2024 US Presidential Elections Megathread

[Caliga]

I look forward to hearing from the far right how 'tough' Noem is for killing defenseless animals.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm curious why Donald didn't name Junior as veep.

[The Minsky Moment]

I'm curious why Donald didn't name Junior as veep.

I think they both reside in Florida which could cause a problem under Article II/12th amendment

[Jacob]

Any bets on who Trump will name as VP?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Any bets on who Trump will name as VP?

Medvedev

[Caliga]

Any bets on who Trump will name as VP?

Matt Gaetz

[Zanza]

Why did all of these cases against him somehow only really start this year as opposed to two or three years ago?

[crazy canuck]

In the case involving the hush money to the porn star the Indictment was in March of last year, and his legal team has been delaying as much as possible.

[The Minsky Moment]

Why did all of these cases against him somehow only really start this year as opposed to two or three years ago?

The NYS indictment was brought in March 23, as CC indicates above. And yes Trump has pulled out all stops to delay every step of the way and still is.  A couple hours of trial time was wasted yesterday because Trump insisted on having live witnesses authenticate basic documents of clear provenance like a C-SPAN tape and his own deposition in the E Jean Caroll case. As to the latter, not only have I never experienced in my legal career having a reporter authenticate a depo transcript (out of hundreds of admissions) I've never seen or heard it being done or referenced in any case report I've read. Pure obnoxious time wasting.  It's something you would never see happen because any lawyer that pulls that would piss off the judge, but pissing off judges is an affirmative part of the Trump legal "strategy".

The NYS case was also delayed because a key piece of evidence came from a subpoena to Trump's accountant, and Trump managed to tie up enforcement throughout his entire Presidency until the Supreme Court finally ruled against him near the end of his term.

In the confidential documents case, the crime was not comitted until after Trump left the White House, and then again, the Feds gave him repeated opportunities to come into compliance before resorting to criminal indictment.  And again, he has done everything he can to slow that case down, in that case with the open cooperation of the judge he appointed.

The one case where one can accuse the government of taking its time is the Jan 6 case, because the AG was following the strategy of going from the bottom up. But once the Special Prosecutor was appointed, the case moved extremely fast, until Trump enlisted his friends in the Supreme Court to slow it down.

[garbon]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/may/01/could-student-protestors-turn-the-2024-election

Could student protesters turn the 2024 election?

Tensions on university campuses, already high as a wave of pro-Palestinian encampment-style protests sweeps the US, got even higher overnight.

The protests, which have seen students pitch tents or occupy buildings at Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and others, began as an effort to get universities to ditch investments in companies which provide weapons and equipment to the Israeli military.

But they have since evolved into a full-throated critique of how the Biden administration, in protesters' eyes, has failed to rein in Israel during its war in Gaza. More than 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza , and as with other modern conflicts, much of the horror has been shared on social media.

It has made it easy for people on campuses and elsewhere to empathise with the plight of Palestinians – and to grow angry at Biden, who has remained largely supportive of Israel in the wake of the October 7 attacks and last week signed a foreign aid package which directed more than $26bn to the country.

Polling averages show Trump with a narrow lead in the seven swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – which are the key to winning the White House. Biden won Wisconsin, where demonstrations continue on campuses in Milwaukee and Madison, by just 21,000 votes in 2020, and has already survived pro-Palestinian protest votes against him in Pennsylvania and Michigan, where he won by similarly small margins.

All this means that, basically, Biden can ill afford to lose any young votes.

"The real threat to Biden is that younger voters, especially college-educated voters, won't turn out for him in the election," Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history of education at the University of Pennsylvania, told me this week.

He added: "In states like Pennsylvania the margins are going to be so small, that it's at least possible that a couple thousand people not turning out, or voting for one of the third party candidates, could swing the election one way or the other."

Although Gaza is not necessarily a front-burner issue among all young voters (the economy remains many Americans' No 1 concern), Biden's popularity with them, well, is not what it was. In April, a Harvard poll found that 60% of 18-29-year-olds believe the country is "off on the wrong track", while only 9% believe things are "generally headed in the right direction". Neither of those numbers sound as if young people are about to sprint down to the polls to cast their vote for Biden.

But the problem goes further than just Biden losing votes among young people. Rightwing media and the GOP have pounced on the issue, claiming that the "out of control" protests are representative of Biden's presidency.

It makes life difficult for Biden. If he sides with the students, Republicans will continue to paint the president as someone unable to reign in chaos. If Biden is too critical of protesters, he risks alienating young people – who he needs in November.

If so, they deserve all the terrible things that will befall them under Trump.

[Savonarola]

From The Atlantic:

The Danger of a Small Act of Cowardice
Story by David Hume Kennerly

The first time I photographed Gerald Ford, he was a day away from being nominated as vice president, after Spiro Agnew had resigned in disgrace. The portrait I made ran on the cover of Time, a first for both of us. Ford was my assignment, then he became my friend. As president, he appointed me, at age 27, as his chief White House photographer, granting me total access. The more I got to know him, the more I admired his humanity and empathy. I remained close to him and his wife, Betty, until the end of their lives. And I was honored to serve as a trustee on the board of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation for more than 20 years.

On April 9, however, I resigned from that position. It was over a matter that might seem trivial on the surface, but that I believe constituted another step in America's retreat from democracy—the failure of an institution bearing the name of one of our most honorable presidents to stand in the way of authoritarianism.
Each year, the foundation awards its Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service, recognizing an individual who embodies Ford's high ideals: integrity, honesty, candor, strength of character, determination in the face of adversity, among other attributes. Past winners have included John Paul Stevens, George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, and Bob and Elizabeth Dole. This year, in my capacity as a trustee, I pushed hard for former Representative Liz Cheney to receive the recognition.

After the January 6 insurrection, Cheney famously helped lead the push to impeach President Donald Trump. "The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack," she wrote in a statement a few days after the riot. "There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution." Four months later, she was stripped of her House leadership position by an ungrateful and angry Republican caucus. A month and a half later, she joined the House select committee investigating January 6; she soon was named co-chair. The next year, Trump got his revenge: Cheney was defeated in her Wyoming primary by a rival he had backed.

Despite this—and numerous death threats—Cheney has been unwavering in standing against Trump and the risk his 2024 candidacy represents.

Cheney is a friend of mine; I have known her since she was 8 years old and have photographed and spent time with her and her family for decades. But I wasn't alone in my thinking: Many of my fellow trustees also believed she clearly deserved the recognition. Ford himself would have been delighted by the selection. He first met Cheney when she was a little girl, and her father, future Vice President Dick Cheney, was Ford's chief of staff. (Cheney herself is a trustee of the foundation in good standing, but several other trustees have received the award in the past.)



Yet when the foundation's executive committee received Cheney's nomination, its members denied her the award. Instead, they offered it first to a former president, who did not accept, and then to another well-known person, who also declined. When the door briefly reopened for more nominations, I made another passionate pitch for Cheney. The committee passed on her again, ultimately deciding to give the award to former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, whose last job as a public servant ended more than a decade ago.

To me, the decision was inexplicable; Cheney obviously had been more deserving. Sensing that the foundation's executive committee no longer shared my principles, I resigned from the board, as I wrote in a letter to my fellow trustees.

Shortly after that letter was published by Politico, the foundation's executive director, Gleaves Whitney, issued a public statement explaining the committee's decision and confirming what I had heard from fellow trustees: "At the time the award was being discussed, it was publicly reported that Liz was under active consideration for a presidential run. Exercising its fiduciary responsibility, the executive committee concluded that giving the Ford medal to Liz in the 2024 election cycle might be construed as a political statement and thus expose the Foundation to the legal risk of losing its nonprofit status with the Internal Revenue Service."

Giving the award to Cheney, Whitney said, would not be "prudent." Translation: The foundation was afraid. In another statement, Whitney said that Cheney could be considered for the award in the future. That was not only totally embarrassing, but too late.

I believe the foundation did what it did because of the same pressures hollowing out many Republican institutions and weakening many conservative leaders across America—the fear of retaliation from the forces of Trumpism, forces that deeply loathe Cheney and the values she represents. Fear that president No. 45 might become No. 47. Fear that wealthy donors might be on Trump's team overtly or covertly and might withhold money from the foundation. Fear of phantom circumstances.

I see Whitney's legalistic tap dance as a cop-out. Cheney has not announced that she is running; she hasn't been a candidate for any elective office since she lost her primary two years ago. What's more, in 2004, the foundation gave its annual recognition to then–Vice President Cheney while he was an active candidate for a second term. In a recent letter to trustees, Whitney wrote, correctly, "We face a very different political environment today than in 2004." He added that, in 2006, the IRS had cracked down on nonprofits supporting political candidates. But again, Cheney is not a political candidate. Two years ago, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation wasn't afraid to pay her tribute with its Profile in Courage Award (granted jointly to her, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and three others).

Mitch Daniels might seem like a safe choice for the recognition, a moderate in the mold of Ford. But he has shown none of the valor that Cheney has in confronting Trump. Despite acknowledging that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Daniels has made only tepid comments about the threat Trump presents to democracy. In 2022, for example, The Bulwark's Mona Charen asked Daniels about a recent warning from President Biden that American democracy was in danger of being subverted by election-denying "MAGA Republicans." Daniels said he had spent 10 years "ducking" such questions. He allowed that he would "make no objection" to Biden's statement, but continued: "I think there are anti-democratic tendencies across our political spectrum, or at least at both ends of it." This was classic both-sides-ism. To me, Daniels in that moment exemplified the kind of passive Republican who is laying brick on the Trump highway to an autocracy.

My resignation is about more than giving one valiant person an award. America is where it is today because of all the people and organizations that have committed small acts of cowardice like that of the Ford presidential foundation's executive committee. I wanted to draw attention to those in the political center and on the right who know better, who have real power and influence, who rail against Trump behind closed doors, yet who appear in public with their lips zipped. They might think of themselves as patriots, but in fact they are allowing our country to be driven toward tyranny. Every now and then, you should listen to your heart and not the lawyers.

Ultimately, the foundation has tarnished the image of its namesake. I was in the East Room of the White House 50 years ago on that hot day of August 9, 1974, when President Ford declared, "Our long national nightmare is over." It was a great moment for America, and a bold statement from the new president, acknowledging that Richard Nixon's actions had threatened the Constitution. Ford could not have envisioned the threat to democracy that America now faces. But he would have been encouraged by a bright light named Liz Cheney—someone who is fighting hard, sometimes alone, for the Constitution that Ford defended just as courageously.

[Barrister]

Any thoughts on Trump sleeping during his criminal trial?

So look - I've obviously never been on trial before, but I spend a lot of my life in courtrooms.

Most of that time is as a lawyer.  There I'm in the middle of the action.  I'm either on my feet asking questions/making submissions, or I'm listening carefully as the other side is doing the same.  That's a very "high energy" time.

But I've spent a not insignificant amount of time just sitting in courtrooms too, where I have no direct involvement.  I'm either waiting for my case to be called, or trying to observe someone else.  And those times can be very, very boring, and I've had to fight off nodding off - and I'm not in my 70s.

No idea if being on trial yourself is closer to being a lawyer, or being a pure observer.

I will note I don't think I've ever seen an Accused person nod off, but then again most crimes tend to be committed by the young.

[Oexmelin]

My sense is that it's, once again, the media focusing on something stupid rather than something important.

[grumbler]

My sense is that it's, once again, the media focusing on something stupid rather than something important.

Agreed.  The only utility to such reports would be to show the impact of age on Trump, but that's not the message.  The media fixation on reporting every last detail about Trump is what got him elected in 2016 and nearly elected in 2020.

[Valmy]

Yeah I am tired of hearing about Trump. I wish he would just go away.

But then I felt that way around 1988 or so.