Gregmal Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 Where are they? Surely Trump was going to pardon himself, his kids, and all the protesters! We were told this so many times by the usual suspects here, and this "Fact" was verified by numerous WaPo, CNN, NYT, etc articles supporting it. All I have seen so far is that this big mega racist pardoned a bunch of black rappers. Do we have a conspiracy theory or story from said places explaining why they got this one wrong again? 0/160 now for team TDS. Last hope is I guess the military escort although thats looking grim. And then of course the hope that Mitch gets the establishment to see the benefit of impeaching Trump so that he can never run against them again! Looking forward to a 100-0 impeachment vote and then of course, the RICO case! You guys are so bright and prescient with your predictions! Any stock tips? Global macro calls? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LC Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 They probably couldn't afford it. ;D ;D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregmal Posted January 20, 2021 Author Share Posted January 20, 2021 Yea IDK.. I'm waiting to hear other explanations. How is it possible to consistently be so wrong, so consistently? Although admittedly, they're all probably pretty busy today. Big day of TV programming/analysis and likely a nightcap date with some petroleum jelly and the new Vogue magazine cover! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Read the Footnotes Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 If you asked me a couple of months ago, I would have said that pardons are very unlikely, and would be a mistake, but Trump does stupid things so it was not impossible. Over the last two months as Trump and his cronies likely did more and more illegal things, the likelihood of pardons actually became less for several reasons. First, a pardon needs to be for a specific crime, it cannot be blanket immunity. So Trump and his co-conspirators in any of the many alleged crimes would have to specify which crimes specifically were being pardoned. Second, to accept a pardon, you have to admit guilt. Admitting guilt in one matter became increasingly bad in terms of optics, does not fit the narrative of an innocent Trump continuing the fight and would hurt any chance to hold on to his base, which was already shrinking. Third, admitting criminal guilt would not absolve them from civil liability. As the civil liability increased, relative to the criminal liability, the calculus would change. Admitting guilt and detailing the crimes would have potentially made the civil cases slam dunks. Finally, if you accept a pardon and admit guilt, you are generally required to cooperate indefinitely with any criminal investigation that you can contribute to. Failure to do so could have consequences. Losing his base, having the entire cabal ratting on each other, and empowering the civil suits basically made pardons untenable. Anyone who thinks rather than just parroting partisan talking points and low brow media should have been able to figure all this out on their own with a little thinking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkbabang Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 No ended wars, no pardons for Assange, Snowden, Manning or Ulbricht. These are things Orangeman could have done without Congress, but didn't. He lowered taxes a little and got rid of a few regulations, but not regulatory agencies. The swamp in DC is as deep and as dark as ever and is now about to get much worse. A lot of hot air, not much more. Extremely disappointing. The chances Biden will go against the Washington establishment and pardon Snowden and the others is just about nil, Biden is the Washington establishment. Trump had a chance to both do the right thing and give a big middle finger to the intelligence/military industrial complex which controls the empire and instead he chose to go running with his tail between his legs. To quote the Orangeman himself: "sad" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregmal Posted January 20, 2021 Author Share Posted January 20, 2021 What I really am shocked by is that Trump is said to have actually honored the swamp thing tradition of leaving a note for Joseph! Any guesses as to: What instrument was used? 1) pen 2) pencil 3) crayon 4) invisible ink and finally, what it said? 1) good luck 2) fuck you 3) see you in 2024 4) please pardon me The pardons did surprise me. They were weak. Dude definitely has some weird thing for rappers. Odd for a crazy racist. Even Snoop Doggy Dog got his buddy sprung despite being a big Trump hater. Is it possible DJT is just trying to bone a Kardashian? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adesigar Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 Not saying that it happened but you guys do know that the president doesn’t have to reveal pardons. He is allowed to keep any/all of them secret. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ERICOPOLY Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 All I have seen so far is that this big mega racist pardoned a bunch of black rappers He pardoned political operatives and rich people who can help him. Roger Stone, Manifort, Steve Bannon, Charles Kushner, Flynn, Hunter, Collins, Stockman, etc... He likely believes that pardoning black rappers will win black voter support. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Read the Footnotes Posted January 20, 2021 Share Posted January 20, 2021 All I have seen so far is that this big mega racist pardoned a bunch of black rappers He pardoned political operatives and rich people who can help him. Roger Stone, Manifort, Steve Bannon, Charles Kushner, Flynn, Hunter, Collins, Stockman, etc... He likely believes that pardoning black rappers will win black voter support. Pardoning a bunch of random people is the equivalent of a giant document dump. The idea is to hide the scumbag co-conspirators in a flood of other pardons. In a way it is a similar idea of slowly de-stigmatizing aberrant behavior which was a constant theme of the Trump administration. To address the previous questions about why pardons were a bad idea that became much worse, let me propose some business analogies. Trump got several of his co-conspirators out of jail this summer and brought others back in to his orbit. Trump is basically a mob boss who used the same hitmen for multiple crimes. It would have been better to only use each of them one crime only. That way if one of them goes down, there's no way to implicate the other co-conspirators. But by "getting the band back together" everyone either lives or dies together. For a business analogy, it's as if Trump suddenly at the end under pressure cross-collateralized all of his loans and assets. Of course, though he has the reputation of the loans that he's not on the hook for, all of his loans are supposedly personally guaranteed by Trump at this point because no one would loan to him otherwise. We have basically reached the same level of risk to him for all the legal jeopardy. So in other words, there is so much legal risk in such a complicated web of potential co-conspirators on multiple cases, that pardons have little value. At this point the only strategy is a mob omerta. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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