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 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, he absolutely knows that if they “shot them in the legs” they’d be killing people. That’s what he wanted, he just didn’t think he could get away with saying that out loud.
After the immunity ruling, he knows he *can* get away with saying it out loud
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.
Let me be clear. In my opinion, John Roberts has joined Roger Taney (Dred Scott - slavery) as a Chief Justice who will be remembered as an evil man. Not just wrong, but worthy of eternal condemnation for trying to destroy the Republic.
Before the decision came down, I actually thought he & Barrett would join Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson in saying "Of course the President CANNOT order political rivals killed, detained w/out charge, etc." In Trump v Hawaii, Roberts led the opinion that rejected the Korematsu decision. Just unreal.
Post-presidential immunity ruling, what is the likelihood of SCOTUS finding a way to select the next president itself? This seemed like a marginal possibility before, but now it's hard for me to imagine they wouldn't leap at the opportunity, no matter how flimsy their argument.
Which is damned impressive considering the reputation he'd been cultivating as an institutionalist trying to tame the most extreme impulses of some of his conservative colleagues. Then he decides to just leap into this shit show with both feet and lead the charge.
But I'm a big fan of your optimism that things will recover enough in the future for our grandchildren to look back on Roberts with the same perspective that we look back on Taney.
No Democratic President going forward should allow their oath of office to be administered by John Roberts. The next oath should be administered by someone like Capital Police Officer Eugene Goodman or a woman who has been victimized by the Dobbs decision.
Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court in October 2018, creating the conservative majority. It took them less than six years to demolish the Constitution to make way for a king.
Conservatives can't be trusted with power. Ever.
I think this is true, too. Ex-heads of state often see rising popularity long after leaving office, but their policies do not last and their sins fade with time. US jurisprudence generally *lasts a long time* and Roberts will be remembered as the architect of that pain for a generation or two.
That is absolutely positively correct. Until last week I considered Roberts to be in a tie with Taney. Roberts successfully proved this past week he assuredly deserves the title of worst Chief Justice of the United States in American history.
I just hope that he lives long enough (not on the court, ideally) to see his name dragged into the mud and shit where it belongs.
I hope he gets to see how the world eventually comes to view his court
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.
I think he, like a lot of folks like him who "pray on the streetcorners", don't actually care. He's a nihilist and doesn't actually care what his legacy is - Bill Barr had an interview about that where he basically said, "Yeah, and I'll be dead so I won't care what they say after I'm gone."
He didn’t understand. A lot of lay people who don’t understand firearms think that shooting to wound is a thing, that it works, and is something that cops and the military can do at will.
I remember how reason.com jumped all over the "shoot them in the legs" rhetoric.
That Robby Soave ("30 under 30" fame) never misses a beat. Unless he has to point at a Republican.
Yesper waited a couple of years, so maybe Monsieur Soave will get around to it in 2037.
I don't think he's actually capable of understanding anything, not in the sense most people are.
He wanted them shot in the leg because he knows he can't say "murder them all." The actual connection between what he asked for vs what would happen just isn't made.
Dude wanted us on Mars by 2020.
