Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
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
That was enjoyable. I should listen to more of these podcasts. Interesting to listen to Ricochet members. I come away with the impression Lois being a squish, but a nice and intelligent lady. ;)
What has come out has gone beyond my wildest partisan imaginings. What has come out is astonishing and breath-taking in its corruption. It’s criminal. Tie that together with the Clinton’s criminal “charity” and what is going on with the Democrats? No wonder they resorted to the Russian hoax thing. It’s all so criminal.
Being paid out of public coffers for Trumps children is a huge sacrifice. They cannot take a salary from the private sector and take public funds. So they are taking a huge loss and making a sacrifice.
The rest, well, it’s amazing if you really believe your flimsy rationalizations.
The citizens are the government in a democracy (which we have).
A squish???!!! Ha! I’ve always liked octopuses. They’re pretty glorious creatures. And I even got to look like Teri Hatcher!!!!
Anyway, I’m glad you enjoyed the interview. Those guys really made the hour fly by for me. It was just fun to speak with them.
Republic, Stina! Republic! :)
Well, you identified with white, suburban women. That’s the posterchild for a squish. You didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 because you feared him and you are possibly voting for him this time because you fear the radicals of the left. Voting on fear is the epitome of “squish.” ;)
Although we have way too many elected representatives eager to dismantle the first amendment.
Because they are elected by voters who are way too eager to dismantle the first amendment.
Technicalities are not realities. Our reps don’t operate as reps for their constituents but as pieces to be manipulated by polling.
Ha! Fear is sometimes a rational response, but it’s not my primary motivator. :)
Just to be clear. I fear some of the movements on the Left right now because I know enough history to read where they might go, and I am afraid that too many people are swept up in emotions that they have not thought through at all… that control them, actually.
But I am not voting against Joe Biden because of fear.
The only spear I have to aim against the monster of progressive control is my vote, and I want to hit that monster in the face, if possible, because I believe no rational person would want that thing marching through their streets if they truly understood it… or they really loved freedom. (I love freedom. I am not a “security mom.”) The spear in the arsenal is, apparently, Donald Trump. So be it. That’s the choice.
As for the past…. I voted against Trump in 2016 because I didn’t like him. Sure. I was afraid of what he’d do to the party. Yes. I found him unpredictable. Indeed. But my vote for a third party candidate then was not cast out of fear but civic duty and a sense of sadness.
When the final outcome was Trump, it may surprise you to know that I actually looked with disdain at the women I saw in my city who mobilized quickly to march against him after the election as if he were Hitler calling for the Third Reich. Blech! These marches mostly annoyed me.
We had had an election. The comparisons I saw between the Donald and some of history’s worst regimes were horrific distortions. I just felt he was an embarrassing boob who was probably much closer to the Democrats than any Republican I’d ever supported.
So I’ll accept I’m a “squish,” but not because I have some rational fears. I’m squishy because I am not rigid. And I am a woman, which means I multi-task well. Like an octopus with eight arms. :)
I think they operate less on this and more out of a desire to get good cable news spots. I’m not convinced that a lot of reps listen to or respect their constituents at all. They simply figure out how to manipulate a lot of them and move forward.
But… po-tay-to, po-tot-o.
We have democratic elements in our governance. We are not a democracy.
The major problem with our national government is not with the Executive. It’s that we have a Legislative branch that refuses to legislate. They haven’t even passed a real budget in more than a decade.
I think you two should step beyond this point because both of you understand full well that our founders established America as a representative democratic republic and we are trending toward failure to sustain that status. We just had a series of comments on public speech illustrative of this direction. The Democrat Party and the leaders of the technical giants are working to relieve us of any semblance of our democratic republic and turn us into what I envision as a fascist/communist state with many features taken from the Chinese model. If either of you @cm and @LoisLane think I am exaggerating please push back on my vision.
Oh I dont think you are and I’m in agreement. It’s part of my original comment. We are not truly operating as a republic. We also aren’t truly operating as a democracy either, but rather some bizarre tyranny of the minority through the courts (garnered by the senate and executive, which one of those isn’t republican at all anymore and the other is constitutionally designed to be the most democratic branch).
We are under a technocracy that is either a) of one mind with or b) using the very vocal, terrorizing minority.
But I did want to point out that if our constitution is about government for the people by the people, than citizenry exercising tyranny is not much different from government doing it.
Government in this country was meant to protect and secure our rights. Not let other citizens run rough-shod over them just cuz “not government”.
Agreed.
Well… that would be one of my squishy fears. Free speech is essential to freedom because it is essential to free thought. I am very concerned about these extremely anti-liberal sentiments I see choking our institutions. I cannot push back much either because Covid cleared me of any notions I once had that Americans would not give up their freedoms without a fight.
True, Stina. The tyranny is actually most often found in our private institutions. I work in academia. It’s super visible there. But maybe we should take some heart. John Stuart Mill felt pretty oppressed by the culture. His pen helped people think about tyrannies. Ideas are powerful. We simply need people to think more… maybe.
Nice response. Thanks.
Let’s work hard to insure that the Left does not succeed in giving us a nationally elected President. Keep our executive branch federally elected.
Indeed. If we toss the electoral college, we will be too much of a democracy.
A Republic … if you can keep it. Benjamin Franklin
As discussed on other threads, there’s no possible path to a Constitutional Amendment eliminating the EC. You’ll never get 3/4 of the states to approve it.
The popular vote pact that has passed several states will fall apart the first time a state “has” to give it’s electors to the “wrong” candidate.
The one path that would make the EC effectively a nullity would be to greatly enlarge the House of Representatives (which can be done legislatively – no Amendment required) since that would add a lot of Electors from the more populous states. But that could have additional interesting effects within the House itself.
And honestly, effect on the EC aside, we really should at least double or triple (if not more) the size of the House. The ratio of citizens to Representatives is way off of what it should be.
I agree with this, though there’s a law that prohibits it, I think… not to mention the size of Congress.
It’s a law. Laws can be changed.
I haven’t read the comments yet.
Thoughtful piece, Lois. There’s one phrase that jumped out at me: “existential threat”. It’s a phrase some use on twitter to describe Donald Trump. Eric Weinstein can’t go a day without making that comment, while at the same time recognizing how toxic and dangerous the left is.
I’ve asked Eric repeatedly (and nicely) to go into detail; he has never responded to me or others with the same question.
I heard a podcast a few days ago that used the same term and explained it thusly: that DT has been described as an idiot, not at all skilled as a businessman (inherited money, multiple bankruptcies) and a blowhard and a conman from Queens, yet has been successful in much of his first term despite constant attacks. He is an “existential threat” to the self image of so many who believe themselves to be intellectuals and experts and certainly better bred. And I’ll add: thought he would be a total disaster as president.
The most successful businessmen also had failures. They will be the first to tell you that failures are common on the road to success. The trick is to not let failures stop you.
The truth is that if “existential threat” is being used to mean “a loss of self-image,” then people seriously need to re-assess the phrase. I tire of its use in general for it is abused to the point of not meaning anything at all in the Age of Trump.
Perhaps there is an existential threat to “existential threat” as it’s starting to be so pedestrian that it’s losing its hyperbolic punch?
I think people should be made to explain what they mean… pin down the words and think about them when they say them, but I haven’t been able to get people to do this, even when I agree with them and say I’m not a huge fan of DT.
I mean, I’m not a huge fan of even some of my relatives, but I don’t think they’re going to wipe me out at Thanksgiving dinner like we are all attending the Red Wedding.
IF so, then they’d be an “existential threat” for our clan. ;)
The key to the Hunter Biden laptop scandal is in the records for the movement of money. The Chinese company mentioned as a player is reported to have gone bankrupt and no longer exist. Those reports say that company was charged with criminal activity which included money-laundering so it may be that the payoffs listed in the emails went to financial institutions outside the U.S. which could make investigation more difficult.
It’s not that we have a problem with the executive, it’s that Congress pushes all the decisions onto the executive branch. Even the administrative details 0bamacare were apparently to decided by the bureaucracy.