What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Syt]

[Syt]

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/14/trump-doj-speech-prison-opponents-00231438

Trump calls for imprisoning his opponents in bellicose speech at Justice Department

President Donald Trump on Friday walked into the Department of Justice and labeled his courtroom opponents "scum," judges "corrupt" and the prosecutors who investigated him "deranged."

With the DOJ logo directly behind him, Trump called for his legal tormentors to be sent to prison.

"These are people that are bad people, really bad people," the president said in a rambling speech that lasted more than an hour. "The people who did this to us should go to jail."

In remarks that were by turns dark, exultant and pugnacious, Trump vowed to remake the agency and retaliate against his enemies.

It was, even by Trump's standards, a stunning show of disregard for decades of tradition observed by his predecessors, who worried about politicizing or appearing to exert too much control over the nation's most powerful law enforcement agency. Trump, instead, called himself the "chief law enforcement officer in our country" and accused the DOJ's prior leadership of doing "everything within their power to prevent" him from becoming the president.

Trump charged the DOJ with spying on his campaign, raiding his home, persecuting his "family, staff and supporters," launching "one hoax and disinformation campaign after the other" and breaking the law "on a colossal scale," making clear the glee he has taken in undermining the department's typical independence and wielding it to achieve the White House's objectives.

"First, we must be honest about the lies and the abuses that have occurred within these walls," Trump said. "Unfortunately in recent years, a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and goodwill built up over generations. They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people."

Those days, Trump said, "are over, and they are never going to come back. He added that he would demand "full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred."

While any presidential visit to the Justice Department is a rarity, Trump repeatedly breached other norms in his remarks as he slammed former officials, unleashed attacks on private attorneys, and touted his vote tallies in last year's election.

"It's a campaign by the same scum you've been dealing with for years," Trump said of the lawyers and officials who have targeted him. "We will expel the rogue actors and corrupt forces from our government. ... We will restore the scales of justice in our country."

The president sought to recast his fraught history with the department — most notably the two federal criminal cases he faced last year, one on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the other for refusing to return a hoard of classified documents after he left office in 2021. Trump also bragged about revoking the security clearance of "deranged Jack Smith," the special counsel who indicted him in those cases. (Smith and the Justice Department abandoned both cases after Trump won reelection last year.).

Trump boasted about pardoning hundreds of "political prisoners who have been grossly mistreated," referring to the people convicted in connection with the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And he said "there was no better day" than when he fired James Comey, the president's first-term FBI director who investigated the 2016 Trump campaign's ties to Russia.

"What they've ripped down is incalculable," Trump said of the department's leaders under the Biden administration.

Trump also used his visit to offer an effusive tribute to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who issued a ruling that tossed out the classified documents case against him. Prosecutors were appealing that decision when Trump prevailed at the polls last November.

"The case against me was bullshit and she correctly dismissed it," he said.

Noting that he had appointed her but did not know her personally, Trump praised Cannon as "brilliant" and credited her for standing her ground under withering criticism from the media and legal pundits. "She was very courageous and it only made her angry," the president said. "They were hitting her so hard it was hard to watch. ... She was the absolute model of what a judge should be."

And he said the Supreme Court's six conservative justices are treated "unbelievably badly" by Democrats opposing Trump's agenda.

Attorney General Pam Bondi introduced Trump by pledging that she and others at the department are fully engaged in his mission.

"We will never stop fighting for him and for our country," she said.

Before the president arrived, the audience heard from two other prominent Trump appointees at DOJ: Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel. Both did their best to fire up the crowd by declaring that DOJ is heeding Trump's call to get tough on criminals and undocumented immigrants.

Despite Trump's repeated and bitter denunciations of his critics, at times Friday he appeared to say that he does not intend to instruct his appointees how to target his opponents but instead plans to trust them to use their judgment to achieve his goals.

"I don't do it. They do it," the president said.

Toward the end of his speech, Trump quoted an unlikely source.

"Etched onto the walls of this building are the words English philosopher John Locke said: 'Where law ends, tyranny begins,'" Trump said. "And I see that."

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5195881-trump-media-illegal/

Trump suggests media outlets be deemed illegal

President Trump railed against the media on Friday, suggesting that some of the actions of the press be deemed illegal and should be investigated.

In a speech at the Department of Justice (DOJ), during which Trump railed against people and entities that he claims have targeted him, said that he views CNN and MSNBC as corrupt.

"I believe that CNN and MS-DNC, who literally write 97.6 percent bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party and in my opinion, they're really corrupt and they're illegal, what do they do is illegal," Trump said.

He also claimed the media outlets work in coordination and that their reporting is able to influence the opinions of judges.

"These networks and these newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative," Trump said.

"And it has to stop, it has to be illegal, it's influencing judges and it's really, eh, changing law and it just cannot be legal. I don't believe it's legal and they do it in total coordination with each other," he added.

Trump's speech at DOJ was rare for any president. During his remarks, he attacked the Biden administration, claimed he has been politically persecuted, and name-checked those that he thinks have unfairly targeted him.

The White House and the news media have sparred in recent weeks, including when the administration announced it would take over the press pool, taking that control away from the White House Correspondents' Association.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last month that moving forward, the White House press pool, a small group of reporters that travels with and covers the president's daily activities, will now be determined by administration officials.

The White House is also in an ongoing fight with the Associated Press over the outlet's decision not to fully adopt the name "Gulf of America" instead of Gulf of Mexico into its widely influential Stylebook, used by news media organizations across the U.S.

The White House has restricted the AP's access to the Oval Office and Air Force One, not allowing the outlet to be in the press pool, and the AP is challenging the White House's action in court.

Speaking of Leavitt:

https://newrepublic.com/post/192796/trump-re-hire-federal-employees-judge

[...]

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the system of checks and balances as "unconstitutional," telling reporters that the administration would fight back by appealing the decisions with the "full weight" of the White House legal counsel.

"You cannot have a low-level district court judge filing an injunction to usurp the executive authority of the president of the United States," Leavitt said. "That is absurd."

Leavitt then said it was within the president's authority to "fire or hire" judges, while highlighting that federal courts had placed more injunctions on the administration's "agenda" in the last month than the Biden administration faced during a four-year term. Somehow, Leavitt interpreted that as a personal attack on the president and his policies rather than an indication that the administration's strategies have been legally dubious.

"It's very clear that there are judicial activists throughout our judicial branch who are trying to block this president's executive authority. We are going to fight back," Leavitt continued, underscoring the fact that Donald Trump has survived "nearly 200" legal challenges and has still ascended to the Oval Office.

[...]

[Zoupa]

I had high hopes for Fetterman. Turned out to be a pretty big piece of shit. He had his stroke and reverted to factory settings for middle-aged white american man.

[Zanza]

This accelerating slide towards authoritarianism is dispiriting. 

[Zoupa]

This accelerating slide towards authoritarianism is dispiriting. 

As I get older, I realized that history has no arc. It's just every generation fighting against our basest human instincts.

[Valmy]

Yeah Schumer. That sounds like a guy who you foiled and is now really mad the government didn't shut down. You fucking traitor.

[Valmy]

I had high hopes for Fetterman. Turned out to be a pretty big piece of shit. He had his stroke and reverted to factory settings for middle-aged white american man.

Yeah. That happened in 2023. He is pretty much just a right wing Republican now. That always seems to happen to us. No Republicans run as reactionaries, get into Congress and suddenly turn out to be a progressive Democrat.

[HisMajestyBOB]

I had high hopes for Fetterman. Turned out to be a pretty big piece of shit. He had his stroke and reverted to factory settings for middle-aged white american man.

Yeah. That happened in 2023. He is pretty much just a right wing Republican now. That always seems to happen to us. No Republicans run as reactionaries, get into Congress and suddenly turn out to be a progressive Democrat.

There's just way too much money and power to gain in fleecing rubes.

[The Minsky Moment]

This accelerating slide towards authoritarianism is dispiriting. 

As I get older, I realized that history has no arc. It's just every generation fighting against our basest human instincts.

Arcs go down as well as up.

[DGuller]

I had high hopes for Fetterman. Turned out to be a pretty big piece of shit. He had his stroke and reverted to factory settings for middle-aged white american man.

Yes, let's definitely normalize bigotry against white men, what can go wrong?

[Valmy]

I had high hopes for Fetterman. Turned out to be a pretty big piece of shit. He had his stroke and reverted to factory settings for middle-aged white american man.

Yes, let's definitely normalize bigotry against white men, what can go wrong?

Well with white men like Chuck Schumer around I think it is justified.

[mongers]

JR did you mis out a not?

I meant the term "court" was an exaggeration, even if modified.  There is no process at all, not even a pro forma one.

Thanks, I didn't look at it that way.

[Zoupa]

I had high hopes for Fetterman. Turned out to be a pretty big piece of shit. He had his stroke and reverted to factory settings for middle-aged white american man.

Yes, let's definitely normalize bigotry against white men, what can go wrong?

 

Cry me a fucking river my man. Jesus Christ. You snowflakes are so sensitive.

[DGuller]

I had high hopes for Fetterman. Turned out to be a pretty big piece of shit. He had his stroke and reverted to factory settings for middle-aged white american man.

Yes, let's definitely normalize bigotry against white men, what can go wrong?

 

Cry me a fucking river my man. Jesus Christ. You snowflakes are so sensitive.

I'm not sensitive to this bigotry because I'm a middle-aged white man, I'm sensitive to it because left wing bigots who think their bigotry is virtuous probably had a big part in making me live under the orange man.

[The Brain]

The only question is if the Resistance will ever begin or if the country will go gentle into that good night. All signs point to the latter.