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Kate Stone's avatar

This whole column makes little sense to me. First there’s the confession of the silly secret, then an intro of both sides-ism and then the premise, that our justice system is stronger than the whims of any one president. I think in many of the instances Gabe describes it’s much more likely that prosecution and conviction failed because no crime was committed, not because of the robustness of our systems. The same with Trump’s threats against his perceived enemies. Unlike Trump and his minions (Manafort, Bannon, Navarro, Stone, etc.) there’s no evidence whatsoever that people like Liz Cheney or Barack Obama committed crimes. And weaponizing the justice system can do a lot of damage without getting anywhere close to an indictment. Does anyone think Zuckerberg’s abandonment of content moderation and the millions in corrupt payments to Trump was just a coincidence? What about the chilling effects on free speech that are inevitable when people are threatened with the federal justice department coming down on them? Or having a housing official demand access to the personal mortgage filing data of anyone the president is upset with, in the hopes of finding some discrepancy? What about the fact that the president accused Lisa Cook of making false statements in financial documents, the exact thing that the president himself was convicted and found liable for? And shouldn’t there be some mention of the Supreme Court Court’s grant of almost complete immunity to the president for acts of wrongdoing or of the president’s repeated emergency declarations that he uses to try to take away people’s constitutional rights? What about the blanket pardoning of everyone who stormed the capitol to try to stop certification of the election, even the people who violently attacked law enforcement? Or the firing of so many experienced and dedicated U.S. attorneys and the installation of partisan hacks in their place? I believe all of this severely undermines faith in our justice system and actually shows just how much damage it can incur simply from the whims of one president. I’m glad that local grand juries in DC and LA acted reasonably. But that is a tiny fly in Trump’s ointment to weaponize Justice.

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Laura's avatar
11hEdited

Theodore Roosevelt famously said to “talk softly and carry a big stick,” which seems to be the opposite of what this administration is doing.

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