* Bush fabricated evidence to start a war and never got prosecuted.
* Obama's administration literally sold guns to a Mexican drug cartel for no apparent reason.
* Reagan had iran/contra
* various different "collateral damage" fuckups under every administration during my lifetime where dozens of civilians are killed but nobody cared because they're poor, brown, and not American
* Kennedy authorized the CIA to raise a private army and launch an invasion of a country we weren't at war with.
And many more, this is but a small sample of the crimes presidents have committed.
But nobody ever gets held personally accountable for anything until Doritos Hitler comes along and commits a series of crimes which, while unconscionable, are comparatively minor next to the above listed. This ruling hasn't actually changed anything. It just codified something that has obviously been true for at least 80 years, and it prevented one party from selectively applying the law to a political opponent in a way which it almost never gets applied.
So my defense isn't that the president should be above the law (he shouldn't), but that he obviously already has been above the law for a very long time and pretending otherwise is just lying to yourself and the american people.
As an Independent who is not voting for Trump or Biden and has largely stopped following the election drama:
Starting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan post-September 11 (Bush -- Republican), and the Gulf of Tonkin incident which led to the Vietnam conflict (LBJ -- Democrat) these were much more costly and problematic than the issues that happened while Trump was president.
The United States should concentrate on its citizens and not on being the world police, and should never get into any external war. Israel can get tank ammunition pushed through with no problem, but we can't get healthcare, childcare, housing, or education at affordable rates. This means that the priorities of the government are not aligned with the priorities of the citizenry and we need to re-align the governemnt with the citizenry.
We also have a childhood obesity crisis, with about 20% of children obese, which will cause much larger problems 20 years down the road when Gen Alpha is all grown up, and Trump and Biden are both dead. This country is not able to think long-term about how expensive GLP-1 agonists will be for 20% of the population.
Also, real inflation is still high; groceries, at least at Trader Joe's, are still much more expensive than pre-pandemic prices. I don't care what is going on in the world until we fix our own internal problems, which neither major party has shown a willingness to do.
As I see it the major political parties both use certain emotional issues including gun control, abortion, immigration to drive voter outrage, while ignoring the issues that are actually important.
* Bush fabricated evidence to start a war and never got prosecuted.
* Obama's administration literally sold guns to a Mexican drug cartel for no apparent reason.
* Reagan had iran/contra
* various different "collateral damage" fuckups under every administration during my lifetime where dozens of civilians are killed but nobody cared because they're poor, brown, and not American
* Kennedy authorized the CIA to raise a private army and launch an invasion of a country we weren't at war with.
And many more, this is but a small sample of the crimes presidents have committed.
But nobody ever gets held personally accountable for anything until Doritos Hitler comes along and commits a series of crimes which, while unconscionable, are comparatively minor next to the above listed. This ruling hasn't actually changed anything. It just codified something that has obviously been true for at least 80 years, and it prevented one party from selectively applying the law to a political opponent in a way which it almost never gets applied.
So my defense isn't that the president should be above the law (he shouldn't), but that he obviously already has been above the law for a very long time and pretending otherwise is just lying to yourself and the american people.