Writes Megan McArdle, in "When the rule of law becomes rule of lawfare/Friday’s Bolton raid and the rebuke of Trump’s $500M fine show what happens when justice is not impartial" (WaPo).
Bad ideas... and they did absolutely nothing to stop Trump. But what if they had stopped Trump? That was the biggest of the ideas, and it might have worked. McArdle asserts that now — now that Trump is back with a vengeance — now we should see that neutral principles are best. If only the lawfare hadn't backfired, it would have been delightful to go on ignoring them.
Delightful for whom? Who are we talking about? Not McArdle herself. She's reporting on what she'd "been hearing" for 10 years. She also says "it was depressing watching so many people on the left thrill to this abusive lawfare." Well, "so many people on the left" think a lot of awful things, including that the so-called "rule of law" is a con.
Did the ordinary liberals of America buy into the fight-fire-with-fire approach? Let them take responsibility, not merely gesture at the "many people on the left." But it's not as though admitting you were wrong now will carry any weight. You played a game of tit for tat and now you're sad that the game continues.
ADDED: Trump plays openly, on Truth Social, just yesterday:
Posts
150 comments:
From the WaPo article: “That doesn’t shift the blame for Trump’s behavior. Trump’s authoritarian instincts are his own, as is the responsibility for the havoc he is wreaking on American institutions.” Note that no actual actions by Trump are cited here. No mention of what this “havoc” is. It’s just his amorphous “behavior” and “authoritarian instincts,” whatever those might be.
Gavin Newsom has been screeching on X to "fight fire with fire" against Trump's support for the Texas redistricting plan. Hilarity ensues as commenters mock Newsom for not fighting fire with water in the conflagrations in his own state.
And they still have learned nothing from the Nov 2024 election.
Trump voters see his flaws and still voted for him - why? Well it must be because he swears. ???? They don't see that he made his everyday life better in some fashion so they voted for despite his flaws. Since no one is perfect, the same reason people vote for Bernie, AOC, or Newsome. There is truth to the old saying "a stopped clock is right twice a day". When you can never admit that about Trump even on the smallest things, the you wob
N
n' get those voters back.
same reason that people on the left vote for Bernie, AOC, Gavin Newsome, etc etc.
Sundance puts it this way...
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/08/24/devin-nunes-frames-a-remarkable-reality/
I'm not at all good with mind reading, but I'll go out onto a limb her and observe that hearing about remorse after its all far too late to be remotely honest doesn't inspire much faith in McArdle's sincerity. No, I'm afraid we're at the FAFO stage of things. Until things get rebalanced the floggings will continue. It's a hell of a thing. When you take away the norms, you take away everything.
'Twas a helluva 249 years though!
The whole thing, all the TDS, is merely fury that the Republicans found someone willing to play by Democrat rules. A hundred felony charges? Turnabout!
If James thinks mortgage fraud needs enforcement, then shouldn’t she not be above the law herself? Trump is holding her to the standard she set. The same with Schiff.
No Edit button so I cannot correct my first post. Here is the redo.
And they still have learned nothing from the Nov 2024 election. Trump voters see his flaws and still voted for him - why? Well, it must be because he swears. What? They don't see that he made their everyday life better in some fashion so they voted for despite his flaws. Since no one is perfect, it is the same reason people vote for Bernie, AOC, or Newsom. There is truth to the old saying "a stopped clock is right twice a day". When you can never admit that about Trump even on the smallest things you don't get those voters back.
Y'all should have thought of this sooner, libs. Too late now. You're going to get spanked like you deserve, so suck it up and quit whining.
The Dems are wildly corrupt and now they’ve been caught.
What I’m waiting for is some Dem to break omertà and rat out who and how they stole the election for Biden. How exactly they did the mail-in ballot scheme. The rat will have to be a vey prominent Dem so that the Fake News can’t ignore the real news.
Or maybe rat out on the auto-pen and pardon scandal.
Democrats are fucking hypocrites, news at 11.
The Democrats pull all this BS as if the only people that matter are the opposing political players. They completely ignore the needs and the will of the People. We don’t even exist except when necessary as a slurry of voters whose votes can be bent to their will.
Megan used to be a straight shooter and excellent writer. She broke during Trump’s first run for president. She threw in, ALL in, with the Bulwark Lincoln Project Nevertrump crowd and lost all perspective. No prosecution was too crazy or unusual to cause any second guessing in that crowd. The first rule of Nevertrump is no law can stand unless it’s used to Get Trump.
Unfortunately for Megan, she also rejected her audience, which was and still is pro-Trump. When she lost us she lost our trust in her good judgment. We readers still believe in supporting cops and the rule of law. Trump has always supported the cops. But Megan can’t rectify her rejection of Trump with her past positions, positions with which her former audience agreed and which Trump is giving a demonstration of as we debate Megan wishy washy WTF column.
Begley, did you not read Molly Ball’s very detailed confession disguised as braggadocio just after the 2020 election?
Wow, McMegan's intellect, and intellectual integrity, is a pathetic shriveled husk of its former self. Sad!
Bumble Bee,
Regarding the CTH link, hasn't the intelligence community *always* been a little untrustworthy, always with the suspicion the were pushing their own agendas rather than that of our elected officials? Think Bay of Pigs, or Gust Avrakotos helping Charlie Wilson run his little private war in Afghanistan.
Hoisted by their own petard.
Dave Begley- it’s my suspicion that the high reaches of the Democrat Party operate something like the mafia. Have the DC police made any progress on the Seth Rich murder? Has the orange blob in the Epstein jail video been identified?
In the immortal words of Randy Quaid in "Independence Day": "Payback's a bitch."
It's like they have all studied Nietzsche, or another German 'philosopher' I won't name. If you want to get your people riled up to take some course of action which their normie morality will rebel against, you need to reframe it. Here is an example:
British elite in 1910: "We have to confront Germany before they supplant us and our empire. The best thing would to join up with France to defeat them, since France is not a real threat to our global empire."
British public: "We don't want anything to do with war in Europe, we are not sending our sons to die!"
British elite: "OK, fine, no alliance with France, but let's provide poor little neutral Belgium with 'security guarantees;' what could go wrong?"
Germany attacks France through Belgium, and suddenly the British press is all about "protecting poor little Belgium" and the British public is sending their sons to die alongside the French in a battle with Germany for power over Europe.
Same principle applies here:
Democrats: "We need to play dirty to keep control of the trillions of dollars in spending and the world's largest military, but our voters will never go for it."
Strategist: "That's easy, just accuse Trump of whatever it is that want to do, but make sure that you accuse him before he knows what is going on, because the first lie wins. They will accept anything we do as long as we can convince the normies that the other side is the bad guy, not us, and we can do what we want."
"What about evidence?"
"LOL, didn't you hear me? The first lie wins, and tribalism will do the rest. They want to believe the lies!"
At some point, the rank and file is complicit in the wrongdoing, having defended it so vehemently, and they will go along with anything. I remember when I used to trust McCardle, but she went along just like everybody else in the press.
As Mike notes, the information on who and how they stole the election for Biden.
"Trump’s authoritarian instincts are his own,"
Everybody who opposes the Atlanticists, and they have their own monthly, is an "authoritarian." All of the naked power tactics used by the Democrats, and Biden? Well, it can't be "authoritarian" if God is on your side!
"Good people need not fear!"
That's what they tell the people in the village when they hear the excavators, the screams, and the gunshots at the edge of town.
Supposing McArdle’s being hypocritical, I don’t understand the logic underlying this criticism. If you think what the Democrats did is bad, and you think their supporters’ failure to condemn it at the time means they’re self-serving when they condemn the same behavior by Republicans, then you’re implicitly acknowledging that the conduct—the “lawfare”—is bad. You’re just excusing the Republicans on the grounds that they were forced into it. But you can’t then defend them as following a principle that “no one is above the law,” and you have to admit their own protestations to that effect are also hypocritical. Or if you think what the Republicans are doing is OK, then why was weaponizing law enforcement wrong when the Democrats did it? The problem with endorsing the “game of tit for tat”—as long as you’re satisfied the other side started it—is that the aim of achieving neutral principles is abandoned. Maybe your side will win the game. But you’ve then committed yourself to support ruling on the basis of sheer power, not any claim that the rulers’ victory is morally or legally justified.
I did read Molly Ball’s piece but there’s way more to the story. And a participant needs to do the confession for it to be effective.
pacwest said...
"Hoisted by their own petard."
They lit the fuse. They'd best prepare for the ride.
The only way to get the demos to stop using corrupt lawfare is to bring the hammer down. But unfortunately it will not stop them, they are too power hungry, so play the game to win and use their own rules against them. Ala Alynski.
@New Yorker
One of these things is not like the I
other. Do you need an explanation?
My favorite is Ezra Klein (of journolist fame) plugging "individuality" and rejecting the collective idea of liberals overreaching in the media...
Comes a few years too late, but who says an old dog can't perform new tricks??
"then you’re implicitly acknowledging that the conduct—the “lawfare”—is bad."
That all depends on whether the charges against Bolton, for example, are as unsubstantiated as the charges were against Trump.
When Democrats are doing it to Republicans: "Nobody is above the law."
When Republicans are doing it to Democrats: "Lawfare."
As John Bolton himself said about the Trump raid, "don't get worked up, let the process play out" or something like that. Grok can probably locate the quote for you.
Anyway, it's kind of funny how Joe Biden can bless thousands of pardons prepared by his staff and signed with an autopen, with nothing more than a nod, but Trump supposedly couldn't declassify documents without some supposed formal process that isn't enshrined in any law or the Constitution.
"That all depends on whether the charges against Bolton, for example, are as unsubstantiated as the charges were against Trump.
It is TRIVIAL to prove that John Bolton was forwarding emails to his family's email addresses. Just like it was trivial to prove that Hillary Clinton was operating a rogue Exchange email server out of her bathroom while she was the Secretary of State (and before her, Colin Powell did it too).
Email leaves a terrific paper trail. Every server it touches on the way to its recipient leaves a breadcrumb of proof.
(As an aside, Anthony Weiner was brought down by server logs maintained by YFrog, the image host where he stored and forwarded his dick pics to young girls. They proved he was lying about his accounts having been "hacked.")
These people are using their own email servers specifically to circumvent our open records laws and also to gather for themselves all sorts of Top Secret evidence of what the government is doing - not to reveal it - but to use it as bargaining chips to threaten the government and prevent their own prosecution.
Every single one of these people belong in Guantanamo Bay with the other terrorists. They are the most criminal of criminals.
I’m so old I remember when no one was above the law.
"That all depends on whether the charges against Bolton, for example, are as unsubstantiated as the charges were against Trump."
She does allow for that: "If you are a liberal alarmed by the Friday raid on the home of former national security adviser John Bolton, well, you should be. It’s possible that if charges come out, we’ll learn that Bolton committed a security breach that would have been prosecuted under any president. But there are reasons to suspect otherwise, given that President Donald Trump and FBI director Kash Patel have endorsed lawfare against their political enemies, including Bolton."
The limit "that would have been prosecuted under any president" ruins her concession. If the other side is corrupt, it will refrain from prosecuting its favorites.
My favorite argument is always, "Republicans should not do [something] . . . because then the Democrats will do the same thing next time they get in power." For sure, the Democrats would say, "You know, the Republicans were so nice not to treat us badly . . . let's return the favor and treat them nicely as well."
In other news, Soros-trained DAs from the Prosecutor Project have been unambiguously exposed as having to sign a pledge to not enforce certain laws and demonstrate selectively reducing prosecutions of blacks in order to access the millions of dollars of campaign finance funds raised for them by this putative nonprofit. Every single person who signed such a pledge, and there is a list, should be disbarred and prosecuted, and the nonprofit should have its nonprofit status stripped and be prosecuted for treason and several other crimes.
Theirs is a completely indefensible case. And victims of crimes committed by the criminals they got off, and got off getting off, should take OSI, its donors, and the prosecutors to civil court and screw them blind.
There is a body of victims' rights law that enables victims to sue, for example, if a landlord fails to report rapes in an apartment building to other renters. Doug E. Beloof of Williams and Clark wrote the textbook.
This would wake up sleazy leftist DAs and Sanctuary Cities. U.S. Attorneys are empowered to take action on behalf of crime victims, and it's time they start doing it. It would be wildly popular, too.
"President Donald Trump and FBI director Kash Patel have endorsed lawfare against their political enemies"
I would love a quote, but I am assuming that none is forthcoming, or I would probably have heard about it.
"You know, the Republicans were so nice not to treat us badly . . . let's return the favor and treat them nicely as well."
That's some world class projection there. World class. Let's completely forget the fact that Trump's home was raided, and his wife's underwear drawer was pawed through over documents that he had every legal right to declassify, when Joe Biden had classified documents in his garage in a cardboard box, and his son's own letter to Burisma offering his services seemed to have a very "inside the State Department" ring to it, as he described the political situation in Ukraine to his prospective employers.
Let's also not forget that Biden kept classified documents in the offices of the Penn Biden center, and the laptop reveals that Hunter ordered a key to those offices made for the Chinese nationals who largely funded the "foundation." And oh, BTW, and this probably sounds like money laundering to you because it is, that same Chinese funded "foundation" paid Joe Biden almost a million bucks for a no-show teaching gig at Penn. There is no record of Biden ever giving a class there, and all appearances by Biden there were paid admission affairs.
But sure, let's pretend that the Democrats treated Trump the same way they would have treated any Democrat.
Thank you for the Molly Ball reference. I never read it before. Here’s the link in case anyone else is interested:
https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
That Molly Ball confession reminds me of why I do not want another constitutional convention. They will out organize us every time.
But in the end the best thing that happened for the Democrats was covid. And Pfizer suppressing its news of a vaccine until after election day.
Yet, what happened in 2024? the coalition fell apart?
And just to tidy it up, who was the head of the Penn-Biden Foundation that tossed that million bucks into the washing machine for Joe? None other than the man he later appointed as Secretary of State, who told the Russians, on the eve of the invasion, that "Yes, we are going to put nuclear missiles three minutes from Moscow in Ukraine as soon as we get them into NATO," knowing that it would be the final straw that would trigger the war Blinken and Biden wanted because they were certain that they were going to win it.
"Russia has already lost" -Joe Biden within a week or so of the beginning of the war. The thought that they had lured Russia into a trap, and now it was checkmate, and we would get to divide up Russia and loot it.
"And Pfizer suppressing its news of a vaccine until after election day."
It's worse than that, the DHS froze the samples that ultimately were used to "prove" the vaccine worked until "Wednesday," the day after the election. The vaccine was approved by the next Monday. If you believe in the vaccine, you have to believe that the Democrats were killing thousands, at least, over the election.
I don’t think the key question here is whether Bolton is innocent: it’s still a problem when the government deprives guilty people of due process. The issue here is that Trump, Bondi, Patel, Martin et al. are presenting these investigations as “a game of tit for tat.” They are, I think, encouraging the perception that they prosecute their enemies. They could have taken a different approach: they could have recognized their own conflicts of interest and taken steps to ensure that enforcement activities were being handled by neutrals. Their failure to do that may reflect their belief that there no longer are any neutrals: that it’s all power politics, through and through. But if that’s where Trump is coming from, he’s not undoing what the Democrats did—he’s finishing the work they began.
If it is presented as tit for tat however it better serves its game theory purpose as explicit retaliation. The idea is to teach the other side that there are costs to such behavior and so deter it.
For 10 years, I’ve been hearing that we needed to fight fire with fire, to oppose Trump by becoming him...
Megan McArdle is usually so level-headed. Ten years ago, Trump was a businessman/celebrity working his way through a crowded primary. Trump had no power to prosecute or coerce.
Crooked Hillary was desperate to win to avoid prosecution in 2016. Trump didn't understand the game back then or have the right people in the administration.
Democrats went all in on lawfare against Trump. After successfully stealing the 2020 election, they drank their own Koolaid believing they’d never lose again. Now, they’re crying because not only is Trump hitting back, he’s getting those lawfare convictions against him overturned. I love the sound of lefties crying.
This is the first time that the D playbook did not work. They have been blackmailing and lawfaring their opponents since forever, with great success (e.g., Barack getting his opponents divorce records unsealed). If it's hard to believe that supposedly smart people like Comey left such a long and detailed paper trail of their misdeeds, it's because they could not conceive of their system failing, and they got sloppy.
If you are a believer in the Great Man of History concept, DJT is exhibit #1. Like Lincoln and Churchill, open to criticism, but unreplaceable and essential for Western Civilization to survive.
I want to thank New Yorker for coming here and exhibiting the same kind of flawed logic that seems to be rampant throughout New York and the entire Democrat Party, i.e., if it was bad when we engaged in lawfare, then it's bad when you engage in lawfare too...without clearly defining "lawfare". Allow me to assist you.
It's not "lawfare" when someone actually broke the law, and the law is substantive, with the manner of arrest, level of charges, and specification of penalties and fines consistent with previous ones for non-political defendants. For comparison please review the lengthy list of each instance of lawfare against Trump, his family, and his associates noting the handling of each of the above characteristics in those cases.
I’m disgusted by the implication of political equivalence. They were trying to Watergate Trump, get people to abandon him under the premise of made up crimes. These assholes Trump is going after are guilty of real live felonies and we should be stacking up indictments like cord wood. Instead ‘exposure’ of their criminality will be punishment enough, so sayeth justice…
“To oppose Trump by becoming him”
The problem for Megan is that Democrats didn’t become Trump. They became something much worse. It started with the Russia collusion hoax before he even took office and continued right up through the years of lawfare. During all this, Trump never responded in kind.
The reality is that none of this was done to save the country from Trump. It was done to preserve Democrat power. If Megan’s objective is really to restore some form of legitimacy for our “sacred liberal institutions”, it’s going to require honesty about where we’ve been and how we got here, not just a fake come to Jesus moment meant to avoid the truth.
Gruber said that Pfizer and BioNTech had decided in late October that they wanted to drop the 32-case interim analysis. At that time, the companies decided to stop having their lab confirm cases of Covid-19 in the study, instead leaving samples in storage. The FDA was aware of this decision. Discussions between the agency and the companies concluded, and testing began this past Wednesday. When the samples were tested, there were 94 cases of Covid in the trial. The DSMB met on Sunday.
So the FDA was aware, involved in the discussions, and the testing was halted until "Wednesday," which was the *DAY AFTER THE ELECTION"
The funning thing is that this part was removed from the article, and I had to go back in Archive.ph to the Nov, 8 2020 version to find this language. Almost like somebody was trying to cover something up. But no worries, Democrats, if they see this, it will be deleted from archive too, no doubt.
Here is the original, you can go to Archive yourself to see the Nov 8th version
https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/09/covid-19-vaccine-from-pfizer-and-biontech-is-strongly-effective-early-data-from-large-trial-indicate/
But remember, Trump "baselessly claimed" that the FDA slowed the approval until after the election!
"are presenting these investigations as “a game of tit for tat.”
Do you have a quote? Because I think that you are putting the words of political commentators, who had nothing to do with the decisions, into the mouths of Trump and Patel. Why you would do this? I can only speculate that the actual evidence you do have that this is the case is pretty thin gruel, so you are making up something stronger.
The part that they deleted from the StatNews article is the part about the FDA and Fauci halting the process until the day after the election, the "Wednesday" sentence.
"For 10 years, I’ve been hearing that we needed to fight fire with fire..."
This is dishonest. The entire premise of her piece is based on a dishonest premise.
What was this fire Trump supposedly started in 2015? What lawfare was Trump employing ten years ago that justified what his opponents started in on before he was even elected the first time? How did Trump crack down on speech? How did he make unprecedented use of prosecutorial powers in 2015 or even at any time in his first term?
I was fan of McArdle's, but it's clear she has allowed herself to stay safely in her bubble. What a waste of her talent.
because that is the directive, ironically the most prog deranged are being shown the door, she was one who didn't protest that recall with every proscription, that was directed at Trump, and his followers, 50 ways like the paul simon song goes
The Democrat Trump obsession is weird. No doubt Obama and Hillary played a role in that, two people obsessed with their own power and influence and ethically odd. But one could also argue that it started with opposition to Bush, making it a generational fight among boomers. The left felt they had a divine right to rule, and it had all gone wrong. The arc of history had been stomped flat. Sacrilege!
Does anyone believe the Democrats won't go completely scorched earth if they ever get back into power?
Most of this crying about Trump's actions against swamp creatures like Bolton is just battle space prep. His opponents are all feeling very vulnerable because they are guilty as hell.
I’m also disturbed at the attempt to undermine the term tit for tat. We’re seeing the stretching of the meaning with the intent of conflating the productive, strategic definition of the term. Expanding: tit for tat is a rewarding game theory strategy where you mimic your opponent’s behavior with the ultimate intent being to provoke and endgame of cooperation and mutual gain. Instead it’s being suggested the only true intent is vengeance. That’s wrong and if you’re propagating that idea people are going ti see through it as another one your devious schemes and reject you…
…at the least you should use eye for an eye or some other idiom to describe the revenge aspect you’re trying to describe..:
the likes of mueller who drove joseph farah to a stroke, who sent swat teams to roger stone's house with a CNN crew, howabout having a team of agents outside Michael Caputo's cancer treatments, smallest violins in the world,
No they are evil, like the prosecutors after Netanyahu, Berlusconi, most recently against Uribe who was the most effective president, Colombia had in a generation, they want to imprison, if not kill any opposition leaders, well not the likes of a Romney hes kind of like a pet gerbil
the fact that letitia james in dereliction of her duty, commited prima facie fraud, because like Schiff thought she would never be held accountable,
MaArdle still presumes bad faith by Trump, et al. She has flunked the test to be an honest interpreter of events going forward.
its not metaphorical in Colombia, their rising star, the grandson of a President, succumbed to his wounds about a week ago, in Brazil Bolsonaro operates with one lung, after some deranged communist, attacked him about a decade ago, while facing off Procurator Moraes,
The wrongdoers must be held accountable, to the full extent of the law. There must be punishment involved, to help ensure what was perpetrated is less likely to occur again.
It must hit these leftwing, anti-American shitbirds right where it hurts.
ST - first comment
Soviet Media propaganda language.
Moraes had Lula rehabilitated after the latter's part in the Car Wash grand bribery scheme, that involves Mark Carney's old firm, among other elements,
What a nice distraction. Whatever keeps your mind off of the Davos billionaires stealing all of our money taking away all of our rights it's just another example that the real power behind the scenes is untouchable.
we ALL NEED to keep in mind, that TRUMP started all this!
it was TRUMP, that bugged the Trump tower (no wait, i mean)
it was TRUMP, that falsified Russia reports (no wait, i mean)
it was TRUMP, sucking Billions from foreign govs (no wait, i mean)
it was TRUMP, that raided Maralago (no wait, i mean)
it was TRUMP, that RAN on indicting TRUMP (no wait, i mean)
it was TRUMP, that eliminated the statute of limitations
(no wait, i mean)
ANYWAY!
If EVERYONE would just fully support the democrats, and there was NO TRUMP.. Then there would be COMPLETE UNITY!
Going further back, it was the enabler of two pincers of lawfare, Perkins and Coie, who manipulated the legal system to drive one worthy figure from her office, Megan was also rather basenghi on that point,
Butler Paid Patsy - they tried to murder Trump.
Without reading other comments: this is a rewriting of history, obviously. Before Trump had been elected, before he'd served a single day in office, Obama and his minions were "weaponizing" (I hate that word but have come to accept it as a shortcut) the Deep State (of which they and the press denied the existence) against him.
Let's say Trump really were the authoritarian his enemies claim he is and in reference to which they rationalize all their terrible, authoritarian behavior. When they started with the terrible, authoritarian behavior, he hadn't had a single opportunity yet to exhibit his supposed authoritarianism.
Perkins and Coie which has moved it's operations to China, standing behind the dragon's tale,
there are so many receipts, the cash drawer would fall and crash to the ground, on one side of the ledger,
planetgeo: You’re welcome. I do appreciate your definition of “lawfare.” But I don’t think it works. Prosecutorial discretion and presidential pardons mean that not every guilty person is prosecuted. And even if the other criteria you list are met, due process can still be violated by coercing witnesses, fabricating evidence, and so on. The prosecutor’s motives and conduct matter, guilt notwithstanding. A political prosecution is still a political prosecution.
run along little doggie, you don't know anything works
they have been playing this game for half a century, with independent counsels like ted kennedy's manservant cox,
later lawrence walsh a decade later, then they memorized
the scalia dissent in morison, and rinse and repeat,
when there was no independent statute anymore they still conjured up eye of newt, and walla, the fitzgerald trials
We (me and my like-mindeds) toss around "TDS" like it's funny, ha ha these people hate Trump so much they are deranged!
But I think they truly are deranged. They became conditioned years ago to think that Trump is so singularly awful that there's no need to think about the potential repercussions of doing quite literally anything to stop him. So a state AG who ran on "I will get this guy for something" convicts him on 37 (whatever) counts of what is at worst the financial equivalent of jaywalking, and none of these people--people who are ordinarily decent and measured folks, but not when it comes to Trump--don't spend a second thinking, "Gosh, we might come to regret this later."
Likewise, when the Trumpies go after James or Schiff or Bolton, no one even ponders the obviously relevant questions--is there reasonable basis to think they committed crimes worthy of prosecution, or that (in the case of Bolton) evidence of such crimes could be discovered by executing a search warrant?--instead it only reinforces their well-established belief that Trump is singularly awful, and nothing else computes. Deranged.
then they brought the inspector javert, who as bureau chief, had allowed the Chinese to access our more secure network,
well once you let Whitey Bulger slaughter merrily through Southie, everything is a piece of cake, who made Stephen Hatfilll's life a living hell, on the suggestion of Nick Kristof,
Perkins and Coie moved it's operations to China?
Seriously? omg - lol. but of course.
I am torn. We have been going through process of the breakdown of Constitutional order of which lawfare is just a part of. It is not going to end well.
On the other hand p, it would take a heart of stone not enjoy characters like James, Schiff, and Comey get their comeuppance.
the former figure was steered by the wrecking ball weissman,
who destroyed Arthur Anderson, some where along the line, he gave Michael Cohen a get of jail free card, despite his incalculable fraud,
you follow the bread crumbs its remarkable where they track back to, mueller the kin at various degrees to the deep state cabal,
When Trump's people take a 100 year old law, and use it in a way that it had never been used before in all of those hundred years, and fine somebody a half a billion dollars over a case where everything was business as usual, and everybody, even the "injured parties" made money, and were happy, I will call it "tit for tat."
For you Democrats here to think that the Republicans shouldn't do it because it was wrong when the Democrats did it, how do you propose we stop the Democrats from doing it again?
If the question is “what if it worked,” we could ask the same about Trump’s own tactics: what if the pressure on Georgia’s Secretary of State had worked? What if Pence had caved? We’d be having a very different conversation about whose “shortcuts” destroyed institutions.
The timeline also gets blurred here. McArdle and Ann suggest “lawfare” from the left damaged institutions and provoked Trump’s responses. But most of the real controversies — the Russia investigation, the Jan. 6 attack, 2020 election denial, the “perfect phone call” to Ukraine, the Mar-a-Lago documents — were responses to Trump’s actions, not inventions out of thin air.
Saying “the left started it” feels like blaming firefighters for water damage while forgetting who set the blaze. We can debate whether every response was wise, but flipping the order makes Trump look like a victim of other people’s shortcuts. That doesn’t hold up.
there wouldn't have been a million lost in the bloodland of the ukraine, the taliban would not be flying their flag over kabul
When asked what is the reason that this law only applied to Trump, and not to the Democrat mega donors in NYC who all do business in the exact same way, we are, like, the governor, who is a huge real estate deal in New York State? Could her books withstand the combing and creative search for new "violations" never before prosecuted? Almost certainly not, but Trump is "uniquely evil" Why? Because he can win elections against us. Because he beat Hillary. What more do you need?
The progressive "burden" of prosecution, persecution with liberal license. Obama? Wilson? Socialism? Left-wing ideology is authoritarian. Abort.
Howard pretending to care about Blackrock now, is so charming
"what if the pressure on Georgia’s Secretary of State had worked"
What pressure? Tell me what pressure Trump applied? Exactly how did he exert power over Georgia's Secretary of State? Who pressured Georgia to allow unattended voting drop boxes all over the state?
Remember Al Gore in Florida, disallowing votes coming in from overseas, and his lawyers cheering when votes from serving military were disallowed? It's on video. What kind of pressure did he apply.
You know what the funny thing is there? After the embarrassment of that election, Florida cleaned up their system, and Florida was suddenly a red state, instead of a purple one. How bizarre, how bizarre.
Hoisted by their Fani, liberals seek conciliation.
As for sanctuary cities, states, they are accessories before the fact. No discrimination for sexual orientation (e.g. pedophilia)? Good luck. All's not fair in lust and abortion.
2000, was the test case of the wurlitzer, but then again there was only target then, also they hadn't perfected the renta mob as they did in 2020
Classic JAQing off (“Just Asking Questions”). You demand me to supply an inch-by-inch blueprint so you can quibble over every nail and bolt, all while dodging my actual point.
But thanks Jaq for proving my point. Trump’s own recorded call to Raffensperger — “I just want to find 11,780 votes” — is well known. You can argue about whether it was pressure, persuasion, or something else, but it clearly wasn’t invented by Democrats or “the left.” It came from Trump himself.
That’s the larger point I’m making: the controversies I listed (Georgia, Jan. 6, Ukraine, Mar-a-Lago search warrant) weren’t dreamed up in some left-wing lab. They were triggered by Trump’s choices. Whether you call them “lawfare” or “overreaction,” they didn’t materialize out of thin air.
I was a seat in the far bleachers in 2000, thats when fake japper debuted as a election denialist, not a chargeable offense then,
because a whole host of worthies including alan dershowitz would have been guilty then,
But most of the real controversies —
Oh good, a list!
the Russia investigation,
The one Obama greenlighted on the basis of a scurrilous oppo attempt by his SecState to aid in her election - oppo that he knew was false?
the Jan. 6 attack
The thing where Capitol Police ushered protesters into the building, where a cop shot into a crowd and killed a protester who may or may not have participated in turning that piece of the protest into a riot, where no one on the protest side was armed and even the ones who turned their area into a riot had nothing prepared with which to "attack," and which started before Trump's supposed "call to arms" in which he actually called for peaceful protest?
2020 election denial
The election where that heroic shadowy cabal bragged immediately afterward about everything they'd done to tip the election to Biden, in contravention of just about every norm they claim to hold so dear?
the “perfect phone call” to Ukraine
The one in which Trump encouraged the Ukrainian government to investigate whether anybody related to the Biden family had participated in Ukrainian corruption - after Biden as VP had declared, "And guess what? The son of a bitch [who was trying to investigate my son] got fired [and the US aid resumed its flow]"?
the Mar-a-Lago documents
The ones that President Trump, who has the power to clarify and declassify anything, was arguing with the National Archives over? Not the ones that Biden, not the President, had illegally removed and sloppily stored in his garage?
— were responses to Trump’s actions, not inventions out of thin air.
I dunno. They kind of seem like "inventions out of thin air" to me... and apparently to a lot of voters. And, not inconsequentially, to a lot of new donors, who saw what was done to Trump and realized that despite their great wealth, they were as vulnerable as he was to the operations of a Deep State that has almost literally endless money and control of the levels of power, including over the public discourse.
Bring a knife, a scalpel when Planned. A machete to clear the path for divergence past, present, and progressive? Rarefied air.
I'm almost of the mind that like Trump the rest of us should absolutely own that these prosecutions are 100% retribution for the Democrat's actions over the last decade. Insisting they are neutral just plays into the hands of fundamentally dishonest RINOs and Democrats like New Yorker, Raymond Ward, and the rest of the rouge's gallery that come here to insist the lawfare against Trump and his supporters was justified. The American people have rendered their verdict on that question, and they'll see who actually brings the goods to trials like Bolton's.
@rehajm
I am glad you posted the explanation of what tit for tat is and what its application's purpose is.
I see the situation as less of an iterated prisoner’s dilemma and more of an iterated stag hunt. The stag is strong institutions, the rabbits are partisan wins. Tit for Tat as a strategy can stabilize cooperation in iterated games, but both sides seem to be using Grim Trigger. Once they see a defection, it’s punishment forever, with bases that punish even the look of cooperation. No wonder we’re chasing rabbits instead of venison. Lol. But in a Stag Hunt, both equilibria exist, which means there’s always a path back to stag if trust can be rebuilt. It would be nice if both sides could give generous tit for tat a go.
"Fighting Fire with Fire" The progressive democrats are still lying to themselves, which means that, by extension, they are still lying to everybody. What kind of 'Fire', precisely, have they been fighting with 'Fire'? What activities of Trump's, besides their hysterically exaggerated and unsupported claims, fit that description? That he was brash and outrageous enough to take on their establishment, and win? Is that really 'Fire', or just sour grapes? How do these two buckets of 'Fire' compare to each other?
They want a return to norms only to provide a cynical respite to their own just desserts, the consequences of their actions. To give them breathing room to come up with the next dirty trick, the next perversion of decency to attack their opposition with, complete with timely and exigent justifications.
Well....no.
it has always been tails we win, heads you lose, they have contested every election in 2000 2004 and 2016, Frontline and HBO had set the framework to do it 2020, had their scheme failed
Jamie, thanks for illustrating the problem. Each of these controversies has been argued endlessly — we could go line by line forever. But my point isn’t to re-litigate them all; it’s that every one of them was triggered by Trump’s own actions.
I get it that many in this crowd have been commanded to see them as hoaxes, overblown, or unfair responses — fair enough. But they weren’t dreamed up in a vacuum. They followed from what Trump chose to do as a candidate and president.
That’s the distinction I was making: blaming “the left” for starting it skips over the fact that the spark came from Trump.
You played a game of tit for tat and now you're sad that the game continues.
[Sighing sadly] “Tit for tat” is not itself a game, it is a strategy for optimizing your response in any member of a class of games where the initial player has a range of moves that can range from mutually beneficial to very negative for the second player. The “Spanish Prisoner” is the classic example, but there are others. I think that “do unto others as you have them do unto you” is another formulation of the same strategy, that may be more palatable to you.
Although to my 54 year old recollection he doesn’t cover Spanish Prisoner type games, you could do worse than to work your way through John von Neumann’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (available through the Althouse Amazon portal). Be warned that despite my BS in mathematics I found it tough sledding, though in my defense I was fresh from two years of wearing olive drab fatigues and perhaps rusty on my mathematical reasoning. For those of you who’ve read A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar (also available from the Althouse portal) or seen the movie starring Russell Crowe,* John Nash earned his Ph.D. by realizing that there was a hole in von Neumann’s theory (probably worth at least a doctorate by itself!) and then resolving that hole with what has been called the “Nash equilibrium” in 12 typed, doubled-spaced pages. Then he did work for the federal government at RAND, and then he went insane.
Several commentators upthread speculate that Megan McArdle is trading on her former reputation as a “left-leaning but fundamentally with sufficient intellectual integrity to go where her analysis takes her” writer in order to help James and Schiff with James with a defense along the lines of “this isn’t a real crime, it’s just a retaliatory move in a tit-for-tat game.” I think Ms. McArdle has shredded the last of that reputation.
_______________
* If you look at pictures of a young John Nash in Nasar’s book, a case can be made that as a young man he was even more handsome than Crowe.
RJW
Well of course. A woman who's been raped has only herself to blame.
we haven't begun to fight, as the saying goes, was that farragut,
@narcisco, it was John Paul Jones.
Tit for tat is an effective strategy for iterative prisoner dilemma situations, which politics appears to be.
https://esp.mit.edu/download/2dd80247-be60-4e73-b49d-91b5b6988ff0/S12850_axelrod_1980.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Imagine a hypothesis, possibly, maybe, could be - that Dems have been leaking state secrets for years. Leaking to media, leaking to allies, leaking to unknowns. And getting paid for it. Oh, sure it's as absurd as thinking that the border wasn't secure and that terrorists were coming across and embedding. Or that the Secretary of State set an example of using insecure servers for e-mail so that no one (but enemies of the US) would have access to state secrets and that that example was followed by hundreds. Absurd. But imagine. Wouldn't it be important to stop the practice? But how could any Dem be prosecuted during the Trump administration without giving the appearance of merely being retaliated on for their blatant unfairness during the Biden years? So should the DOJ just ignore the leakers so as to seem pure as a kindergardner on Day One? No. The retaliation angle will give the story legs and a story is needed these days for real action to happen and the security angle is central to our future. We need action there. Securing against the leakers is far, far more important than "retaliation" but, of course, the rotted pond scum that bubble out poisoned air, aka "the news", will never discuss that.
Ann,
How come this post did not get the civility bullshit
tag?
I think Farragut was "Damn the burritos".
It's just an assumption at this point that Trump's DOJ is handling Bolton's case inappropriately. Let's wait and see what the rascal has been up to before we make that judgement.
It has been said that for lefties there is no history, only the lie of the moment (If no one said it, let me do so now.). It is as though the lawfare against Trump and supporters never occurred and is not still occurring. Democrats and their catspaws are also becoming inured to Hamas propaganda against Israel and Jews. Evil abides.
Enter @New Yorker, Yet Another Pontificating Concern Troll... yawn.
(Just another day that ends in 'y', right?)
Rusty said...
RJW
Well of course. A woman who's been raped has only herself to blame.
I have no control over what you hear, but that’s not what I said. Pointing out that Trump’s own choices triggered controversies isn’t the same as blaming a victim — unless you see Trump as the victim in every case, which is exactly the pattern I’m pointing out. This playbook treats every investigation, response, and consequence as automatically an attack on him, while deciding he bears no responsibility for his own actions.
That’s precisely the framing I’m questioning.
“To oppose Trump by becoming him”
Life imitates Batman. "You made me!" You made me!" Trump 1.0 wasn't vengeful or a threat to anything other than the power of those who were in charge. It was Trump's opponents who created Trump 2.0. He's still not vengeful, but the way the other side bent or broke every rule in the book to take him down has changed him and made him prosecute crimes that Trump 1.0 would have ignored.
Speaking of Batman, isn't it delightful how Abby Philip's diss about Trump thinking he's the Caped Crusader fighting DC's crime, was turned into pro-Trump meme?
"I have not yet begun to fight!" -- some bass player.
Ronald J. Ward said...
Jamie, thanks for illustrating the problem. Each of these controversies has been argued endlessly — we could go line by line forever. But my point isn’t to re-litigate them all; it’s that every one of them was triggered by Trump’s own actions.
No.
Trump's actions were actions that every President had done themselves and that Democrats twisted laws to turn into a crime.
You will not deal with the truth. You make up bullshit lies to justify the Stalinism of the Democrat party.
Name one thing Trump did that Obama, Clinton, Bush or hundreds of business people haven't done before him.
Just one.
You hare here in bad faith.
The Bolton “raid” shows the law is not “impartial?” Really? Bolton is now a martyr for the left? Remember Megan pre-WAPO when she could think. Oh. Yeah. Possession of classified document is only a Trump offense. Remember?
What's going on here? Who changed out the Althouse trolls? I liked the whiney children act better than the calm, avuncular bullshit artist act. Or is it too early for the brats?
It's about what's good for the goose and the gander.
Ward: “This playbook treats every investigation, response, and consequence as automatically an attack on him, while deciding he bears no responsibility for his own actions.” Here’s a fine example of lefty critical thinking./s But Letty James is a victim. Schiff is a victim. Now Bolton is a victim.
Democrats wanted lawfare.. well they got it. Reap what you sow... and I shed NOT A TEAR. F*ck 'em!
RJW keeps hand-waving away that Tish James, Adam Schiff, John Bolton, James Comey, John Clapper, and a whole host of others also made the choices that made them liable to investigation and prosecution in order to claim there is something unjust about Trump's DOJ taking action against them.
If they did nothing wrong then they've got nothing to hide. Isn't that the formulation?
Christopher B said...
RJW keeps hand-waving away that Tish James, Adam Schiff, John Bolton, James Comey, John Clapper, and a whole host of others also made the choices that made them liable to investigation and prosecution in order to claim there is something unjust about Trump's DOJ taking action against them.
In other words they committed actual crimes and broke actual laws.
Liberals are retreating? Watch your six.
Jaq requested help from Gro in getting the precise quote from Bolton that is relevant to the search of Bolton‘s house. Here it is:
“You’re referring to a quote attributed to John Bolton regarding the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in 2022. The exact quote, as shared in posts on X, is: “Everybody ought to just calm down, whether you’re pro-Trump or anti-Trump and let the process work its way through.” He also reportedly said in a Fox News interview on August 14, 2022, that the raid was conducted with a search warrant approved by a federal judge, indicating probable cause, and urged people to respect the process rather than jumping to conspiracy theories. Bolton’s comments were made in the context of urging restraint and trust in the legal process following the Mar-a-Lago raid.”
The question was raised why I didn’t give this post the civility bullshit tag. I know the subject here is closely related, and I almost feel like enlarging the tag to include this subject, but here’s why it’s different. Civility bullshit is specifically bullshit about how people should express themselves with civility,. But this is about actions taken, such as filing lawsuits and doing searches, and I’m not including that in what civility means. But there’s the same idea about taking one position when your side is on the receiving end and another position when your side is in power.
"we could go line by line forever. But my point isn’t to re-litigate them all; it’s that every one of them was triggered by Trump’s own actions."
Of course you will not be drawn to discuss the actual facts of the matter, because ... well because "truthiness" doesn't really translate well to debate, of course!
"I get it that many in this crowd have been commanded to see them as hoaxes, overblown, or unfair responses "
This is some serious projection, you can't even cite any of the actual, primary source evidence, can you, you can just repeat the tropes that you got from Colbert, or NPR, which has said that adherence to truth gets in the wa of getting things done.
"— fair enough. But they weren’t dreamed up in a vacuum."
Umm, you do know that the head of the CIA made a handwritten note, that has been found, that said that he knew that the Russiagate matter was all cooked up by the Hillary campaign in an effort to counter the email server scandal, and no actual evidence has actually ever appeared to back it up, even as Mueller spent two years investigating it?
Oh, that's right, you don't want to get dragged into discussing the facts of the matter, you just want to repeat talking points, over and over, because repetition is what propagandists use when logic and evidence don't lead to the conclusions that they need you to draw.
New Yorker,
What, exactly, will prevent the Democrats from just using lawfare next time? What possible reform could the Trump Administration or Congress do that would prevent it from happening again? I don't like political lawfare but I don't see second option to tit for tat. Weigh in- tell us what we should be supporting here.
They pretty much were dreamed up in a vacuum, and the fact that you don't have any primary source evidence, even as you have probably read acres of text blasting Trump, says a lot.
Here, listen to the head of NPR talk about truth herself, in her own words.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3d_VdmHvXs
"I liked the whiney children act better than the calm, avuncular bullshit artist act."
Give it six months. After getting called out on his bullshit act for about three to six months RJW will do one of two things- either vanish or become a whining child. It always happens- Kakabich went through this transformation.
Jaq, I could play along with the dead horse beatings but I don’t think your goal is to debate but more of an effort to bog me down in endless footnotes and minutiae.
I see no need to relitigate every investigation or argue over every detail. My point is simple: Trump’s choices set off these controversies, and portraying him as the automatic victim flips the cause-and-effect sequence. You can argue endlessly about assumed evidence — that doesn’t change the pattern I’m highlighting.
I am just curious, New Yorker, do you still think that the accusation that the vaccine was held up until after the election is "baseless" given the evidence that I have presented? If if you do, what does that say about you, and if you accept that Trump had a basis for the accusation after all, what does that say about the press that you put so much faith in?
"I could play along with the dead horse beatings but I don’t think your goal is to debate but more of an effort to bog me down in endless footnotes and minutiae."
So you can't even summon a single link, or even a Trump quote that we can fact check. Got it. I hate to say it, but you keep insisting that there is some kind of a basis for these actions against Trump, and the fact that you can't cite even one, is a tell that maybe you are not being honest, or worse, that maybe you are to intellectually limited to even engage in this debate.
I bet Costcos and office supply stores in the DC area sold out of paper shredders in a matter of hours after the Bolton search warrant story broke.
Ronald J. Ward said...
I see no need to relitigate every investigation or argue over every detail. My point is simple: Trump’s choices set off these controversies, and portraying him as the automatic victim flips the cause-and-effect sequence. You can argue endlessly about assumed evidence — that doesn’t change the pattern I’m highlighting.
You see no point to relitigate because you were wrong.
We are past the point of litigation. We are at the point where it is accepted that we were right, Trump was innocent, and you are just being dishonest bitch and refusing to accept it.
Remember the Republican who ran for office as DA on a platform of taking down a specific Democrat, then spent huge numbers of staff hours combing through decades of books, then came up with a new, never before seen interpretation of a century old law, then used a method or property valuation, one which conveniently made Mar a Lago worth less than a lot of residential homes in Palm Beach? which was all they could come up with?
It might be interesting to learn how a politically connected family like the Hochul's in New York State managed to land the concession contract for the Buffalo Bills stadium, for example. but will a Republican run for office on the promise of combing through her books, and doing whatever it takes to take her down? We have never seen anything like that from Republicans. Ever.
They went after Trump et a with treasonous conspiracy, Antifa, Black LM, Capitol punishment, Planned Presidenthood, lawlessness, witch hunts, warlock trials, panty raids, etc with abortive ideation on their minds. All things considered, his response has been tempered and legal. Lose your Pro-Choice religion, your liberal license, your progressive path, your braying cacophony.
RJW said...
I see no need to relitigate every investigation or argue over every detail.
Well, isn't that convenient?
Democrats, with alarm: "Trump is going to do to us what we did to him."
Also Democrats: "Trump is acting like a dictator."
"But my point isn’t to re-litigate them all; it’s that every one of them was triggered by Trump’s own actions."
Well, of course you don't want to relitigate them, Ronald, since the actual details don't help the narrative you are attempting to support. Let's suppose for the sake of argument Trump had done none of those actions you are claiming served as the catalysts for the lawfare against him- do you deny the Democrats and their legal teams would have seized on something else? I am asking you straight up- which prosecutions of Trump do you think were completely legitimate and would have been prosecuted against any other person who took the exact same actions? You will need to provide details in support.
RJW said...
I see no need to relitigate every investigation or argue over every detail.
Well, isn't that convenient?
…surprisingly xe isn’t expressly opposed to an audit…
"Well, of course you don't want to relitigate them, Ronald..."
Ronald has determined that it's Trump's fault. Now, can't we all just move on?
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