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Are Trump’s Transgressions Always Worse?
I do not like the president. I have never liked the president. I will never like the president. Yet I am confused by statements about the president that seem to bolster his political opponents per a game of degrees that I honestly do not understand.
Today I heard two examples of this.
First, I was listening to an old episode of the Joe Rogan show. An attorney who works with the Innocence Project was discussing Kamala Harris’s criminal justice record per the possibility that she would be chosen as Biden’s VP candidate. Before saying anything else, Josh Dubin carefully held out the caveat that anyone running for office would be better than the current administration.
Then he described how Harris had fought to stop men he believed she knew to be innocent from exploring DNA evidence that might clear their names and get them out of prison. He detailed the cases of men on death row–death row–whom he believed were being denied justice by Kamala Harris. He talked about the disparate impact of Harris’s approach on minority communities. He discussed a case on which he had worked that had robbed a client of literally decades of his life per the type of zealousness that he saw in the now VP candidate when she was the lead prosecutor in California.
At some point in the conversation, Jason Flom, another advocate for the wrongfully convicted, added from another microphone that he would certainly vote for a Biden/Harris ticket despite misgivings about Harris’s record because he believes we are in an “existential crisis” with our current White House. And I smacked my head because I seriously don’t understand the logic.
Donald Trump is a blowhard. He is not a guy I want to have over for dinner. He rubs me the wrong way. I think there is plenty of evidence to show he is a narcissist and was a horrible business partner. He bilked people out of money at various times in his career. Some of these people were rather vulnerable such as the students who signed up for a Trump University degree. Per what I think I know about his history, I would not loan the president a dollar. But did he stop someone on death row from making a case for his innocence?
Actually, he signed the First Step Act to begin criminal justice reform. He signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which should have been a law all the way back when Theodore Roosevelt was president.
There seems to me to be some intellectual dissonance that I just can’t process.
Being a blowhard is as bad as keeping men behind bars to advance one’s own career?
How is saying dumb stuff worse than destroying real people via the criminal justice system?
How do these things balance on the “transgression scales?”
I add the caveat that I do not know the basis for these men’s hate of the president. Still, I do know they feel Kamala Harris worked in a material way against the missions to which they’ve dedicated their lives, and I can’t imagine why that isn’t worse than anything I can think of Donald Trump doing, and I have no problem saying he’s an idiot.
Then I turned on the Commentary podcast earlier today. This is one of my favorites! I often feel I am of like mind to these presenters, and I even wonder if any of them will reluctantly vote for Donald Trump in November. I’m not in the mind-reading business. Still, I can say this crew has no problems calling Donald Trump a clown when he acts like one, but they are never silent about the real successes of the administration either. In other words, unlike most of the media, they strike me as fair, which is why I keep listening to them.
Yet, yet, yet, I am baffled by one thing Monday morning.
John Podhoretz says that President Trump is in a poor position to attack influence peddling a la Hunter Biden per the positions of his children, and I have long accepted this per face value as true. I, too, have a cultural bias against nepotism, and it seems to me as if the whole Trump family is engaged in the White House. What does Jared Kushner really know about the Middle East? Why is Ivanka heading up a task force looking at cold case killings of indigenous children? Surely these people are only where they are because of who they know???? It’s so distasteful.
But, but, but… is that really the same thing as peddling influence to a government currently hosting concentration camps? Putting a drug-addled child on a board of a corrupt company in a foreign country?
Isn’t it more like grooming your own kid to be the editor of your own magazine, a position that many other people would want, because you trust he’ll do a good job?
(Oh, my God! Am I becoming a deplorable with blinders on per that comment?)
Let me tell you. I understand the deep skepticism of the Trump family, but in the end, Jared did a good job in the Middle East, didn’t he? Is Ivanka rolling in the dough because of her various tasks organizing people to look into the dead or whatever other committees she’s fronted?
Let me digress for just a moment while I make a weird admission.
Before Covid hit, I saw the cutest dress at, I think, Neiman Marcus. It was pricey, but it was on sale. I wanted to try it on until I saw the label: Ivanka Trump. I’m not proud to say it, but I put that little blue number with the pearl collar back on the rack like it was a hot potato because I just couldn’t face the cashier.
Is that an example of Ivanka Trump benefitting from being the president’s daughter?
Weren’t Jared and Ivanka already pretty rich before Trump gained his office?
What exactly did they gain?
Power as King and Queen of Pariahs?
Now, I have no idea if anything in the current Hunter Biden scandal is true or not true. I no longer know what is really happening in the world. There are too many conflicting stories, too many different narratives. I’m not even allowed to read the story per various forums, so who can say what is real? Still, Donald Trump didn’t destroy the media for me with his cries of “fake news.” My trust was blown up a long time ago by scandals in coverage over events like Benghazi. At this point, it’s mostly just noise for me, as I think about planting mums in an autumn garden…..
Yet, yet, yet, I can clearly see there are people working on the Innocence Project who will vote for someone they think knowingly prosecuted innocent people for the sake of ambition simply because she isn’t Donald Trump, and that frightens me. I can see myself accept a narrative that the president doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to appearances of impropriety and family in a knee jerk way until I wonder aloud is there a memo involving Tiffany or Barron or Don Jr. or whoever that says the “big guy gets 10” on the Trump side of the ledger? From China? I mean, I seem to recall something floating back somewhere about a golf course in Scotland, but I can’t remember the details anymore, and the loan sharks from Russia don’t seem to be real, so can anyone tell me the deal to which I’d apply equivalency?
By the way, I’ll be shocked if Donald Trump wins re-election with the media thumb so firmly on Biden’s scale, but I won’t be surprised, if that makes sense. Either way, I’ll vote for him in 2020 because the Bidens and Harris don’t seem to be an improvement in any department that I can measure. At least Donald Trump acts like a Catholic when it comes to saving the babies, and I really do care quite a bit about saving innocent lives.
Published in General
To cut to the heart of what is at issue today with the Hunter Biden headlines:
First undisputed Fact: Hunter magically landed a $50K to $80 per month gig to pretend to be actively engaged on the board of the corrupt Ukrainian Burisma Natural Gas Company.
Second undisputed Fact: Joe Biden as VP and acting Ukraine Czar for the Obama Admin leveraged a US $Billion aid package to force the Ukrainian President to fire the AG/Prosecutor who was investigating Burisma for alleged corruption. US VP’s don’t interfere to that level of specificity in other countries political goings on …that should have caused the MSM to let out a collective WTF. But of course the MSM stepped over the dead body of the blatant Biden/Obama corruption with their usual nothing to see here folks, everyone move along.
Now, not yet authenticated but getting there: Just this week we are seeing emails which are allegedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop and which corroborate the alleged quid pro quo and worse yet detail other Biden family enriching themselves with pay to play corruption schemes orchestrated by the Biden family while The Big Guy was Obama’s VP and Hunter was acting as the Biden Family bagman/deal making/go between, traveling abroad with Pop on Airforce 2 doing deals and making bank.
Kind of big problem for a guy running for President … and the (D)/MSM playbook thus far is to go out of their way to find ways to discredit the laptop content as “Russian disinformation”, “the chain of custody is sketchy”, “Rudy is Sketchy”, “Rudy and Bannon are sketchy”, “Rudy is a Russian asset”, “Trump is Putin’s secret lover”, I could go on …… but the MSM is certainly not actually trying to determine if the email content can be corroborated by looking at the emails of the original senders or recipients because that just may authenticate the emails which the (D)/MSM/BigTech combine cannot possibly allow to happen until after November 3rd.
Er . . . so Hunter was on the board of Burisma for “work” for which he was not qualified. And all because of his daddy’s position as Vice President. And he was required to give Joe kickbacks for it. This is influence peddling of the worst sort — worst because it involves issues of national security.
But you say this is not corrupt.
Unbelievable.
Security clearances require looking into familial connections overseas for these reasons. I don’t get why this doesn’t even raise a red flag in the slightest.
And the Godfather Joe, aka the Old Man, took his cut off everything that Hunter took. Ergo, criminal and corrupt.
Because Orange Man Bad.
Ah! I think this is a perspective that is worth exploring. I think this was what I felt, so I feel you.
But then Jared and Ivanka aren’t actually paid advisors, right? They make their own money, and they were already pretty flush.
The Bidens are weird because they weren’t wealthy, and now they are, so that wealth accumulation must be explained unless Jill was just killing it in education.
I mean, President Obama wasn’t rich, but he published books and got speaking fees, so how he built his wealth is pretty transparent, but Joe’s money is a little murkier to me… (Not getting all conspiratorial here. I’ve been interested in the expansions of wealth through graft going back to LBJ!) So Hunter taking money per proximity to power would be on Hunter, as you say, unless “the big guy” is Biden…. (Hmmmm…. I guess I’m sounding conspiratorial.)
I also have a problem with the payer of Hunter being a major rival of the US.
I don’t know.
I just started thinking more about this, and run-of-the-mill nepotism seems less of a violation of public trust than taking money from a foreign actor that is literally hostile to our country’s own interests….
But I’m trying to understand all angles.
Thanks for offering an opinion.
People seem to be using “nepotism” in varying meanings. Nepotism means giving high-order jobs, to less-than-qualified family members to consolidate his own power, and to enrich the family members. Neither Trump not Biden have done this.
Trump may have given important positions to two of his children in order to consolidate his power — though more likely to use them correctly and to insulate himself from potential enemies in his inner circle. His children have not enriched themselves, but rather have tended to impoverish themselves, relatively speaking. And his children appear to be living up to their responsibilities. This is not nepotism, though strictly speaking it is hiring family members. It is not nepotism, but employing family members.
Biden on the other hand, never gave Hunter or any of his family members positions, either of authority, prestige or income, but gave them access to government funds, and alternately receiving bribe money in return for buying Biden’s support. This is not nepotism, either, though it does involve enriching family members. It is not nepotism, but incorporating family members into a bribery scheme.
I think you said you were Catholic. That would be somewhat unusual. Flannery O’Connor territory?
I think it’s way more than $3.5M.
I am also an Army brat. We just stayed in GA longest, so I claim it as mine. Maybe this is because I have a lot of time for Miss Mary Flannery.
Ah. Ft. Benning?
Ft. Stewart.
Aren’t conspiracy theories extravagant and involving many people managing to work in lock step while keeping it all a secret?
Isn’t an agreement between father and son a much more plausible arrangement than most conspiracy theories?
Perhaps. ;)
Honestly, they’re like a grifting tag team.
Guy Benson and the NYT from 2008 are Russian assets disseminating Russian disinformation!
Grifters gotta grift.
I am very much afraid you misjudge Biden’s commitment to unity. After all this man claimed Mitt Romney of all people was going to put African Americans back in chains. For me though his biggest sin which I won’t forgive him for was the circus he allowed in the Thomas hearings. I do respect you position though. If I am disappointed on Election Day I hope you assessment of his character is better than mine.
I have to disagree with you here. Jared accomplished something good for America and the world. I don’t know of anything public that Ivanka has accomplished; however, I am willing to cut some latitude on .500. I agree that they may have had the appearance of corruption; however, given the results I can’t agree that it was a violation of the public trust. Like many Trump moves it was high risk and looked bad at the time, but in the end I have to say I am pleased with the results.
Just because they are family?
Maybe Trump just wanted someone he could trust.
It’s clear that there are few trustworthy people in Washington. Even in the White House. How many of the President’s early hires turned out to be just another form of swamp creature trying to bring him down?
Tucker Carlson just broke news that a facebook insider told the NY Post (paper that broke the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story) that the facebook ‘Hate Speech Engineering Team’ , that banned the NY Post story, has at least six Chinese Nationals as members.
I subscribe to NextDoor and they are removing stories that involve things like stealing Trump/Pence signs because the posts are political.
Speech is taking a beating.
This is cultural. Americans really don’t like even the scent of nepotism. It smacks of entitlement. It feels like a betrayal of merit. This is one of the reasons that Jeb Bush could not get any traction. This is one of the reasons that Hillary Clinton was so distasteful. It is what it is. It is culturally impossible to escape. The only time it is celebrated is when fathers train sons (or daughters) to hold a business, and even that feels weird when the business is too big. This is deep in the American marrow. I understand this feeling. It is not always rational, but it is real.
This was my line. This is why I went home to the Republicans.
The New York Post is still locked out of their Twitter account, by the way. It’s been a week now.
That’s more election interference than Russia could ever pull off.
As I said before because I was skeptical of His qualifications and it felt like a make work appointment for a son-in-law. Also as previously stated I was wrong in a delightful way. I owe an apology to both of them. In the end it turns out he probably did want someone he could trust, and this is more important, that believed in the mission and the strategy. That was someone who by definition had to be an outsider, who he could trust and who would be seen as a trustworthy negotiator. Given the cultures involved it probably worked out better that it was a family member, in fact it may have had to be one.
I’m reminded of the early NeverTrump criticisms of the President. “He demands loyalty!” Well, duh. Have you ever hired anyone? Ever owned a business? Of course you want loyal employees. What’s the alternative? Backstabbers? That was one of the sillier criticisms. Still see it, too.
#GriftwoodJoe
You will notice that free speech is taking a beating from citizens and not the federal government.