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A story about a pathetic man's downfall


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1 hour ago, Hookah Horns said:

Anyone who believes the POTUS can simply declassify info critical to national security and do whatever he wants with it with impunity is regarded. Classification isn't dispositive if it's related to national security. Espionage Act. 

 

have you met a trumper / maga / gqp in person or read their posts here ?

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1 hour ago, Hookah Horns said:

Anyone who believes the POTUS can simply declassify info critical to national security and do whatever he wants with it with impunity is regarded. Classification isn't dispositive if it's related to national security. Espionage Act. 

 

17 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

have you met a trumper / maga / gqp in person or read their posts here ?

 

tx 3 putt anticipates my response. I'll just add that it doesn't have to be believable; it just has to be inflammatory. Trumpists embrace being willfully obtuse.

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1 hour ago, Rimbo said:

Nonsense. There is a process for declassification. If it doesn't go through that process, it's not declassified, standing orders or no.

And judges, of all people, understand the criticality of following procedure.

There’s going to be a whole host of hypothetical good-faith arguments made on behalf of someone who had not acted in good faith in his adult life. As mentioned up-thread, our system has a weakness. It’s designed with the assumption that our political actors want to do the right thing. 
 

Hypothetical: The President is handed a TS/SCI document in the situation room.  He determines, at that moment, that the information is so vital, so important, the American people need to know NOW. Without a word, he gets up, walks out, and begins talking with his communication team about it and how to announce it, handing the document to them in an unclassified space. Can POTUS really not do that as the CINC and ultimate classification authority? 
 

This argument, or one very similar, will get trotted out. 

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45 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

There’s going to be a whole host of hypothetical good-faith arguments made on behalf of someone who had not acted in good faith in his adult life. As mentioned up-thread, our system has a weakness. It’s designed with the assumption that our political actors want to do the right thing. 
 

Hypothetical: The President is handed a TS/SCI document in the situation room.  He determines, at that moment, that the information is so vital, so important, the American people need to know NOW. Without a word, he gets up, walks out, and begins talking with his communication team about it and how to announce it, handing the document to them in an unclassified space. Can POTUS really not do that as the CINC and ultimate classification authority? 
 

This argument, or one very similar, will get trotted out. 

If Garland went this far as to raid the former president's home I would be shocked if they don't have proof of him either selling or offering to sell the stolen documents. This was the nail in the coffin raid not a fishing expedition. This is going to be the largest scandal in American history even eclipsing the half assed shitty coup attempt this same fuck orchestrated. 

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2 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

If Garland went this far as to raid the former president's home I would be shocked if they don't have proof of him either selling or offering to sell the stolen documents. This was the nail in the coffin raid not a fishing expedition. This is going to be the largest scandal in American history even eclipsing the coup attempt this same fuck orchestrated. 

I Hope Please GIF

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16 hours ago, Ghost of LL said:

There is simply no reason for it to retain those materials unless to sell it.

He's not intellectually curious.  Would I like to read up CONPLAN 8044-2018?  Sure.  But Donald Trump couldn't read his PDB; there's no chance he's taking thousands and thousands of pages to read simply because he finds them interesting.

Nor did he take the documents to just put on the mantle.  I could see him taking gifts that various foreign leaders had given him and putting them around Mar a Lago.  But this isn't that.  You don't take visitors down and show them the schematics for the W87-1.  Nobody would understand it, and anyway, what's the fucking point?  Everyone knows you were president and as such had access to the holiest of holies.  It doesn't impress anyone more to see that you still have it.

No--the only reason for him to retain these documents is for him to sell them.  We probably can't prove that he was trying to or that he was going to.  But I have no doubt that that was his intent.

He also had information on the French president, which reads like blackmail to me. So you’re not giving enough credit. 
 

Serious note, y’all remember the “spying on Merkel” affair?  Now the world knows that a former POTUS had juicy shit on Macron in a shoebox. That’s a great thing to explain to Allies.  This man harms our security out of office. 

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3 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

well he ran out of time during his long day of taking important calls and meeting with important people or whatever the fuck i refuse to look it up. 

I took the time. This is kind of interesting. This came out on Sunday, Jan 3, 2021 describing his schedule for the next day. After that he traveled to Georgia in a failed attempt to prop up the Republican candidates in their special election, losing the Senate to the Dems as a result. That Wednesday was the insurrection. Perhaps some of those calls and meetings had to do with plotting a coup.

 

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25 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

I took the time. This is kind of interesting. This came out on Sunday, Jan 3, 2021 describing his schedule for the next day. After that he traveled to Georgia in a failed attempt to prop up the Republican candidates in their special election, losing the Senate to the Dems as a result. That Wednesday was the insurrection. Perhaps some of those calls and meetings had to do with plotting a coup.

 

Yeah, no doubt it takes a lot of time to contact every world leader who despises us and see what they are willing to pay his sorry ass for information and whether they are willing to provide asylum.

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37 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Haha, I never asked, you're an 'Eater?

 

In a former life.

 

I did not go to Irvine btw, I almost did though. I went to CofC then UCSB.

 

8 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

You can specialize in Internal Combustion Engines?

At UC Irvine you could. Was only program in country at the time I believe. Not sure if it still exists with the ICE going the way of the dodo.

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Trump Will Release the Warrant

(When it’s good for Trump, and not before)

https://apple.news/AkW-BlzVfSWSCP9tvyQJb-g

 

Spoiler

 

AUGUST 10, 2022

 

Rarely in the annals of public controversy has so much certainty been expressed in the face of such great ignorance. With very few exceptions, the Republican Party has coalesced around Donald Trump and expressed the fierce conviction that the Department of Justice’s decision to serve a search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was a grotesque abuse of power.

There’s a notable problem with this conclusion: The American public still hasn’t seen the search warrant. Trump’s lawyers have it, and they’ve described it in vague terms, but they have not released it. One of his attorneys, Christina Bobb, appeared on Real America’s Voice (an obscure far-right media network) and said that the warrant sought “classified documents, evidence of a crime as far as classified documents go,” and “presidential records.”

This disclosure—which corroborates disclosures by anonymous sources in the immediate aftermath of the search—tells us little of real value. The term classified documents encompasses a wide range of material, from documents that are relatively benign to documents that, if released into the wrong hands, could inflict real damage to the national security of the United States.

During my military career, I handled thousands of classified documents. More than once, I read an email or reviewed a document and wondered why it was stamped secret. Overclassification is a real problem in the military, and we keep confidential many documents that the public could see without consequence.

FOLLOW THE ATLANTIC

At the same time, I’d review other documents and immediately understand the reason for caution. Their disclosure could compromise military operations and cost lives. And I didn’t have access to anything like the sensitive documents that the president sees.

In short, Americans shouldn’t really know what to think about the search. We can hope that the momentous decision to search the former president’s residence met appropriate legal standards and merited the DOJ’s historic intervention. We can fear that the warrant represented either a politicized attack or an unnecessary law-enforcement escalation of a politically perilous investigation. But we simply can’t know if the DOJ’s actions were appropriate until we see their legal and evidentiary support.

A copy of the warrant won’t resolve the dispute, but it can help the public understand what’s at stake. The DOJ doesn’t release warrant applications (and the present application is reportedly under seal), but it does release the warrant itself—to the owner of the property its agents search. And that warrant will typically detail both the items sought and the federal criminal statutes relevant to the search.

Trump isn’t just the former president; he’s the current front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination. He’s the once and potentially future president of the United States. And he holds in his hands a document that’s extraordinarily relevant to his fitness for office. A responsible politician would release that information to the public. Yet a “source close to Trump” told NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard, “No, we’re not releasing a copy of the warrant.”

The reason is obvious. Holding on to the warrant might be bad for the country—leaving us largely in the dark, fighting furiously over hypotheticals—but for now it’s very good for Trump.

To understand why, it’s important to understand how Trumpism thrives. Trumpism as a cultural and political movement depends a great deal on both the extraordinary loyalty of his supporters and the overreaction of his opponents. Each phenomenon feeds on the other.

The loyalty was apparent from the moment Trump confirmed the search. Without knowing anything about the reason for the search, the right exploded with rage. Trump didn’t have to rebut any allegations, excuse any embarrassing revelations, or even do anything more than express outrage at his alleged mistreatment; the right still rallied to his side.

Why release a document that might complicate the matter? As that same source told Hillyard, there is a “complete circling of the wagons” around Trump. He doesn’t need to be transparent to preserve his base.

At the same time, the refusal to release the warrant feeds frenzied speculation on the left. What is he hiding? How bad is it? That speculation, perversely enough, is good for Trump. Right-wing media outlets pick the most improbable allegations and use them to reaffirm the Republican contention that the left is unhinged. And the wilder they perceive the left to be, the more Trump’s supporters on the right see him as the only leader truly prepared to fight the enemies of the republic.

David Frum: Stuck with Trump

Make no mistake, recent examples of irresponsible speculation abound. The infamous Steele dossier, for example, led countless Americans to believe that Trump was a fully compromised Russian asset. The truth—that Trump campaign officials and allies had improper contacts with Russian officials and assets, and lied about those contacts—was bad, but it was never as lurid as the dossier claimed.

The result was a right-wing public that was inoculated against even the worst revelations in the Mueller report. If they weren’t as bad as the wildest allegations had implied, then—in their minds—Trump had won.

A similar dynamic may be unfolding now. Trump doesn’t have to release the warrant to maintain his support. The GOP is standing by his side. In fact, it’s locked arms so emphatically that it might cause possible Republican presidential contenders to think twice before deciding to challenge Trump.

At some point, Trump could still release the warrant, even if the GOP doesn’t waver. As bitter past experience dictates, conduct that is unacceptable but not quite as severe as Trump’s loudest critics had speculated is seen by his partisans as a complete exoneration. If the warrant rebuts the worst allegations, Trump wins.

We’re left with a grim bottom line: For Trump to be transparent is in the public interest, but that’s not his primary concern. He might let us see the warrant, but not when it’s good for the country. He’ll let us see it when it’s good for Trump, because “good for Trump” is the only standard that truly matters for the man and the cult he has made.

 

FOLLOW

 

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8 hours ago, The Dog said:

And a message from NAFO's representative in the US Congress:

 

...

3. Failed to return documents when subpoenaed.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is the DOJ's investigation is focused on laws that are completely independent of whether a document is classified or not. It's a moot point. 

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What a shame it would be if a snapshot or 2 of something Trump purloined off to his cabana was on Alex Jones' phone.

Also, since odds are someone snitched on the files and their location, wonder if they saw him destroy (another crime) documents at Mar A Lago as well?

 

 

 

 

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18 minutes ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

...

3. Failed to return documents when subpoenaed.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is the DOJ's investigation is focused on laws that are completely independent of whether a document is classified or not. It's a moot point. 

I think it’s still important. Trump uses his talents to make public opinion influence legal niceties and this is important outside the courtroom in any event. 
 

“taking classified documents” is something GED holders can get their heads around as wrong. That’s what I think about Watergate.  Big sprawling story, but also had “president was in on a burglary” was a simple enough idea that the whole country understood its wrongness. 

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1 hour ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

...

3. Failed to return documents when subpoenaed.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is the DOJ's investigation is focused on laws that are completely independent of whether a document is classified or not. It's a moot point. 

None of the offenses listed in the search warrant require the documents to be classified.

I suppose we should consider the unpleasant possibility that they are considering persons other than Trump for violation of those statutes.

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8 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

None of the offenses listed in the search warrant require the documents to be classified.

I suppose we should consider the unpleasant possibility that they are considering persons other than Trump for violation of those statutes.

I mean, isn't that how you take down a mob boss? Keep squeezing his toadies until he either runs out of support to maintain power, or until enough of them flip to take him down. 

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7 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

There’s going to be a whole host of hypothetical good-faith arguments made on behalf of someone who had not acted in good faith in his adult life. As mentioned up-thread, our system has a weakness. It’s designed with the assumption that our political actors want to do the right thing. 
 

Hypothetical: The President is handed a TS/SCI document in the situation room.  He determines, at that moment, that the information is so vital, so important, the American people need to know NOW. Without a word, he gets up, walks out, and begins talking with his communication team about it and how to announce it, handing the document to them in an unclassified space. Can POTUS really not do that as the CINC and ultimate classification authority? 
 

This argument, or one very similar, will get trotted out. 

This is the same judicial system that usurped the president's power over immigration and delegated it to some Yokel in Victoria, Texas.

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3 hours ago, Horn Dog said:

Trump Will Release the Warrant

(When it’s good for Trump, and not before)

https://apple.news/AkW-BlzVfSWSCP9tvyQJb-g

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

AUGUST 10, 2022

 

Rarely in the annals of public controversy has so much certainty been expressed in the face of such great ignorance. With very few exceptions, the Republican Party has coalesced around Donald Trump and expressed the fierce conviction that the Department of Justice’s decision to serve a search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was a grotesque abuse of power.

There’s a notable problem with this conclusion: The American public still hasn’t seen the search warrant. Trump’s lawyers have it, and they’ve described it in vague terms, but they have not released it. One of his attorneys, Christina Bobb, appeared on Real America’s Voice (an obscure far-right media network) and said that the warrant sought “classified documents, evidence of a crime as far as classified documents go,” and “presidential records.”

This disclosure—which corroborates disclosures by anonymous sources in the immediate aftermath of the search—tells us little of real value. The term classified documents encompasses a wide range of material, from documents that are relatively benign to documents that, if released into the wrong hands, could inflict real damage to the national security of the United States.

During my military career, I handled thousands of classified documents. More than once, I read an email or reviewed a document and wondered why it was stamped secret. Overclassification is a real problem in the military, and we keep confidential many documents that the public could see without consequence.

FOLLOW THE ATLANTIC

At the same time, I’d review other documents and immediately understand the reason for caution. Their disclosure could compromise military operations and cost lives. And I didn’t have access to anything like the sensitive documents that the president sees.

In short, Americans shouldn’t really know what to think about the search. We can hope that the momentous decision to search the former president’s residence met appropriate legal standards and merited the DOJ’s historic intervention. We can fear that the warrant represented either a politicized attack or an unnecessary law-enforcement escalation of a politically perilous investigation. But we simply can’t know if the DOJ’s actions were appropriate until we see their legal and evidentiary support.

A copy of the warrant won’t resolve the dispute, but it can help the public understand what’s at stake. The DOJ doesn’t release warrant applications (and the present application is reportedly under seal), but it does release the warrant itself—to the owner of the property its agents search. And that warrant will typically detail both the items sought and the federal criminal statutes relevant to the search.

Trump isn’t just the former president; he’s the current front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination. He’s the once and potentially future president of the United States. And he holds in his hands a document that’s extraordinarily relevant to his fitness for office. A responsible politician would release that information to the public. Yet a “source close to Trump” told NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard, “No, we’re not releasing a copy of the warrant.”

The reason is obvious. Holding on to the warrant might be bad for the country—leaving us largely in the dark, fighting furiously over hypotheticals—but for now it’s very good for Trump.

To understand why, it’s important to understand how Trumpism thrives. Trumpism as a cultural and political movement depends a great deal on both the extraordinary loyalty of his supporters and the overreaction of his opponents. Each phenomenon feeds on the other.

The loyalty was apparent from the moment Trump confirmed the search. Without knowing anything about the reason for the search, the right exploded with rage. Trump didn’t have to rebut any allegations, excuse any embarrassing revelations, or even do anything more than express outrage at his alleged mistreatment; the right still rallied to his side.

Why release a document that might complicate the matter? As that same source told Hillyard, there is a “complete circling of the wagons” around Trump. He doesn’t need to be transparent to preserve his base.

At the same time, the refusal to release the warrant feeds frenzied speculation on the left. What is he hiding? How bad is it? That speculation, perversely enough, is good for Trump. Right-wing media outlets pick the most improbable allegations and use them to reaffirm the Republican contention that the left is unhinged. And the wilder they perceive the left to be, the more Trump’s supporters on the right see him as the only leader truly prepared to fight the enemies of the republic.

David Frum: Stuck with Trump

Make no mistake, recent examples of irresponsible speculation abound. The infamous Steele dossier, for example, led countless Americans to believe that Trump was a fully compromised Russian asset. The truth—that Trump campaign officials and allies had improper contacts with Russian officials and assets, and lied about those contacts—was bad, but it was never as lurid as the dossier claimed.

The result was a right-wing public that was inoculated against even the worst revelations in the Mueller report. If they weren’t as bad as the wildest allegations had implied, then—in their minds—Trump had won.

A similar dynamic may be unfolding now. Trump doesn’t have to release the warrant to maintain his support. The GOP is standing by his side. In fact, it’s locked arms so emphatically that it might cause possible Republican presidential contenders to think twice before deciding to challenge Trump.

At some point, Trump could still release the warrant, even if the GOP doesn’t waver. As bitter past experience dictates, conduct that is unacceptable but not quite as severe as Trump’s loudest critics had speculated is seen by his partisans as a complete exoneration. If the warrant rebuts the worst allegations, Trump wins.

We’re left with a grim bottom line: For Trump to be transparent is in the public interest, but that’s not his primary concern. He might let us see the warrant, but not when it’s good for the country. He’ll let us see it when it’s good for Trump, because “good for Trump” is the only standard that truly matters for the man and the cult he has made.

 

FOLLOW

 

2 weeks?

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3 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

Good thread 

 

 

2 hours ago, Chopper said:

If you've seen any of the "instant declassification" bullshit and the operation crossfire stuff the trumptards are bleating about since last night, this (long-ish) thread is worthwhile.

 

I don't even need to read these to know they are completely full of shit.  This is common sense stuff.  Much like the "can a president pardon him/herself?" question.  It's fucking dumb.  If this were by the book, then we are the dumbest country in the history of the world.  

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1 hour ago, BehoId, The Underminer! said:

I think it’s still important. Trump uses his talents to make public opinion influence legal niceties and this is important outside the courtroom in any event. 
 

“taking classified documents” is something GED holders can get their heads around as wrong. That’s what I think about Watergate.  Big sprawling story, but also had “president was in on a burglary” was a simple enough idea that the whole country understood its wrongness. 

Those same "GED holders" should also be able to get their head around "the president lost an election and attempted to destroy our democratic traditions by conspiring to overturn the election" But nope, they remain 100% behind Trump. The GOP in Nixon's day wasn't a cult devoted to Nixon. Team Trump will simply create some far fetched explanation that proves the only the thing Trump is guilty of is trying to make America great again, and every one of those fucking rubes will rally behind him. This latest circus, while bad, pales in comparison to the election bullshit and January 6th insurrection. He aint losing his base over this bullshit. 

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2 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

I don't even need to read these to know they are completely full of shit.  This is common sense stuff. 

Okay, boomer.

But seriously, yes, one can intuitively know that what they're saying is bullshit, but I think it pays to understand the details of what they're saying and why they're full of shit.

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7 hours ago, Hermanator said:

If Garland went this far as to raid the former president's home I would be shocked if they don't have proof of him either selling or offering to sell the stolen documents. This was the nail in the coffin raid not a fishing expedition. This is going to be the largest scandal in American history even eclipsing the half assed shitty coup attempt this same fuck orchestrated. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abscam
 

Quote

Abscam (sometimes written ABSCAM) was an FBI  sting operation in the late 1970s and early 1980s that led to the convictions of seven members of the United States Congress, among others, for bribery and corruption. The two-year investigation initially targeted trafficking in stolen property and corruption of prominent businessmen, but later evolved into a public corruptioninvestigation. The FBI was aided by the Justice Department and a convicted con-man, Mel Weinberg, in videotaping politicians accepting bribes from a fictitious Arabian company in return for various political favors.

 

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8 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

There’s going to be a whole host of hypothetical good-faith arguments made on behalf of someone who had not acted in good faith in his adult life. As mentioned up-thread, our system has a weakness. It’s designed with the assumption that our political actors want to do the right thing. 
 

Hypothetical: The President is handed a TS/SCI document in the situation room.  He determines, at that moment, that the information is so vital, so important, the American people need to know NOW. Without a word, he gets up, walks out, and begins talking with his communication team about it and how to announce it, handing the document to them in an unclassified space. Can POTUS really not do that as the CINC and ultimate classification authority? 
 

This argument, or one very similar, will get trotted out. 

Correct: He really cannot do that as the CINC, because he's NOT the ultimate classification authority for nuclear secrets. Those are governed by law, not by POTUS. And even as the "ultimate authority," he must still follow the process. That is also governed by law. That's what rule of law means.

This is a critical point, perhaps the critical point of our lifetimes, where what happens next determines the kind of country we really are. If Trump doesn't end up in jail for this, then our democracy and supposed values were all a sham.

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7 hours ago, Hermanator said:

If Garland went this far as to raid the former president's home I would be shocked if they don't have proof of him either selling or offering to sell the stolen documents. This was the nail in the coffin raid not a fishing expedition. This is going to be the largest scandal in American history even eclipsing the half assed shitty coup attempt this same fuck orchestrated. 

Yep. Do we not think that the NSA listens to discussions with heads of other countries, or their representatives?

Perhaps the feds will be hesitant to publicly disclose this info but it doesn't mean that it won't be put in front of Trump and dare him to see it released.

 

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1 hour ago, Chopper said:

I think it pays to understand the details of what they're saying and why they're full of shit.

Because it's their default state of being?

1 hour ago, Blotto said:

Those same "GED holders" should also be able to get their head around "the president lost an election and attempted to destroy our democratic traditions by conspiring to overturn the election" But nope, they remain 100% behind Trump. The GOP in Nixon's day wasn't a cult devoted to Nixon. Team Trump will simply create some far fetched explanation that proves the only the thing Trump is guilty of is trying to make America great again, and every one of those fucking rubes will rally behind him. This latest circus, while bad, pales in comparison to the election bullshit and January 6th insurrection. He aint losing his base over this bullshit. 

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  • Bozo_Casanova changed the title to Poll: President Trump's Major Announcement


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