144 points

The chonky fascist was whining about being silenced and then decides not to take the stand.

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95 points

The chonky fascist was whining about being silenced and then decides not to take the stand.

Just like all the other times, he never had any intention of taking the stand. That was show for his base – the same base that now believes that the gag order somehow prohibits him from testifying. He’s appealing to the dumbest of the dumb because they’re going to stick by him no matter what, and are also the ones who are likely to make the most noise and most likely to commit acts of violence in his name.

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45 points

I just hope they’re outnumbered when November rolls around.

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42 points
*

I’m more hoping that Democrat communities in swing states are prepared. All it takes is one or two attacks on a couple of minority districts in battleground states to dissuade enough people from voting to tip the scales in favor of Trump. And it doesn’t take a majority of Republicans to do that. All it takes is a few lone wolves to take matters into their own hands, and that’s what Trump is targeting. He doesn’t care if he’s scoring 50% at the polls or 5%. If those 5% have a bunch of lone wolf idiots willing to launch a couple of attacks, that could easily be enough, and I’m willing to bet that’s what Trump is banking on.

And they don’t even need to be “violent”. Just drive by a polling place with a couple of smoke bombs and some automatic rifle sound effects playing out of the car speakers and let the ensuing hysteria do the rest.

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4 points

At least half of the population is below average intelligence. So the smarts better get out and vote.

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7 points

There’s also some tactical value in pretending youre going to testify - the prosecution team will spend a lot of time and effort preparing for it and how to best conduct the cross examination. In this case I doubt it made much difference on that front though.

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8 points

Now he can pretend he got silenced as the reason why he didn’t take the stand.

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-2 points

You really gonna complain because the guy shut his fat face for once?

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8 points

Who is complaining?

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1 point

I am. There’s no way Trump takes the stand and manages to avoid perjuring himself.

He may have been 100% serious about taking the stand. His lawyers also know that would be legal suicide and talked him out of it.

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4 points
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Removed by mod
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71 points

Boooo. I’d love to see a few perjury charges tacked on.

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29 points

And contempt.

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10 points

And electrical

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5 points

And my ax.

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15 points

And this is likely exactly why they didn’t call him to the stand. They knew he’d immediately perjure himself, because he’s a compulsive liar. No amount of coaching or “just keep your answers short and only answer exactly what was asked” will keep Trump from lying on the stand.

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3 points

You honestly think Trump would face perjury charges?

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1 point
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Removed by mod
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51 points

Just more examples of his dingleberries not having to follow the same rules as everyone else.

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3 points

Intimidation. Plain and simple.

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31 points
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Did they defense even defend him?

Edit: corrected spelling because someone thinks they are a smart ass.

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42 points

It depends.

Let’s be realistic – nobody on that jury cared about testimony from anyone other than Cohen and Stormy Daniels. The rest were just bureaucratic filler that most of the jury probably couldn’t care less about.

Their attempts to discredit Stormy Daniels was considered by most to be a huge miss, as she seemed to hold up better on cross-examination than she was on direct. Most believe this is a result of Trump demanding the lawyers try to make her say that the sex never happened at all, rather than focusing on details that actually matter to the case or simply trying to get her testimony tossed on relevance grounds. In fact, they failed twice here: Had the defense just conceded that the sex act occured, her testimony may not have been allowed at all since she had little to nothing to contribute to the actual allegations. And after that, the judge likely would have declared a mistrial due to the prejudicial nature of her testimony if Trump hadn’t put it in play in the first place by denying the sex happened.

They scored a pretty huge win when they got Cohen to admit that he stole money. And in the end, that still may save Trump if it creates enough doubt in even one juror’s mind. But that was pretty much the only win they got, and even that was more of a “even blind squirrels occasionally find nuts” kind of way. The rest of their defense ranged from largely ineffective to incompetent, and their one and only defense witness seemed to do more harm than good if reports are to be believed.

So no, they didn’t really defend him very well, but that’s largely a result of them listening to Trump’s demands instead of putting on a coherent defense. But they did get one really good shot in, and that shot alone may have been just enough to get the job done.

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17 points

Thank you for the concise summary

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7 points

The rest were just bureaucratic filler that most of the jury probably couldn’t care less about.

Which was itself part of the defense strategy. In similar cases, the two sides would agree on the validity of certain pieces of evidence, making those technical witnesses unnecessary. But Trump probably told his lawyers not to admit to anything, which probably drew the trial out for a week or two, and forced the prosecution to have to cover every detail, in the hopes the jury would find it all too overwhelming.

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9 points

But Trump probably told his lawyers not to admit to anything, which probably drew the trial out for a week or two, and forced the prosecution to have to cover every detail, in the hopes the jury would find it all too overwhelming.

There’s no probably about it. There were a couple of reports out there that said Trump did exactly this just to drag out the trial and get the jury bogged down in all the red tape.

The ironic part is that they could have avoided much of the most damning testimony if they had just conceded that the sex had occurred. At that point, Stormy Daniels’ testimony would probably have been disallowed entirely because it wouldn’t be relevant, and the jury would not have the image of an orange man in a T-shirt and boxers getting spanked by a pornstar with a magazine seared into their brains.

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-2 points
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You missed an Y lol!

You missed a Y.

Edit: Downvoted? Really? OP claimed he corrected the spelling. It’s not completely correct. Read it again.

Edit 2: Wild! Today I learned it’s “a Y.”

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5 points

An Y? You mean a Y? “Y” starts with the W sound.

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2 points

Whoa! Today I learned something new. As someone whose English is his second language, I thank you and I salute you!

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-16 points

1t d3p3nds 0n wha7 y0u m3an.

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22 points

Do we really have to wait a whole week for closing arguments? Just get the hung jury announcement out of the way and let in him off Scot-free, yet again. Can he just have a heart attack already? Sick of this

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14 points

No, no. I want him to be in prison. Or at least haunted by endless trials until he dies of natural causes, all bitter and angry.

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7 points

I have no hope of him ever facing consequences like the rest of us would.

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7 points

I feel stupid for reading any of these articles or commenting on them. We all know this movie ends with him getting away with it, but it’s still compelling compelling for some stupid reason.

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