As you can see, I started off answering a question about Trump’s taxes, and then got a bit irritated with some of my followers on Twitter.
After the Supreme Court oral arguments yesterday on whether Congress and a New York grand jury can have access to Trump’s taxes and financial records, a Twitter follower asked:
Predictions about what a court will do are educated guesswork. Nobody knows until we see the decision. The Supreme Court usually follows its precedence, which is bad for Trump. The law has always been clear: The president cannot exert any kind of “executive privilege” to avoid complying with a subpoena. Nixon couldn’t. Clinton couldn’t. But Trump thinks he should
It’s possible that the court may carve out a more precise rule limiting subpoenas for presidential records.
If they rule for Trump and let him hide his financial records, it will definitely be shocking, and contrary to precedent. But at this point, not much will shock me, so I’ll make a boring prediction: The future of rule of law in America depends more on what happens in the November election than the Supreme Court today.
Initially I thought that the financial records being released so close to the election might doom Trump’s reelection chances, but with the death count rapidly rising in a pandemic, I think the issue of Trump’s finances will matter less to voters than the crisis we are now facing.
Also, note that the arguments Trump’s lawyers made were entirely based on Trump as president. If Trump is out of office, prosecutors will be able to get all of those records.
I realize this is a small consolation, but I don’t think he can be any more unleashed between now and November than he already is. A ruling in his favor would make him very dangerous in a second term.
What I meant by “he can’t be more unleashed” was that what he can actually do is limited by his circumstance. There is nothing he wouldn’t try do, but he has no secret police, he cannot command the army to shut down polling places
Operation Ukraine Shakedown was launched at the end of 2018, just after the midterms. It was basically an 18-month plan to set things up so that it appeared a foreign country was, on its own without prompting, launching an investigation against Biden.
There isn’t time.to undertake another such shakedown, and besides, that kind of thing is much harder to pull off in a pandemic. I really don’t see him starting a war, particularly during a global pandemic.
What is in his power, though, is to create lots of chaos, keep everyone spinning, do outrageous things to fire up his base. He will keep doing these things. His base will cheer. His critics will melt down. We will keep spinning in the exact same circles.
Just don’t give him 4 more years.
Even after my post yesterday explaining that Don the Con Artist has persuaded people that he is invincible and invulnerable, NFC responded by sending me this tweet:
If I wanted to destroy American democracy, I’d unleash a bunch of bots and trolls to stir Americans into endless “OH MY GOD WHAT IF. . .” meltdowns. I’d get people to spend all their time in absurd “what if” rabbit holes, spinning with outrage, wearing themselves out.
What a coincidence! That’s exactly the goal of Russian Active Measures: to get people to lose confidence in democracy. Because when enough people lose confidence in Democratic institutions, it’s all over.
The problem with social media: People like to get “clicks” and “likes”
Guess which will of these headlines get more clicks and retweets
- Trump will fix the election
- Biden has an edge in the polls
I suggest people are riled because news outlets and social media accounts want likes and retweets. So without realizing it, they’re helping Don with his Big Con.
I then got this response:
I’m afraid the person who gave that response will not pass the logical reasoning portion of the Twitter Bar Exam.
I didn’t accuse anyone of working for Putin. I am, however, saying that One goal of Active Measures is to cause Americans to lose confidence in the democratic process. Another is to get Americans to do the work for them. People spreading panic that democracy is dead are helping with Active Measures.
Not to be deterred, another person said this:
The statement: “It is easy to hack into voting machines” is factually untrue. The logical error is confusing “possible” with “easy.” Hacking into enough machines to sway an election is an extremely remote possibility.
It is, however, easy to suppress the vote by persuading people that their vote won’t matter.
In places where I’ve done voter protection work, the concern that people won’t vote because they think it is pointless.
When people go on and on about how “easy” it will be for someone to hack into machines and steal the election, that person does two things: (1) the person undermines confidence in elections and (2) persuades people that there is no point in voting.
Spreading factually untrue statements is always a bad idea. “It is easy to hack into voting machines,” is a factually untrue statement.
It’s easy to get worked up over the possibility of Russia figuring out how to hack into enough voting centers to flip votes, or worrying that Trump will make himself dictator. These are exiting, thrilling worries.
The truth is often mundane and boring.
The truth is that the 2020 election will be won or lost based on voter turnout. There really are not many undecided voters. People tend to have strong feelings about Trump one way or another.
A Republican just won a special election in California. Granted, it was unusual in many ways, but it illustrates the real danger: Republicans will feel energized to vote, while Democrats will be discouraged and stay home.
“Working to interfere” basically means “trying to suppress the vote mostly by confusing people.” That’s what a bot and troll campaign does.
“Working to interfere” doesn’t mean “will fix the election.” People confuse these two phrases. There are things we can do to guard ourselves against a bot and troll campaign trying to cause confusion and undermine the election. The Ukrainians weren’t fooled by the Russian disinformation campaign, but Americans in 2016 were. So how about if Americans just don’t get fooled again?
I am quite sure lots of people right now are trying to hack into Biden’s personal emails, and the DNC. In 2016, Americans allowed hacked emails to be used against the victims. Remember? Russia did the ugly deed and Americans ran with it.
So when you think about it, Russia isn’t really the problem. We’re the problem. And that means we can do something about it.
