To be fair, we all know that the first midterm of a presidency is typically a repudiation of the incumbent, a la Obama and most others. If itâs not a bloodbath, then itâs really rigged.
Thatâs why Project 2025 was working with such speed, knowing their time was limited. And Vought had spent his years âin the wildernessâ working on plans to make sure that what he does isnât easily/ever reversed.
All true... but a correction creates the possibility to stop the bleeding and begin the process of prepping for 2028.
No going back... so just gotta go forward.
What's gone is the idea that people trust Trump. The loyalists will continue to focus on the "radical left", but the reality is that the Trump policies are taking a wrecking ball to the economy, the government, and our standing in the world... and people who figured "what do we have to lose" a year ago have found out the hard way.
Location: At the dude ranch / above the sea Gender:
Posted:
Nov 5, 2025 - 6:08am
rgio wrote:
It has the makings of a bloodbath next November....
To be fair, we all know that the first midterm of a presidency is typically a repudiation of the incumbent, a la Obama and most others. If itâs not a bloodbath, then itâs really rigged.
Thatâs why Project 2025 was working with such speed, knowing their time was limited. And Vought had spent his years âin the wildernessâ working on plans to make sure that what he does isnât easily/ever reversed.
Last night was quite possibly the beginning of the end of the MAGA movement.
The new anti-Christ in NYC will be a primary focus, but it's not the signal... all noise.
If you look at the swings in VA and NJ by district, all of the inroads that Trump made in 2024 have crumbled. Latinos in North Jersey took a swing with Trump because of the cost-of-living/inflation issues under Biden, and quickly realized they were fooled. They swung back to the Dems in very large 20%-30%+ movements for a pretty weak Democrat nominee in Sherill vs. the Trump endorsed guy. Unlike most states, NJ has a long history of giving the other party Drumthwacket (the NJ gov. mansion) after 8 years. It's gone that way since the 50s. This was their year...and they got trounced.
High taxes and high energy costs were the issues, and the Republicans couldn't convince anyone they could fix it.
In VA, beyond the shut-down, there are millions of people who know someone that's lost a job in the DOGE fiasco. It's most relevant to Northern VA, but the same type of thing is happening everywhere. Tariffs are crushing small business, and the uncertainty of what's next has frozen investment and growth.
If you listen to the Q3 earnings calls, nearly all of the forecasts for next year are coming down, and the ability for companies to eat the tariffs is over. Prices are going up soon....on everything. Companies are shedding jobs. Trump is going to be election kryptonite. Nobody outside of the diehard Republican minority is going to support Republicans next fall. The very same arguments that got Trump re-elected are going to destroy the party's chances in 2026.
So now we turn to 2026, and every Republican up for election in location that could be competitive has a real dilemma... do you break with Trump now and get primary'd out of the race, or do you hang in and try to distance yourself from Trump after becoming the nominee? Everything costs too much, and the government is doing nothing about it. In fact, they have made everything worse, unless you're in the top 1%.
It has the makings of a bloodbath next November....
Whoa . . . A lot of back and forth since I posted. Sorry for delay in response; busy yesterday. Rgio is correct that the point of my entire post is that claims of a double standard, a rigged justice system, or a weaponized DOJ are not defenses of Trump on the merits.
The point of that part of my post that you have questioned is that it is not a defense of Trump on the merits to allege that he was subject to a double standard when he was prosecuted for violations of laws relating to the possession of classified documents when Biden was not. At most, that could only surface in court as a motion to dismiss based on selective prosecution and, as explained by the Supreme Court: âA selective prosecution claim is not a defense on the merits to the criminal charge itself, but an independent assertion that the prosecutor has brought charges for reasons forbidden by the Constitution.â In sum, even if Trumpâs case had been dismissed because of selective prosecution, that would not mean that Trump was innocent. (Nor does the dismissal of the case because Judge Cannon found special counsel Jack Smith to be unlawfully appointed).
Prosecutions for unlawfully obtaining and retaining classified documents must prove elements of intentionality. Possession alone is not sufficient. The obtaining and retention of the classified documents must be knowing and willful. Trump willfully retained the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. That was not the case with Biden (or Pence). Therefore, it is not at all true, as you suggest, that both Trump and Biden should have been prosecuted or neither should have been. Determinations of whether to prosecute are made on a case-by-case basis by prosecutors based on an assessment of the facts, evidence, and law. As rgio has noted, Biden and Pence immediately returned the documents. Trump did not. That and other factors distinguished their cases from his.
As I explained in a post here at the time:
There is no question that Trump chose to retain the classified documents in defiance of a grand jury subpoena. We know this because his attorney, Evan Corcoran, subsequently testified to the grand jury that when he had attested to DOJ in June 2022 that the documents being turned over at that time were all of the documents responsive to the subpoena he had located after conducting a required due diligence search, he had only searched the documents in the storage room because he was unaware that other possibly responsive documents had been moved out of that storage room by aides at Trumpâs direction.
Corcoran only testified before the grand jury after the presiding judge ruled that the attorney-client privilege that normally would have barred such testimony by him had been pierced. Corcoran also had taken contemporaneous notes at the time that also were produced before the grand jury. Contemporaneous notes adds exponentially to the credibility of a witness. . If this goes to trial, Corcoran will be a virtually unassailable witness against Trump. The Trump defense will move to suppress Corcoranâs testimony by arguing that the prior judge had erred in ruling that the attorney-client privilege had been pierced. If that motion fails, Trump will be convicted based on Corcoranâs testimony and the surveillance tapes showing Walt Nauta moved boxes of documents from the storage room to Trumpâs office and residence.
In sum, this is not a witch hunt, and anyone making that claim is either totally ignorant of the facts/evidence or lying through their teeth.
And a follow-up conclusion of mine at the time that is still applicable today and dovetails with my post from the other day that started this discussion:
The only point of the claim (mantra) that this is a two-tiered system of justice especially rigged against Trump is to absolve he and his supporters from having to offer any defense of him on the merits.
Lastly, but perhaps most significantly and ominously, this has expanded into a deeply and widely held belief that retribution is not only justified, but imperative.
Whoa . . . A lot of back and forth since I posted. Sorry for delay in response; busy yesterday. Rgio is correct that the point of my entire post is that claims of a double standard, a rigged justice system, or a weaponized DOJ are not defenses of Trump on the merits.
...
I was wondering where you were.... it was tough to watch this morning while sitting on my hands.
Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
Oct 30, 2025 - 9:38am
kurtster wrote:
you wrote :
The problem I have is that you often appear to be focused to the point of obsession with what you see as double standards. In doing so, you often are not defending alleged misconduct in and of itself, on the merits, but instead asserting your belief that someone else had done the same or worse without consequence. ... This smacks of two wrongs do make a right. A prime example of this is Trump seeking vindication by demanding the prosecution of his political enemies by the DOJ, claiming he is justified in doing so because Biden âweaponizedâ the DOJ against him and his supporters ... The same specious reasoning was applied to the prosecution of Trump for possession of classified documents. Trump supporters did not purport to defend him on the merits. Instead, they claimed a double standard because Biden was not being prosecuted for his possession of classified documents (neither was Pence).
I am having a hard time following your logic.
In the last paragraph, you cite the claim of a double standard because Biden was not prosecuted, along with Pence, for possession of classified documents and Trump was. With that are you saying that Trump should not have been prosecuted at all or are you saying that Biden should have been prosecuted along with Trump ? They all had classified documents, yet only one was prosecuted. Should no one have been prosecuted or all of them ? Help me out here.
Whoa . . . A lot of back and forth since I posted. Sorry for delay in response; busy yesterday. Rgio is correct that the point of my entire post is that claims of a double standard, a rigged justice system, or a weaponized DOJ are not defenses of Trump on the merits.
The point of that part of my post that you have questioned is that it is not a defense of Trump on the merits to allege that he was subject to a double standard when he was prosecuted for violations of laws relating to the possession of classified documents when Biden was not. At most, that could only surface in court as a motion to dismiss based on selective prosecution and, as explained by the Supreme Court: âA selective prosecution claim is not a defense on the merits to the criminal charge itself, but an independent assertion that the prosecutor has brought charges for reasons forbidden by the Constitution.â In sum, even if Trumpâs case had been dismissed because of selective prosecution, that would not mean that Trump was innocent. (Nor does the dismissal of the case because Judge Cannon found special counsel Jack Smith to be unlawfully appointed).
Prosecutions for unlawfully obtaining and retaining classified documents must prove elements of intentionality. Possession alone is not sufficient. The obtaining and retention of the classified documents must be knowing and willful. Trump willfully retained the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. That was not the case with Biden (or Pence). Therefore, it is not at all true, as you suggest, that both Trump and Biden should have been prosecuted or neither should have been. Determinations of whether to prosecute are made on a case-by-case basis by prosecutors based on an assessment of the facts, evidence, and law. As rgio has noted, Biden and Pence immediately returned the documents. Trump did not. That and other factors distinguished their cases from his.
As I explained in a post here at the time:
There is no question that Trump chose to retain the classified documents in defiance of a grand jury subpoena. We know this because his attorney, Evan Corcoran, subsequently testified to the grand jury that when he had attested to DOJ in June 2022 that the documents being turned over at that time were all of the documents responsive to the subpoena he had located after conducting a required due diligence search, he had only searched the documents in the storage room because he was unaware that other possibly responsive documents had been moved out of that storage room by aides at Trumpâs direction.
Corcoran only testified before the grand jury after the presiding judge ruled that the attorney-client privilege that normally would have barred such testimony by him had been pierced. Corcoran also had taken contemporaneous notes at the time that also were produced before the grand jury. Contemporaneous notes adds exponentially to the credibility of a witness. . If this goes to trial, Corcoran will be a virtually unassailable witness against Trump. The Trump defense will move to suppress Corcoranâs testimony by arguing that the prior judge had erred in ruling that the attorney-client privilege had been pierced. If that motion fails, Trump will be convicted based on Corcoranâs testimony and the surveillance tapes showing Walt Nauta moved boxes of documents from the storage room to Trumpâs office and residence.
In sum, this is not a witch hunt, and anyone making that claim is either totally ignorant of the facts/evidence or lying through their teeth.
And a follow-up conclusion of mine at the time that is still applicable today and dovetails with my post from the other day that started this discussion:
The only point of the claim (mantra) that this is a two-tiered system of justice especially rigged against Trump is to absolve he and his supporters from having to offer any defense of him on the merits.
Lastly, but perhaps most significantly and ominously, this has expanded into a deeply and widely held belief that retribution is not only justified, but imperative.
However, I do understand the need to get yourself through the night ...
Not dead yet. There are many news cycles left to fill with feckless activities that appease the bootlickers while he continues to grift for his family.
