At this point, I don’t just want Trump to be thrown out of office.
I want him to be jailed, and I want his assets seized.
Tens of millions of our tax dollars have already been paid to his businesses, to pay for his playing golf and going on vacation. That is ENTIRELY unacceptable to me. I want that money back.
I think Pence is preparing to be President well before 2020.
Yes, I don’t think he’s preparing to run against Trump. I think he’s preparing for the real possibility he will replace Trump before 2020 and then run for re-election in 2020.
I really think if they give Trump his wall, replace Obamacare, and let him curtail immigration he will say he’s done what he set out to do and resign. He doesn’t want to be President.
I still don’t understand why the emoluments and profiteering stuff hasn’t gotten much coverage in the media.
This is the same sort of dangerous underestimation of Trump’s ego that predicted he’d drop out of the primary race when it came time to divulge his financial information. Then later, that he’d drop out of the general election because he wouldn’t find it fun enough. Etc, etc, etc…
I can’t see Trump ever resigning. As long as he can cobble together enough supporters to fill one of those rallies, he’ll keep fighting.
However, I agree that Pence is probably hedging against the possibility that he runs in 2020 as an incumbent. Perfectly reasonable thing to do, IMO.
Me neither. This seems like a gross failure on the part of our government to stop this.
Because no one in the GOP cares. When the emoluments and profiteering stuff first started popping up, Republicans made it very clear that they didn’t think anything Trump was doing violated any laws and that they frankly weren’t going to waste any of their time on it. That pretty much killed it right there.
The thing is, even aside from the emoluments clause, the fact that we are paying literally tens of millions of dollars, directly to Trump businesses, so that he can go golfing… is just obscene to me. It’s like, if he really wants to go there, fine… the government folks going there to support him should be able to go FOR FREE. His business should not be allowed to charge the government money, to pay for decisions that he’s making.
If he doesn’t want to let the government stay at his place for free… that’s fine. He can go to camp david, where they can stay for free.
Abso-frickin-lutely
Nor should any of his businesses be able to charge any member of a foreign government for anything while he is in office.
We’ve kind of lost sight of the fact that his businesses shouldn’t be his any more. Yay for eroded norms.
I’ve never really understood it, but there’s some inflection point that, once you’ve crossed it, you’re pretty much set for life. Like you become a chief executive and even if you’re fired for gross incompetence, you’ll likely be hired to be CEO somewhere else. Or a terrible NFL coach who gets fired will very likely get hired somewhere else because I guess having been a coach means you’re good at coaching, or something. That and being wealthy means god loves you makes a weird slurry of attitudes in this country, creating a ruling class of powerful folks who really should not be trusted to hold it. Also, Kardashians. One of which will likely be president in our lifetime.
It’s like a corollary to the Peter Principle.
Even WaPo and NYT are pretty quiet about it, though. It doesn’t seem like a lot of effort is being spent to investigate/report on it.
I disagree with the notion that the news isn’t digging into it. Just Google “Trump emoluments” and you’ll get a ton of hits from the news throughout his election and all the way up to today. It just doesn’t get any play because it’s financial and law wonk stuff which is complicated and boring to most people.
Ok, they’re not putting on their front page much, then. Compared to the Russia thing which is the Saga of the Universe. It seems odd, as who the hell knows what Trump knew about Russia personally, yet meanwhile he’s openly fleecing the nation…?
How is it odd? Russia and Trump’s tweets get all the attention because they’re easy to digest, popular, and most importantly, the GOP will talk about them - sometimes even agreeing that they’re a problem. Emoluments violations get nothing.
I guess I hold outlets like WaPo and NYT to a higher standard than ‘easy to digest’ and ‘popular.’
Anyway, I’m not sure I accept the premise that such a story isn’t easy to digest. “Trump charging gov’t officials to use his own golf club” seems as digestible a headline to me as “Justice Dept. reverses stance, supports Ohio’s effort to purge inactive voters from rolls” (this morning’s WaPo).
If this action is as egregious as folks like Timex claim it is (I Am Not A Constitutional Lawyer, btw), there seems to be some dereliction somewhere in how it’s slipping through the cracks. “Not sexy enough” doesn’t cut it, in my book.
I don’t agree. If the perks get too tepid, the work too hard, and the heat from scandal gets too close, he can be talked into resigning.
Think of this: if he does run in 2020 and wins again it will be the end of his campaign rallies, which are his favorite part. If he leaves office and doesn’t try too hard to win again he can keep running and having rallies (and taking slushfund contributions) forever!
You tell them they have privilege, you tell them they and their culture is racist, you tell them their religion is stupid and bigoted. You tell them being anti-illegal immigration is racist, you tell them questioning why blacks kill blacks is racist, you tell them that regardless of their own position in life they have it better because they are white.
And you think that will win them over?