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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   28013 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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National review has basically said this is BS (but Trump did himself no favor with bad legal counsel). That is what establishment republicans think.

National review has basically said this is BS (but Trump did himself no favor with bad legal counsel). That is what establishment republicans think.

I'm essentially a NR republican of the Jonah Goldberg Remnant variety. I am anti-Trump in that I think he is cultural poison and I will(have) never vote(d) for him. I agree completely with the NR consensus on this.

The problem with the "This will kill Trump" viewpoint is that it sees Trump in a vacuum, as a uniquely corrupt outlier. My view is that is he is the "naked" exampled of the corruption already pervasive in elite politics. Everything he does or tries to do or wants to do is completely routine and no more dirty than what the Bidens/Clintons/Pelosis have been doing for decades. And probably the Bushes, Obamas, etc.

The difference that Trump offers is that he is simultanously pettier/dumber/incompetent at everything he does AND he has none of the friendly institutional cover afforded to the elite club and their competent lawyers and knowlegable operatives. They have a system that they know how to navigate, litigate and obfuscate, and Trump doesn't know that he needs to know how to work that system to succeed.

So, when the proposition comes up: Does this change your opinion of Trump? The answer to even mainstream Republicans is, "This makes no difference, because the other guys are just as bad, and maybe worse because they're good at being that bad and getting away with it."

If Trump going down is the draino that unclogs the swamp and he takes them all down, this maybe isn't so bad. If he's the only one who makes it through the drain, this is a sort of travesty of selective justice.

I actually think Trump is less bad compared to the Clinton, Bushes, etc. He is also more vulgar and doesn’t “hide it” as well.

But think of how many relatively poor people go into politics and leave crazy wealthy.

National review has basically said this is BS (but Trump did himself no favor with bad legal counsel)

Nothing before the "but" matters.

The Wall Street Journal thinks everything is fine.

[Trump] adding, “I don’t know if Biden knows too much about it because I don’t know if he knows about anything.” There is no evidence that the Biden administration was involved in New York prosecutors’ decision to charge Trump in the case.

Emphasis mine. Not only is this blatant editorializing in a news story by the Wall Street Journal, it's blatantly false, because the involvement of a former Biden DOJ official is evidence.

Ehh the focus has been very heavily on “this is wrong” and not “Trump’s atty did a bad job.”

The WSJ piece is from their news section which is quite progressive. The opinion section is not forgiving this show trial.

The WSJ piece is from their news section which is quite progressive. The opinion section is not forgiving this show trial.The WSJ piece is from their news section which is quite progressive. The opinion section is not forgiving this show trial.

Headline from the WSJ opinion section: "Trump Was Convicted by a Jury, Not by His Political Enemies".

Trump said, without evidence, that President Biden was responsible for his conviction, saying “this was done by the Biden administration in order to wound or hurt an opponent.” Trump also implied, again without evidence, that evil big-money men are out to get him, describing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as a “Soros-backed D.A.” And he claimed that trial judge Juan Merchan was unfair, calling him “a conflicted judge who should have never been allowed to try this case.”

But it was 12 ordinary citizens, not Biden, Soros or Merchan, who unanimously pronounced Trump guilty on 34 felony counts. In fact, the Trump trial shows why juries have long been considered an important anti-corruption device. A sitting judge—one person, known to future litigants long in advance—is in theory easy enough to bribe. But does Trump mean to imply that all 12 of the jurors, none of whom was known in advance, were paid off by Biden or Soros? How? A judge might be tempted to kiss the hand of the state government that feeds him or, in the case of a federal judge, the president who nominated her in the past and might promote her in the future. Not so a jury.

(there is, in fact, evidence that the Biden administration was involved, and certainly evidence that people were out to get him, given that the NY AG ran on that as a campaign promise. But none of that matters, the holy jury has spoken)

I stand corrected. That’s an awful take.

That doesn’t surprise me even a little that they would say that, but I think it’s telling that National Review has never been less important or influential than it is now.

Like Rolling Stone magazine for the conservative movement. How the mighty have fallen.

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