• partial_accumen@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    2 months ago

    The main one that he couldn’t avoid at that point was the Stormy Daniels hush money case.

    If Trump had exited without a fight, my guess is that most of the momentum for that would have died out. Yes it was a crime, but I think most would have just wanted to put Trump in the rear view mirror and forget about him and focus on the future for better or worse.

    • Zeppo
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 months ago

      Possibly. That would be basically agreeing with his claim that it was politically motivated prosecution, though. Seems to me like he really pissed off some people in New York and they may have done it anyway.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        Possibly. That would be basically agreeing with his claim that it was politically motivated prosecution, though.

        I disagree with your conclusion.

        As an example, Nixon committed worse crimes than Trump’s New York state crimes, and Nixon was not prosecuted for his crimes. Had authorities pursued conviction of Nixon that would not have been politically motivated.

        • Zeppo
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 months ago

          I’m not saying I agree with Trump saying that in the first place. But to say he’s prosecuted because he’s running and wouldn’t be if he wasn’t seems like the definition of politically motivated. In any event, he’s being prosecuted because he’s guilty.

          • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            2 months ago

            When someone in good faith says “This prosecution against me is politically motivated.” They are communicating the idea that the charges were manufactured without any underlying crime or possibly the underlying crime is minuscule, but the charges are overblown. Neither of those is the case with Trump.

            If you’re just using the dictionary definitions of the words, “politically”, “motivated”, and “prosecuted” then yes it meets that, but then so does a whole bunch of other absurd stuff you don’t mean when using the same logic. By that logic a home burglar is the victim of “politically motivate prosecution” because our legal policy is that burglary is a crime and that the burglar is being prosecuted because of it.

            • dnick
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              2 months ago

              That’s not a good parallel, it’s the politically ‘motivated’ part he’s referring to. If someone is being prosecuted because they’re running for office, and you have a legitimate argument that if they had chosen not to run for office the charges would have been dropped, it’s legitimate to say it’s politically motivated.

              On the other hand, if your crime was literally campaign finance crimes and voter manipulation, there’s a reasonable argument that ‘politically motivated’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing here. If you did a political crime, and seem likely to continue to be politically motivated to commit more crimes, it kind of makes sense that prosecuting you with a tiny bit of political intent isn’t totally unreasonable.