3748

I feel like Castor is angling to cover Pence at this point.

3749

That honestly feels like it should be the safe play if it was reasonable to expect the Senate to do its job in good faith with the impeachment trial.

3750
3751

From what I know of Trump supporters I’m related to in one way or another: Yes, yes it will. People that voted for Trump to give us the middle finger enjoy his antics.

3752

He seems like he’s trying to make the argument that Trump completely fell for the conspiracy theories and so he was acting in good faith when demanding investigations and withholding aid so it’s all good.

Interesting defense, that the president is an easily fooled idiot.

3753

That is going to be the final defense in the Senate. Essentially, Trump is too stupid and self-centered to conceive that his personal interest is distinguishable from the national interest; therefore he was pursuing what he understood was the national interest; so no bribery.

3754

Meanwhile…

3755

This is going to sound like a dumb comment (and to be fair, it probably is) but for some of the younger (relatively) Trump supporters I encounter, there seems to be a disconnect from them and reality. That is, there’s a blurring between what is real and the crap they see on reality TV. They think Trump is a great character and it’s absolutely hilarious how he pisses off the liberals (“liberals” being anyone who actually understands how scary and damaging his actions are). I almost get the feeling they see all this as they would their favorite person on a reality TV show. They love to see how this guy pisses off everyone else in the house/island/ship/whatever.

It reminds me of teenagers and how their brains often don’t quite make the connection that the consequences of their actions might happen to them. At one level they understand that a certain risky behavior can lead to a bad result, but fundamentally they don’t really grasp that it could happen to them. That’s the feeling I get from a lot of Trump voters, they don’t think disastrous policies could actually affect their lives. It’s just poke-the-liberals-in-the-eye entertainment.

3756

The problem with that argument is that it makes him unfit for office. Which we all know, but the gop is ok with.

3757

Looks like now that the witnesses the GOP themselves demanded testify has wrecked their attempts to defend Trump, he is now one of the Democrats’s witnesses.

3758

I doubt normal middle/working class folks enjoy peeping into their pageant dressing rooms, or raping contestants, etc. So no, not the same at all.

3759

Middle/working class people are very much in favor of severe beatings or outright killing of people like that in my experience.

3760

These people are both small business people who are in the 6 figures salary range with up to a few employees each (max), and both are in their 50’s [I bring this up because there’s a weird archetype of small business people with moderate education who LOVE trump.] They are both otherwise seemingly reasonable people that I can get along with quite easily outside of politics, but on key issues (read: things FOX talks about) they suddenly turn into ravenous idiots. Thankfully, it’s really easy to predict hot button issues and they are smart enough not to bring them up either, so we can all get along.

I wish they were young kids that could learn, but both are far too old/far gone.

3761

So… there is no “malicious intent” in moving shit to hidden servers for political reasons?

Not like… security reasons. Just because it makes someone look bad?
Call me crazy, but that seems kinda malicious to me.

3762

It was just a clerical error man! No biggie. It’s like the top secret dog ate it.

3763

I don’t really grasp how both these men can testify that on the one hand that they were concerned when they understood the President was conditioning aid to Ukraine on investigations of Biden, and that they understood that this was a private political objective for the President and not a matter of national policy, and that they conveyed what the President wanted to the Ukrainians, but on the other hand no one ever asked them to engage in bribery or extortion. What would they call it?

3764

But I do understand how someone else could read IL’s post as a slur on middle or working class individuals.

Not my intention.

3765

Yeah, and I didn’t read it that way either. But the number of replies from people outraged that Trump’s behavior is being attributed to middle/working class culture seems to indicate that a lot of people did read it that way. Note for the future, the word “culturally” is a fuzzy one and people read very different things into it.

3766

Yup. Hey, it worked with “Fake News” (originally meant to describe Russian-perpetrated bullshit memes on FB, but now understood as “anything that makes God-Emperor Trump look bad”), so naturally they’re gonna try it with everything else now.

3767

That’s not my objection. My objection is that the idea that Trump is a man of the people is a ridiculous, dishonest trope, and pretending that he is anything other than a rich establishment figure is crazy. He is not working class because he does not labor. He is not middle class because he does not labor. He is a rich, privileged white man who lives a life of affluence and plenty, largely paid for by an inheritance augmented with the money of the working people he has cheated along the way.