Trump's Card

[Flynnie]

Ferguson's schtick in America was a mix of oddball improv comedy and incredibly sincere monologues about stuff like becoming a US citizen and beating the bottle.

Which, looking back on it, sounds ahead of its time.

[Levin]

So Giuliani has made such a mess that Trump has to give his twitter log in to a proper lawyer.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/991992302267785216

[Etienne]

Though still one who can't spell "role" (tweet 3).

Unless using "roll" for "role" is US English. I don't think it is.

[ursus arctos]

It is not.

[anton pulisov]

Is Giuliani getting revenge here or something?

I can't wait for Trump: The Movie

Ianucci has to do it.

[WOM]

Here's hoping he grabs the Blackberry back and tweet 4 is "NO COLLUSION!!!"

[ursus arctos]

Intuiting Giuliani’s motivations is always a fool’s errand, but this does seem to have been part of a “strategy” that he and his client cooked up.

My best guess is that they now think they can make the Daniels thing go away if they drop the initial pack of lies (which were never going to survive any scrutiny) and instead focus on demonstrating that there was no use of campaign funds. That will be more difficult than they think (campaign finance law is replete with traps for the unwary), but they also have to deal with her defamation suit and (most importantly) all of the stuff that will come out of the materials seized from Cohen, assuming that they aren’t able to suppress the search.

[Ginger Yellow]

Yeah the idea seems to have been to say "Well, we were paying Cohen a retainer anyway, which covered expenses he might incur, and this was an expense he incurred, so that squares the circle, right? No knowledge, no campaign finance violation." But a) Giuliani flubbed it royally, and b) it's far from obvious that it's not a campaign finance violation.

[Snake Plissken]

Hush money isn't a campaign finance violation?

[Tubby Isaacs]

As I always say, the evangelicals will be fleeing Trump any day now.

Actually a few likely dropped Roy Moore, so maybe Trump could lose some.

[Ginger Yellow]

Hush money isn't a campaign finance violation?

Probably it is.

[ursus arctos]

From one of Tubbs' evangelicals

https://twitter.com/KurtSchlichter/status/992044202857979904?s=19

[Ginger Yellow]

Fredocon is a new one to me. Seems particularly ironic given Trump's habit of surrounding himself with Fredos.

[ursus arctos]

Same here in both respects.

I'm not a huge Toobin fan, but he's right that Rudy! essentially admitted that the payment was an in-kind campaign contribution on Fox and Friends. He's not as stupid as his client, but he is pretty freaking dumb.

No wonder Cobb decided to go fishing in the Sea Islands.

[Tubby Isaacs]

There's a total of $460,000 of pay offs, by the sound of it. Who are the others?

[Incandenza]

From one of Tubbs' evangelicals

https://twitter.com/KurtSchlichter/status/992044202857979904?s=19

Is Kurt an evangelical? He likes to talk about his hot Asian wife a lot.

[Incandenza]

This tweet is always useful:

https://twitter.com/bronzehammer/status/782408312730095616?lang=en

[ad hoc]

Arent evangelicals just those people who like Trump supporting Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine so that they can hasten the Rapture? They don;t seem to be religious in any meaningful sense, they just want the world to end.

[ursus arctos]

A good number of them are, but it is literally a broad range of churches. The use of the term in US politics for instance, almost always ignores the many evangelical people of colour,

[ursus arctos]

This is a useful thread

https://twitter.com/jedshug/status/992002589305733120?s=21

[San Bernardhinault]

So, what are the consequences for a campaign finance violation? Is it anything more than a few grand of fines for Trump? I know the last line of that thread says that deliberate violations come with jail time, but surely Trump is not likely to actually be facing the slammer.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

One of the side effects of having a political climate built entirely around people past retirement age, is that you have to wonder if they're stupid or simply dementing.

[ursus arctos]

There are obviously a large volume of factors that could impact that result which we don't now know, but if you put a gun to my head, I'd say a six figure fine and a suspended sentence.

The bigger threat is that the prosecutors now have every reason to pursue a more fulsome investigation, which is almost certain to find evidence of additional shenanigans. As the volume of that evidence mounts, so does the pressure on Cohen to flip, while at the same time the case for complete suppression of the evidence seized from him becomes even more of an uphill battle.

[ursus arctos]

One of the side effects of having a political climate built entirely around people past retirement age, is that you have to wonder if they're stupid or simply dementing.

Having been subject to the antics of both Rudy! and his client for decades, I'd go for "both/and"

[Tubby Isaacs]

"Rudy!" by Wayne Barrett is a good book.