Friday Talking Points -- 34-Time Felon Sentenced

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

73% : Trump is going to appeal it through every venue he can, but his chances of having his sentence overturned are slim, at best.
57% : But that's beside the point -- the point is that Trump successfully got everyone talking about it, and he will continue stirring everyone up as long as it gets him new headlines.
54% : But the Supreme Court rejected his plea, so Trump had to sit and take his medicine today.
54% : Then Trump ate up the remaining time with his endless appeals of every single aspect of the cases he could come up with.
53% : None of these options were really available to the judge, since in ten days Trump will become president once again.
48% : Meanwhile, Trump is offering a preview of what we can all expect for the next four years, which can be summed up in two words: angry chaos.
40% : But even with the lack of any real punitive judgment against Trump, it will still stain his record.
39% : Trump will walk away from the consequences of not securing national security documents (and refusing to hand them over to the rightful owner, the National Archives, even after being subpoenaed for them), his blatant attempts to interfere in the presidential election results in Georgia (which were actually caught on tape), and his culpability in the January 6th attempted insurrection and attack on the United States Capitol and the Congress itself.
38% : What it amounts to is the state of New York sternly admonishing Trump by saying: "Tsk, tsk!"
37% : No jury will hear the evidence in any of those cases -- at the very least, until after Trump leaves office again.
35% : So here we are, four years later, and Trump beat the rap because he has enough money to pay lawyers to endlessly throw sand in the gears of the justice system.
35% : Jack Smith is preparing two reports on the cases that never made it to a jury, and while one of them is still ongoing (because Trump had two co-defendants in the documents case) the other is now over for the time being, so the Justice Department will be releasing a redacted version of Smith's report before Trump gets back into office.
35% : They are now arguing among themselves whether to attempt one gigantic bill that would include a rewrite of the tax code and an extension of all the Trump tax cuts, or to split it into two bills so they can pass some border money for Trump to use more quickly.
34% : This should lay out the case against Trump for his involvement in January 6th, so at least we'll all get to see most of what that investigation uncovered.
30% : Trump fought hard to prevent the sentencing from even happening.
28% : Trump will not serve a day in jail, he will not have to pay a penny in fines, and he won't even be subject to probation.
28% : Prosecutors had four whole years to hold Trump accountable, and (led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, who bears much of the blame) they wasted entire years of this time.
27% : Jimmy Carter had become almost the personification of decency in his post-presidential life, while Donald Trump has always been the personification of something a lot more tawdry.
26% : The other three cases against Trump will not go forward now, or likely ever.
21% : Trump cannot pardon himself, because these were state crimes, not federal.
19% : Major areas of Southern California are being devastated by some of the most-destructive wildfires California has ever experienced, so of course Trump decided to wade into the crisis and spout lots of lies and propaganda in order to blame Democrats for somehow creating the Santa Ana winds.
17% : Showing his masterful ability to hijack the headlines with complete nonsense, Trump has been trolling the nation's journalists with the concept of returning to the days of Manifest Destiny and American imperialism.
17% : And we may very likely see Trump decide how to dole out disaster-relief money based on the political affiliation of those impacted -- which is an absolutely terrible thing to do, of course.
15% : Other than his numerous civil cases (which he keeps losing), this is likely the only legal price Donald Trump is going to pay for his crimes.
15% : So while Fetterman's announcement that he'll be heading down to Florida to meet with Donald Trump disappointed many Democrats, but it's really just building his maverick brand.

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