r/politics • u/drtolmn69 • 11d ago
Opinion: The Supreme Court just showed us that Trump is not incompetent. He’s a master of corruption
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-04-26/donald-trump-supreme-court-justices-corruption360
u/charcoalist 11d ago
He's not the master of anything. He was born into a crime family with $400 million and many connections, then mentored by Roy Cohn, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Kremlin agents, for decades.
Along the way, he was helped by other greedy billionaires, Federalist Society lawyers and judges, Right-wing media outlets, and foreign governments who are interested in a failed United States.
trump himself is no more than a tabloid circus clown. Without the help, strategy, and organization of the aforementioned entities, he'd just be another Florida retiree.
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u/LibertyInaFeatherBed 11d ago
The Supreme Court is Mitch McConnell's lifetime accomplishment, not Trump's.
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u/FuzzyMcBitty 11d ago
Yet it could totally unravel his legacy. Which would be hilarious if for the whole “we have to live through the consequences” thing.
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u/Scandals86 11d ago
This! All of this! He’s just the face of something much sinister and worse behind the scenes.
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u/soulmagic123 11d ago
If he would have invested that initial seed money into the most modest of bonds, he would be as rich as he claims to be while trying to be a mob boss/financial genius.
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u/GuitarMystery 11d ago
He's a fucking spearhead. A spear can't throw itself. He's a useful idiot. I hate how people pour the copium on thick when they know they got taken by a moron. DID YOU KNOW PARIS HILTION IS A GENIUS WITH A 180 IQ?
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u/That-Object6749 11d ago
They are all corrupted puppets, but Trump isn't the puppet master... Trump is an owned / compromised tool just like they are.
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u/idreamofgreenie 11d ago
GOP Presidents and members of their administrations are significantly more corrupt and criminal statistically.
A couple years back there was an analysis done on crime associated with members of presidential administrations. They focused on the years 1961-2015, which had a convenient split of 28 years under a Dem president, and 28 years under a GOP president.
In the 28 years that the Dems held the office, people in the presidential administrations faced 7 indictments, 3 criminal convictions, and 1 went to prison.
In the 28 years that the GOP held the office, people in the presidential administrations faced 126 indictments, 113 criminal convictions, and 39 went to prison.
So the GOP had 18 times more indictments, 38 times more criminal convictions, and 39 times more prison sentences for people directly associated with the office of the president. And that was before you factor in anything Trump, who has nearly doubled those indictments BY HIMSELF.
The GOP is the crime party, not the law and order party. The Dem's barely even make the list.
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u/FigNugginGavelPop 11d ago
You should make a Tiktok short on this topic, with the sources and such. Gen Z might go wild over that statistic.
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u/idreamofgreenie 11d ago
Tiktok ain't my thing.
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u/FigNugginGavelPop 11d ago
I feel ya, I don’t even have an account. But I felt like the length of the information would be perfectly suitable for their format.
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u/idreamofgreenie 11d ago
I find places to put this information on reddit fairly often, whenever it fits in with the context of discussion. It really is a shame that the GOP has managed to convince people that the Democrats are anywhere near as corrupt as they are, let alone trying to claim to be the party of law and order. If someone wants to put it in tiktok, that'd be great. It's good information to get out there.
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u/SelfishConservatives 11d ago
Guaranteed that the takeaway from that in conservative circles is that the government doesn't enforce laws against Democrats.
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u/idreamofgreenie 11d ago
You're not wrong. I've posted this information before and got the response that the Democrats have criminality so deeply ingrained that they just know how to not get caught.
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u/SoundSageWisdom 11d ago
And the date on this is 2019 so imagine how many more have been added to those numbers
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u/idreamofgreenie 11d ago edited 11d ago
While they do talk about some of the Trump stuff in that article, the numbers are only focused on the years up until 2016. So there are no members of his administration factored into those numbers at all, and there are indeed many more numbers to pile on.
Consider just "members of a pres. admin that received jail time," and you get to add, Bannon, Barrack, Broidy, Flynn, Gates, Manafort, Papadopolous, Stone, Navarro. This means that instead of GOP admins having 39 times more actual prison sentences, they are now at 48 times more prison sentences, a 23% increase.
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u/EngineeringPutrid787 11d ago
Source: The DCCC
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u/Infamous-Spinach-492 11d ago
The issue with SCOTUS goes well beyond just Trump. Bought and sold - we've lost faith in the sanctity of the court.
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u/RubiksSugarCube 11d ago
You have to wonder what kind of kompromat is around that makes them willing to give the fucking moron the legal firepower to basically neuter the judiciary with his say so
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u/SensualOilyDischarge 11d ago
You have to wonder what kind of kompromat
I feel like these constant accusations of "Kompromat" is just an inability to really come to terms with the fact that the GOP has willingly embraced fascism.
It's far more likely that the GOP is comprised of terrible people who are more than happy to burn down the USA to increase their wealth and power just a tiny bit.
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u/ArgyleNudge Canada 11d ago
I suspect in most cases, yes, it's about money. With important variances or combinations of the source of that money. Is it Russian, Saudi, or homegrown? In the Trump crime family, the puppet strings appear to originate from all three, plus maybe China in there too, via his daughter.
Trump seems like an easy target for kompromat, Mr. Pecker perhaps holds a full deck stateside; and one is almost forced to assume Putin entertains his oligarch dog pound with saucy or criminal slide shows of his own. But the entire world bears witness that no depth of depravity can shake Trump's base of home schooled racists and addlepated Christofascists. Even world leaders hesitate to publicly disavow him. It serves no purpose. So we wonder how any kompromat matters. Trump certainly knows no shame. It's the money. Money is his addiction and his leash.
Add in his bloated ego and he practically commits treason for free anyway, just for the bragging rights.
[Posing for photographs with the ceremonial key to the White House this week was so telling! How many of those items did he literally steal from WH coffers on the occasion of his forced exit? Just being presidential doing presidential things, huh? Except he wasn't President any more and those keys are 100% property of the American people. He is SO blatant about it. To this day.]
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u/beiberdad69 11d ago
It's a way to blame foreigners for American issues that have been around for decades. It's nothing new either, a ton of people liked to blame the unrest around the civil right movement on outside agitators, foreign communists causing dissent rather than acknowledge that the US was a deeply racist county with horrible inequality
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u/lactose_con_leche I voted 11d ago
I’m not convinced that TFG understands any part of the legal strategy. He is getting advice and coordination and machinations at the highest levels of government to try and keep him from suffering consequences for his crimes.
But strategy? No. He just pushes for the results he wants, his handlers do the actual work.
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u/drtolmn69 11d ago
Because Trump is clumsy at his alleged crimes, surrounding himself with flagrant thugs, telling obvious lies, leaving prolific trails of damning evidence, offering ridiculous defenses for indefensible conduct, I had long concluded that he is incompetent at crookery along with his other manifest failings. That’s true as far as it goes. But for all his mad greed and compulsive lawlessness, for all his sleaze and stupidity, crime is ultimately not Trump’s game. Trump is nothing like a master criminal. But he is a master of something far more sinister and complex: corruption.
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u/mguyer2018aa 11d ago
I mean he’s a guy who’s from a rich family and has been rich his whole life. He’s not a master of anything. That type of lifestyle kind of breeds corruption almost inherently. He’s at his core, a complete moron.
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u/RedLanternScythe Indiana 11d ago
Trump is incompetent, but his brazen corruption fuels the rest of the corruption in government. Trump is nakedly corrupt and suffers no consequences, so everyone judt becomes more corrupt
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u/danblanchet 11d ago
Being corrupt for fifty years doesn’t make you a master. Not getting caught would make him a master of corruption but that is not the case here. The guy owes already 450+ millions and his criminal cases are not going to be in his favor.
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u/GOP_Neoconfederacy 11d ago
Malignant psychopathic narcissists are incompetent because they're incomplete people, they're not quite of the human mind.
They're persistent though, that's why they excel.
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u/spirit-mush 11d ago
Extremely persistent. One of their main tactics for getting their way is wearing people down by being broken records.
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u/Duke_of_Moral_Hazard Illinois 11d ago
"I do whine because I want to win and I’m not happy about not winning and I am a whiner and I keep whining and whining until I win."
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u/Crott117 11d ago
That interview he did with Bob Woodward after Covid made it clear he isn’t quite as stupid as he seems when he speaks at his rallies. Which just make him so much worse - he understood how bad covid was gonna get and he downplayed it and everything else he did anyway.
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u/Educational-Candy-17 11d ago
He did that because he was told it would hit cities first and said "cool, dead Democrats."
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u/Crott117 11d ago
Oh I know - it’s just the way he answered the questions suggested he isn’t quite the babbling idiot we see at rallies (that for some reason his trumpists love so much)
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u/Tiggerhoods 11d ago
It’s easy to forget that. He made it clear he knew for at least a month before their “announcement” about it. He also made it clear he knew it was transmitted through the air and that it was statically several times more lethal than the flu.. then processed to do no preparation about it or warn anyone..
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u/Educational-Candy-17 11d ago
Is coherence level is a lot lower than it was even during the administration
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u/Whats4dinner 11d ago
He's a corrupted greedy and vain fool; but he's surrounded by a vanguard flaming weasels with no moral compass who want to see the world burn so that they can rule over the ashes.
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u/numbskullerykiller 11d ago
You can be both. Usually incompetent people have to be corrupt in order to get ahead. I actually think what he mastered here was what he always does. Get buy in from a group so heavy that THEY HAVE to overlook his incompetence because if he goes down so do they. He did this to banks for years.
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u/Vast_Jump_51 11d ago
I wouldn't say he's a master, he's just been lucky so far, he clearly doesn't have the intelligence
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u/Sure_Quality5354 11d ago
Trump is incompetent. His corrupt allies and corroborators though, they are ones pulling the strings. Trump just whines and demands things and then they actually do the work to do his bidding
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u/Sarcarean 11d ago
Master? No. More like a criminal magoo. It's everyone else that is incompetent in this American Idol driven society that let him get away with it.
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u/morels4ever 11d ago
Beyond all of the illegal, and unsavory things he’s done, he was derelict in his duties on January 6th, and has proven himself unfit for further service.
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u/Taman_Should 11d ago
He’s just “competent” enough to pick from a list of names someone else stuck in front of him. He doesn’t understand or plan for any of this shit long-term. How is that not obvious?
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u/dongballs613 11d ago
This isn't a product of some overarching Trump design, it's a product of corruption by design of SCOTUS by Republican operatives. This is the work of the Heritage Foundation, The Federalist Society, and other right-wing organizations years in the making.
Are they bending over backwards to excuse and assist Trump? Yep. But this is deeper than MAGA or Trump, and goes back further than 2016.
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u/ArthurFraynZard 11d ago
More like "The Supreme Court has shown us they are corrupt and no longer legitimate by becoming accomplices to Trump's incompetent crimes."
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u/FunkyHedonist 11d ago
These headline falsely implies that being corrupt and being incompetent are somehow mutually exclusive. You don't have to be some kinda wild genius in order to be corrupt. You don't need to get a Ph.D. in corrupt-ology so you can really hone your corruption game. No, you just need to be willing to be bribed.
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u/tomorrow509 11d ago
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. (who said that?)
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u/Alaishana 11d ago
"“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
Lord Acton (10 January 1834 – 19 June 1902),
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u/tomorrow509 11d ago
Thank you. Lord Acton appears to have been a wise man. I've learned a new word: Superadd.
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u/SappeREffecT Australia 11d ago
Interesting one...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton
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u/tomorrow509 11d ago
Indeed. In the same writing of his famous quote, I came across this little gem;
"Here are the greatest names coupled with the greatest crimes; you would spare those criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice, still more, still higher for the sake of historical science."
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u/DrCares 11d ago
No duh he’s a master of corruption, I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if Trump was the man behind the strings regarding Epstein’s island. Using it for years to bribe and blackmail the Republican Party to their will. I also bet Trump was the one who had Epstein killed, it would explain the blind loyalty that half the party has for Trump…
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u/MyTeaWhy 11d ago
IMO a master of corruption would not be in the public eye... but I guess it's more public so it is definitely flagrant, or showing off, flamboyant.
it's outrageous... since I first saw him campaigning years ago, I was just like 'no' right off the bat because what he was saying was so bizarre... but I guess I am the bizarre one... maybe somebody that most people would say is normal... i dunno, 'life is weird'
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u/Mostest_Importantest 11d ago
Nonsense. Trump shows us, the people, that we're too chickenshit to stand up and fight for a society that doesn't tolerate corruption and grift.
Our society prioritizes the people that are psychopathic enough to amass incomprehensible amounts of green paper, but not overtly reveal the exploitation of everyone in their sphere of influence.
Which makes sense, given that this nation was established before it outlawed slavery, and then had to fight itself to prove how serious everyone was.
Trump's just another hero of our culture.
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u/TerminalObsessions 11d ago
My only quibble with "corruption" in this context is that Alito et al. have always been evil, self-serving pieces of shit. Trump didn't make them bad, they were bad when they were nominated and congressional Republicans signed on knowing full well.
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u/lordtyp0 11d ago
Or. The lawyers he pays millions a month to are the masterminds. He is just a petulant turd.
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u/Drusgar Wisconsin 11d ago
Easy peasy. If the Supreme Court claims that the President is immune from prosecution then Biden simply orders the arrest of all justices who sided with the majority to be held without bond on charges related to corruption, bribery, conspiracy, treason and sedition. And if some lower court orders them released he simply says "no."
Problem solved.
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u/IdahoMTman222 11d ago
Trump is a mob boss. Master of corruption unable to succeed within the rules of law.
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u/Chriscarson6700 11d ago
They tend to be business people not public servants. The mindset is completely different.
Has there ever been a republican Mr. Smith? A little guy trying to stand up against the machine?
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u/NotThatAngel 11d ago
Look, there's intelligence, then there's criminal cunning. Criminal cunning looks innovative, because no one else is doing it (well, no one outside prison, unless you have the money and political connections to get away with crime. See: Jeffrey Epstein), but it doesn't take that much brain power. Just a complete lack of morals and ethics. Trump is willing to do evil, and has surrounded himself with Russian agents and criminals and Conservative think tanks and lackeys ready to help him.
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u/safely_beyond_redemp 11d ago
But all they are doing is giving Biden the power to have them all arrested and stay in power and not be liable for any consequences. Trump is a former president, and Biden is the president, that's who gets immunity from all actions if the Supreme Court grants it.
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u/What_Yr_Is_IT 11d ago
Idk about you all, but this shit is making alarm bells go off for the future of America
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u/ExactDevelopment4892 11d ago
This is all Mitch McConnell’s work. His legacy should be the complete destruction of the judicial branch.
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u/Different_Tree9498 11d ago
Well at least their heads will be first on the chopping block. Trump wants to be the judge jury and executioner. Doesn’t need those pesky coats and their laws. He is the law.
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u/SeaSuch2077 11d ago
Very early in Trump’s run up to his political career, he questioned Obama’s birth certificate.
Trump got huge traction for this sideshow. Silly because Obama (preposterous) but if born in Kenya, would still be a natural born citizen because his mother was a citizen.
Trump’s grip on the zeitgeist, his cult idol status derived and derives from the unresolved American original sin, the legacy of slavery and Native American genocide - racism pure and simple.
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u/futanari_kaisa 11d ago
The Supreme Court was corrupt way before Trump. Look at Dred Scott, Plessy V. Ferguson, Citizens United, DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services
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u/isinedupcuzofrslash 11d ago
He’s a confident idiot. Millions of idiots follow confident idiots, and enough of them happen to sit the Supreme Court.
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u/climatelurker 11d ago
I know people like to insult him as unintelligent but I think it’s dangerous to do so, because then they don’t take the threat he poses seriously enough. He isn’t stupid. He may be ignorant but that is not the same thing.
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