Listen now (60 min) | This was a great conversation with Inez, as it got into some deep differences regarding how we see politics. We start by discussing the Trump indictment, and how bad the charges against him are. From Inez’s perspective, this is just the latest part of the story of a permanent bureaucracy going after its political opponents. My argument is that, while sometimes conservatives can make a reasonable case that they’re being treated unfairly, this is not the best way to understand the Trump indictment. She thinks that the DOJ has violated a norm of not indicting a sitting president, while I believe that it would be strange to let conduct this flagrant go unpunished.
Donald Trump the Indicted is not a sitting president, Inez. And the indictment focuses exclusively on acts the government alleges he committed as a private citizen. This is a good indictment given what it alleges.
Edit: Richard misquoted Inez. She didn’t say it was dangerous precedent to indict a sitting president. She said it was dangerous precedent to indict an ex-president or major party candidate.
Actually the law doesn’t make it a crime to destroy government information. It’s illegal to refuse to return it when demanded, and then lying about whether you still have it, which is what Trump is accused of doing. Besides, if Trump’s DOJ thought Clinton had committed a provable crime, his AG could have indicted her, but he didn’t.
(1) It is illegal to destroy evidence. The information that Clinton destroyed wasn't just information - it was subpoenaed information.
(2) It is not illegal to refuse to return if it has not been adjudicated, which it wasn't.
(3) Barr was deep state. He would always protect Dems and go after Trump. The DoJ acting biased is not a valid argument that the deep state is not biased and out of control.
It is fascinating to watch full fledged TDS just make shht up.
There is disagreement, and then there is just blind devotion to ignoring the evidence.
TDS is an example of the latter. When people can't even admit that Hillary destroyed evidence (not information) with a hammer AND got away with it, then we can't even begin to debate. We are just dealing with a religious zealot.
“What Hilary did” and got away with has nothing to do with whether what Trump is alleged to have done (and might yet get away with). You can’t say that no one ever forever can be charged with an offence just because somebody somewhere in the past escaped prosecution for something that his supporters claim is just as bad. Sorry, I would have voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 if I had been American because both (all, actually) Democrats were bad for America and I would in 2024 if the GOP can’t find somebody better. He’s a terrible human being but so was Winston Churchill. But he has to answer for this document business. I don’t want to hear “What about Hilary?” ever again. So stop with the TDS stuff.
She spent the whole time criticizing the indictment of someone (Trump) who is on tape describing in detail the crime he was committing as he was doing it. They have him so many chances to just give the stuff back, but when he didn’t and broke the law by pathetically and moronically trying to hide the stuff, she interpreted it as: “they were going after him no matter what”. You have to be insane to buy that argument.
I agree about the Russia collusion investigation being over the top. The 2nd impeachment was poorly worded (he did not incite), but he deserved to be impeached for lying about the election being stolen and inaction during storming of the capital.
But anyway, intellectual integrity requires evaluating the different incidents based on the facts of each, and Trump is clearly guilty currently.
It's possible to despise Trump for being narcissistically out of touch with reality and to also to despise him for probably believing that he must've won the election. In fact, they're the same position. Thinking that he is a self-obsessed buffoon but also that he thought he lost and lied about it doesn't mesh for me.
I have no problem seeing both as true. Why can't a narcissist also be a pathological liar? Trump the narcissist thinks that only he can fix our problems and so should run for President. Trump the pathological liar says all sorts of things that are obviously not true (even claiming at one point he met Putin on 60 minutes) as he tries to obtain and keep power. In terms of the election, the narcissist has a hard time imagining how he could have lost to Biden. The liar is willing to tell fibs in order to keep power. Trump could easily think in some way he should have or did win, but also be willing to say whatever it takes to make that outcome happen. Trump the narcissist doesn't need to believe in whatever fraud is used as an excuse to overthrow the election. He just needs the election overturned.
And there is no law against making claims. Many of which turned out to be very true. Both the PA and WI Supreme Courts found election irregularities that were illegal and sufficiently large to change those state's outcomes.
Zuckersbucks have been found to be illegal in over 18 states.
The FBI paying twitter $3 million to censor election stories (true Hinter laptop story) is election cheating.
Trump had absolutely every right to question the results. As all the Democrat "election deniers" had done in 2016 - to him.
The leftist lies are too easy to see through.
The leftists double standards are far to easy to spot.
It is clear that they are wielding power arbitrarily now just to prove that they can wield it arbitrarily and get away with it. And that, not Trump, is the tipping point for nations.
Inez says it's not a "conspiracy" and then goes on to explain that it's nearly the entire bureaucracy thinking Trump is Hitler and they have to make sure that someone like him can't run. Ummm...that's a conspiracy. Inez is basically just your run of the mill conspiracy theorist and I'm sure Richard can find someone much wiser to discuss things with. Almost everything she claims glosses over the details that undermine her tin-foil hat worldview (IRS, Clinton, DOJ targeting parents etc). And Richard, if you're going to talk to her, don't let her monopolize the conversation. I mean her long rant at the end that just takes Andy McCarthy's version of what happened to the FBI as gospel truth is pathetic (the same McCarthy btw that wrote a book about impeaching Obama), but there was no push back at all. I mean, maybe ask her why DOJ is prosecuting high level Democrats like Karen Carter Peterson in Louisiana, or TJ Cox in California. Or raiding Henry Cuellar's home. She gives complete credence to "scandals" that have essentially no evidence as yet and ignores actual criminal cases that undermine her worldview. With all due respect to Richard, this was not a "great" conversation. This was someone who is pretty delirious with partisanship monopolizing the hour with nonsense. Richard started to get across the main idea at one point. It's not that DOJ has changed in some fundamental way. It's that Trump is a mess and keeps forcing their hand. Even in the Russia case, I mean who the heck hired Manafort, Papadopoulos, Page, etc - all these guys that raised red flags in the first place? Not defending everything they did by a long shot, but what was DOJ supposed to do, close their eyes? If a Democrat hires as his campaign manager someone who is deeply indebted to Iranian oligarchs and willing to work for free, are Republicans going to say "Hey, we don't want the DOJ to be political, nothing to see here"? The common thread is Trump, and it is amazing the mental gymnastics even otherwise smart people like Inez will go through to basically say Trump is mostly the victim and it's everyone else's fault.
The accuracy of your actual point isn't well-served by confusing conspiracy with something more like uncoordinated ideological action. If all these people actually felt like they were stopping an orange Hitler, they needn't have conspired with one another in order to know what to do. Even if, hypothetically, every single person in 'the government' from the highest to the lowest had a big "RESIST" bumper sticker, that wouldn't be a conspiracy -- that would be a bunch of individuals doing what they thought was right to resist what they thought was wrong. Similarly, it's not 'stochastic terrorism' when unrelated rightwingers hurt trans folx or bomb abortion clinics. It's people putting into action their genuine beliefs.
Maybe I'm making a semantic error, but it sure didn't seem to me like she was describing "uncoordinated" action on the part of the bureaucracy. She doesn't want to think of herself as a conspiracy theorist, but then admits she thinks Trump's real problem is that practically the entire bureaucracy is just out to get him and this indictment is the latest sign of that. I mean what would the conspiratorial version of that be? I guess something even crazier. Why won't people like her just accept the obvious and most simple explanation for what is happening to Trump? It's Trump! The guy's been in trouble with the law his whole life (most of which was as a Democrat). Richard snuck in a good point about how almost no one was talking about the targeting of Republicans by DOJ pre-Trump. The only reason we're talking about it now is because Trump and his lackeys in conservative media have been repeating the lie for seven years straight to the point when even conservative intellectuals who should know better pretend it's something other than steaming excrement. That's not to excuse real errors of judgment by DOJ in handling Trump, but geeeez, who wants that job? Who thinks they could really do better? And when I read the Mueller Report, I just kept thinking, wow, they are really given these people the benefit of the doubt over and over again. But I'm supposed to believe that these are the same people who are doing everything they can to stop Trump. It's garbage.
Good conversation. Thanks for introducing me to Inez - I hadn't heard of her before. You fought valiantly, but she crushed you.
BTW, what Inez was saying that indictment of an ex-president provides an incentive to cling to power echoes the analysis in Douglass North et al Violence and Social Orders (2009), which is a great book.
As I recall, Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server was identified during one of the 10 (!) Benghazi investigations concerning what was, at worst, the Obama admin spinning a policy failure and/or Hillary’s incompetence, but certainly nothing criminal. (One might even call it a witch hunt!) The House Committee wanted Hillary’s private emails for purely political reasons as they suspected she was going to attempt another White House run and would be difficult to beat. Furthermore, Trump’s first impeachment was concerning his investigation into Joe Biden, also a likely presidential nominee, to gain an edge in 2020. I am quite concerned about the DOJ breaking precedent and charging Trump, but Republicans set the stage for what’s happening. Hard to take Inez seriously without her considering these facts.
Congress (Benghazi hearings) is allowed to be political. The DoJ is NOT allowed.
That is the problem. The distinction matters. And it matters a lot.
In addition, "You started it" is not a strong argument for malfeasance.
We could easily argue that Benghazi was the result of what Dems started. That road leads to destruction. And at this point, I actually advocate for more destruction, or national divorce, but not giving an iota more of ground to aholes that weaponized the deep state to go after parents, Catholics, and political figures.
The Deep State didn't go after parents and Catholics. Like Inez, you take a very specific phenomenon and then recharacterize it in a deceptively broad manner to make it seem scandalous. Yes, DOJ was concerned that in some of these school board meeting conflicts, violence was being threatened as well as other dangerous activity like making false accusations of child abuse against board members so they would be harassed by CPS. That gets turned into "DOJ is going after parents who are just concerned about what their kids are learning in school." Bull. And anyway, what did DOJ do? Produced a memo. The Horror. And no, DOJ isn't going after "Catholics" either. The real story is that some agent produced a memo warning that a very specific type of radical Catholic might be a decent target for recruitment. The reference was to young male Catholics who reject Vatican II, and so are already steeped in conspiratorial thinking. By most people's definition these guys aren't even Catholic. They don't recognize the Pope's authority. Again, this gets turned by ignorant or dishonest people into accusations that the "DOJ is going after Catholics now!" Like your rosary clutching septuagenarian neighbor or grandparent needs to worry about the Feds knocking the door down.
The FBI has no business policing local school board meetings. And everybody knows that when they send out a memo saying "how can we help you target these people" - that is exactly what it means. Who wrote that memo - not even Garland. It was written by a bunch of partisan leftists, and handed to Garland who happily slapped his signature on it. That is the definition of weaponization of government.
And the DoJ is going after Catholics. What did these Catholics do to get on the FBI hit list? Nobody even knows. We have Antifa wearing masks and beating people in public over and over and over again and do we get a memo? No. We have people leftists don't like and just call "conspiratorial" with the usual zero evidence - and do they get labeled? Yes. It is gross.
The only dishonest people here are the leftists pretending this is not happening and making up super lame excuses for using the full might of the Federal government to harass the people they don't like.
Go ahead and tell us what specific cases were brought against innocent parents and “Catholics” just for being Catholic. You can’t because it didn’t happen. It was just transparent propaganda as I pointed out and nothing you’ve written refutes it.
"Weaponization of government" means bullying people you don't like. A bully doesn't have to actually strike people - to be a bully.
The government should not be threatening people for speaking at meetings or going to church. It is totally irrelevant if they acted on it. The threats are what what is unconscionable.
And you know this. And still you offer lame excuses to cover for really nasty people.
When a congressional investigation can morph into criminal charges for even peripherally related actions, “Congress versus DOJ” is a distinction without a difference, especially when you believe “show me the person and I’ll show you the crime”, as Inez does.
Re: “You started it” - I don’t disagree, but much of the critique is centered around what this supposed “first punch” is going to lead to - Trump’s prosecution is “setting a dangerous precedent” I.e. Republicans plan on doing the same thing. Inez explicitly mentions the possibility that both Trump and Biden will be running for office to avoid jail time. I can’t take this argument seriously because Republicans sure seem to have thrown the first punch…
(1) Unfortunately, Trump's request to investigate the Burisma racket was shut down, and became the false excuse for an impeachment.
As usual, we now have overwhelming evidence that Trump was totally correct to call for an investigation. We now have 17 tapes from the briber, and $10 million in IRS income, and the trail though the shell companies. We also have the death just yesterday of one of the key witnesses. The dead in the wake of Clintons and Biden's is impressive.
Your argument is that "Trump started it" because he was right? I don't get it.
(2) Obviously a congressional investigation can morph into a criminal one ONLY when the accused is a Republican. You have stumbled on precisely the problem. I don't care if you try Trump, but doing it while letting Hillary walk is completely outrageous and indefensible.
(3) Everybody always thinks the other guy started it. That is how you get Northern Ireland and the Middle East. You go back 600 or 2000 years and justify your immoral actions. As I said already - bring it on. Use whatever excuses you like to attack us. We don't care any more. We all go down now. Enjoy what you asked for, by lying willfully to yourself.
Did you even listen to the episode? The argument isn’t over whether past presidents and presidential candidates broke the law. It’s over whether they should be prosecuted for it, and what precedent ia prosecution would set. I agree completely that it’s concerning, I just think one needs to be honest about how we got here.
And I’d say a young Newt Gingrich probably started the tit for tat death spiral.
What bothers me is that you can't see how stupid and shallow and obvious that position would be.
What exactly did Newt do that was so outrageous? Besides getting control of the House for the GOP for the first time in 40 years? You just hate Newt because he beat you. Nothing more, and nothing less.
And you hate Trump because he beat Fellonia von Pantsuit.
What about your opinions isn't just super obviously founded on simple hate?
Hannania is DELUSIONAL. Was he not alive, let alone awake during the Bush years? Every day it was some apparatchik in the media calling the president and the administration Nazis or some other ridiculously hyperbolic slur for *no good reason*. Likewise, must I remind everyone of the treatment that Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork received for the threat that the Establishment and its defenders in Congress (Uncle Ted, Joe from Scranton, I'm looking directly at you) perceived them as being??
Seriously Richard, you're out over your skis massively. Anyone who *might* threaten, even in a little way, the DC consensus, will be isolated and annihilated.
Inez is right again. Not sure how Richard can be quite that clueless and accepting of the deep state.
The 2016 Russia gate - 2020 laptop censorship combo has perma black pilled me against your view. Guess you think neither is a big deal or unusual?
Donald Trump the Indicted is not a sitting president, Inez. And the indictment focuses exclusively on acts the government alleges he committed as a private citizen. This is a good indictment given what it alleges.
Edit: Note Richard’s correction.
Edit: Richard misquoted Inez. She didn’t say it was dangerous precedent to indict a sitting president. She said it was dangerous precedent to indict an ex-president or major party candidate.
Yes I fixed it.
Thanks!
This is most clearly a biased and one sided prosecution.
Clinton destroyed evidence with a hammer.
THAT is good indictment.
Actually the law doesn’t make it a crime to destroy government information. It’s illegal to refuse to return it when demanded, and then lying about whether you still have it, which is what Trump is accused of doing. Besides, if Trump’s DOJ thought Clinton had committed a provable crime, his AG could have indicted her, but he didn’t.
(1) It is illegal to destroy evidence. The information that Clinton destroyed wasn't just information - it was subpoenaed information.
(2) It is not illegal to refuse to return if it has not been adjudicated, which it wasn't.
(3) Barr was deep state. He would always protect Dems and go after Trump. The DoJ acting biased is not a valid argument that the deep state is not biased and out of control.
It is fascinating to watch full fledged TDS just make shht up.
Chill, Bud. Not everyone who disagrees with some element of your world view is “full fledged TDS.” That’s why you yo-yos can’t win elections.
There is disagreement, and then there is just blind devotion to ignoring the evidence.
TDS is an example of the latter. When people can't even admit that Hillary destroyed evidence (not information) with a hammer AND got away with it, then we can't even begin to debate. We are just dealing with a religious zealot.
“What Hilary did” and got away with has nothing to do with whether what Trump is alleged to have done (and might yet get away with). You can’t say that no one ever forever can be charged with an offence just because somebody somewhere in the past escaped prosecution for something that his supporters claim is just as bad. Sorry, I would have voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 if I had been American because both (all, actually) Democrats were bad for America and I would in 2024 if the GOP can’t find somebody better. He’s a terrible human being but so was Winston Churchill. But he has to answer for this document business. I don’t want to hear “What about Hilary?” ever again. So stop with the TDS stuff.
Inez is very well spoken and I had thought would be a good sparring partner. Unfortunately she seems to have turned out to be completely insane.
"Since you have no actual arguments to defend your overly emotional position - just insult the speaker" - Rule #2, The Leftist Debate Manual.
She spent the whole time criticizing the indictment of someone (Trump) who is on tape describing in detail the crime he was committing as he was doing it. They have him so many chances to just give the stuff back, but when he didn’t and broke the law by pathetically and moronically trying to hide the stuff, she interpreted it as: “they were going after him no matter what”. You have to be insane to buy that argument.
(1) Russia-collusion: Total Lie.
(2) Alfa Bank hoax: Criminal Lie.
(3) Impeachment 1: Total Lie. For investigating Bursima kickbacks to Hunter- we now know to be TRUE.
(4) Impeachment 2: Total Lie. For a known FBI staged J6. Video is out. Ray Epps still walking around.
(5) Government sending 3 million to Twitter to election tamper: Totally illegal and unconstitutional.
You would have to be a willful liar, to not see Inez' argument.
I agree about the Russia collusion investigation being over the top. The 2nd impeachment was poorly worded (he did not incite), but he deserved to be impeached for lying about the election being stolen and inaction during storming of the capital.
But anyway, intellectual integrity requires evaluating the different incidents based on the facts of each, and Trump is clearly guilty currently.
It's possible to despise Trump for being narcissistically out of touch with reality and to also to despise him for probably believing that he must've won the election. In fact, they're the same position. Thinking that he is a self-obsessed buffoon but also that he thought he lost and lied about it doesn't mesh for me.
I have no problem seeing both as true. Why can't a narcissist also be a pathological liar? Trump the narcissist thinks that only he can fix our problems and so should run for President. Trump the pathological liar says all sorts of things that are obviously not true (even claiming at one point he met Putin on 60 minutes) as he tries to obtain and keep power. In terms of the election, the narcissist has a hard time imagining how he could have lost to Biden. The liar is willing to tell fibs in order to keep power. Trump could easily think in some way he should have or did win, but also be willing to say whatever it takes to make that outcome happen. Trump the narcissist doesn't need to believe in whatever fraud is used as an excuse to overthrow the election. He just needs the election overturned.
And there is no law against making claims. Many of which turned out to be very true. Both the PA and WI Supreme Courts found election irregularities that were illegal and sufficiently large to change those state's outcomes.
Zuckersbucks have been found to be illegal in over 18 states.
The FBI paying twitter $3 million to censor election stories (true Hinter laptop story) is election cheating.
Trump had absolutely every right to question the results. As all the Democrat "election deniers" had done in 2016 - to him.
The leftist lies are too easy to see through.
The leftists double standards are far to easy to spot.
It is clear that they are wielding power arbitrarily now just to prove that they can wield it arbitrarily and get away with it. And that, not Trump, is the tipping point for nations.
Inez says it's not a "conspiracy" and then goes on to explain that it's nearly the entire bureaucracy thinking Trump is Hitler and they have to make sure that someone like him can't run. Ummm...that's a conspiracy. Inez is basically just your run of the mill conspiracy theorist and I'm sure Richard can find someone much wiser to discuss things with. Almost everything she claims glosses over the details that undermine her tin-foil hat worldview (IRS, Clinton, DOJ targeting parents etc). And Richard, if you're going to talk to her, don't let her monopolize the conversation. I mean her long rant at the end that just takes Andy McCarthy's version of what happened to the FBI as gospel truth is pathetic (the same McCarthy btw that wrote a book about impeaching Obama), but there was no push back at all. I mean, maybe ask her why DOJ is prosecuting high level Democrats like Karen Carter Peterson in Louisiana, or TJ Cox in California. Or raiding Henry Cuellar's home. She gives complete credence to "scandals" that have essentially no evidence as yet and ignores actual criminal cases that undermine her worldview. With all due respect to Richard, this was not a "great" conversation. This was someone who is pretty delirious with partisanship monopolizing the hour with nonsense. Richard started to get across the main idea at one point. It's not that DOJ has changed in some fundamental way. It's that Trump is a mess and keeps forcing their hand. Even in the Russia case, I mean who the heck hired Manafort, Papadopoulos, Page, etc - all these guys that raised red flags in the first place? Not defending everything they did by a long shot, but what was DOJ supposed to do, close their eyes? If a Democrat hires as his campaign manager someone who is deeply indebted to Iranian oligarchs and willing to work for free, are Republicans going to say "Hey, we don't want the DOJ to be political, nothing to see here"? The common thread is Trump, and it is amazing the mental gymnastics even otherwise smart people like Inez will go through to basically say Trump is mostly the victim and it's everyone else's fault.
The accuracy of your actual point isn't well-served by confusing conspiracy with something more like uncoordinated ideological action. If all these people actually felt like they were stopping an orange Hitler, they needn't have conspired with one another in order to know what to do. Even if, hypothetically, every single person in 'the government' from the highest to the lowest had a big "RESIST" bumper sticker, that wouldn't be a conspiracy -- that would be a bunch of individuals doing what they thought was right to resist what they thought was wrong. Similarly, it's not 'stochastic terrorism' when unrelated rightwingers hurt trans folx or bomb abortion clinics. It's people putting into action their genuine beliefs.
Maybe I'm making a semantic error, but it sure didn't seem to me like she was describing "uncoordinated" action on the part of the bureaucracy. She doesn't want to think of herself as a conspiracy theorist, but then admits she thinks Trump's real problem is that practically the entire bureaucracy is just out to get him and this indictment is the latest sign of that. I mean what would the conspiratorial version of that be? I guess something even crazier. Why won't people like her just accept the obvious and most simple explanation for what is happening to Trump? It's Trump! The guy's been in trouble with the law his whole life (most of which was as a Democrat). Richard snuck in a good point about how almost no one was talking about the targeting of Republicans by DOJ pre-Trump. The only reason we're talking about it now is because Trump and his lackeys in conservative media have been repeating the lie for seven years straight to the point when even conservative intellectuals who should know better pretend it's something other than steaming excrement. That's not to excuse real errors of judgment by DOJ in handling Trump, but geeeez, who wants that job? Who thinks they could really do better? And when I read the Mueller Report, I just kept thinking, wow, they are really given these people the benefit of the doubt over and over again. But I'm supposed to believe that these are the same people who are doing everything they can to stop Trump. It's garbage.
Good conversation. Thanks for introducing me to Inez - I hadn't heard of her before. You fought valiantly, but she crushed you.
BTW, what Inez was saying that indictment of an ex-president provides an incentive to cling to power echoes the analysis in Douglass North et al Violence and Social Orders (2009), which is a great book.
As I recall, Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server was identified during one of the 10 (!) Benghazi investigations concerning what was, at worst, the Obama admin spinning a policy failure and/or Hillary’s incompetence, but certainly nothing criminal. (One might even call it a witch hunt!) The House Committee wanted Hillary’s private emails for purely political reasons as they suspected she was going to attempt another White House run and would be difficult to beat. Furthermore, Trump’s first impeachment was concerning his investigation into Joe Biden, also a likely presidential nominee, to gain an edge in 2020. I am quite concerned about the DOJ breaking precedent and charging Trump, but Republicans set the stage for what’s happening. Hard to take Inez seriously without her considering these facts.
Congress (Benghazi hearings) is allowed to be political. The DoJ is NOT allowed.
That is the problem. The distinction matters. And it matters a lot.
In addition, "You started it" is not a strong argument for malfeasance.
We could easily argue that Benghazi was the result of what Dems started. That road leads to destruction. And at this point, I actually advocate for more destruction, or national divorce, but not giving an iota more of ground to aholes that weaponized the deep state to go after parents, Catholics, and political figures.
The Deep State didn't go after parents and Catholics. Like Inez, you take a very specific phenomenon and then recharacterize it in a deceptively broad manner to make it seem scandalous. Yes, DOJ was concerned that in some of these school board meeting conflicts, violence was being threatened as well as other dangerous activity like making false accusations of child abuse against board members so they would be harassed by CPS. That gets turned into "DOJ is going after parents who are just concerned about what their kids are learning in school." Bull. And anyway, what did DOJ do? Produced a memo. The Horror. And no, DOJ isn't going after "Catholics" either. The real story is that some agent produced a memo warning that a very specific type of radical Catholic might be a decent target for recruitment. The reference was to young male Catholics who reject Vatican II, and so are already steeped in conspiratorial thinking. By most people's definition these guys aren't even Catholic. They don't recognize the Pope's authority. Again, this gets turned by ignorant or dishonest people into accusations that the "DOJ is going after Catholics now!" Like your rosary clutching septuagenarian neighbor or grandparent needs to worry about the Feds knocking the door down.
The FBI has no business policing local school board meetings. And everybody knows that when they send out a memo saying "how can we help you target these people" - that is exactly what it means. Who wrote that memo - not even Garland. It was written by a bunch of partisan leftists, and handed to Garland who happily slapped his signature on it. That is the definition of weaponization of government.
And the DoJ is going after Catholics. What did these Catholics do to get on the FBI hit list? Nobody even knows. We have Antifa wearing masks and beating people in public over and over and over again and do we get a memo? No. We have people leftists don't like and just call "conspiratorial" with the usual zero evidence - and do they get labeled? Yes. It is gross.
The only dishonest people here are the leftists pretending this is not happening and making up super lame excuses for using the full might of the Federal government to harass the people they don't like.
Go ahead and tell us what specific cases were brought against innocent parents and “Catholics” just for being Catholic. You can’t because it didn’t happen. It was just transparent propaganda as I pointed out and nothing you’ve written refutes it.
"Weaponization of government" means bullying people you don't like. A bully doesn't have to actually strike people - to be a bully.
The government should not be threatening people for speaking at meetings or going to church. It is totally irrelevant if they acted on it. The threats are what what is unconscionable.
And you know this. And still you offer lame excuses to cover for really nasty people.
Who did they threaten for just going to a meeting or going to church? That is not what happened.
You skipped how Trump investigated Joe Biden.
When a congressional investigation can morph into criminal charges for even peripherally related actions, “Congress versus DOJ” is a distinction without a difference, especially when you believe “show me the person and I’ll show you the crime”, as Inez does.
Re: “You started it” - I don’t disagree, but much of the critique is centered around what this supposed “first punch” is going to lead to - Trump’s prosecution is “setting a dangerous precedent” I.e. Republicans plan on doing the same thing. Inez explicitly mentions the possibility that both Trump and Biden will be running for office to avoid jail time. I can’t take this argument seriously because Republicans sure seem to have thrown the first punch…
(1) Unfortunately, Trump's request to investigate the Burisma racket was shut down, and became the false excuse for an impeachment.
As usual, we now have overwhelming evidence that Trump was totally correct to call for an investigation. We now have 17 tapes from the briber, and $10 million in IRS income, and the trail though the shell companies. We also have the death just yesterday of one of the key witnesses. The dead in the wake of Clintons and Biden's is impressive.
Your argument is that "Trump started it" because he was right? I don't get it.
(2) Obviously a congressional investigation can morph into a criminal one ONLY when the accused is a Republican. You have stumbled on precisely the problem. I don't care if you try Trump, but doing it while letting Hillary walk is completely outrageous and indefensible.
(3) Everybody always thinks the other guy started it. That is how you get Northern Ireland and the Middle East. You go back 600 or 2000 years and justify your immoral actions. As I said already - bring it on. Use whatever excuses you like to attack us. We don't care any more. We all go down now. Enjoy what you asked for, by lying willfully to yourself.
Did you even listen to the episode? The argument isn’t over whether past presidents and presidential candidates broke the law. It’s over whether they should be prosecuted for it, and what precedent ia prosecution would set. I agree completely that it’s concerning, I just think one needs to be honest about how we got here.
And I’d say a young Newt Gingrich probably started the tit for tat death spiral.
I'm sure you would say that "Newt started it".
What bothers me is that you can't see how stupid and shallow and obvious that position would be.
What exactly did Newt do that was so outrageous? Besides getting control of the House for the GOP for the first time in 40 years? You just hate Newt because he beat you. Nothing more, and nothing less.
And you hate Trump because he beat Fellonia von Pantsuit.
What about your opinions isn't just super obviously founded on simple hate?
Newt was an innovator. And like most creative geniuses, he had imitators. Many, in fact.
The point is that conservatives don’t have a leg to stand on when accusing Democrats of changing precedent or throwing the first punch.
The latest development is indeed concerning, but it also seems to be where things were inevitably headed.
Hannania is DELUSIONAL. Was he not alive, let alone awake during the Bush years? Every day it was some apparatchik in the media calling the president and the administration Nazis or some other ridiculously hyperbolic slur for *no good reason*. Likewise, must I remind everyone of the treatment that Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork received for the threat that the Establishment and its defenders in Congress (Uncle Ted, Joe from Scranton, I'm looking directly at you) perceived them as being??
Seriously Richard, you're out over your skis massively. Anyone who *might* threaten, even in a little way, the DC consensus, will be isolated and annihilated.