So a guy that claims to have been working as Cohens lawyer took the stand. If he was Cohens lawyer though, wouldn’t attorney client privilege have prevented him from testifying about anything?
So the mere fact of his presence proves him to be a liar, right? What am I missing?
The chonky fascist was whining about being silenced and then decides not to take the stand.
Just like all the other times, he never had any intention of taking the stand. That was show for his base – the same base that now believes that the gag order somehow prohibits him from testifying. He’s appealing to the dumbest of the dumb because they’re going to stick by him no matter what, and are also the ones who are likely to make the most noise and most likely to commit acts of violence in his name.
I’m more hoping that Democrat communities in swing states are prepared. All it takes is one or two attacks on a couple of minority districts in battleground states to dissuade enough people from voting to tip the scales in favor of Trump. And it doesn’t take a majority of Republicans to do that. All it takes is a few lone wolves to take matters into their own hands, and that’s what Trump is targeting. He doesn’t care if he’s scoring 50% at the polls or 5%. If those 5% have a bunch of lone wolf idiots willing to launch a couple of attacks, that could easily be enough, and I’m willing to bet that’s what Trump is banking on.
And they don’t even need to be “violent”. Just drive by a polling place with a couple of smoke bombs and some automatic rifle sound effects playing out of the car speakers and let the ensuing hysteria do the rest.
Everything I’ve seen from these traitor trash asshats suggests they’re bullies and cowards so I’m not sure I buy your lone wolf theory. They’re far more comfortable in a group where the opponent is outnumbered, that’s when they really show their colors.
There have been plenty of lone-wolf attacks over the past few years. They just typically don’t get as much attention because the damage they cause is typically minimal. The attack on Paul Pelosi is probably the most high-profile example. And we’ve seen plenty of lone-wolf attacks from people for other causes (abortion, most commonly). There’s no reason to believe that the MAGA movement is immune from people considering similar attacks.
I guess we’ll see. The examples you point to don’t seem numerous enough to potentially affect turnout though. Like I said, they’re cowards so they don’t attack large groups such as people waiting to vote.
I guess we’ll see. The examples you point to don’t seem numerous enough to potentially affect turnout though. Like I said, they’re cowards so they don’t attack large groups such as people waiting to vote.
On average, the US has I think 1.5 mass shootings per day. Schools, places of worship, supermarkets, parades, and even a children’s hospital got threatened. Especially at what will be a political flashpoint in this country, there’s no reason to believe that polling places would magically be immune. If anything, the chances of a polling place getting attacked is significantly higher than normal.
And those large groups of people waiting to vote…you know what they don’t have? Guns. A large group of unarmed people all gathered in one place to vote makes for a perfect target for someone with a poiltical chip on their shoulder, especially if they’re looking for targets that are unable to fight back. A gang-style drive-by could easily take out a dozen or so people, and even a “non-lethal” drive-by (my example above; a couple of smoke bombs and sound effects) would be enough to at the very least disrupt the election and at worst cause injury or death in the hysteria and confusion.
And it doesn’t have to be more than one or two. The margin in most swing states hovered around 10,000 votes per state. Drop a smoke bomb or two in the middle of a couple of minority districts and that alone could be enough to swing an election while the polling place is shut down for hours and people throughout the area who would have otherwise voted decide to stay home out of fear.
If anything, the chances of a polling place getting attacked is significantly higher than normal.
I’m not really interested in arguing about hypotheticals, suffice to say that direct assaults on voters during an Election Day is far from common and I hope it says that way.
I’m in california in a reddish town in a “blue” county. The saturday and sunday before election day, during early voting, one of those “convoys” drove by our polling places in lifted trucks with trump flags and fired off a few rounds. They made a loop around town all day to all the polling places, went by the one by my home seven or eight times. Law enforcement did jack shit, because one of the folk in the “convoy” lives three streets over and is one of those problem “always driving through the 25 and by the school at 60, rolling coal” neighbors. We’d have noticed if he was arrested. Trump still lost easily in our county. Probably because all us blue voters had already voted.
There’s also some tactical value in pretending youre going to testify - the prosecution team will spend a lot of time and effort preparing for it and how to best conduct the cross examination. In this case I doubt it made much difference on that front though.
Do we really have to wait a whole week for closing arguments? Just get the hung jury announcement out of the way and let in him off Scot-free, yet again. Can he just have a heart attack already? Sick of this
I feel stupid for reading any of these articles or commenting on them. We all know this movie ends with him getting away with it, but it’s still compelling compelling for some stupid reason.
Let’s be realistic – nobody on that jury cared about testimony from anyone other than Cohen and Stormy Daniels. The rest were just bureaucratic filler that most of the jury probably couldn’t care less about.
Their attempts to discredit Stormy Daniels was considered by most to be a huge miss, as she seemed to hold up better on cross-examination than she was on direct. Most believe this is a result of Trump demanding the lawyers try to make her say that the sex never happened at all, rather than focusing on details that actually matter to the case or simply trying to get her testimony tossed on relevance grounds. In fact, they failed twice here: Had the defense just conceded that the sex act occured, her testimony may not have been allowed at all since she had little to nothing to contribute to the actual allegations. And after that, the judge likely would have declared a mistrial due to the prejudicial nature of her testimony if Trump hadn’t put it in play in the first place by denying the sex happened.
They scored a pretty huge win when they got Cohen to admit that he stole money. And in the end, that still may save Trump if it creates enough doubt in even one juror’s mind. But that was pretty much the only win they got, and even that was more of a “even blind squirrels occasionally find nuts” kind of way. The rest of their defense ranged from largely ineffective to incompetent, and their one and only defense witness seemed to do more harm than good if reports are to be believed.
So no, they didn’t really defend him very well, but that’s largely a result of them listening to Trump’s demands instead of putting on a coherent defense. But they did get one really good shot in, and that shot alone may have been just enough to get the job done.
The rest were just bureaucratic filler that most of the jury probably couldn’t care less about.
Which was itself part of the defense strategy. In similar cases, the two sides would agree on the validity of certain pieces of evidence, making those technical witnesses unnecessary. But Trump probably told his lawyers not to admit to anything, which probably drew the trial out for a week or two, and forced the prosecution to have to cover every detail, in the hopes the jury would find it all too overwhelming.
But Trump probably told his lawyers not to admit to anything, which probably drew the trial out for a week or two, and forced the prosecution to have to cover every detail, in the hopes the jury would find it all too overwhelming.
There’s no probably about it. There were a couple of reports out there that said Trump did exactly this just to drag out the trial and get the jury bogged down in all the red tape.
The ironic part is that they could have avoided much of the most damning testimony if they had just conceded that the sex had occurred. At that point, Stormy Daniels’ testimony would probably have been disallowed entirely because it wouldn’t be relevant, and the jury would not have the image of an orange man in a T-shirt and boxers getting spanked by a pornstar with a magazine seared into their brains.
And this is likely exactly why they didn’t call him to the stand. They knew he’d immediately perjure himself, because he’s a compulsive liar. No amount of coaching or “just keep your answers short and only answer exactly what was asked” will keep Trump from lying on the stand.
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