But ... serving in government and supporting Trump are in many cases two different things. Do you think it's better for nobody to be willing to serve who doesn't approve of the person who was elected?

my point was that Secret Service agents are still loyal to him even to the point of still doing their job when he tried to destroy the whole government, including their jobs.

Speaking clearly only for myself, I much prefer that to the alternative. I don't view it as a case of being loyal to him, though I'm sure there's some who are. It's about being loyal to the public, to the job itself. If we reach the point where people start refusing to be involved in public service when they don't like the person they are serving under, we won't have a functional government no matter who the people elect.

Same way prosecutors can prosecute defendants for violating laws they don't agree with; they aren't serving that particular law, they are serving the law in a more general sense, and serving the public. IRS agents, plumbers and food preparers in any governmental capacity including the White House, there is of course almost no end to examples of this kind of thing.

Do you not know what the term lining up means?

You're incredibly naive if you don't think serving in a Trump admin and supporting him aren't one in the same. He has flat out said he is going to give loyalty tests and remove anyone not loyal to him. He wants to be a king, not a servant of the people.

It has nothing to do with what he's said or what he plans to do. It's about serving the system, the institution, the office. There is no president imaginable - I mean that literally - for whom serving would mean supporting that person, personally or in terms of policy, inherently. If it did, government could not function.

When a military action is ordered, the question isn't 'does the order come from someone whose politics I agree with or who I think is worthy of his job'. The question is 'do I have valid orders from my chain of command, which begins with the commander-in-chief as selected by the constitutional process'.

This is why democracy is in jeopardy.

Youre fooling yourself if you don't think there are service members willing to put Trump over country.

I think we're talking at cross-points there. There are people willing to do that ... there have always been people willing to do that but I made a comment to that effect in one of my posts not far up.

The quote you are objecting to though is just about how the system has to work. Not just our system, but any system, under any quality of leadership no matter how good or bad. It doesn't put democracy in jeopardy, and it's not about putting Trump over country. It's about putting country over Trump (or whoever else), serving regardless of who the president or other leader might happen to be. That's a requirement for functional government of any kind to exist, so Secret Service or whoever else being willing to participate in a Trump administration is not a negative thing. It's a necessity.

The Star of the show...er trial Stormy Daniels is appearing today. trump isn't happy about it because they only found out the day before because the judge had ruled earlier to not give his lawyers the normal courtesy of letting them know in advance who the witnesses will be because of their client's continued intimidation of them in social media.

This sounds like the judge just gave Trump grounds for appeal. I thought the surprise witness thing was a big no-no nowadays.

Then again IANAL.

They are on a witness list, so it isn't a surprise that someone is testifying

I'm no lawyer but I would assume one post about horseface would be enough to get the appeal tossed out

Oh, so the order is a surprise but the witness itself isn't?

If that's the case then I misunderstood Thomkal's post.

Just because someone is on the witness list, there is no obligation that they are called to testify.

Each side can call a witness from the list as they see fit. The order could change based on how the testimony goes from previous witnesses.

There should be zero surprise about Stormy Daniels testifying. They had to be prepared if she was the first witness, last witness, or not called at all. To say they didn't have time to prepare is simply not the case and is being used probably for fundraising purposes from people that don't know any better.

Both sides have the witness list and plenty of time to prepare for them. Because Trump couldn't stop intimidating potential witnesses leading to some of his gag orders, the judge ruled that they don't have to follow the common courtesy in a trial and didn't have to reveal who was next on their witness appearance until the day before.



i'm damned sure that Trump's lawyers were very ready for Stormy whenever she gave her testimony.

Posts about Stormy Daniels and then a too-quick read of another post referring to ANAL and I was like, OK maybe it's time to start paying attention to that trial.

It just occurred to me that there must be a Trump/Stormy parody porn out there.

Speaking of "what's the worst that could happen?" ...

Probably several

My wife received a text from Trump/Trump adjacent group asking for an "endorsement" before his trial resumes.

The Republican presidential candidate is texting people for money to help with his trial because he lied about paying to fuck a porn actress...

The party of family values

Judge Cannon has indefinitely postponed the documents case.

She needs to be removed from this case and the bench.

Clearly the government was just too mean to poor ol' trump. It's just so unfair that he be put through this. All he's ever done is love the USA and this is how they repay him. He's more persecuted than Ghandi, Lincoln and Jesus...combined. All we can do is fix this and make it right or we risk angering God. God Bless the USA. Pray for us all.

Jesus molson, I was having a good day. QS was having a good day. We were all having a good day....

:p

Haha I got that trash too.

I'd be interested in hearing the other lawyers here chime in, but from my perspective she is very carefully making sure that all of the things she is doing to help Trump are not the sorts of things that would get her removed from the case.

First, she is not doing anything that is immediately appealable, so the government would have to file a writ of mandamus (or something similar) to get to the appellate court. (And the fact that you've probably never heard of a writ of mandamus gives you a sense of just what an extraordinary remedy that is).

Second, she is confining her rulings to areas where the appellate courts traditionally give trial judges very wide discretion, like scheduling.

Also, as a bonus, the Eleventh Circuit is the 3rd most MAGA/Conservative federal appellate court in the country (behind the 5th Circuit and the Supreme Court), so any attempt to go over her head would be very risky.

TL;DR--What she's doing is obvious. But she's doing it in a way that, from my point of view, won't get her kicked off the case.

This is a dead avenue; Trump won.

Democrats need to run on the swamp winning and how the corruption from Trump's taint is spreading.

It was a lost cause when the case went to her court.

Steve Bannon don't past Go, don't collect $200


Just a moment...

Break out the popcorn-It's Michael Cohen Testify day in court today. Not a fan of Cohen during his time as Trump's attorney, but since then we haven't really seen/heard him act that way. And he's already gone to jail for his part in what he did in this case, so I'm sure it will be a pleasant reunion

Mike Johnson is the latest republican to come to court to support Trump. What an absolute disgrace rump has turned us in to.

Is this some rich people thing? Can't you just put out an arrest warrant for the guy?

Arizona officials say they can’t find Rudy Giuliani to serve him with indictmentÂ*notice | CNN Politics

And today Johnson gave a speech saying that crimes need to be crimes again.

Spoiler for barf inducing content:

I will say these Republicans are getting valuable experience for when their own trial starts

At this point does having Gaetz and Boebert at your trial count as 'support'?

The party of family values - showing up en masse to support a guy in his trial for *checks notes* illegally paying off an adult film star with whom he cheated on *checks notes again* his third wife.

Someone mentioned that Boebert didn't even show up to her son's court case last week. Nor did she get him an attorney.

That surprises me. She seems like the sort of woman who would willingly offer a hand.

Happy Birthday Giuliani!

Rudy Giuliani is served indictment papers at his own birthday party after mocking Arizona attorney general

The fall of Rugy Giuliani is one of the most fascinating things in politics for me over the past 25 years.

Agreed.

I lived in NYC in the late 90s. He was hugely popular, a pragmatist, enacted policy you could see improving the city. There was an underlying oddness with his personal life, but, that seemed like just fun subway tabloid reading. I also remembering him dressing in drag more than once for events. It wasn't a big deal, it fit the city and the time and it was who he was.

I choose not to remember this Giuliani. I choose to remember the Giuliani that went after falsified fat free yogurt.

I've said this on here before, but if Giuliani had retired a few years after 9/11, wrote a bestseller autobiography called "America's Mayor," gone to live upstate and just came out to make the occasional appearance at 4th of July Parades, he'd be at 98% approval.

Giuliani took cops along and started a race riot in front of the Mayor's house in the 90's. He was pretty bad but got insanely friendly media coverage after 9/11 despite some of those deaths being his fault.

Reminds me if how Cuomo was this hero during COVID while he was killing off the senior population in record numbers.

Cuomo was killing them off, or COVID was?

Well he was sending COVID positive patients into nursing homes and then lied about the numbers. Was a pretty big scandal and killed a lot of people.

Did he tell people to inject bleach, though?

If not, he was negligent.

I can't believe the gag order prevented Trump from testifying. Fucking woke mob activist trans judges.

It's really outrageous that Judge Cannon is doing everything she can to keep this trial from happening.

It would also be nice if Dems decided to scream bloody murder about at least one thing in the seemingly bottomless pit of corruption of and criminality.