The Donald Trump Score Card

Opinion | The Enormous Risks a Second Trump Term Poses to Our Economy

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"The rule of law is an essential underpinning of our economy. Mr. Trump’s proposed plans would undermine the rule of law in multiple ways, including using the F.B.I. and the Justice Department to target his adversaries, probably doing the same with the I.R.S., firing United States attorneys if they refuse his order to prosecute his political enemies, using his pardon power to immunize political allies from the consequences of lawbreaking and continuing to reject the fairness and freedom of our elections.

Mr. Trump would also fill his cabinet and senior staff with people whose primary qualification is loyalty to him. In such a scenario, the White House and federal agencies would be expected to make decisions not on the policy merits but in order to satisfy Mr. Trump’s ego, anger, whims, personal business interests and political vendettas.

Nor would Mr. Trump and his allies stop there. They plan to replace up to 50,000 civil servants — nonpartisan professionals such as safety inspectors, researchers and procurement experts — with political loyalists. This may even include requiring current federal employees to take a loyalty test."

 

Also, as part of Trump's sentence, make him spend time in a migrant detention camp cages like the ones he created when he was president where over 5,000 children were separated from their parents with no tracking process.


Trump migrant separation policy: Children 'in cages' in Texas

 

James Traficant was sentenced to prison and placed with people he didn't like.

His shared similarities with Trump.

Article from September 2009


Disgraced Traficant found prison life ‘tough’

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"Traficant said life behind bars was "tough," and that it wasn't long before he was in "the hole." He said he was "put in a position to be hurt" at the federal prison in Allenwood, Pa., because it had many illegal immigrants unhappy with his idea of patrolling the Mexican border with troops."

 

Traficant entertained the idea of running his Congressional office from prison.

The House expelled him in July 2002.

He went to prison shortly after the House expelled him.

Traficant ran in 2010 to try to regain his old House seat and lost.


CNN.com - House gives Traficant the boot - July 25, 2002

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"In a 420-1 vote Wednesday night, Traficant -- who was convicted of federal corruption charges in April -- became only the second House member since the Civil War to be kicked out of Congress."

 

American democracy has overcome big stress tests since the 2020 election. More challenges are ahead

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"His strategy then was to use Republican dominance in swing state legislatures, governorships and secretary of state offices to try to send slates of fake electors to Congress even though Democrat Joe Biden won those states and captured the presidency.

Since then, Republicans have lost two of those swing state secretary of state offices — in Arizona and Nevada — as well as the governor’s office in Arizona and control of the state legislatures in Michigan and Pennsylvania. In Congress, lawmakers passed a bipartisan bill closing some of the loopholes in the counting of Electoral College votes that Trump tried to exploit to stay in office, making it harder to challenge state certifications on the House floor.

The upshot is it will be far harder for Trump to try to overturn a loss in 2024 than in 2020. The most likely way he returns to the White House is by winning the election outright."

 

American democracy has overcome big stress tests since the 2020 election. More challenges are ahead

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"Some Republicans did try to aid Trump. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton led a group of 17 GOP attorneys general in filing a lawsuit urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the election. The high court swiftly dismissed the case. Trump lost all but one of more than 60 lawsuits he and his allies filed in states to overturn the election, sometimes before judges he had appointed.

Then in November 2022, every swing state candidate who backed Trump’s effort to overturn his loss and who was running for a statewide office with a role in elections lost."

 

Barr doesn't think a president can assassinate people but he can. And he has further protection from prosecution for it after the Supreme Court's immunity ruling.

Trump's own attorney, Sauer, admitted what Barr denies to the Supreme Court when he was pleading Trump's case for immunity.

Sauer added a qualifier that Congress would first have to remove Trump from office via impeachment before he could be prosecuted for a crime such as assassinating someone.

The Supreme Court eventually ruled that Trump couldn't be prosecuted for official acts even after being impeached and removed from office.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...ty-seal-team-6/?itid=co_jan-6-investigation_3

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“The president has the authority to defend the country against foreign enemies, armed conflict and so forth,” he stated. “He has the authority to direct the justice system against criminals at home. He doesn’t have authority to go and assassinate people.”

“Whether he uses the SEAL team or a private hit man, it doesn’t matter,” Barr continued. “It doesn’t make it a carrying out of his authority. So, all these horror stories really are false.”

 

In Trump's mind, he thinks he as the right to defend the country against perceived domestic enemies who he thinks stole the election from him.

Trump has stated publicly that he thinks he has a presidential duty to insure that elections are done 'fairly'.

Barr should know this better than anyone. Barr resigned after Trump pressured him to help overturn the 2020 election by creating a false backdrop that the 2020 election was mired in fraud..

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/07/07/trump-trials-tracker-latest-news/

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"The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling on ideological lines found Trump and all presidents have broad immunity for “official” acts, but that immunity does not extend to private conduct. Confusingly, the court said it could not tell which of Trump’s alleged misdeeds fell on which side of that line, sending the case back to a lower court to decide.

So far, it’s hard to see this ruling as anything other than a hugely consequential redrawing of the boundary lines in American government — giving more power explicitly to the president and taking from the Justice Department a significant amount of presumed authority to investigate or prosecute presidents."

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...e-thomas-jack-smith-special-counsel-immunity/

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"Thomas was weighing in on what is generally considered a far-fetched legal theory pushed by Trump’s attorneys in lower courts and by some conservative legal groups. They argue that Smith was illegally appointed and funded and say the criminal cases against Trump should be dismissed.

Trump filed a motion to dismiss the federal classified documents case against him in Florida on the basis that Smith was illegally appointed. He did not file a similar motion in the D.C. federal election interference case.

Similar challenges to other recent special counsels, including Robert S. Mueller III, have been rejected in court."

 

Clarence Thomas was one of the six justices who ruled for presidential immunity and more.

Now that the Supreme Court has granted immunity to a president and declared that his or her interactions with DOJ officials can't be used as evidence in criminal cases, it gives a president greater latitude over what he does with the DOJ.

If Thomas is upset with Jack Smith not being confirmed by the Senate (which isn't required), he can expect future presidents to engage in behavior with the DOJ that will make him even more upset (unless it's Trump or a another conservative president).

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...e-thomas-jack-smith-special-counsel-immunity/

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"McWhirter said it is unusual and inappropriate for a justice to include a largely unrelated opinion in a ruling, but he said it’s something that Thomas often does as he seemingly tries to invite outside groups to bring cases before the court.

Thomas’s opinion has no legal teeth and does not create precedent. Still, McWhirter said Thomas’s words could embolden Cannon to overturn past rulings or encourage defense lawyers to push this issue through the lengthy appeals court process.

“It is not part of what a justice is supposed to do,” McWhirter said. “It does signal to everyone that he is willing to take up this issue.”"

 

Considering the current conservative composition of the court, he probably won't ever have the need, but if he did, Trump could bribe the members of the Supreme Court and argue he is immune from prosecution because the Superme Court ruled he's immune from prosecution.

Trump could bribe members of any court.

The remaining safety net is that Congress can impeach and remove corrupt judges.

 

Clarence Thomas has already been bribed by conservative billionaires who have given him a quarter-million dollar RV and luxury vacations in Indonesia, among other gifts that went unreported by Thomas.

 

Trump says immigrants are stealing black jobs.

Trump made the same type of remark in Detroit when he visited a predominantly African-American church.


'Black jobs'? Trump draws pushback after anti-immigration rant

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"They're taking Black jobs now and it could be 18, it could be 19 and even 20 million people," former President Donald Trump said in the debate Thursday about the role immigrants play in the U.S. economy. "They're taking Black jobs, and they're taking Hispanic jobs, and you haven't seen it yet, but you're going to see something that's going to be the worst in our history."

The available data, however, doesn't indicate that immigrants are filling roles en masse that would otherwise go to American citizens.

And as Derrick Johnson, CEO of the NAACP, pointed out, "There's no such thing as a Black job or a white job."

 

That post was in June 2023 and the situation may have looked like the GOP convention would end up chaotic like the 1968 DNC convention.

Since then, Trump refused to participate in any of the 2024 GOP primary debates and still easily won the GOP nomination.

After the first Trump-Biden 2024 presidential debate, some are calling for Biden to leave the race after his poor performance. That could create a chaotic situation during the DNC convention in August if an attempt is made to replace him.

Ironically, The DNC convention for the 2024 race is in Chicago where the chaos occurred during the1968 convention after President Johnson announced he wouldn't be running again..

 

Maybe they could all wear brown shirts and boots.

 

Wow…..
Hopefully history doesn’t repeat itself!

 

The "riots " of the 1968 democratic convention were finally called exactly what they were --a police riot. The police beat anybody they could get their clubs on during that mess.

 

HEY TRUMP--WANNA KNOW WHAT I THINK OF YOU?? CHECK IT OUT.