A Tweet Too Far ?

[toucana]

"Avast me hearties, prepare to repel all boarders !"

[TheVat]

Here you all go. General News is back, and yes, that includes politics.

Remember to keep it civil, provide evidence for claims when challenged, and keep the focus of chats on facts and not the personalities of forum members or on partisanship. When in doubt, see our Forum Guidelines posted in the Announcements section.

[toucana]

Nice one Donald. But Kansas City was located in the state of Missouri the last time anyone looked.

[TheVat]

Kansas City was my mother's hometown, the first few years of early childhood. If she were still alive, she would be very amused. There is a much smaller city, in Kansas next door, also called Kansas City, but it's not what Americans refer to when they say KC, nor has it ever been home to the Chiefs. In that area, people refer to the smaller Kansas City as KCK. I don't know if this tweet will tip the 2020 electoral votes in Missouri away from Trump, but it's a good start!

[Hendrick Laursen]

Nice one Donald. But Kansas City was located in the state of Missouri the last time anyone looked.

It's a great post!
It's like reading an anti-story, in the sense of experimental literature. We're tempted to go back and doubt every single word this man has ever uttered.

[toucana]

[toucana]

Axl Rose the lead singer of Guns 'N Roses who only rarely uses social media had an entertaining exchange with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

It was prompted in part by the gratuitous use of a Guns 'N Roses track 'Live & Let Die' during a Trump visit to a PPE mask factory, which was followed by an interview with Steven Mnuchin on FOX TV in which he uncritically urged listeners to start doing long road-trips around the USA again.

Stung by Axl Rose's description of him as an 'A**hole', Mnuchin retorted "What have you done for your country lately ?" and attached an emoji of what was meant to be the US flag. Unluckily Steven Mnuchin attached the emoji for the national flag of Liberia by mistake - (It looks very similar but has only one star instead of 50).

[toucana]

Trump’s press conference has ended after a series of falsehoods and misleading claims. At one point he compared the Covid-19 crisis to the “the great pandemic” of 1917, saying it was a “terrible thing” that “probably ended the Second World War, all the soldiers were sick”.

The pandemic occurred in 1918, and World War II ended in 1945.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2020/aug/10/coronavirus-us-covid-19-children-schools-donald-trump-relief-package-joe-biden-live-updates

[charon]

I have not seen a single article anywhere that gives a definite answer as to whether he can be prosecuted after leaving office.

Has anyone?

[toucana]

Trump is already under criminal investigation by a Grand jury appointed under the authority of Cyrus R. Vance Jr. who is the DA of New York County and New York. The DA’s office have made it clear that they are in the process of indicting Trump on charges of bank fraud and income tax fraud.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/nyregion/donald-trump-taxes-cyrus-vance.html?referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwAR34hRvAYjHcFS8O4spRKyKfa5KsmTGWQ9AHaK67fAvlluq8T-CaBjue2NQ

The DA’s team has been battling to obtain Trump’s tax returns from an accountancy firm called Mazars USA for over a year, and they recently secured an important Supreme Court ruling that favours their subpoenas.

Points of interest here:
i. These are state charges, not federal ones, and as such they cannot be pardoned or dismissed by any president, successor, or corrupt incumbent of the AG’s office in the Justice department.

ii. Neither the president nor the AG can fire the Manhattan DA either. Given that the DA is an elected state official, Donald Trump would have to test out his often touted assertion that he could “shoot a man on 5th Ave. in broad daylight” by shooting the DA in person in order to stop this indictment

iii. Grand juries once appointed to look into financial crimes nearly always return indictments; and once they indict, the courts almost invariably proceed on to successful convictions and sentencing in cases of this kind. This is because financial crimes are usually very well documented. There will probably be an absolute mountain of completely damning evidence against the entire Trump organisation.

Remember - it was tax evasion charges that put Al Capone in prison for life, not the Valentines Day Massacre.

[charon]

Absolutely, Capone and tax, first thing that occurred! But are you saying they CAN indict a sitting president on these charges?

[toucana]

Absolutely, Capone and tax, first thing that occurred! But are you saying they CAN indict a sitting president on these charges?

That remains moot. Recent SCOTUS rulings seem to favour a view that no one, not even a president, is above the law. Arguments to the contrary normally cite an internal Justice department memorandum by the OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) that says prosecuting a sitting president would be inconsistent with Article II of the constitution.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/yes-constitution-allows-indictment-president

The excellent Lawfare article cited above was written by Laurence H. Tribe who is a Harvard legal scholar and constitutional ethics adviser who has often appeared on MSNBC. He summarises the arguments for and against the OLC memorandum and concludes (inter alia):

Nothing in the Constitution supports treating amenability to the criminal process as something that kicks in only after a civil officer has been impeached and removed. To treat a sitting president as immune to that process until his presidency ends is to superimpose upon the impeachment framework—a framework designed as the way to remove a president who commits an impeachable offense that might or might not also be a federal crime—something quite extraordinary in a system priding itself on the axiom that no one is above the law.

A more practical consideration is that there are only 84 days remaining until the 2020 US presidential election in November. Trump and his legal team can probably run the clock down, and block any criminal indictments before then with tendentious appeals to appellate courts over the discovery subpoenas.

But once the election falls due, all arguments over the OLC guidance are void, and there will be nothing to protect Trump from indictment and prosecution thereafter on state charges if he fails to win or subvert the election.

[charon]

But once the election falls due, all arguments over the OLC guidance are void, and there will be nothing to protect Trump from indictment and prosecution thereafter on state charges if he fails to win or subvert the election.

Or subvert... I liked that :-)

Thanks. Next question: will they actually lock up an-ex president?

[toucana]

This tweet attracted considerable attention recently, not just because it trivialized COVID-19 and spread a false conspiracy theory, but also because of its provenance. It was posted on the account of Herman Cain, a prominent GOP donor and former 2012 presidential candidate who died recently in July 2020 - From the effects of COVID-19.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/herman-cain-coronavirus-not-as-deadly_n_5f4ca08fc5b64f17e13fc8b4?ri18n=true

Herman Cain was taken ill two weeks after attending president Trump’s disastrous campaign rally at Tulsa Oklahoma on 20 June. Cain, who co-chaired Black Voices for Trump, tweeted a photo of himself without a mask at the event, which was attended by several thousand people.

His latest messaging from beyond the grave on the subject of COVID-19 drew a mixed response:

This is the sassiest, “Surprise! I’m a zombie now!” announcement ever..

Can we dig Herman up and have independent doctors confirm this?…

UPDATE: Herman has caught the virus in Hell and died from it, again. He is now in SUPERHELL …

Herman Cain being killed by a pandemic and then later tweeting that the pandemic isn't really that deadly isn't the most important thing to happen in 2020 but it is by far the craziest..

Did Christopher Nolan direct this tweet?

Does Herman Cain, who died a month ago of covid-19, still tweeting that covid-19 is a hoax, count as a "zombie apocalypse?" Asking for my bingo card.

The tweet has since been deleted.

[toucana]

If u lost ur pet pidgin /it’s dead in front yard my Iowa farm JUST DISCOVERED here r identifiers Right leg Blue 2020/3089/AU2020/SHE ///LEFT LEG GREEN BAND NO PRINTED INFO. Sorry for bad news

https://twitter.com/ChuckGrassley/status/1307421592411156482

The west coast may be on fire, the southern seaboard may be underwater and the rest of the country may be in the combined grip of a pandemic, a constitutional crisis, and a presidential election - but Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) who is the president pro-tempore of the US Senate apparently has weightier things on his mind, according to his Twitter feed.

Received wisdom is that ‘pidgin’ is probably a mutated spelling of ‘pigeon’ - but don’t be be fooled !

There is an army of QAnon devotees out there who obssessively read every last syllable of each deranged Tweet uttered by their Great Leader and his acolytes, and these disciples can understand every last hidden meaning of each odd syllable and apparent typo.

The true initiates know that “Right leg Blue 2020/3089/AU2020/SHE“ really means ”operational units in DC metropolitan districts prepare to retrieve your ammunition and activate ‘Boogaloo’ on the 30th..”