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Trump says White House counsel Don McGahn will leave in the fall


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That's because Don McGahn refuses to let Trump pardon Manafort, so Trump has been mulling for awhile replacing McGahn with a lawyer who will help him with that. 

 

Won't matter because Manafort had a mistrial on 10 other criminal charges which will now be tried in state court which Trump can't pardon him from and Manafort faces a second trial in mid-September that Trump would also not be able to pardon him for as the optics on pardoning the same man twice, especially within months of each other, would be untenable, even for Trump.

 

So . . . Manafucked.

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4 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

 

 

I wonder if Grahmn and Grassley's recent statements about cutting Sessions loose were something of a "compromise" between Trump and Republicans. 

 

Inside reports all confirm that as bad as he is in public, he's even worse in public.

 

My guess is that Trump wants to fire Sessions, McGahn, and pardon Manafort, like, yesterday. Those near conspiratorial statements from Grahmn and Grassley may have been their way of saying, "Fine, we'll let you do all this stuff, but you have to wait until after the election."

 

I wonder if Grassley's reaction is feeling that Trump broke their deal by starting the least controversial of the three actions before the election.

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Buckle up, boys.

 

Trump is now clearly signaling he is going to instigate a Constitutional crisis to try to save his ass. And Republicans are lining up in his side for the fight.

 

This is like Mcmaster's exit or similar situations. It was so well reported beforehand we knew a couple moves in advance. With recent news, we now know with near certainty that McGahn will leave, Manafort will be pardoned, and Sessions will be fired. Likely other previously unthinkable actions will accompany these three things as Trump consolidates Justice and the FBI into his own personally loyal arm to attack his political opponents with.

 

It should be mentioned that if Trump's previous public statements about Manafort being a good man for not breaking are seen as playing footsie with a bribe or witness tampering or whatever you want to call Trump dangling a pardon for silence then McGahn's departure is nothing short of an outright declaration. 

 

Manafort is about to go on trial for a second time, and Trump just all but told him flat out, "I will pardon you if you keep your mouth shut."

 

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7 minutes ago, Chairslinger said:

Buckle up, boys.

 

Trump is now clearly signaling he is going to instigate a Constitutional crisis to try to save his ass. And Republicans are lining up in his side for the fight.

 

This is like Mcmaster's exit or similar situations. It was so well reported beforehand we knew a couple moves in advance. With recent news, we now know with near certainty that McGahn will leave, Manafort will be pardoned, and Sessions will be fired. Likely other previously unthinkable actions will accompany these three things as Trump consolidates Justice and the FBI into his own personally loyal arm to attack his political opponents with.

 

It should be mentioned that if Trump's previous public statements about Manafort being a good man for not breaking are seen as playing footsie with a bribe or witness tampering or whatever you want to call Trump dangling a pardon for silence then McGahn's departure is nothing short of an outright declaration. 

 

Manafort is about to go on trial for a second time, and Trump just all but told him flat out, "I will pardon you if you keep your mouth shut."

 

 

What's interesting is that slowly but surely, even the right are beginning to support the Mueller investigation more and more as the evidence starts to become undeniable. So while I agree with you that Trump may do all those insane things, by the time he does the nation will turn so hard against him that it won't matter. We'll see, but that is where things are starting to trend for the right. 

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7 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Fwiw Chris wrey isn't as shitty as I would have expected

 

 

That thought crossed my mind while I was posting. My thought was that either Trump might fire him too. Or that Wrey, while apparently a non-partisan actor trying to steer the FBI through difficult times will just acquiesce when Trump puts more pressure on him and Republicans make it clear they're not going to do anything about it.

 

I think the second is more likely. Wrey has seen how effectively they have smeared Comey. If Trump forces the issue, he has to know that's what's in store for him as well if he fights back.

 

The only defense here is for Dems to take the House(the Senate would be nice too, but that seems like a longshot). Like in other things(judge nominations) the GOP seems to be finally giving into their ""power is all that matters" impulse when it comes to norms that keep things like Justice and the FBI non-partian. The only way to stop them is with Dems controlling at least one center of power.

 

The real disturbing thought here to me is what happens if the Dems don't even take the House in November.

 

As I said in the other thread, I think these drastic actions to take over Justice and the FBI by the GOP have been spurred by the perception that the Dems will use the House to investigate the hell out of Trump. The Republicans feel the only defense to that is use up the credibility of institutions to investigate every right wing fever dream conspiracy they can come up with about the Democrats to muddy the waters. Sure, Trump did this stuff, but lookit all these Dems the FBI busted running a child sex ring!

 

This all might sound pessimistic, but I think we're in for an ugly fight even if the Dems take the House. If they can't even do that, we find ourselves in a repeat of 2016 where the GOP finds themselves with an embarrassment of riches of power. And we'll all find how just how much our institutions can protect us from Trump and the GOP's slide toward authoritarianism for the sake of power because nothing else will be there to stop them.

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14 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

Polling seems to indicate that the right has more and more "disapproved" of Trump if he fired Mueller or ended the investigation. So it's my hot take, but that has been the case. 

 

Those polls are basically a furrowed brow from all our favorite members of the GOP. A lot of people don't believe he should, but there's zero reason to believe they wouldn't fall in line if he did.

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9 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Those polls are basically a furrowed brow from all our favorite members of the GOP. A lot of people don't believe he should, but there's zero reason to believe they wouldn't fall in line if he did.

 

 

I think that's right. And in a lot of ways, it is the story of the Trump presidency.

 

This presidency has been a master class of propaganda.

 

I have lost count of the number of times Trump has done the unthinkable, only for Fox News and right wing outlets to normalize it in a news cycle or two.

 

 

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14 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Those polls are basically a furrowed brow from all our favorite members of the GOP. A lot of people don't believe he should, but there's zero reason to believe they wouldn't fall in line if he did.

 

I agree about GOP lawmakers, but not the average Republican. You can see that even in interviews with them.

 

2 minutes ago, Chairslinger said:

 

 

I think that's right. And in a lot of ways, it is the story of the Trump presidency.

 

This presidency has been a master class of propaganda.

 

I have lost count of the number of times Trump has done the unthinkable, only for Fox News and right wing outlets to normalize it in a news cycle or two.

 

 

 

Oh, for sure.

 

But as more evidence comes out, the more average Republicans don't want to see Trump end the investigation.

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8 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

But as more evidence comes out, the more average Republicans don't want to see Trump end the investigation.

 

Does that actually matter if the alternative in their mind is the Dems taking power and pushing policies they don’t like, picking judges they don’t like, and so on?

 

Trump won the general election on the votes of a significant number of people who didn’t like him, but did (and still do, sadly) believe he’s better than the alternative.

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2 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Does that actually matter if the alternative in their mind is the Dems taking power and pushing policies they don’t like, picking judges they don’t like, and so on?

 

Trump won the general election on the votes of a significant number of people who didn’t like him, but did (and still do, sadly) believe he’s better than the alternative.

 

That's harder to say - I'm genuinely unsure if their disapproval would be strong enough to be okay with the alternative. I hope so. If not, and Trump theoretically pardoning Manafort, firing Sessions, and ending the Mueller investigation doesn't get enough of a majority of the country to come together to get rid of him, then there really is no hope. 

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2 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

That's harder to say - I'm genuinely unsure if their disapproval would be strong enough to be okay with the alternative. I hope so. If not, and Trump theoretically pardoning Manafort, firing Sessions, and ending the Mueller investigation doesn't get enough of a majority of the country to come together to get rid of him, then there really is no hope. 

 

I spend a LOT of time with Trump voters...I get the sense that they don’t want him doing things that hurt his ability to get their platform pushed. They don’t want the Mueller investigation to proceed on merit, they want him to leave it alone because he only makes things worse. Could be wrong but that has been my takeaway.

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2 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

 

I spend a LOT of time with Trump voters...I get the sense that they don’t want him doing things that hurt his ability to get their platform pushed. They don’t want the Mueller investigation to proceed on merit, they want him to leave it alone because he only makes things worse. Could be wrong but that has been my takeaway.

 

Also true, but my thought with that has always been that they would respect what Mueller finds if it's overwhelmingly clear and against Trump, no? Perhaps not, but if they are okay to see the investigation theoretically proceed on merit (at least, not stop it) then presumably they'd respect the conclusions it'd draw. 

 

But understanding the mind of a Trump voter is impossible. That's what I presumed because it's the only logical conclusion from them disapproving of Trump interfering with the investigation, as you say. 

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I was flipping back and forth between the big three news networks yesterday and I came to the conclusion that they looked like news channels covering the news in completely different realities.

 

If your average Trump voter is getting their news from Fox News, they probably don't care about any of this, because they exist in a completely different world with different news and different scandals.

 

This isn't spin, it's two versions of reality and it's truly terrifying what out media landscape has evolved into.

 

 

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6 minutes ago, ort said:

I was flipping back and forth between the big three news networks yesterday and I came to the conclusion that they looked like news channels covering the news in completely different realities.

 

If your average Trump voter is getting their news from Fox News, they probably don't care about any of this, because they exist in a completely different world with different news and different scandals.

 

This isn't spin, it's two versions of reality and it's truly terrifying what out media landscape has evolved into.

 

 

 

They probably don’t care about this, because they probably don’t know about this.

 

Their network reports fundamentally different stories.

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7 minutes ago, osxmatt said:

They probably don’t care about this, because they probably don’t know about this.

 

Their network reports fundamentally different stories.

 

Watching Fox makes you more uninformed than simply not following the news.

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He sure is trying to hide something despite calling this a witch hunt.  It's disgusting to think the GOP will continue to back him because their far more concerned about winning their elections than they are about our actual country.  What a time to be alive.  

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