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PoliGAF 2017 |OT5| The Man In the High Chair

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Spoiled Milk

Banned
pigeon said:
Are you dumb? We don't put presidents in jail because they haven't committed crimes, except for Nixon, which we politely agreed to ignore, which was probably a mistake that is part of how we ended up in the current situation.
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Which president hasn't committed crimes in the past 60 years? Besides Carter. God Bless Carter.
 
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PantherLotus

Professional Schmuck
I couldn't tell if you were trolling but yes of course we have to hold our elected officials, including the president, accountable. Including jail time if necessary. What kinda roll eyes are necessary to refute this?
 
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Tamanon

Banned
So this is his first real policy speech right? Will be interesting to see if he can hold it together and actually sell America on his plan(doubtful).

Or if this is another trick and just a rambling speech.
 
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VendettaRed07

Member
Even if other presidents have done things worthy of jail time they weren't so completely negligent or broadcasting their crimes over television and internet social media outlets. There's an argument that pursuing conviction with previous presidents would have been a net negative as there was often if almost never enough hard evidence to land some one or that the process of trying to get it would have been more institutionally damaging than letting it slide. For the most part, presidents and leaders up until now could at least argue they were acting with the countries best interest in mind

Trump isn't. He's so negligent and stupid. He's basically admitted to guilt and obstructing justice. There has to be concequences for him.

If there isn't, then there is no incentive going forward for elected officials not to cheat. Because even if you are caught you'll get away with it. There's a zero percent chance even if future candidates do try to cheat they wouldn't be able to cover it up way better than he has. There's more at stake by letting this go than going after him. Because if he doesn't go down no one ever will

If Trump colluded with the Russians and there is proof and nothing happens then why shouldn't democrats just go to the Chinese and have their hackers go after the RNC and certain states election boards voter registery? Obviously I'd never want something like that to happen but if Trump is guilty then he has to go down because it's institution shattering if he doesn't. Where as id argue there have not quite been institution shattering results from allowing previous presidents crimes to slide before
 
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East Lake

Member
PantherLotus said:
I couldn't tell if you were trolling but yes of course we have to hold our elected officials, including the president, accountable. Including jail time if necessary. What kinda roll eyes are necessary to refute this?
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It's not that outlandish of an opinion. This was written after Trump threatened Clinton with a special prosecutor.

Donald Trump's threat in Sunday night's presidential debate to appoint a special prosecutor to go after Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail server is legally empty -- but it's genuinely dangerous nevertheless. Federal regulations give the appointment power to the attorney general, not the president, precisely to protect us against a president who uses the special prosecutor as a political tool.

What separates functioning democracies from weak or failed ones is that political parties alternate in power without jailing the opponents they beat in elections. That sometimes means giving a pass to potentially criminal conduct, but that's a worthwhile sacrifice for making republican government work.
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That alternation means winners don't put their opponents in jail. If they do -- or if the opponents fear that they will be jailed -- then the incentive to accept defeat evaporates. Losers in that dire position instead will turn to wide-scale popular resistance or military coups. That's only rational if the losers think they won't be free to run for office again.

Alternation is thus what distinguishes stable democracies from weak or failing ones. Prosecuting opponents is the hallmark of democracy-ending dictatorship. Egypt offers a recent and clear example: Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has relentlessly prosecuted the elected leaders he displaced in his 2013 coup. No one has any illusion that the Muslim Brotherhood will be back in future elections. And no one doubts that democracy in Egypt is over.

It may seem extreme to say that Trump's promise to prosecute Clinton threatens alternation in the U.S. After all, American democracy is pretty stable. But other presidents have bent over backward to avoid such prosecutions -- even to the point of condoning illegal behavior.

Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon is a prime example, even though the two were from the same party. Ford judged that the republic wouldn't be well-served by prosecution of a former president. George W. Bush didn't seek to prosecute Bill Clinton for perjury, although legally he might have been able to do so.

And Barack Obama didn't seek to prosecute Bush administration officials for acts that likely counted as torture.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-10/trump-would-jail-clinton-there-s-a-name-for-that
 
The Chosen One

The Chosen One

Member
Tamanon said:
So this is his first real policy speech right? Will be interesting to see if he can hold it together and actually sell America on his plan(doubtful).

Or if this is another trick and just a rambling speech.
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He'll stay on script tonight and stick to the teleprompter. And he'll mostly get positive reviews for "sounding Presidential".

But he'll undermine everything he says tonight at tomorrow's rally in Arizona.
 
DietRob

DietRob

i've been begging for over 5 years.
Tonight is the first time Trump breaks into prime time for an address right? This absolutely reeks of "I desperately need to look presidental" and remind everyone I'm still president.

This isn't "prime time" address material. I hope he doesn't make a habit of this. If he gets a lot of positive feedback I can see him start to abuse it
 
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VendettaRed07

Member
East Lake said:
It's not that outlandish of an opinion. This was written after Trump threatened Clinton with a special prosecutor.



https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-10/trump-would-jail-clinton-there-s-a-name-for-that
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Again this is generally true and I agree that we shouldn't be jailing politically leaders for any crime they commit.

But this is beyond the pale. And what Trump has done if guilty is pretty easily far worse than any other crime due to the implications allowing it to be something acceptable will have.

What's the difference between not accepting defeat out of fear of being prosecuted and setting the precedent that seeking foreign aid to attack your political opponents.

Like is one even any better than the other at that point? When are we going to do something; do you have to get caught hiring foreign assassins?
 
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Slayven

Member
Spoiled Milk said:
It takes a mere ten seconds of Trump footage to glean that he's intellectually and temperamentally unfit to be president, not in the sense that the job requires it (I think presidents are mostly just toothless popular figures with a lot of authority anyway, far removed from the people actually designing policy) but rather because he literally can't get anyone to do anything without what I had assumed to be bare minimum communication and socialization skills.
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Trump isn't lucid enough to run an Arbys
 
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Slayven

Member
Evan Rosenfeld‏Verified account @Evan_Rosenfeld 13m13 minutes ago

BREAKING: Former Maricopa Co. Sheriff Joe Arpaio told @12News Monday that he won't be attending President Trump's rally Tuesday in #Phoenix
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,
 
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Aaron Strife

Banned
If Hillary committed a crime worthy of being imprisoned then yes, she should go to jail.

What's wrong with that? The problem with Trump last year was that they never accused her of anything concrete, much less have any basis for it. Yet their campaign chant was "lock her up" and he told her point blank she would go to jail, even though she did not commit a crime (to god and our knowledge).

If Trump colluded with the Russians, which is what he is currently being investigated for, he should go to jail. End of story.
 
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aspiegamer

Member
What I get out of this speech is "we're bombing more people, more places, more often, with more people there, but I'm not going to tell you anything else about it in the future." This is deep neocon territory.

"Terrorists 'have nowhere to hide'"*
*Kashmir excluded
 
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aspiegamer

Member
Welp. Someone prep that old "possible nuke area?" map and center it on Kashmir. Yet somehow this speech has been a half hour of absolutely freaking nothing other than a promise of more bloodshed.

Spoiled Milk said:
literally the opposite of neoconservatism. He just said that we're switching to "principled realism" and is not interested in nation building or changing people's way of life anymore. Altogether a decent speech.
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"We're not engaging in nation building, but we're staying there until a nation gets built and out of the people we like."
 
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AntraxSuicide

Banned
East Lake said:
It's not that outlandish of an opinion. This was written after Trump threatened Clinton with a special prosecutor.



https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-10-10/trump-would-jail-clinton-there-s-a-name-for-that
Click to expand...

The examples at the end aren't very good. Nixon should've gone to prison (or at least been convicted) and anyone ordering torture should've been charged as well.

Most of our political norms are fine and should be guarded, but the norm that "politicians can never be tried for crimes" is really stupid. Trump and the GOP have already tested various norms and their boundaries, and this one is no exception.
 
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