Jarathen: There is an assumption this would make him sad.

With regard to former Sec. of Defense Mark Esper’s chilling account that then-President Trump wanted troops confronting protestors in Lafayette Park to “shoot them in the legs”, I’d love to hear someone ask the follow up question whether Trump understood that people would fall & get hit in torso.

To be clear, I understand that leg wounds can easily be fatal. I just would love to hear whether Trump understood “shoot them in the legs” was an impossible-to-achieve, idiotic request when dealing massed troops confronting a mass protest from a distance.

I don’t think he gave two shits whether protestors died.

I think “shoot them in the legs” was him trying to create plausible deniability, because he thought he could’ve been prosecuted for saying “shoot them in the head”

But now Chief Justice Roberts has (to his everlasting shame) enabled fascism by taking away the prospect for criminal prosecution. I hope Roberts receives total consciousness on his deathbed and goes to his grave knowing that his entire legacy will be as a minion of evil.

There is an assumption this would make him sad.

I am confident, based on knowing many former Supreme Court clerks, that Roberts thinks a great deal about his legacy.

I had always hoped this would be what saved us. This, and his giant ego.

so did his legacy just slip his mind last week? or is trump v. us how he wants to be remembered?

I think he is a COWARD who was afraid the right would come after him if he stood up to Trump. I think he thinks his legacy will be adjudicated by the Heritage/Cato/Federalist Societies. I think he would be horrified to learn he will be remembered as the moral equivalent of Roland Freisler.

Amazon.com: Hitler's Executioner: Roland Freisler, President of the Nazi People's Court: 9781473889392: Ortner, Helmut: Bookswww.amazon.com Amazon.com: Hitler's Executioner: Roland Freisler, President of the Nazi People's Court: 9781473889392: Ortner, Helmut: Books

Who will be our white rose?

We have to be the people we have been waiting for. No one else is coming to save us.

He has a lifetime appointment. They did not come after him when his court rejected all those election lawsuits. So I am not sure he is a coward as much as he is complicit. I doubt if he worries about his legacy anymore especially when the legacy writers, as you point out, are his people.

[sighs.] i thought the whole point of lifetime appointment was that you can do what's right and not what's popular because you won't ever have to run for office. you don't have to be afraid of people coming after you. [sighs again and pinches the bridge of his nose.]

Turns out, it also enables doing what’s *wrong* and unpopular. Whoops! Fortunately, they thought of that and we can impeach a justices for not maintaining “good behavior”. So if we have a functioning legislature, we should be fine. Whoops!

Coward is right. I think had he split with the majority we would've had a somehow worse ruling written by Alito, Gorsuch, or Kavanaugh. Had ACB fully split with the majority, Roberts would have gone with her so he could write that opinion and soften the impact on Trump as much as possible.

IMO he’s more like Freisler’s colleagues on the People’s Court (they were not prosecuted after the war, it must be said). Freisler himself was an entirely different thing-fanatical, psychologically unstable showman of the courtroom.

He’s an arrogant smug prick who is convinced that he can get away with giving Trump a free pass. He thinks we’re all fucking morons and rubes, and the DC media is doing its damndest to prove him right

Either that or he's the guy @mattbors.bsky.social drew this about. He definitely exudes "you made me do this by noticing what I was doing"

Right. From Roberts’ perspective, he’s killing it, legacy-wise. FedSoc, the Heritage Foundation, Claremont, all the right wing orgs will herald him as the architect of the right wing takeback of the country. Destroy the Civil Rights Act, the New Deal, everything up to Dred Scott. He’s a hero.

He’s a poor thinker, then.

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