Jake 🇺🇸 Profile picture
Jun 1, 2024 15 tweets 5 min read Read on X
"In itself the outcome would seem to vindicate a fundamental American principle, that no citizen is beyond the reach of justice. Yet over the long run this prosecution will probably do more to weaken than affirm the rule of law. 🧵 Image
2/

"Legal experts have cited numerous avenues for credible appeal, and any appeal will not be resolved until long after the November election. That will make it all the easier for Mr Trump’s supporters to embrace his arguments that he is the victim of a biased judge and jury. Image
3/

"This verdict is particularly vulnerable to appeal because of the lack of clear precedent for the charges the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, chose to bring. Image
4/

"Falsifying business expenses is a misdemeanour under New York law, but by arguing that that crime was committed in order to commit or conceal another one, Mr Bragg was able to charge Mr Trump with felonies. Image
5/

"Prosecutors argued, and Judge Juan Merchan agreed, that jurors did not even have to agree on precisely what other law Mr Trump violated, resulting in a vagueness that is sure to be one of the grounds for appeal. Image
6/

"Mr Bragg, a Democrat, was elected to his post after boasting that he was most qualified to prosecute Mr Trump, giving the former president further grist to say he is the victim of political persecution by allies of his opponent, President Joe Biden. Image
7/

"That this verdict is particularly vulnerable to Mr Trump’s claims that the system of justice is being 'weaponised' against him may seem a perverse reason to criticise it. Image
8/

"No political figure should be able to hold the law hostage, extorting immunity from prosecution in exchange for not degrading the system of justice in the eyes of followers. Image
9/

"But prosecutors exercise wide discretion in choosing what cases to bring, for good reason. They are supposed to consider not only the likelihood of conviction but also the seriousness of the crime and the public interest at stake. Image
10/

"Mr Bragg’s predecessor, as well as Mr Biden’s DOJ, considered bringing versions of these charges and elected not to. Compared with the other cases pending against Mr Trump, this one always seemed too much of a stretch to command widespread public legitimacy... Image
11/

"Further, this prosecution has done more to help than hurt Mr Trump’s chances of winning back the White House, and, as the insurrection of January 6th 2021 ought to have made clear, that is a greater hazard to the rule of law than any fraudulent book-keeping. Image
12/

"He was waning as a political force before Mr Bragg charged him in April 2023. The indictment put Mr Trump back in the spotlight. Mr Trump rebounded among Republicans in the polls and began his march to the nomination. Image
13/

"His proud defiance of the prosecution has contributed to his image of strength. Mr Biden’s lacklustre campaign has struggled to take advantage of Mr Trump’s legal woes without implicitly lending credence to suspicions that they are political. Image
14/

"Maybe this conviction, as some polling suggests, will cause independent-minded voters to abandon Mr Trump. If not, then paying hush money to Ms Daniels may now help elect Mr Trump a second time."

Read it all:

archive.is/7kfWG
@threadreaderapp unroll

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Jake 🇺🇸

Jake 🇺🇸 Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @omni_american

Dec 24, 2024
"The entire historical legacy of Western civilization has been turned into a battlefield. [The book argues] that the stakes in this conflict could not be higher. For when the past is contaminated, it becomes near impossible to endow people's life with meaning in the present.🧵 Image
2/

"There was no formal declaration of war. But, sure enough, at some point at the turn of the century, a war against the past was launched. The partisans supporting the assault on the legacy of European civilization are not members of a party. They have not issued any war aims and have never formulated an explicit strategic vision. They are also a heterogeneous bunch, a coalition of disparate interests and movements.Image
3/

"Hostility towards the past evolved slowly, then all at once, its intensification occurring haphazardly without any serious long-term thought. The use of the term 'war' to account for the systematic pursuit of historical disinheritance is not simply metaphorical. In effect, this war leads to the diminishing of the authority of the past, to the discrediting of its legacy, and to the killing of the soul of communities whose way of life remains underpinned by European culture.Image
Read 8 tweets
Dec 21, 2024
"The hardest thing in 23 years for me to watch was the city council yesterday making their statement that in essence said every single one of us are racist by the very uniform and badge we wear. And then the news pans out, and it shows the outside of City Hall, where the city council is making their statement. And what do I seen outside? It's a mobile field force around City Hall protecting the very people that called us racist." 🧵Image
2/

2020's assault on police was, as the quote above shows, pure hypocrisy on the part of elites. But it was also evil and we knew it, bc Roland Fryer proved in 2016 that its premises were false and, in 2020, that it would cause a huge increase in the deaths of black Americans. Image
3/

The BLM-led assault on policing in 2020 led, according to @wil_da_beast630, to the homicides of 2,874 more black Americans in 2020 alone than would have died otherwise. Almost 3,000 black lives were therefore "unmattered" in a single year as a result of this movement.Image
Read 11 tweets
Nov 26, 2024
"Over the last 10 years, a cultural revolution has been imposed on this country from the top down. Its ideas originated in the academy, and it’s been carried out of the academy by elite-educated activists and journalists and academics."

Academia's attempt to radically reform society has been crushed: 🧵Image
2/

After trying to remake society in conformity with its (frankly, rather warped and justly unpopular) criteria:

"The politics of the academy have been defeated. Its ideas, its assumptions, its opinions and positions—as expressed in official statements, embodied in policies and practices, established in centers and offices, and espoused and taught by large and leading portions of the professoriate—have been rejected.Image
3/

The attempted revolution carried out by academics and other knowledge-economy elites had an agenda that:

"includes decriminalization or nonprosecution of property and drug crimes and, ultimately, the abolition of police and prisons; open borders, effectively if not explicitly; the suppression of speech that is judged to be harmful to disadvantaged groups; 'affirmative' care for gender-dysphoric youth (puberty blockers followed by cross-sex hormones followed, in some cases, by mastectomies) and the inclusion of natal males in girls’ and women’s sports; and the replacement of equality by equity—of equal opportunity for individuals by equal outcomes for designated demographic groups—as the goal of social policy.Image
Read 12 tweets
Nov 13, 2024
Many of my Dem/left friends feel rage at Trump voters and masochistic hatred for America, which they see as having succumbed to its own latent transhistorical forces of racism and sexism.

This belief is not only false, as @Musa_alGharbi shows in this 🧵, but it also destroys mental health and, I think, makes it nigh impossible to rebuild the party to regain broad appeal.

Harris didn't lose because of racism or sexism, nor because of wealthy elites, third parties, or turnout.

Check it out:Image
2/

Did Trump win because of racism? No:

"The GOP has been doing worse with white voters for every single cycle that Trump has been on the ballot, from 2016 through 2024. And there’s tons of evidence that Trump’s racialized language has been a major driver of this trend – it’s been a drag on his support among whites rather than serving as the key to his success.

Meanwhile, Harris did quite well with whites in this cycle. She outperformed Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden with white voters. The only Democrat who put up comparable numbers with whites over the last couple decades was, incidentally, another black person: Barack Obama in 2008.

Across the board, Harris and Walz improved their numbers with whites – men and women alike. Democrats lost because everyone except for whites moved in the direction of Donald Trump this cycle."Image
3/

Did Trump win because of sexism? No:

"Kamala’s performance with men was solid. It was her performance with women that destroyed her prospects.

Put simply, it was young and non-white women – the very people who were supposed to ensure Kamala’s victory – who instead helped usher Trump back into the White House.

In fact, even as Kamala’s candidacy went down in flames, women did pretty well at the ballot box this year. For example, as a result of this election cycle, there will be a record number of female governors in the U.S. in 2025. So far, 17 non-incumbent women won House seats; 105 female House incumbents won reelection. 3 non-incumbent women won Senate seats. There were many firsts this cycle as well, including the first transgender woman elected to U.S. Congress.

Voters didn’t seem to have any problem electing women this cycle. They just didn’t respond well to the specific woman that Democrats put at the top of their presidential ticket."Image
Read 9 tweets
Nov 12, 2024
Spoke with a male, "mixed" race (black and white) high school student and learned about teen views on race, DEI, and the gender divide over Trump. 🧵

1. Race: He said race at his very diverse HS wasn't an important category. They're all friends and don't divide up by race.

2. DEI: The campus DEI officer, in contrast, and other administrators are obsessed with and very sensitive about race.
2/

2a. DEI, cont'd: He and his peers tease each other amiably about race. This is a bonding mechanism. He said if the DEI officer and other admin found out, they'd be in trouble, so they keep it secret from them.

2b. The DEI officer is seen as "a bit much" and no one likes the class she teaches. All she does is tell them what they can't do or say. She talks incessantly about how to behave in order to be "sensitive." They don't take her at all seriously.
3/

3. Trump: The boys largely didn't favor Trump but they aren't worried about the next 4 years. We'll be ok. The girls think it's the end of the world, because abortion will be banned.

He said it wasn't possible for the boys to console the girls by pointing out that Trump has repeatedly said he's not in favor of a total ban, so they shouldn't catastrophize. If the boys tried to offer this perspective, the girls would freak out, and it would damage their relationship, so they keep it to themselves.
Read 5 tweets
Nov 9, 2024
I am 53 years old. The last 4 years amount to the most repressive, totalitarian era I've ever lived through.

"If the general atmosphere of fear we live in as people who want to speak and live freely—if all that change in American society had the fingerprints of a particular leader on it, that leader would be a fascist."
—@noam_dworman

But it was not a particular leader—it was the left. 🧵Image
2/

It was not a fascist leader but a society-wide culture of totalitarian intolerance that made me watch my words like a hawk for half a decade.

It was fear of retaliation from the left that made me lay awake at night, terrified that a student might have misinterpreted something I said in class and initiated a cancellation campaign against me.
3/

It was not a fascist leader but a leftwing culture of retribution—in the face of which tenured faculty and college administrators cowered—wielded by 18-year-olds that ended the career of a colleague of mine because she read out loud a word in an antiracist comic book. Yes, students, with the complicity of an entire college staffed with cowards whose fear was nonetheless rational, actually ended her career for reading an ANTIRACIST comic book.
Read 10 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(