Senate The US Politics discussion

This is my prediction:

Mueller comes back with findings from his investigation, probably after midterm elections around 2018-2019. He recommends charges for Flynn, Manafort, Trump Jr., Kushner and a handful of Trump's other associates for various crimes involving collusion with Russia and for Kushner perjury/obstruction of justice. Mueller also recommends charges of obstruction of justice for Trump for the Comey fiasco (I think he'll slip out of being implicated in the actual collusion).

Trump pardons everyone including any family members except for a select few he decides to throw under the bus to save face, so no one close to him actually faces any consequences. If it's a Dem led House, impeachment charges begin but acquittal in the Senate. If it's still a GOP led House, nothing is ever filed. GOP stands by Trump and he's there until 2020 where he runs for reelection or Ivanka runs in his place while he steps down for health reasons.

 

What happens if the pregnancy is out of wedlock J-Rod?

 

My prediction:

The investigation will either gain enough evidence of something related to Trump colluding with the Russians or it will go into other areas and catch him for some kind of financial misconduct. At that point, probably after 2018, it will be clear that Congress still won't do anything since Republicans will have around 58 seats in the Senate. At that point, Mueller will charge Trump with crimes, and the question of whether a sitting President can be charged criminally will go to the Supreme Court. I'm just guessing here, but since a civil lawsuit can be brought against a sitting President, the Supreme Court will rule that Trump can be charged. Trump will be indicted, but the Senate will still stick by him. The case will proceed and he'll ultimately be found guilty. At this point, the argument for keeping Trump in office will become so tenuous that Senate Republicans tell him he needs to step down. He won't. Then he'll be impeached and found guilty.

 

I don't think we'll be waiting until after the midterms for Mueller's report. I would say it's more likely to be at the end of this year or sometime in the first several months of next year. I'm sure they're moving fast, given that Trump could introduce additional problems by firing Mueller.

I also don't think Trump is going to slip out of being implicated in collusion, and we could see evidence of that as soon as this week. The Secret Service announced today that Trump Jr. was not a protectee at the time of the meeting. Unless Carter, H.W., Clinton, W, Obama, or any of their wives (or Obama's children) were at that meeting, Trump would had to have been in the vicinity (if not in the meeting itself). HRC is in her own unique category, having been under SS protection since 1993 while also being a major candidate for the presidency.

Pardoning everyone/multiple people would be a major risk for Trump, because there's a case to be made that accepting a pardon means that you're accepting guilt.

 

OK so is the assumption that anything will happen to the Trumps based more in wishful thinking, or idealistic-but-misplaced faith in the American system? Because come 2020, there's still going to be "oh this scandal will do him in for sure!' remarks abounding before the election.

 

Trump would just spin it as "Trump Jr./Kushner did NOTHING wrong but the fake news and the witch hunt by the FBI made up these false charges against him so I have to pardon him to prevent this witch hunt/Clinton did much worse but was never charged!" and his base/the GOP will buy it. Fox News has already started pushing the propaganda that Mueller's findings can't be trusted because he hired lawyers who donated to the Democratic Party so the base is already prepared to not believe anything Mueller comes back with.

On a related note, does anyone know is a President can pardon himself? Because Trump definitely would if any charges were recommended against him and suffer no consequences.

 

Yes, the base may buy it, but independents won't and have already begun turning away from him. He can't rely on the base alone.

 

His base is about 35-40% but they're heavily concentrated in areas the GOP needs to win a majority in the House and Senate so the GOP will do continue to do nothing no matter how bad it gets. It's more politically advantageous for them to stand by him (he has an 85-90% approval rating among Republicans which hasn't wavered over a scandal-ridden six months) than turn against him so they're not going to do anything.

Washington Post had a good article on why Trump isn't going anywhere with the support of the GOP base: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...g-impeached-this-year/?utm_term=.bb169694f7c9

Anything involving the removal of Trump before 2020 has to involve the GOP turning against him since they control the House and Senate (and even if Dems win back the House in 2018 they still need a 2/3 vote in the Senate to convict him). That's why I don't see him going anywhere until 2020 at the earliest.

 

unicorn - If a sitting President could pardon himself (and somebody with more constitutional law knowledge could prove me wrong), then Nixon would have done it before resgining.

 

We're working on it.

And Trump and the GOP will control America for as long as they want to. They've already gotten people to self-purge themselves off of voting rolls, their program of voter suppression enabled by the Holder V Shelby County decision is the real reason they won the election, and they will continue with that. Democrats will never control any part of the Federal Government and their time in State Governments is soon coming to an end. In 20 years, America will be moving more in the Russia type direction. It cannot and will not be stopped. There is no future and no reason to live. There is no hope. There will be nothing but loss, decline, suffering and death.

 

Googled my question and got this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ssue-himself-a-pardon/?utm_term=.604092ce0292. Short answer, no one knows as the Statute doesn't make it clear.

 

Still, Nixon seemed sure enough that he didn't give himself a pardon and that was probably the closest to this point that a President's been to being charged with a major crime while in office.

 

If he pardons himself, the Supreme Court will rubber stamp it. He can do anything he wants.

 

You must've hated the end of Rogue One.

 

Uh, that was just a movie, dude.

 

It was also pretty terrible, given the inconsistent motivations assigned to someone who was supposedly an extremist revolutionary since childhood but was also shocked to discover there was such a thing as revolutionary movement.

 

She knew there was a revolutionary movement, but she didn't know how extensive a movement it was or that it had any sort of chance.

 

I think there's a decent chance Kasich and maybe someone else will mount a primary challenge against Trump. But I also don't think it will be successful.

The only thing that could stop any of Trump's absurd reign (since his supporters simply don't believe objective truth exists) might be if the healthcare bill passes and winds up costing people with preexisting conditions their lives and money in droves (which it would).

There's *some* possibility that the very self-interested Republican base, particularly the new working-class bits brought in by Trump, will ultimately care more about their wallets and lives once it has personally affected them.

Even then, there's still every chance they will buy into his conman explanation for it, and blame it on Democrats entirely instead. I don't have much confidence in many of them to be able to analyze reality anymore.

I think there's every possibility that the Democrats won't have anyone to counter Trump in 2020. It may take the party absolutely falling apart and being reconstituted as something else, and the country coming into absolute ruin in a way that directly impacts voters in an undeniable way, before we'd ever see this group of Republicans out or power.

In other words... No, I don't think what happened with Nixon will happen here, no matter what they find. It ought to. But things in the political landscape have changed greatly since then. Mostly because it's now driven by radio and Fox News. The tail truly is wagging the dog. It's basically every horrible thing imagined by Network brought to life.

 

You've just slandered entire fields of epistemology, just wait til Ramza gets here.

 

Americans lack the morals and the courage to get rid of Trump, or to build a country worth anything. All Americans have succeeded at doing for decades now is killing people.

The problem for the world is, with America in decline and soon to no longer be the major country, that an even crueler and more immoral nation will take it's place-China.

There is no future. There is no hope.

 

Think about the various people throughout history that have been in bleaker positions and came out the other side. Because they fought. Because they didn't care about the odds. Because the alternative was intolerable.

Until there are nuclear missiles in flight overhead, there's a future. Like Thomas Paine once said, "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."

 

Other countries in history did not have atomic weapons and an immoral populace that can be easily exploited. America does.

 

He's right. There's no hope. We should just go ahead and kill ourselves now and leave this miserable planet to the next race to **** up.

 

Trump's lawyer blames the nefarious Secret Service for letting the Russia meeting happen

The Secret Service points out Jr was not under Secret Service protection at the time

 

Welcome to several pages ago, VLM. As a friendly tip, helps to post the news as it breaks, not a day later.