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Donald Trump tells court he had no duty to ‘support’ the US Constitution
(www.the-independent.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Maybe, but this goes much further. This is a president of the United States literally declaring himself not to be duty-bound to the constitution, the one document that limits their power.
Lord Varys : Power is a curious thing, my lord. Are you fond of riddles?
Tyrion Lannister : Why? Am I about to hear one?
Lord Varys : Three great men sit in a room: a king, a priest, and a rich man. Between them stands a common sellsword. Each great man bids the sellsword kill the other two. Who lives, who dies?
Tyrion Lannister : Depends on the sellsword.
Lord Varys : Does it? He has neither crown, nor gold, nor favor with the gods.
Tyrion Lannister : He has a sword, the power of life and death.
Lord Varys : But if it's swordsmen who rule, why do we pretend kings hold all the power? When Ned Stark lost his head, who was truly responsible? Joffrey? The executioner? Or something else?
Tyrion Lannister : I've decided I don't like riddles.
[pause]
Lord Varys : Power resides where men believe it resides. It's a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.
I love game of thrones because of this but hate it bcoz of grr
yeah, these exchanges were some of the absolute highlights
Isn't it the document that gives them their power?
That is a meaningless distinction in this case, unless you think that it somehow means he doesn't have any power if he goes against the constitution.
Sorta but not really.
It should be, but pieces of paper are just dead trees with some dark colored stuff on them.
I mean, if it were actually the case that the constitution is what grants the government its power, then the government would have to follow the constitution, and it doesn't really -- at all.
I don't recall the part of the constitution that lets them regulate education, or to provide healthcare or social security, to fund Food and agriculture, science, housing, to fund building the civilian Internet, to regulate many of the things it regulates, to fund building an interstate highway system, and so on. There's some very specific phrases in the constitution that have been abused to hell and back to justify it, but none of that was ever what the federal government in the united states was supposed to do according to the founders.
The whole point of the united states was supposed to be more like the EU, and for most of history it was. Starting with Abraham Lincoln's dictatorial reign (sometimes dictators do good obviously in this case) presidents took a more active role in governing the country. World War 2 and the great depression had a further massive impact on increasing the role of the federal government in governing the country, and when the supreme court was about to step in because the new laws weren't legal, FDR threatened to pack the supreme court, so they accepted novel and ridiculous interpretations of the constitution.
If the founders intended to let congress create whatever laws they wanted, they wouldn't have specifically described the copyright and patent systems and the post office in the constitution. If Federal powers didn't need to be described in the constitution, then the federal government wouldn't have needed to pass a constitutional amendment to make alcohol illegal federally, and then later passed another amendment to take away that power.
The 10th amendment specifically lays out that powers not enumerated to the federal government don't get to stay with the federal government, but go to the states, and barring that to the people. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." -- And the 9th also says that people's rights are much broader than just the rights enumerated in the constitution: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Two of the most major debates of the moment, regulating the Internet, and gun control, are explicitly disallowed by the constitution, but instead of proposing a constitutional amendment, they're going to just do it anyway, and they do it anyway. That's the reality of how the federal government works today, they completely disregard the document that supposedly gives them their power.
So at the end of the day the political establishment has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that the constitution is just a piece of paper, and it will be disregarded the moment that it is expedient to do so.
Here is a fun fact States are not required to follow federal education guidelines. States get some funding if they do. So hopefully as Texas continues to destroy their school system, they will lose funding and turn into an even more uneducated population.
You know, I was going to do a "take that!" With some stories out of Chicago and baltimore, but doing the research for it has really made me realize just how partisan reporting on education is. You have lots of examples of really good schools in illinois, maryland, and even Texas, but everything talking about problems seems to be from one side of the political compass trying to get an own on the other side.
Some problems in public schools have nothing to do with the schools themselves, you have some of the best funded public School systems in the country but they're fundamental social problems that you can't fix with a classroom.
The literature is perfectly clear, that kids who grow up with a father in the home are better across a wide spectrum of measures then kids who grow up without a father, but one of the effects of poverty and the government program set up to alleviate poverty are often designed to break up families, and some black activists claim this has a disproportionate effect on black families.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3904543/
https://nationalcenter.org/project21/2014/01/08/lbjs-war-on-poverty-hurt-black-americans/
So I think that the reality is a lot more complicated than just dollars and cents, and more complicated than test scores and graduation rates. I'm not sure that either side of the political spectrum is doing right by kids. I just don't see the evidence for it.
Are you seriously trying to argue "it was just his lawyers arguing this point, he didn't say it himself"?
That’s not what he’s saying, and I’m not a Trumpet but the article’s pretty clear: Trump’s argument is that he swore to “preserve, protect and defend” but that elsewhere the constitution defines officers as people who swear to “support” so he’s not an “officer”.
It’s stupid and nitpicky but not as clickbaity as the headline.
You do understand that as his legal representation, they are arguing for him, which makes their argument legally literally his argument?
Why are you complaining to me, while the Independent must have made the same mistake in your eyes?
The article is titled: "Donald Trump tells court he had no duty to ‘support’ the US Constitution". You are claiming that this is incorrect, since Trump didn't tell the court this. Why are you not complaining to the Independent?
Can you show me where I stated that it was a "direct quote of Trump"?
Your life is uneventful enough to keep complaining to me, so I figured you'd do the same to the professional news organization that actually did what you accuse me of doing.
Notice how that quote doesn't say that it's a "direct quote of Trump"? That "Trump said it"? I'm calling you out on misquoting me right now, so please follow your own advice.
Yes, and you might notice "declare" is a different word from "say". Merriam-Webster for example has the definition 1a):
Trumps lawyers, as his legal representatives, made his legal position known formally, officially and explicitly. Couldn't be a better fit. So what are you going on and on about?
Of course he knows what he said. He was able to explain it to you using a dictionary… which means you don’t even understand English let alone what you’re talking about.
Trump actually did a lot of what he said he'd do. He was incredibly effective. This isn't praise for him. I'm just saying, MAGA mostly agrees with you, but see an archon of action in Trump.
he didn't really get a lot done
That's actually not how most maga people feel as far as I can tell. Trump's Twitter feed and candidacy compared to Trump's government were quite different. As president he did maybe too good of a job keeping his hands off of things. Considering the massive riots during a good chunk of his presidency, many conservatives including maga conservatives wanted him to be a little bit more like the fascist that the left pretends he was instead of the 90s Democrat he actually was.
There's actually quite a bit of criticism of trump from his supporters. He passed terrible budgets, he didn't pardon Assange or Snowden or the j6 protesters, he put swamp monsters like John Bolton into positions of power when they should have been put into positions of prison cells or at least unemployment lines, he went along with covid mandates, and project warp speed that resulted in the untested experimental vaccines being mandated to countless people around the world was his idea.
People talk about the supreme Court, but that's turtle man McConnell's crowning achievement, not Trump's.
You are acting like the vaccines were a bad thing. Also, especially if you think of the first wave of vaccines that went to at risk groups as field trials, they were very much tested. The fact that trump didn't support the vaccines publicly and push his constituents at the very least to use them is a large mark against him.
Do you think that if you put 9 women who arent pregnant together then you can make a baby in 1 months, and if you put 275 women who aren't pregnant together that you can make a baby in a day?
I would say you can't do that, it takes 9 months to make a baby even if you put 1000 women who aren't pregnant on the job.
The same way, you can't do long-term testing without a long term. That's one of the reasons why when Trump originally started project warp speed everyone told him that it was absolutely impossible to create a vaccine in that period of time, because you still needed to test it. And they didn't, not in the long term.
Now I took the untested experimental vaccine before it was mandated that I shall take it or else lose my job. I took it because I feel like it was the right thing to do, but unlike the establishment that lied to everyone by claiming they knew everything about the long-term effectiveness and safety of the drugs, I went into it understanding it was ultimately a gamble. It was a gamble that I won on the safety front, I'm just fine. But it was a gamble I lost on the effectiveness front, I ended up getting covid anyway not long after I and 85% of people in my country took the vaccine.
Trump was never against the vaccines and always advocated that his supporters take them. Of course he wasn't against them, it was one of his achievements as president. Whatever you think of the vaccines, if it wasn't for his policy initiative project warp speed they never would have been developed as quickly as they were. He openly told people to get vaccinated. The problem is that most people don't actually know anything about Donald trump, they only know what the latest rage bait article says. It's really sad watching people who claim to be free thinkers just doing whatever they're told by the Teevee.
https://youtu.be/hSfeCqKty9o?si=hUY1sSFd2ztuIQx2
Can you share the testing schedules for long-term testing which were skipped? I've asked this every person that I've seen share your position, but I've never gotten an answer. Somehow, everyone knows that long-term testing must mean more than the tests that were done, but nobody can tell me how long it has to be.
Any kind of official source is fine.
There are typically 3-4 phases of testing for vaccines.
Phase 1: Small groups of people (20 to 100) receive the trial vaccine. This phase gathers information on the vaccine’s safety, identifies side effects, and studies how well the vaccine works to cause an immune response.
Phase 2: The clinical trial expands to hundreds (100-300) of trial participants who have characteristics (such as age and physical health) similar to those for whom the vaccine is intended.
Phase 3: The vaccine is given to thousands of people and tested for efficacy and safety.
Phase 4 (if applicable): Ongoing studies after approval, designed to monitor the effectiveness of the approved vaccine and detect any side effects not identified in the clinical trial.
The Emergency Authorization from the FDA allows the use of unapproved drugs in the case of emergencies. the 4 vaccines to be used starting in late 2020 before Phase 1/2 trials were complete for Moderna and before Phase 3 trials were complete for Pfizer/Biontech, Astrazeneca, and Johnson&Johnson.
Phase 3 trials would be completed in late 2022, by which time many covid restrictions and mandates were already dropped and a majority of many populations had already been vaccinated by the time the normal required testing was completed.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-319.pdf (Figure 8)
https://www.fda.gov/media/144636/download
I can't argue against the idea that we were in a situation where we needed something fast so decisive action needed to be taken, but we can see some of the effects of the fast tracking. First, the AstraZeneca vaccine (which I don't think was accepted under the Emergency Authorization in the US) was found to have a higher risk of blood clots than the others (Phase 3 testing of that particular vaccine lasted until early 2023) so was restricted for use in places like England and Canada where it was accepted for use. As well, because testing was fast tracked, politicians were out there making false claims about the effectiveness of the vaccines. If the vaccines were really as highly effective as touted, then covid should have gone extinct in populations that were fully vaccinated, but that didn't happen (and the counterpoint to that was that the virus mutated and so the vaccine wasn't for those viruses, but it doesn't particularly matter -- if it doesn't prevent covid it doesn't prevent covid). As well, because of the limited data set due to fast tracked testing, it wasn't known until later that boosters would be required to maintain efficacy after a certain point.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/use-of-the-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-jcvi-statement-7-may-2021/use-of-the-astrazeneca-covid-19-azd1222-vaccine-updated-jcvi-statement-7-may-2021
In the United States, the Johnson&Johnson vaccine was first accepted under the emergency use authorization, but later had its use restricted, and then later fully revoked as it became obvious there were potential issues with blood clots:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/05/health/fda-johnson-johnson-vaccine-eua/index.html
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-limits-use-janssen-covid-19-vaccine-certain-individuals
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/health/johnson-johnson-covid-vaccine-end/index.html
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/janssen/index.html
The US government and the CDC was recommending that pregnant women get the vaccine in April of 2021, over a year before phase 3 testing was completed. That really set off alarm bells for me because typically pregnant women are excluded from medical trials because of the ethical implications of potentially harming a baby in the womb. Thalidomide is a famous example where a drug was approved (not in America but in many other jurisdictions -- For her role in preventing the approval of thalidomide in the U.S., President John F. Kennedy presented Frances Kelsey with the highest award for civilian federal workers, the Distinguished Federal Civilian Service medal.) and it turned out to have unexpected side-effects on unborn children. Given all this, that was a potential risk and I think a lot of pregnant women didn't have the facts required to make a good decision.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbdoXen3AR8
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/development-resources/division-pediatric-and-maternal-health-clinical-trials-pregnant-women
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccines-pregnancy-idUSKCN24W1NZ
At the end of the day, while COVID vaccine skeptics predicted absolutely genocidal consequences for rushing the development of the vaccines, the reality is that the risks paid off. There are some side effects from the vaccines no doubt, but overall we were able to get society back on track significantly before the standard testing regime was completed. The only thing for me is that the government was not being honest to the people about the fact that it was a risk. In my case, I took the vaccine knowing there was a risk because I had a duty to my family to keep my workplace going so I could continue to support them, but some people took it without being properly informed as to the potential risks or the fact that the vaccines were operating under an emergency authorization and testing was not completed.
Thank you for the links. I understand your point, though I still question which parts of which phase were skipped - there is a big difference between "XYZ wasn't done" and "XYZ was in the process of being done, and preliminary results were analysed", which seems to be the case for the trial phases.
By definition, anything allowed by an emergency authorization isn't fully approved. Whether you define testing that won't be completed for another 2 years as "skipped" or just "not complete" is irrelevant -- it's still an untested experimental drug or it wouldn't require an emergency authorization.
The one thing skipped is the progressive nature of the testing. Typically, phase 1 justifies phase 2 testing, and phase 2 justifies phase 3 testing. Under project Warp speed, this progression was largely bypassed so that different phases of testing could overlap.
Phase 3 testing wasn't even remotely close to being done by the time of the emergency use authorization. Phase 1 and 2 testing was only just done by the time of the emergency use authorization. The testing wasn't done yet, and wouldn't be complete for years. It wouldn't be done until after the pandemic was declared over. It doesn't matter if it was skipped or not, it wasn't completed.
The fact that two of the four major vaccines ended up being pulled off the market because they were unsafe should be definitive proof of my point. The testing wasn't done, and so these potential risks weren't caught during testing, and so dangerous products were put out to market, and after it was discovered those products had their emergency use authorization rescinded.
Well I am no expert so here is an article based from experts for you.