Ya and in regards to him saying Kamala will be a dictator its interesting to see how each responded to lock them up chants. trumps crowds chant lock her up. He tells his supporters he will lock her up. Kamala crowds chant lock him up. She says "that has nothing to do with me. The courts will handle all that"
trump says he will be a dictator on day one.
trump tries to bash the media constantly to get us to distrust everything but him.
trump fires those who disagree with him.
trump tries to overturn elections and tries to get us to distrust the election process.
trump blackmails/extorts foreign leaders to try to get them to investigate his political opponents.
trump praises Putin, Kim Jeong Un, Vicktor Orban, Xi.
trump shared a post that depicted various people including Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Kamala Harris, Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates in jumpsuits. He shared a post to his followers that said that the House committee that investigated the January 6th attack on the Capitol should be indicted for sedition. And he said that there should be public military tribunals against former President Barack Obama without explaining what for.
Richard Painter, who was a White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, likened the comments to a vision of President Vladimir Putin's Russia, where Putin's political opponents end up behind bars on charges such as
"extremism" or
"treason" after
criticizing his regime.
The former president has
previously suggested prosecuting his rivals would be legitimate revenge for his own legal troubles, which include one criminal conviction in New York state court and three other criminal cases.
Painter said that argument ignores some stark differences between Trump's own situation and what he is threatening to do.
Robert Gordon, a Stanford law professor, said even though Trump is "given to bluff and bluster," there is good reason to believe he means it when he says he will use the legal system to get revenge. Gordon noted that Trump tried to get the FBI and Justice Department to investigate and prosecute rivals during his first term. That broke with
post-Watergate norms for keeping law enforcement investigations independent from the White House.
For instance, according to the Mueller report, Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, told federal prosecutors Trump asked him to reverse
his decision to recuse himself from presidential campaign-related investigations and direct the Justice Department to
investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton around the summer of 2017.
In the spring of 2018, Trump also told White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute both Hillary Clinton and James Comey, the former FBI director whom Trump had already fired during an investigation into Russian interference to help Trump in the 2016 US presidential election,
according to the New York Times. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo warning Trump that if he ordered law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could be impeached.
After the March, 2019 release of the Mueller report, which looked at Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump also called for federal officials to "investigate the investigators." Bill Barr, Trump's chosen attorney general after Sessions, later
appointed special counsel John Durham to do just that.
"He made clear his position that as head of the executive branch, he has both the power and right to direct federal criminal justice enforcement at any targets he chooses; and does not respect the 'independence' of the Attorney General and of US Attorneys," Gordon told USA TODAY in an email.
Amanda Carpenter, a former staffer to Republican Sens. Jim DeMint and Ted Cruz, who now works for Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit, told USA TODAY it will be easier for Trump to get underlings to go through with a prosecution − even without strong evidence − because checks on the president's power will be weaker.
"The prosecution he's threatening against people who challenge his authority is based on smears, conspiracies, and lies, and that is why, when he has gone to court for those election lies in the aftermath of the 2020 election, his claims are rejected again and again," she said.
Carpenter noted plans
from Trump allies to
erode Justice Department independence along with the Supreme Court's
July 1 presidential immunity decision and the
dwindling number of congressional Republicans who supported Trump's Jan. 6-related impeachment.
"Trump and his allies have spent their time out of office creating plans to systematically gut the checks and balances that stopped him from excessive law breaking in his first term," Carpenter said.
During Trump's first term, appointees from the Republican establishment slowed or blocked some of Trump's efforts to test or break legal boundaries.
Bill Barr, for instance, told CNN's Kaitlan Collins in an
April interview that Trump "would lose his temper" and say that people he was upset with should be executed. "At the end of the day it wouldn't be carried out and you could talk sense into him," Barr said.
Vice President Mike Pence resisted Trump's multi-week campaign to get him to reverse the results of the 2020 election during Pence's constitutional role in counting the electoral votes.
Trump advisors and former aides
have said that he will prioritize personal loyalty and commitment to his agenda in choosing appointees to his next administration.
One such person has already been chosen: Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, who has said he
wouldn't have certified the 2020 presidential election results, unlike Pence.
But Kamala wants social media to not allow children to be bullied to the point of committing suicide or something. Oh noes!