Rules are made to be broken. Or are they?
It’s certainly a gray area when it comes to what former president – and Republican nominee-to-be -- Donald Trump is “permitted” to say during this week’s first-in-the-cycle presidential debate on Thursday night (on CNN) under the “gag” orders imposed by judges in the multitude of legal witch hunt cases he’s being subjected to.
Of course, Trump was already found guilty of 34 felony counts in New York last month in the so-called “hush money” trial waged by ambitious leftist prosecutors and a judge who was so conflicted that he probably should’ve had a “Biden/Harris” bumper sticker affixed to the back of his swiveling bench chair. The Democrats are the ones needing a gag order on themselves.
It’s safe to say that in years past, presidential candidates felt free to utter just about anything they wanted at any time they felt like speaking, a privilege Democrats such as Crooked Hillary Clinton and senile Joe Biden used to make outlandish claims and state boldfaced lies in debates – none of which were fact-checked by the moderators in real time. Anyone recall Candy Crowley coming in on the side of Barack Obama in 2012? There certainly was no “gagging” of Democrat mouths no matter how heinous the deceits they spouted over the years.
Times are different now, with Donald Trump having taken over the GOP for wishy-washy establishment Republican candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney, men who adhered to rules of “decorum” concerning niceties and pleasantries that limited what they would introduce versus their opponents. Do you recall that it used to be thought of as taboo to label your opponent a liar?
That’s one “rule” that no longer exists. Democrats lie, lie, lie and shamelessly spread conspiracy theories without fear of repercussion. In 2020, Democrat senile Joe Biden notoriously said that his son Hunter’s infamous laptop was a Russian plant as well as “Antifa is an idea” and that Trump was personally responsible for hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths. Shameful.
At any rate, Trump faces a slew of rules on Thursday night regarding things he can and can’t say, all in the name of shielding the government’s bogus cases against him. In an article titled “What Trump can’t say at a debate”, Ashley Oliver reported at the Washington Examiner last week:
“A gag order issued by Judge Juan Merchan in the hush money case will prevent Trump from discussing at the debate, for example, his concerns about one of the lead prosecutors and the judge’s daughter, both of whom Trump has argued presented conflicts of interest in the case. Matthew Colangelo, who had a leading role in helping Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg secure a conviction against Trump last month, worked in the Biden Department of Justice before Bragg, an elected Democrat, hired him to help with the hush money case in December 2022…
“Trump can speak more broadly about all of his cases, and he can talk as little or as much as he wants in the debate about special counsel Jack Smith or the state prosecutors who brought charges against him. The gag order in New York, as well as a similar one issued by Judge Tanya Chutkan in his case in Washington, D.C., expressly permit Trump to criticize those figures...
“Because of these various limitations, Trump cannot speak at the debate at all about known or potential witnesses in any of his cases when the speech could be perceived as intimidation.”
Imagine you’re Trump on Thursday and you have to listen to your opponent babble about “convicted felons” and “insurrections” and “not being above the law”, all while needing to remember that you’re not permitted to express anything in response about the people who are persecuting you. Or if you do, you could face being tossed in a jail cell for the trouble of speaking your mind.
It’s all bogus. But that’s the way it is this year. Senile Joe Biden’s cobweb-filled noggin doesn’t have anything relevant to say, but he’ll tell plenty of whoppers about Republicans being “dangerous” and also being “threats to democracy” and the like. Yet Trump is the one who’s subject to being “gagged”. How does that make sense?
The truth is, in Trump’s various trials, Democrats have gotten a lot of mileage out of begging judges to restrain the accused’s ability to fight for himself in the court of public opinion simply because of what “might” happen in terms of deranged Trump supporters hypothetically threatening prosecutors, their families, etc. with bodily harm. The logical extensions of such a plea are practically endless. Who knows, maybe someone who’s involved with a case, or a witness, could claim, “I often walk with my friend at the end of the day and they could be in danger if Trump singled them out as knowing me.”
The First Amendment and Free Speech have taken a beating under the “protection” of senile Joe Biden’s in-Justice Department, with skittish interrogators like Special Counsel Jack Smith repeatedly invoking potential danger to government personnel as the reason for why Trump or his surrogates couldn’t state their side publicly. I’m pretty well versed in history but I don’t recall the Founding Fathers wavering about what couldn’t be said about the government in a public forum.
Seems to me as law students, we were taught that the guarantees of freedom of speech, the press, assembly, petition and freedom of belief and worship were pretty much absolute and could only be restrained under the narrowest of exceptions, especially when the target of the comment is/was a public figure or the government itself.
I never thought the concept was that complicated to begin with, but when you have Democrats in the twenty-first century trying to “manage” the emotions, rights and feelings of tens of millions of people, they portend to be terrified of the unknown. It’s not as though there have been armed Trump backers shooting up leftwing protests or something similar of late. The Democrat congressional baseball team doesn’t need to fear for their lives at practice like Republicans did last decade, due to Bernie Sanders-backer James Hodgkinson.
Would Boston’s Sons of Liberty have gotten away with meeting these days? Could Thomas Paine have published “Common Sense” in 2024 without needing to worry if senile Joe, Merrick Garland and the mobs of leftist Democrat “justice” personnel would be waiting for them with gag orders and threats of jail time?
The situations aren’t exactly analogous, but they’re still not that far akin. The notion that Donald Trump, as an ex-president with constitutional privileges in addition to his status as 2024 Republican presidential nominee-to-be, can have his speech curtailed by a lowly local judge is preposterous. At the very least, Trump is entitled to fully develop his political ideas, inclusive of how he would reform federal law enforcement and the judicial system if elected.
If New York’s Judge Merchan is scared for his safety, let the federal government provide him protection. Maybe the Biden people could confiscate the loot devoted to paying for private security for liberal Hollywood celebrities to guard the politically compromised.
Every objective and honest liberal (granted, there aren’t many) are much more afraid of what Donald Trump would say in reference to the corruption and influence in the justice department these days. Put it this way, there isn’t anyone lurking around the next streetcorner waiting to take out a Democrat. Conservatives aren’t violent no matter what the establishment media warns about them.
Trump isn’t a threat, either, though Democrats savor the opportunity to take away his megaphone on the 2024 election. The average person doesn’t follow the particulars of the legal cases and couldn’t care less about the prosecutors’ names, but they understand the word “gag” and grasp that Trump isn’t granted leeway to defend himself to the extent that he should be allowed to do.
At the same time, a good many Republicans hope Trump will stick to speaking on the issues in the debate rather than bringing up the “stolen” 2020 election time and again, a relitigating of the past that only dredges up bad memories and distracts from the real problems that the Republicans’ platform would help solve. The Democrats’ corrupted court personnel is important, to be sure, but Trump would be much better off by pounding on senile Joe Biden’s horrible record on legitimate political issues.
Instead, Biden will only want to talk about “voter suppression” and the standard Democrat complaints of racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, “MAGA fascists” and championing abortion. Senile Joe will say, time and again, that the “rich don’t pay their fair share” and attribute any negative aspects of the economy to Trump’s policies from his term.
There’s another line of thought that Trump may ignore the gag orders entirely and simply risk whatever fallout results from his fully presenting his case in an open forum. Can you imagine the Democrat prosecutors and judges attempting to fine or imprison Trump for something he said in a national presidential debate?
Rules are made to be broken, aren’t they?
If Biden brings up the “convicted felon” topic, it should be fair game for Trump to respond and name names when it’s out in the open. There’s plenty of verbal ammunition to go ‘round there and Trump has obviously waited months for the opportunity to clear his name and take the establishment media (yes, CNN) to task for their role in prosecuting these bogus charges.
It’s about as politically motivated as it gets, and Trump has a good case. Should Trump intentionally or unintentionally run afoul of a “gag” order… who would call him on it?
With the federal cases against Trump in Washington DC (for the former president’s role in the January 6 protest) and South Florida (the bogus classified documents matter) and in Georgia (the Fanni Willis fiasco) not going anywhere before November’s election, Democrats must put all their hopes and emphasis on the New York “gag” order sticking and hoping to convince America that the Republican is really a criminal.
Why can’t the candidates say whatever they want and let the public/voters decide? The old-fashioned way isn’t so outdated after all.
Joe Biden economy
inflation
Biden cognitive decline
gas prices,
Nancy Pelosi
Biden senile
January 6 Committee
Liz Cheney
Build Back Better
Joe Manchin
RINOs
Marjorie Taylor Green
Kevin McCarthy
Mitch McConnell
2022 elections
Donald Trump
2024 presidential election
コメント