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The world doesn't stop turning just because Democrats decide to have a fit in Congress.
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[RD] Trump in Charge: The MAGA Presidency
- Thread starter Birdjaguar
- Start date
The world doesn't stop turning just because Democrats decide to have a fit in Congress.
Why is the House still in recess? There is plenty for the house to do unrelated to the budget. It takes both parties to resolve the shutdown. Why isn't Trump, as the GOP leader, not Trying to resolve the shutdown? He has been directly involved in both Gaza and Ukraine negotiations. Why isn't he involved in opening the government? I thought he was the greatest negotiator? The Dems have been waiting for 3 weeks to sit down with him or the GOP Congress to figure out a path to opening the government. The Republicans won't even discuss it.
SemiLazyGamer
King
- Joined
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- 645
Like a Representative just having won her special election a month ago who hasn't even been sworn in.
Oh, look at that! She's the final vote needed to force the Epstein files to be released.
amadeus
rad thibodeaux-xs
If the White House needs any improvements at all, it’s to bring back the Nixon bowling alley wallpaper.
AROO!
AROO!
Trump doesn't want to open the government. Like DOGE, this is his new pretense for cutting funding to departments he views as supporting Democrats.
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
what does tax policy have to do with historical preservation
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Trump wants to be paid, reportedly up to $230M, for past 'malicious' prosecutions into his conduct
Trump, responding to report, says any Justice Department compensation decison would 'go across my desk'
President Donald Trump said Tuesday he's probably owed "a lot of money," responding to a newspaper report that he was seeking $230 million US in damages related to two investigations into his conduct.The New York Times reported Trump had filed administrative claims before he was re-elected last November, concerning both the FBI's 2022 search of his Mar-a-Lago property for classified documents and for a separate investigation years earlier into potential ties between Russia and his 2016 presidential campaign.
The status of the claims and any negotiations over them within the Justice Department was not immediately clear. A Justice Department spokesperson told The Associated Press that "in any circumstance, all officials at the Department of Justice follow the guidance of career ethics officials."
But Trump, in his response to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, said any decision would "have to go across my desk."
"The ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it," Bennett Gershman, an ethics professor at Pace University, told the New York Times, calling the situation "a travesty."
The latest revelation comes amid Democratic assertions that the Justice Department is helping Trump target political rivals, as three of his critics have recently been indicted.
Politicized claims 'ludicrous': ex-special counsel
The New York Times said one of the administrative claims, filed in 2024 and reviewed by The Associated Press, seeks compensatory and punitive damages over the search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022.His lawyer who filed the claim alleged the case was a "malicious prosecution" carried out by the Joe Biden administration to hurt Trump's bid to reclaim the White House, forcing Trump to spend tens of millions of dollars in his defence.
But prosecutors alleged that Trump, who was a private citizen at the time, resisted repeated requests to return all of the documents and looked to prevent some of the documents from being retrieved after a subpoena was issued. Trump faced 37 felony charges, which included alleged violations of the Espionage Act, and prosecutors said the documents included 18 marked top secret, 54 secret and 31 confidential.
It was one of four criminal indictments that Trump faced between his two presidencies, and Jack Smith was appointed in November 2022 to oversee the case. A Florida judge would eventually dismiss the documents case, but a planned appeal from Smith's team was rendered moot when Trump won the election last year.
"The idea that politics would play a role in big cases like this, it's absolutely ludicrous and it's totally contrary to my experience as a prosecutor," Smith said in a recent, rare interview since leaving office.
The New York Times said the other complaint seeks damages related to the long-concluded Trump-Russia investigation, which continues to infuriate the president . Special counsel Robert Mueller said in 2019 that charging Trump was never on the table, but he did stress the investigation couldn't exonerate him from allegations he obstructed with the probe.
Mueller's report said that while a conspiracy between Trump campaign members and Russian officials couldn't be established, on multiple occasions Trump associates lied to investigators about contacts with Russian individuals. The Trump campaign also welcomed Russian efforts to damage Trump's opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Repeats false 2020 election claims
Beyond the two claims, Trump on Tuesday appeared to raise the spectre of possible compensation related to "the fraud of the [2020] election."Recounts, reviews and audits in the battleground states of 2020 all affirmed Biden's victory. Judges, including some Trump appointed, rejected dozens of his legal challenges.
William Barr, attorney general in 2020 and a staunch defender of Trump, told The Associated Press in the election aftermath there was no evidence of widespread fraud that would have changed the election result. Barr later told a congressional committee that the claims of fraud were "bullfeathers."
Nevertheless, a large number of Trump supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to prevent the certification of Biden's victory. Smith, the special counsel, was also overseeing an indictment into Trump's alleged role in fomenting that riot, another case that fell away with Trump's 2024 election win.
Trump early this year pardoned nearly everyone criminally charged with participating in that attack, including leaders of militant groups charged with seditious conspiracy.
At least 11 rioters have been re-arrested, charged or sentenced for other crimes including child sexual abuse, plotting to murder FBI agents and reckless homicide while driving drunk, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. That includes a man just charged with threatening to kill Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Trump first signalled his interest in compensation publicly during a White House appearance last week with deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
"We knew some in the administration wanted to pay 'restitution' to the January 6th insurrectionists," Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff said on social media on Tuesday. "Now the president wants the biggest payout for the one who incited it."
Schiff, a manager during Trump's first impeachment by the House of Representatives in late 2019, is reportedly being investigated for mortgage fraud. Other Trump critics have been indicted in recent weeks: former FBI director James Comey to New York Attorney General Letitia James — also for alleged mortgage fraud — and John Bolton, national security adviser in Trump's first term, who faces indictment for improper handling of classified documents.
Trump said if the Justice Department signed off on compensation for the investigations, he could donate the money to charity or put it toward renovations for the White House, amid a controversial, ongoing demolition job in the East Wing as he pushes forward with plans to renovate the White House's ballroom.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/washington-trump-investigations-justice-department-9.6948210
The complexity is basically at the high end to try to either help wealthier tax payers or close loopholes they are exploiting.
Nevertheless, demolishing a portion of the people's house with no input from Congress is simply bypassing the "red tape" known as the Constitution.
Lexicus
Deity
Critical support to Trump's demolition of the symbols of western imperialism! Do the rest next week!
The Supreme Court will probably weigh in that the original intent was for work on the White House to be done with slave labor, so they will be repealing the 15th Amendment for purposes of this project.
danjuno
Cole Phelps, Badge 1247
What exactly does renovating an old mansion to make it even more decadent have to do with "greatness"?
The only clear man date he has is with Putin. Less than 50% of the vote went to him.
Lexicus
Deity
It is a bit weird that no one seems to get the trick there, he's comparing constitutional mechanisms designed to prevent the concentration of power in a single person to bureaucratic "red tape" (such as tax code complexity) in order to make a fascist argument that the President's power to act should not be limited by the law.
danjuno
Cole Phelps, Badge 1247
I just assume that by default with the MAGA Cult.
They couldn't care less about "Big Government" when their glorious leader does it.
Generals, senior officers say trust in Hegseth has evaporated
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has lost the trust and respect of some top military commanders, with his public “grandstanding” widely seen as unprofessional and the personnel moves made by the former cable TV host leading to an unprecedented and dangerous exodus of talent from the Pentagon, said current senior military officers and current and former Defense Department officials.
Junior officer mentality
Numerous sources, including military officers and current and former civilian officials in the Defense Department, described Mr. Hegseth as viewing the job through the lens of a junior officer, which has often led him to fixate on issues that otherwise could be left to the services or lower-ranking officials. For example, some generals and admirals came to Quantico expecting to hear about a major new strategic initiative, doctrinal shift or some other important announcement.
“Not about f——— haircuts,” the current Army general told The Times, referring to Mr. Hegseth’s deep focus on grooming standards, a view expressed by numerous sources.
Another source described it as “the mentality of a midgrade officer” who is deeply focused on fitness, grooming standards and other issues that typically don’t reach the desk of the defense secretary.
Other retired officers and military analysts have expressed similar sentiments publicly. Retired Marine Corps Col. Mark Cancian, now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote a lengthy analysis of Mr. Hegseth’s Quantico speech that examined why some issues made it into the address and others did not.
“Hegseth’s focus on fitness, weight and appearance reflects his experiences as a junior officer. These are perennial challenges at the small unit level; anyone who has commanded a small unit in the military understands where he’s coming from,” Mr. Cancian wrote. “However, if his military experience had been at higher levels, he would have discussed strategy, threats and warfighting at the operational level. As it was, these topics were nearly absent from his remarks.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has lost the trust and respect of some top military commanders, with his public “grandstanding” widely seen as unprofessional and the personnel moves made by the former cable TV host leading to an unprecedented and dangerous exodus of talent from the Pentagon, said current senior military officers and current and former Defense Department officials.
Junior officer mentality
Numerous sources, including military officers and current and former civilian officials in the Defense Department, described Mr. Hegseth as viewing the job through the lens of a junior officer, which has often led him to fixate on issues that otherwise could be left to the services or lower-ranking officials. For example, some generals and admirals came to Quantico expecting to hear about a major new strategic initiative, doctrinal shift or some other important announcement.
“Not about f——— haircuts,” the current Army general told The Times, referring to Mr. Hegseth’s deep focus on grooming standards, a view expressed by numerous sources.
Another source described it as “the mentality of a midgrade officer” who is deeply focused on fitness, grooming standards and other issues that typically don’t reach the desk of the defense secretary.
Other retired officers and military analysts have expressed similar sentiments publicly. Retired Marine Corps Col. Mark Cancian, now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote a lengthy analysis of Mr. Hegseth’s Quantico speech that examined why some issues made it into the address and others did not.
“Hegseth’s focus on fitness, weight and appearance reflects his experiences as a junior officer. These are perennial challenges at the small unit level; anyone who has commanded a small unit in the military understands where he’s coming from,” Mr. Cancian wrote. “However, if his military experience had been at higher levels, he would have discussed strategy, threats and warfighting at the operational level. As it was, these topics were nearly absent from his remarks.”
Lexicus
Deity
soundjata
everything
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2011
- Messages
- 2,639
Yeah poor generals are getting bullied by a youngster who knows nothing about military etiquette.
They are exactly where the administration want them to be: in fear of rejection.
At the first opportunity we'll see them running forth, bayonet in the clear, trying to regain some glory in the eyes of their beloved dictator.
Donald is craving for his own war. Don't you think?
They are exactly where the administration want them to be: in fear of rejection.
At the first opportunity we'll see them running forth, bayonet in the clear, trying to regain some glory in the eyes of their beloved dictator.
Donald is craving for his own war. Don't you think?
EnglishEdward
Deity
Maybe, but I think the law of unintended consequences of selecting not very bright yes men may be coming into effect.
soundjata
everything
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2011
- Messages
- 2,639
Do you mean action? From the nomenklatura? Against il Duce?
EnglishEdward
Deity
I stated before that the first election of the Donald was comedy, the second election is tragedy.
And I doubt that he will escape a tragic consequence.
And I doubt that he will escape a tragic consequence.