Oh, I know.
Super-narc - someone who knows they're a narcissist, and wants to be the best darned narcissist since, like, ever!
The Trump Card...
- Thread starter muttly
- Start date
With Trump himself now tweeting about his power to pardon, it's no longer an unnamed source or fake news item. Would Trump be wise to use this power?
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I may have missed it, but I don't think Trump Tweeted anything about him pardononing himself, so that aspect of it is still a little iffy in the Fake News department. Makes for a great headline, though, same as it did for Nixon, Clinton, Bush Jr and Obama, all of whom had articles written about that very thing. For example, waterboarding has been a prosecutable crime in the US for more than 100 years, but a Justice Department under the Executive Branch can be told which crimes to ignore and which ones to pursue. The possibility that a new Obama administration could reach different conclusions led to the speculation that Bush might pardon everyone involved in the torture, including himself.
A president pardoning himself is a gray area in the law, because it's never been done and tested. It's the same as indicting a sitting president. In our history every legal argument that has been made in favor of indicting a sitting president has been made by, not all that surprisingly, someone who wants to indict a sitting president (Leon Jaworski, Kenneth Starr). That's the inherent problem with a special counsel or special prosecutor, they have the freedom, if not the mandate, to pursue political vendettas that ordinary prosecutors would have dropped. While an indictment of a sitting president doesn't violate the Constitution at all, it does violate the Constitution's structual principles regarding the practicalities of governance, i.e., an indictment and trial would place an undue burden on the president's ability to carry out his duties under the Constitution. It could be used as an end around method of a coup d'etat. It's probably best we don't open that Pandora's Box.
As for the president pardoning himself, I think it would all but guarantee an impeachment, because of the implied admission of guilt that comes along with it. There was talk at the time of Clinton, Bush and Obama all granting themselves a pardon on the way out the door when threat of impeachment was no longer an issue. I do think that if Trump or any other president granted themselves a pardon, and it was tested in court, and you know it would be, the Supreme Court would almost certainly go with a basic principle of the law in that one cannot be a judge in their own case, and a self-pardon is precisely that. Also, a presidential self-pardon, if given to obstruct justice, it still obstruction of justice, so the self-pardon could be construed as a crime in and of itself. I think if a president wants to pardon himself, he needs to leave that up to someone else, his successor.
Certainly at the national level. Local politics, mayors, dog catchers, county clerks, maybe not so much. But Congress and the White House? You betcha.
Dog catcher?........ lol.......
Now there's a phrase I haven't heard in a month of sundays!
One of my favorite bits of trivia is, before he was Elvis Presley's manager, Col Tom Parker was elected Dog Catcher in Tampa in 1941.
Another similarity he shares with Jesse "Da Brain" Ventura.
I get the impeachment part (no man is above the law). The admission of guilt idea is a new insight to me. I never thought about that before reading it here. It never occurred to me that a self-pardon might be widely perceived as an admission of guilt, even if the pardon was for unspecified crimes. Instead of eliminating the investigations that are now underway, a self-pardon may inspire greater interest in them and fuel them all the more.
While a pardon might exempt Trump and others from future prosecution, it would remain in the public interest to learn what is going on. Trump might argue that he is granting pardons to end baseless, distracting witch hunts so the country could move forward. But the likely effect would be an intensified assumption that Trump is guilty of something against the public interest and an intensified desire to find out what it is.
Narcissistic characteristics can be found in every human being alive. The degree to which they manifest varies from person to person. While it is true to say Ventura exhibits narcissistic behaviors, it is not equivalent to Trump. "Super-narcissist" is not a formal term of art. I made it up and I use it to express my belief that Trump's narcissism is off the charts. Knowing Ventura well, I do not characterize him as a super-narcissist.
Yeah, in the general sense, a pardon is nothing more than a kind indulgence that is asked for and usually given for some minor offense or discourtesy, or for the tolerance of some minor distraction or inconvenience. Fart at the dinner table and it's "Pardon me! I'm sorry." Stop someone on the street and ask, "Pardon the interruption, but how do you get to Carnegie Hall?"
But in the legal sense a pardon is literally the release from the legal penalties of a criminal offense. Even if the pardon is a blanket pardon for unspecified crimes, they're still crimes. A self-pardon would imply guilt, a virtual confession. And because the Constitution explicitly exempts impeachment from a pardon, an admission of guilt with a self-pardon would mean articles of impeachment and almost certainly the removal from office.
I can't imagine even the most ardent of Trump supporters willing to give a pass on such an admission of guilt. While a self-pardon may keep Trump out of prison (if such a thing were allowed to stand), the county simply cannot have someone in the White House blatantly committing and then absolving themselves of crimes. Impeachment proceedings wouldn't even take a week, and the vote wouldn't be close.
Perhaps so. When musing aloud about his power to pardon, perhaps he's doing it with his family in mind. But there too would be an implied admission of guilt. Using the powers of the presidency to pardon a family member would be problematic also.
Or, as is actually the case, he's musing aloud about his power to pardon in direct response to media reports that cite the ubiquitous and ever chatty unnamed sources that he asked his legal team about his power to pardon individuals including himself. It's not like he just started tweeting about pardons out of the blue. But even if we take the unnamed sources at unseen face value that the president did talk to the White House Counsel about presidential pardons, it's hardly noteworthy, newsworthy, or unusual, since that's one of the explicit functions of the White House Counsel.
The fact that he inquired about the legalities of his pardon power is hardly evidence that he's thinking about pardoning someone specifically, regardless of how much the press wishes to speculate that it does. He could be considering someone specific, or no one at all, but in the age of New McCarthyism, witch hunts, and wide-net fishing expeditions it's probably prudent to familiarize himself with the affected legal issues of the executive office.
It might be problematic, but granting a pardon to someone else is not an admission of guilt. You can't admit to someone else's guilt, only your own.
The new McCarthyism. That is what we are seeing here. But this time it is mostly Dems and their cohorts in the news media( many of them Fake News) who are 'all in' and hyperventilating about Russia. Along with the never Trumpers like Clapper and Brennan in the Intelligence Community who have pretty much joined the Resistance Movement against Trump.
In the 1950's wasn't it the news media acting as the watchdog from the Red hysteria ?
Their preferred presidential candidate lost so now they flipped. Flipped sides and flipped their minds. I heard an analyst say a while back that the Russian Government has always tried to meddle in U.S elections. Ok, so 4 years ago I'm assuming that the Russians wanted Obama to win reelection over Romney, who had some harsh words about them in one of the debates. Obama also was overheard saying to Medvedev that his administration would have more flexibility after the election.
Where were all the collusion and attempt at meddling stories 4 years ago if this has always gone on? Not a peep from the Fake News media back then. But now this Russian story is the biggest thing eva. For realsy.
In the 1950's wasn't it the news media acting as the watchdog from the Red hysteria ?
Their preferred presidential candidate lost so now they flipped. Flipped sides and flipped their minds. I heard an analyst say a while back that the Russian Government has always tried to meddle in U.S elections. Ok, so 4 years ago I'm assuming that the Russians wanted Obama to win reelection over Romney, who had some harsh words about them in one of the debates. Obama also was overheard saying to Medvedev that his administration would have more flexibility after the election.
Where were all the collusion and attempt at meddling stories 4 years ago if this has always gone on? Not a peep from the Fake News media back then. But now this Russian story is the biggest thing eva. For realsy.
You sound very confident about that and I believe you.
Did you copyright that term?
I don't know Ventura or Trump at all but I agree with you when it comes to narcissism, THE DONALD probably has THE BRAIN beat. When it comes to paranoia I think Jesse has got that locked. But not by much.
How about A Big League Narcissist?
Incidentally, the term Super-narc, or Super-narcissist has been a listing in the Urban Dictionary for several years.
And speaking of Tapper, it's on YouTube, his Sunday morning interview with Scaramucci. It signals a whole new world in how the White House communications team will be interacting with the press.
Scaramucci is combative, but not hostile. And he refuses to be baited with loaded questions. Trapper tried to nail him to the wall, but Scaramucci wasn't having any of it. By the end Jake had to bow and shake his head and smile in defeat.
At several points in the interview Scaramucci could have easily become defensive and hostile, but instead the tenor was along the lines of, 'Look, Jake, you're a partisan hack. I know it, you know it, everybody knows it, so let's not dwell on that. Let's talk about job growth and the economy instead.'
And speaking of Tapper, it's on YouTube, his Sunday morning interview with Scaramucci. It signals a whole new world in how the White House communications team will be interacting with the press.
Scaramucci is combative, but not hostile. And he refuses to be baited with loaded questions. Trapper tried to nail him to the wall, but Scaramucci wasn't having any of it. By the end Jake had to bow and shake his head and smile in defeat.
At several points in the interview Scaramucci could have easily become defensive and hostile, but instead the tenor was along the lines of, 'Look, Jake, you're a partisan hack. I know it, you know it, everybody knows it, so let's not dwell on that. Let's talk about job growth and the economy instead.'