US Election 2024: Grumpy Old Men

[Solauren]

He's only saying that because he thinks they might alienate people that would otherwise vote for Trump.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Trump calls historic hush money case 'political persecution' as trial gets under way

Former President Donald Trump said he is "proud" to be at a New York court as the trial over the hush money case began on Monday.

It is the first of Trump's four indictments to reach trial and makes him the first former US head of state to stand trial for a serious crime.

"This is an assault on America, nothing like this has ever happened before, there’s never been anything like it. Every legal scholar said this case is nonsense, it should have never been brought, it doesn’t deserve anything like this," Trump told reporters as he walked into court.

"This is political persecution, this is a persecution like never before, nobody has ever seen anything like it and again it’s a case that should have never been brought," he said.

"That’s why I am very proud to be here, this is an assault on our country and it’s a country that’s failing ... This is really an attack on a political opponent, that is all it is, so I’m very honoured to be here, thank you very much.”

This trial is to see whether Trump repeatedly and fraudulently falsified business records to conceal crimes in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records. Prosecutors say he was trying to conceal an alleged effort to keep salacious stories about his sex life from emerging during his 2016 campaign.

On the first day of the trial, the judge selected the jury and lawyers for both sides of the case haggled over what evidence could be permitted.

The prosecution also asked the judge to fine Trump for three social media posts they say broke the judge's gag order that bans him from making public comments about some of the people related to the case.

As Trump is the presumptive nominee for the Republican party, he is expected to split his time between days in court and, as he has said, "campaigning during the night" ahead of the US presidential election set to take place in November.

The jury selection for the case has been extraordinarily difficult, with a jury having to be able to assure judges that they will be able to set aside any personal feelings or biases during the trial and come to a decision that is based entirely on the evidence and the law.

This makes jury selection particularly challenging in the case of Donald Trump, who is very well-known and an extraordinarily divisive figure.

Many of the details of this case have been public since 2018, when federal prosecutors charged Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen with campaign finance crimes in connection with a scheme to bury claims by porn star Stormy Daniels, as well as other potentially damaging stories from Trump’s past.

There are allegations that Mr Cohen paid Ms Daniels $130,000 (£104,000) to not disclose her claims of an affair and a sexual encounter with Trump.

[Rogue 9]

Time Magazine

How Far Trump Would Go
By ERIC CORTELLESSA / PALM BEACH, FLA.

Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice.

We’ve been talking for more than an hour on April 12 at his fever-dream palace in Palm Beach. Aides lurk around the perimeter of a gilded dining room overlooking the manicured lawn. When one nudges me to wrap up the interview, I bring up the many former Cabinet officials who refuse to endorse Trump this time. Some have publicly warned that he poses a danger to the Republic. Why should voters trust you, I ask, when some of the people who observed you most closely do not?

As always, Trump punches back, denigrating his former top advisers. But beneath the typical torrent of invective, there is a larger lesson he has taken away. “I let them quit because I have a heart. I don’t want to embarrass anybody,” Trump says. “I don’t think I’ll do that again. From now on, I’ll fire.”

Six months from the 2024 presidential election, Trump is better positioned to win the White House than at any point in either of his previous campaigns. He leads Joe Biden by slim margins in most polls, including in several of the seven swing states likely to determine the outcome. But I had not come to ask about the election, the disgrace that followed the last one, or how he has become the first former—and perhaps future—American President to face a criminal trial. I wanted to know what Trump would do if he wins a second term, to hear his vision for the nation, in his own words.

What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump remains the same guy, with the same goals and grievances. But in person, if anything, he appears more assertive and confident. “When I first got to Washington, I knew very few people,” he says. “I had to rely on people.” Now he is in charge. The arranged marriage with the timorous Republican Party stalwarts is over; the old guard is vanquished, and the people who remain are his people. Trump would enter a second term backed by a slew of policy shops staffed by loyalists who have drawn up detailed plans in service of his agenda, which would concentrate the powers of the state in the hands of a man whose appetite for power appears all but insatiable. “I don’t think it’s a big mystery what his agenda would be,” says his close adviser Kellyanne Conway. “But I think people will be surprised at the alacrity with which he will take action.”

The courts, the Constitution, and a Congress of unknown composition would all have a say in whether Trump’s objectives come to pass. The machinery of Washington has a range of defenses: leaks to a free press, whistle-blower protections, the oversight of inspectors general. The same deficiencies of temperament and judgment that hindered him in the past remain present. If he wins, Trump would be a lame duck—contrary to the suggestions of some supporters, he tells TIME he would not seek to overturn or ignore the Constitution’s prohibition on a third term. Public opinion would also be a powerful check. Amid a popular outcry, Trump was forced to scale back some of his most draconian first-term initiatives, including the policy of separating migrant families. As George Orwell wrote in 1945, the ability of governments to carry out their designs “depends on the general temper in the country.”

Every election is billed as a national turning point. This time that rings true. To supporters, the prospect of Trump 2.0, unconstrained and backed by a disciplined movement of true believers, offers revolutionary promise. To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk. A second Trump term could bring “the end of our democracy,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “and the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order.”

More at the link. It's a super long read and I'm not going to copy it all over, but what he intends to do in his own words is frightening.