39
votes
Donald Trump’s lawyers told the court that no one would give him a bond. Then he got a lifeline, but they didn’t tell the judges.
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Authors
- Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, Alex Mierjeski
- Word count
- 1122 words
So someone who is $175M in debt for a bond, plus the full judgment that he's on the hook for, can run for President of the United States. Doesn't that scream conflict of interest? I'm starting to think nothing matters anymore. Why should I play by the rules?
I mean it is important for the voice of the people to be able to be the end all in a democracy. It’d be a bit weird if the constitution specifically prohibited people with debt from being president. The issue is more that it’s gotten to the point where half of the country is OK with anything Trump can or will do. When half of a democracy are becoming bad actors, it’s pretty doomed no matter what. Is what it is.
There's a difference between having a mortgage or a car loan and being $175M in debt to someone who paid your bond for a $464M judgment against you. Sorry, but the person who is that indebted is either 1) easily compromised, or 2) going to lash out in some way to protect themselves. If Trump is allowed to run for President being in such a position, the downfall is here. The system is a lie. It's no longer respectable. And you just have to live accordingly.
I’m not really sure what the systematic failure is. I think the criteria for running for president should be low. There’s been candidates who ran for president from prison (and who’s a good example as to why you should be able to - Eugene Debs was in jail for being a socialist). What should be preventing people who are liable to be bribed from being president is that voters should, well, not vote for them. They should be filtered out at the voting stage. That Trump won’t be is the failure, not that he’s merely allowed to run.
Agreed. The failure here is not "the system" in the legal sense, it's in the social sense. For any other presidential candidate in any other era, any single event or even single verbal mis-step that Trump has uttered would have immediately ended a politician's career. Trump is not special. At all. He merely happens to exist in a time when a lot of people are collectively lashing out in anger and frustration, and see him as exemplifying the behavior that they think they want in a leader right now.
This incentives charging and convicting political opponents of crimes.
That's the least of the systemic failures which Trump has exposed. He violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution practically from Day One in office. Unfortunately, all the enforcement powers lie with Congress, and we know how that's turned out.
What? I’ve never heard POTUS referred to as “the voice of the people” before. That’s not remotely my understanding of the role of the executive branch. If anything our representatives are literally supposed to represent the voice of the people who elected them.
I kind of categorically refute this comment altogether. The structure of the US democracy is built on checks and balances. These have been over complicated and stripped of their ability to be effective and obfuscated with legal contortions like “money is free speech”. It’s absolutely a systemic breakdown IMO.
I don't think that they were saying POTUS is the voice of the people, they were saying that the election of POTUS is the voice of the people. Meaning preventing Trump from running would be in opposition of allowing the voice of the people to determine who they wish to vote for.
Personally I think our voting system does that already, so the only difference is for those that don't look beyond the superficial. If preventing Trump from running removes an option that others wish to vote for, then our voting system removes many more options that I'd vote for if the system didn't prevent me from doing so.
Ahh. Okay. I understand the comment now. The many different selective “logic” arguments for Trump gets confusing.
That particular voice of the people is under gag orders from court(s) I believe.
Because if you get caught, you will get sent to prison. By the "justice" system.
I'm not talking about things that would get me imprisoned, like stealing from a wealthy person. I'm talking everyday. I mean our cultural norms. I posted some thoughts in a different thread about letting the liar out of me to get a better job. When I see stuff like this, it just reinforces to me that I should do it because it seems like the only people who get ahead are the people that take advantage of the system. Trump has no repercussions. And he does big shit. I'm not looking to do big shit. I just want a comfortable life.
I think that the people who are most successful in life (by shallow capitalistic measurements) are basically sociopaths. In fact, I assume that many powerful people raise their children to be like wolves among sheep. This gives them a big advantage. To them, only suckers follow rules.
It's The Prisoner's Dilemma. The "defectors" run rampant because the "cooperators" do what they are supposed to do. If we all acted like Trump then society would collapse in a few days.
By the way it's unlikely that Trump is any happier than you. He has more stuff but it's obvious he's miserable with an insatiable need to win and cheat and steal. He must know at some level that he's never earned anything, never had a real friend, never had a non-transactional relationship with anyone. It must suck for him, and certainly sucks for all of us who have to hear about him constantly.
I think you’re making the case for why the rule of law matters. Why there needs to be “Justice” in the legal system. So people have a direction to point and internal sense of moral duty.
Trump is showing us a mirror of how far the country has drifted from that. IMO we are literally trolling the US culture and government with Trump. It’s a dangerous “game” the rage of Trumpers are “playing”.
You might be interested in Bruce Schneier's book, Liars and Outliers. The author is a noted computer security researcher, and the book deals with the role of trust in society.
Exactly. The rule of law matters. The longer Trump gets on the less people believe in a just world.
I find this statement pretty disgusting. Hey, what's $464M between friends?
Trump inevitably betrays friends like the scorpion and the frog in the river.
Dude dodged an expensive bullet
He still posted the reduced bond for Trump. This guy made his fortune with car loans, so he’s used to repoing assets of delinquent borrowers.
I agree he'd likely lose the money, if nothing else due to Trump's inability to control himself around these court cases.
I think what's unsettling is that there was some level of influence he thought he could gain by putting $464M at risk, and either that's an insignificant amount of money to him or the influence he expects to wield as a result is huge, or both.
Yep. This makes Hankey an insurrectionist and traitor to the US IMO.
All the contortions of the whole Trump saga have pretty much convinced me there are major components that the public is just not privy to. It’s nonsensical to me that with the amount of evidence of Trump having been compromised in so many ways, AND attempted to overturn an election via violence… the insane amount of PR and legal noise needed to blot out fact after fact after fact…
I think the best I can hope for is one of these two scenarios happening:
In the end though I personally stopped believing any narrative the media offers. I’m down to hoping that some 3 letter agencies are actually steering this ship and that they are both on this side of the globe and still have US-based intentions. That’s where I can still find some sense of hope, because nothing makes sense anymore.
You can actually run for President from jail (people have done so before). There’s nothing that says that you can’t, after all.
…and if my grandma had wheels she would have been a bike.
(Acknowledging this might be pressing Tildes etiquette, but I hope it brings a chuckle to someone.)
Yes. There are lots of technicalities in law that make it possible for lots of things to happen. Bankruptcy increasing one’s debt, legal fines being the best monetary decision, etc. I guess I’m just optimistic enough to think that maybe 1/2 the country wouldn’t elect a man in jail… but at this point, who knows. It seems people still treat elections like WWE.