US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9550

On December 17 2017 15:43 Introvert wrote:
I'm actually partial to the theory below. So when "no collusion" comes up, as seems more and more likely, it works even better for them.
+ Show Spoiler +

On December 17 2017 13:58 TheTenthDoc wrote:
I mean, when I was spending some time as an intern with the federal government I never had any ownership of any email sent using my official email. Not really sure what would make the transition team above this requirement as government contractors.

Heck, I'm not sure Trump even legally owns his tweets anymore after they declared them official government communications.

Privilege (attorney/client or executive)/classified would be another thing, but I confess I have no idea how and what the heck Trump and co mean when they talk about it.

On December 17 2017 21:21 Gorsameth wrote:
Right now my biggest wonder is, in the hypothetical situation where Trump fires Mueller (or fires Rosenstein and finds someone who will fire Mueller for him), will the Republican Party stand against him and support the inevitable impeachment coming from Democrats?

Half a year ago I would have expected them to do so. Now i'm not so sure anymore.

On December 17 2017 21:27 Nebuchad wrote:

It's pretty clear that they'll get destroyed in 2018 with Trump so they want to avoid that, but if they're part of the process it can also reflect on them electorally with the Trump base.

Merry Christmas, because we believe in the Jesus.

On December 17 2017 23:03 m4ini wrote:


Very doubtful, look at Alabama. One would think that a racist, homophobe religious zealot with pending pedophile allegations is kinda unelectable. If it weren't for the considerably higher than usual black voter turnout, he would've won easily - no one "changed sides", everyone who voted republican before did so again.

On December 18 2017 00:09 Liquid`Jinro wrote:

Do you have stats on this? I've seen the whole 70%~ish of white folks voting Moore and 95% ~ of black people voting for Jones, bit. But what I haven't seen is a comparison of turnout and ratios from last year.

Would be interested to see how much white turnout was depressed from previous years.

There was no such turnout surge in white, working-class Alabama. In fact, turnout was lower than it was in 2014 in many of Alabama’s mostly white, working-class counties. In Alabama’s least-educated, predominantly white counties, the turnout was often far lower than it was in 2014. In Fayette County, where just 13 percent of voters have a college degree, turnout landed at just 69 percent of 2014 levels.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Alabama voters surged to the polls Tuesday, blowing through turnout estimates of 20 to 25 percent, to exceed well over 1 million votes cast, about 38 percent of the state’s registered voters.

On December 18 2017 00:17 Simberto wrote:
I seem to remember that stat turning up in this thread, too.

Ok, found something like that in this post from Stealthblue:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/general/383301-us-politics-mega-thread?page=9508#190148

It wasn't about black turnout, but about democrat turnout (93.5% of presidential) vs republican turnout (49.8% of presidential)

President Donald Trump has in recent days received a wave of new, underwhelming polling numbers - many of which have come from unexpected places.

Take, for example, a Suffolk University poll from earlier this week. It found that Trump's favorability rating among people who said Fox News was their most trusted news source was 58% - a substantial drop from the outlet's surveys in June (90%) and October (74%).

Meanwhile, in Alabama - where in Tuesday's special election the Democrat Doug Jones defeated his embattled Republican challenger, Roy Moore - exit polls found that voters had a split opinion of the president.

In a state Trump carried by nearly 30 points over the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 presidential election, just 48% of voters say they approve of Trump, and 48% say they disapprove of the job he's doing.

And in Iowa, where Trump defeated Clinton by roughly 9 points, a Wednesday poll from the Des Moines Register/Mediacom found that 60% of Iowans disapproved of the job Trump is doing. Just 35% say they approve, a sharp drop from his 43% approval in the poll's July edition.

President Donald Trump now claims, by way of his attorneys, that protesters at one of his 2016 campaign rallies violated his rights by protesting.

Those protesters were later allegedly battered by Trump supporters after Trump shrieked for their removal. The protesters are currently suing Trump for incitement to riot.

In legal filings made this week, Trump’s lawyers say he couldn’t have violated the protesters’ rights by calling for his supporters to assault and remove them from the venue–because those protesters violated Trump’s rights first. One motion reads, in relevant part:

In this case, Plaintiffs interfered with the Trump Campaign’s freedom to ‘choose the content of (its) own message. Thus, by interjecting this anti-Trump speech in the middle of a pro-Trump rally, they were obviously transforming the message that Mr. Trump and the Campaign wished the event to convey.

The motion was filed as part of a dismissal request made Trump’s legal team in response to a lawsuit brought by multiple protesters who were violently removed from a Trump campaign rally in Louisville, Kentucky in March 2016. At that campaign rally, then-candidate Trump screamed: “Get ’em out of here!”

A federal judge allowed the protesters’ lawsuit to proceed earlier this year after Trump’s stable of attorneys unsuccessfully argued their client was protected from liability by the First Amendment.

In his April order allowing the suit, Judge David Hale wrote “It is plausible that Trump’s direction to ‘get ’em out of here’ advocated the use of force. ‘Get ’em out of here’ is stated in the imperative; it was an order, an instruction, a command.”

Now, after their initial failure at reigning in the protesters’ claims, Trump’s attorneys are trying an even more novel tactic: arguing that two perceived wrongs can, in this case, make a right. The motion defends Trump’s incendiary order-instruction-command as necessary. It reads:

Mr. Trump had every right to call for the removal of the disruptors. Any contrary rule would destroy the right of political campaigns to express their messages at rallies without being sabotaged by intruders.

This argument relies on no known legal doctrine.