosophers who make it their vocation to ask questions that don’t have useful answers, or the ones who latch onto a sliver of reality and treat it like a complete paradigm. I’m here to show humans philosophy done effectively.
When are our politicians, pundits and activists going to learn that,
“The political left has shown its pattern of propaganda lies within their narratives so many times that it’s beyond me why anyone would blindly accept any narrative that the political left, their lapdog Pravda-USA media, their woke consumed bureaucracy, or their activist supporters actively push?”
Political Propaganda – Arrrgh!!!
Someone could ask him if Michael Byrd had been white, and Ashli Babbitt black, would Byrd have been cleared by a secret tribunal, and escaped all punishment? If so, would the fire damage to the Capitol be repaired by now?
One quibble I have is when you say Trump treats people of all races equally badly. I find him quite loyal and supportive – to people who are loyal and supportive to him. It’s people who attack him and take cheap shots at him that he throws back at. Regardless of race. Maybe not the more effective or mature of responses, but by and large, he’s very loyal.
The verdict is in.
Trump found guilty on all 34 counts in hush-money trial.
Yesterday sources said that Biden would address the nation after the verdict.
I wish I could write like you, Steve-O, because I’d have a lot to say.
The president is an idiot if he gets behind a podium to gloat. Everybody with a brain, and certainly everybody with a law degree, knows that this is not the end of the process and that if this reaches the supreme Court which it almost certainly will, the verdict is probably toast.
On what grounds would this reach the Supreme Court?
The usual way, Bob: if it is overturned or not overturned by a series of appellate courts all the way up the line, and SCOTUS accepts the case as having important legal and national implications.
I know how cases reach the Supreme Court. But how would THIS case, specifically, reach the Supreme Court since Steve believes it will.
Why would the justices choose to take this case?
Are you just sealioning? Because it’s a ridiculous question. There are endless grounds for appeal both legal and procedural. The main reason it might not get that far is that the NY Supremes may overturn the case before SCOTUS has a chance. Allowing the Stormy Daniels sex stuff into the testimony alone might trigger a reversal.
What? Steve said this would reach the Supreme Court, I asked HIM why he thinks THIS case would make it all the way to the Supreme Court and get chosen by the justices.
All you’re doing is explaining how cases make it to the Supreme Court. I’m already aware of how.
This cases seems highly unlikely to even be reversed on appeal. Your example is weak because the judge allowed Stormy Daniels to talk about sex with Trump because the defense said it never happened in the first place. The judge also sustained a lot of the defense’s objections during her testimony and the judge found it odd the defense didn’t object to certain things she said.
So good luck with that. And even if it was successfully appealed, I still don’t understand how THIS case is set up to be a shoo-in for the Supreme Court. There’s nothing here to suggest that and seems highly unlikely.
The conviction should be thrown out at the first NY state appellate level and the judge should be sanctioned. So much reversible error. The case should have been thrown out at the pleading level.
You think that because you like the result, you’re Trump-Deranged, and you don’t know what you’re talking about. The way the case was brought, with the maneuvering around the statute of limitations, is grounds for reversal. The fact that the judge’s daughter was making money off the case is grounds. The judge’s weird instructions are grounds. It’s grounds for reversal that, as Prof Turley pointed out, the court allowed the jury to be told repeatedly that there were federal campaign violations committed by Trump, which is is not true and not relevant. The federal government found no basis to impose a civil fine, let alone bring a criminal charge. The judge barred a legal expert who could have shown that no such violation occurred, so the judge allowed the jury to be repeatedly told a false fact that could have affected the verdict. There’s lots more. That doesn’t mean that the trial will be overturned, but there is certainly grounds, and the fact that the case involves the 2024 election alone is enough to get SCOTUS’s attention. It might even choose to take the case immediately on that basis.
I’m ignoring eveything you said before the Supreme Court comment since it’s totally irrelevant. I could also say you think the case will be reversed because you voted for Trump.
But to your actual point, on what legal merits does THIS case have anything to do with the 2024 presidential race?
You could say it, but unlike me, you have no basis to say it, and you don’t know what you’re talking about. Moreover, you’re flirting with the Stupidity Rule, or, as is more likely, you’re being intellectually dishonest. All of the four cases brought against Trump, plus the civil case, in an election year, by Democratic prosecutors, reek of a coordinated effort to win the election by criminalizing politics. That you could ask that last question and still look at yourself in the mirror without blushing is telling.
Is Bush v Gore in any way analogous?
I don’t think so.
I stand corrected, Willem!
Mark Levin, a far better lawyer than I am, just posted this on X, and he is persuasive:
It has been 6- weeks since this star chamber, kangaroo court proceeding started, preventing President Trump from campaigning on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays in the critical few months before the general election. This case has prevented hundreds of thousands of voters from hearing President Trump at rallies, meeting him in person, and the usual and normal activities a presidential candidate engages in to reach and persuade voters. This trial has forced President Trump to pay untold sums of money to defend himself, funds that would otherwise be used in campaign events and advertisements. Meanwhile, the court’s extreme gag order has prevented President Trump from speaking to voters about the full array of events taking place in the courtroom, while his political opponents can fashion statements and advertisements aimed at persuading voters that Trump should not be elected and Biden should be.
For these reasons and many more, it is the voters who are being disserved by this unlawful abomination. To put it bluntly, the is no law, state or federal, that has been broken. The statute of limitations on the state law had already run anyway. There is no federal campaign issue, which is why no federal campaign law has been specifically cited at any time during the trial.
Moreover, no other American, let alone presidential candidate, has been subjected to such a preposterous case, which further underscores its purpose.
Furthermore, there is no state jurisdiction in a case that supposedly relies on a federal campaign law to create 34-state felonies, which federal authorities have examined and never charged. And the violations of President Trump’s due process rights are so numerous as to be impossible to comprehensively list here — from the filing itself to the jury instructions and everything in between.
All of this is directed at the voters — that is, to influence and interfere in the federal presidential election by a state prosecutor, a state judge, in a state courtroom, with a jury chosen from a limited jury pool. That’s the purpose of this entire exercise.
As I watch TV lawyers and others talk about Trump’s appeal options, I am surprised that they ignore a federal path to the Supreme Court. At issue is our federal voting system for president, the office of the presidency, and the ability of any local prosecutor to bring charges, even preposterous charges, against a presidential candidate. Appealing a guilty verdict through the state judicial process on, let’s say, a guilty verdict on a state issue, would be understandable. But it does not address the more significant constitutional issue: what I will call reverse federalism, that is, the seizing of federal jurisdiction by a state. This issue will not go away as other local and state prosecutors find political benefit in continuing this kind of lawfare. The entire poisonous effort must be addressed, and only the U.S. Supreme Court can do that. The federal, presidential election process is at stake as is the office of the presidency. No appeal to higher state courts will not resolve what is now a horrendous federal election problem created by a single DA and acting state judge. The damage has already been done, and every day that passes the damage increases.
For this reason, and others, Bush v. Gore is the only path the Supreme Court has provided for review. The Equal Protection Clause was used by the High Court when the Florida Supreme Court continually altered the state voting system in an apparent effort to deliver the electoral college votes to Al Gore. The High Court found, among other things, that in doing so, the state court was imposing an “unequal” application of the election law on voters depending on what county they resided in, in violation of the 14th amendment.
In the case at hand, the principle of equal protection also applies. In fact, it is even more compelling than it was in Bush v. Gore. A single Democrat-elected DA, who ran for office campaigning that he would get Trump, a single Democrat-appointed acting judge, who is conflicted by his donations, associations, and daughter’s fundraising on the case, together are preventing the putative Republican nominee for president from running a campaign for president (at least severely handicapping the campaign) for the first time in our nation’s history. Never before have a DA and state judge so abused their offices as to even attempt to influence or interfere with a presidential election. The TV lawyers and others are gnashing their teeth over this, and rightly so. They are appalled at what they are witnessing inside the courtroom — the motions, the rulings, the judge’s behavior, the jury instructions, etc. They are laying out reason after reason the case will be reversed on appeal, while lamenting that state appellate review is too slow to matter for purposes of the election. Former federal prosecutors opine that they have never seen a pro-prosecution judge like this. Defense attorneys are stunned at the multiple due process violations. Like a choir, the sing again and again about the damage this is doing to the rule of law, the justice system, the federal electoral process, and the federal election system, but they are blind to taking the only legal step that can be taken to at least attempt, in a serious, substantive, and federal constitutional way, to bring this case to the foot of the Supreme Court’s steps, so that the High Court can at least decide whether it needs to intervene, as it did in Bush v. Gore, or should allow local and state officials bulldoze through our federal election system and, more specifically, through the public’s ability to choose a president, the most important and powerful governmental official in our country.
The TV lawyers and others simply throw up their hands. This is the difference between analysts and advocates. It is also the difference between Democrat-Party and leftwing lawyers and “our” lawyers. I was president of Landmark Legal Foundation (I am not chairman) for years. Our exclusive focus was on difficult legal and constitutional matters. We have been plaintiffs and we have provided scholarly briefs to state and federal courts, and often federal appellate courts and the Supreme Court. We have litigated against numerous federal departments, including the DOJ, the IRS, Treasury Department, the EPA, the Interior Department, etc. We have litigated in dozens of states. We have challenged tax laws, campaign violations, administrative regulations, voting laws, etc. We have filed ethics complaints, briefs against presidents and major organizations and institutions. And we have done this for almost 50-years. Most of all, we have frequently found ourselves on the opposite side of the radical left, which is not shy about using the legal system as it is today — for lawfare in a presidential election.
The Manhattan case is intended to interfere with the normal and routine campaign process to Trump’s detriment and Biden’s advantage. Too many lawyers will not bring themselves or are simply by experience and knowledge not able to bring themselves, to the point of using the legal system in a legitimate and, indeed, necessary way to confront what has occurred here. More to the point, by their actions, they are intending to deny millions of citizens, especially those who have not decided how they will vote in November, in what is expected to be a very close election decided by a handful of states, full access to and participation in a federal, presidential campaign process in which candidates use multiple methods and means to reach them and persuade them. Elections are how we select our top governmental officials. Unconstitutional interference by anyone or anybody must not stand.
Finally, if there is a guilty verdict of some kind, that is what the state court sought by its own conduct. The label “convicted felon Donald Trump,” which the Biden campaign is reportedly intending to call the former president, clearly is intended to influence enough voters to impact the election results. The long state appellate process cannot fix that, and certainly not in time. Indeed, the matter becomes even more urgent. In my view, if there is a guilty verdict, Bush v. Gore and the Equal Protection Clause must be considered, even though we cannot predict in advance if the Supreme Court will take it up (it won’t have the opportunity if it is not asked).
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You mean the “you don’t agree with me and it’s pissing me off” rule?
And as usual, you’re now in political, bloviating territory and nowhere near sound, legal analysis about this court case.
No, I mean the obvious dunderheadedness of pretending that a political prosecution and the legal machinations behind it are unrelated to the election.
You can read the list of the many potentially appealable rulings and errors as well as I can, and I shouldn’t have to recite them to you. I haven’t done any legal analysis on this case, because I wasn’t in the courtroom, and I can’t trust the biased reporting. I have done ethical analysis of the case, which is simply that it’s unethical politics, the abuse of the legal system, and opens the door to much worse in the future.
And accuse me of bloviating again, asshole, and you’re banned. If you’re going to be just a reflex contrarian, you can do it politely and respectfully, or not at all.
Clear?
Bob, if I were Jack, I’d give you the old heave ho, you’re outta here!
OB
it is obvious that Bob Ghery got is law degree from the ladies in the view and is intentionally being antagonistic. Professor Turley has said there are numerous reasons for reversal as have many others. I think Jack has been gracious in giving him the benefit of the doubt but after his first “ no it’s not argument” I stopped reading him.
From now on my flag will remain upside down and at half staff because part of of our republic in the form of the judiciary has been corrupted by the powerful and that those claiming Trump threatened our democracy have poisoned the electorate into believing that their opposition requires prosecution simply to avoid democratic choice so they may stay in power. We are in the process of being turned into subjects to live in servitude to the globalists. I can only hope my fears are allayed in November by throwing out all the liars and corrupt lawmakers.
I agree, CM. This is a monstrous stain upon the reputation of the New York state legal establishment including all its lawyers and its judiciary. But frankly, I think they are so deranged by Trump’s existence, they simply don’t care. I sat next to a sitting federal district court (Long Island) judge during a wedding reception. He didn’t even try to hide his contempt for the then president.
I actually gave legal reasons as to why it wouldn’t be reversed based on Jack’s comments.
But go off.
“This cases seems highly unlikely to even be reversed on appeal. Your example is weak because the judge allowed Stormy Daniels to talk about sex with Trump because the defense said it never happened in the first place. The judge also sustained a lot of the defense’s objections during her testimony and the judge found it odd the defense didn’t object to certain things she said.”
Those were your “legal reasons”? There’s a difference between talking about sex and going into salacious details that have no probative value but only serve to inflame the jury. Trump was not charged with having sex.
what was the specific predicate crime? How does a state court adjudicate a Federal violation? Especially when all the Federal stakeholders found no grounds to charge let alone convict?
IANAL, but basic logic is fairly simple to follow
I hope Merchan sentences Trump to probation so when he’s elected and wants to travel overseas on U.S. state business, or even domestically, he’ll have to visit his probation officer and get approval from some guy handling a hundred or so other cases.
It seems to me that Mark Levin’s comments above are the same rationale that Garland and the DOJ sued Texas for enforcing immigration law. The SCOTUS ruled for the DOJ stating clearly that immigration was solely the province of the Federal government. The same is true for federal election law. Why isn’t the DOJ demanding that the U.S. Supreme Court intervene in this case? Because it does not want to harm Biden’s chances for reelection. Garland uses that law to protect Biden, himself and his cronies.