There is no longer a separation between the institutional GOP and the MAGA base. Trump has taken over the entire RNC and is routing the entire parties funds to his coffers.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jun 3 2024 02:18pm

"Illegal payments to hide the hush money for his mistress. He deceived the voters in 2016 to get elected!!!1"


This gets at three weaknesses of Trump all at once: his shadiness, his seedy private life which stands in gross contrast to the social values he and his party claim to espouse, and the notion that he only got elected in 2016 based on a fluke, without ever having an actual mandate from the voters.

All of this stuff has been known for a long time and is largely priced in, but reminding voters of it is still welcome from the Democratic pov. The Stormy Daniels stuff, in particular, is something that got little attention since the 2016 campaign, which was 8 years ago. There are millions of new/young/first time voters in 2024 who hadn't heard of it before. Likewise, the label "convicted felon" will affect some really low info voters. But then again... the overwhelming majority of folks who are very low info plus indifferent between Trump and Biden will end up as nonvoters.




That's actually not grounded in reality. Polls in 2022 were pretty close to the actual results, particularly the generic congressional ballot. It was the conventional wisdom which was off, not the polls. And the impression that 2022 was a big surprise was exacerbated by the fact that Republicans lost a lot of high-profile races by tiny margins because they nominated absolutely atrocious candidates. The picture was further muddied by large regional variation. You had mini red waves in places like New York, California or Georgia, plus a full-blown red tsunami in Florida. But you also had mini blue waves in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Fine, maybe "institutional GOP" was a suboptimal choice of words. Let's instead say "establishment Republicans, particularly those whose influence within the GOP predates the Trump-era". The point still stands that those within the party who kept a distance from Trump (like Collins) or were outspoken critics/foes (like Romney) call out this trial as BS and support Trump's central claim that it was politically motivated first and foremost.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 3 2024 02:18pm

Which isn’t illegal and for it to be a campaign violation it has to be directly confirmed if it can be for any other purpose then it isn’t a campaign violation. Also the labeling of the payment as a legal expense isn’t wrong… it was literally paid to a lawyer that was “protecting” the trump organization. Democrats the literal definition of a banana republic.

Romney is criticizing Bragg for not settling. Why the hell would he? I followed the case almost every day and one thing that's pretty clear is the case was a lot stronger than people give it credit.

In particular, Trump's best defense option that I saw was probably "well he didn't really make the recordings to be fraudulent, he thought Cohen making the payment counted as real legal work", but that was undercut pretty strongly by Cohen's testimony and just common sense, that a laywer doesn't pay hush money then falsify their tax documents to say it was income.

You gotta be a special kind of brain dead to think that Trump would have paid for this story to be stopped if he wasn't in a campaign. This dude brags about grabbing women by the pussy. He'd have bragged about nailing a porn star, and apparently has many times.

That entire point was undercut right at the start because the guy who intercepted the story testified it was for the campaign and the meeting to establish the catch-and-kill scheme only happened a couple days after the campaign launched.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Jun 3 2024 02:28pm

Oh wtf I just checked and you're right. Didn't pay attention too hard since it was such an obnoxious period of the news cycle. Not sure what the Republican talking heads were smoking at the time. Maybe high off the fumes of Roe V Wade being overturned?

It’s not illegal to pay for an nda. It’s also not a campaign violation to pay for an nda with personal money. An expenditure of paying a lawyer is a legal expense. Please try to keep up.



Also the felonies are based on the verbiage of legal expense. What was he supposed to put? Was he supposed to put NDA? If so an NDA issued by a lawyer is a legal expense.

This post was edited by Landmine on Jun 3 2024 03:08pm

The conventional wisdom was based on two arguments: the historical precedent of backlash to incumbents during midterm elections, and Biden's unpopularity plus high inflation at the time. A lot of Republicans didn't want to admit to themselves just how unpopular their stance on abortion is with the wider voting public, and how much Dobbs closed the enthusiasm gap which is the typical reason for midterm waves against the incumbent party.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 3 2024 04:04pm

Cant wait to vote for the rapist, pedophile, convicted felon like all you fine hogs.

oink oink amirite!?!?