Just want to comment on the profile of the Trump voters here. I know many of them, and in my opinion they are split toward the extremes.
Nearer the top of the economic pile you have Trump supporters who want to pay less taxes. They generally want smaller government, smaller public services, and believe in individual responsibility to make the sort of life for yourself that you want. That is a myth, I’m not saying it’s true, but this is one large section of the Trump base. Within this group would be some traditional conservative Republican types who really don’t care fro Trump at all, as a man, but they will hold their nose and vote for him because they think that his policies are best. They are becoming/have become yesterday’s Republican Party.
Nearer to the bottom of the economic pile there are vast swathes of Trump supporters. They feel a grievance and feel they deserve a better shot at the American dream, and Trump has got them whipped into a frenzy about outsiders coming in and damaging their prospects. Upper economic people know that the economy needs millions of migrant workers, but lower economic people really believe that a better fence at the border with Mexico will sort this out.
To my mind many of the people in between these extremes are Democrats. Of course Democrats have plenty at the top and bottom of the economic pile too, but I see the suburbs, and professions like education, containing many more Democrats than Republicans.
The Democrats need to do a better job talking to those at the lower end of the economic pile, as surprisingly (to me at least) Trump’s message is carrying weight with them, even though his policies are no good for them.
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I think there’s a lot of people who would vote for democrats had it not been for the whole superdelegates etc etc.
The democrats set-up is rotten. A set of people choosing which candidate a population can vote for ?
That’s not a democracy.
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Thats a pretty decent snapshot of Brexit Britain to be fair.
Cohen has been a train smash of a star witness.
Costello , the guy who was tasked by Trump to convince Cohen not to flip , testified that Cohen told him he had nothing on Trump and that he knew absolutely nothing about the payments.
Expect more fireworks tomorrow when the prosecution get to question him.
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Interesting wrinkle on this case to remember - they don’t have to prove the campaign finance violation. The claim is part of the case because it is what takes the accounting fraud charges from misdemeanor to felony, but they don’t have the same burden of proof. It requires only what they the preponderance of evidence rather than the threshold of beyond reasonable doubt as will be applied to the core charges.
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Also relevant that we can now safely say Trump will not be testifying. This ordinarily should not be held against a defendant, but we surely have to judge this differently given it a case principally about influencing public opinion of him, is being conducted during an election campaign and with him repeatedly complaining about being silenced and not able to tell his side of the story.
I expect the coverage of the meaning of this will be only a fraction of its actual relevance
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Costello had a hard time of it today apparently , shown up to be the stooge he was for Trump with lots of e-mails directly contradicting his previous testimony. People are wondering why he was even called … I’m betting that was Trump’s idea.
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If Trump’s bleating about not being able to tell his side of the story had any weight to it, he would surely testify and get his perspective out there, and on the record.
But for once, it seems his lawyers have managed to corral him, as the likelihood of self-incrimination would have been high, as he just can’t help himself.
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This is the guy who won his election because of concern over the accessing of classified documents through a private server
https://x.com/scarylawyerguy/status/1792995134042181789
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Three Politico reporters who sat through the trial discuss what they witnessed and what they think might be the determining factors for the jury.
The entire case could rest on how Judge Merchan instructs the jury , and particularly this idea of how the falsification was done to avoid falling foul of campaign donation laws. Remarkably there was precious little reference to it during the trial itself.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/05/23/mag-khardori-rountable-week3-00159472
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Six of the Georgia charges dropped, the other charges remain.
That was over two months ago.
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lol, thanks, I’m a bit slow today. I saw another post with her trying to overturn the ruling, it was a paywall so chose this one instead.
I heard an interesting take from Andrew Weisman yesterday about the weak defense presented by Trump’s team, most notably in the lack of witnesses they called. If Trump was innocent then one or both of Weisselberg or Schiller, two characters heavily covered in the trial, should have been able to support that with their testimony. The jury will reasonably question why we didn’t hear from either directly and are within their rights to infer things from that detrimental to Trump’s case.
I doubt they would have put Weisselberg on the stand , seeing as he’s already doing time for lying for Trump. I don’t know what the story with Schiller is though. I’m assuming he told them to fuck off.
