The system is working.

if he was found not guilty, then people would doubt the rest of the charges. It is important that he is on trial but it is equally important that they show the country and the world that these charges are real and he IS guilty.

I really hope the jury convicts Trump, but if they don't there's nothing anyone can do. Barring unforseen circumstances (one never knows with Trump), his fate will be in the jurors' hands. For better or worse, that's our system.

challenged by his defense counsel, and will prevail as facts, and publicized to the public.

Yes, a guilty verdict would be icing on the cake.

With the stunts IQ45 has pulled just leading up to opening statements, it's gonna' be a 3-ring circus!!!!!!

but in the unlikely event of an aquittal he may be the next Potus emboldened by a not guilty verdict.

win in November....he's pretty much despised except for his stagnant base...a base that is as untethered to reality as their vomitus god...

The privileged cabal pedaling this shitstain have no alternative other than doubling down and manufacturing chaos.

The proof is overwhelming. A lot will be determined by the right wing media's coverage. They made this monster.

His violation of campaign finance laws. Using money or threats to keep people quiet like the Mafia.

I doubt he will walk away with an acquittal on all charges.

Evenif one person votes innocent the other eleven will still influence more people to vote against him.

His true talent is in manipulation of even dire reports on him to his advantage.

Which doesn't require much manipulation.

What we or he can't anticipate is how it will effect him. What is the number of lawsuits he has initiated? It must be in the hundreds.

Nothing like FOX news "scoops" to create a mistrial and screw the country. The jurists just won't escape the surreptitious cameras of Murdoch and his top Lieutenant.

Get ready for a "This just in" bulletin from Watters and other creeps on FOX the minute the jury walks off into the jury room. "Photos of the jury as it leaves the court room to begin deliberations were received by FOX from an anonymous source." Blah, blah, flippin' blah.

And get ready for the ensuing firestorm about first amendments rights when the government speaks of planning to study the possibility of perhaps instituting an inquiry into the matter.

Sleepy, smelly, obnoxious creep.

Before that happens I predict he’s going to meltdown. Everything that he holds dearest to him is going to be exposed. His money and his penis and how he decides to use them.

We’ve already been exposed to some of his sexual predations, now let’s hear the sex tales of Diaper Don as told to the world by a porno star. We shudder thinking of our own parents doing ’it’, now we get to hear about a 77 year old getting off. I don’t think it will be complimentary. It’ll ruin his image right in front of his own lying eyes.

And then on to the money and WHY it was spent.

Justice gets served sometimes in a way we don’t think it will.

when he was 59, since Barron just turned 18. But I agree that, looking at him now, and even trying to imagine. . . the mind reels!!!

. . . the made-for-TV special "The Porn Star Trial of Donald Trump" -- starring . . . you guessed it -- Stormy Daniels as herself and (you choose the male lead) as Trump!!!!!!!

Sidney Greenstreet is dead!

The whole trial will strengthen both the justice system and democracy more.

It’s not the guilty verdict that will be his undoing, it’s the exposure of his character in an official setting in which the TRUTH will actually be the main element. The witness testimony is key to undoing this moral monster. It must be done before jurors start falling like flies as they are exposed by FuX news so that the threats against them can start.

This moment in American history will be seminal, legendary and terminal. Seminal in destroying the MAGAT’s in congress, legendary in the legal world for bringing justice to one who proclaimed himself immune, terminal for the defendant and those who see themselves marching in his footsteps. He and his ilk are toast. America will come out of this better for having had to endure him; him, not so much.

Guilty, not guilty, hung jury, mistrial, jurors eliminated….it doesn’t matter what happens as long as sworn testimony occurs and is mostly completed as far as the orange anus goes. He will be exposed to his base for the creepy, nasty pussy grabbing traitor he is.

The best result of course is a completed trial and a guilty verdict as far as I’m concerned but him being in criminal court is a really BIG deal regardless of how it goes.

For example: https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=18873441

And no matter what Judge Merchan decides on Tuesday after the hearing on the gag order, there will some who will attack Merchan.

or much understanding of the legal system in general, but they have watched many episodes of Law and Order.

done un less than four days. I thought the defense team would be able to dr!aaaaaaaaaaaag it out!

all to see is very important. This trial will do that.

Singlehandedly, this pinche cabron Donald Trump has severely warped, twisted and skewed our entire justice system to suit his needs, and whims. And in doing this, Trump seems to have been the very astute student of the most crooked and corrupt mob lawyer of them all, Roy Cohn, who appears to have taught him very well. You may praise the rule of law and offer self assuring homilies to it when Judge Merchan scores a very partial or temporary victory against the Orange Trumpster, but we have a long, long way to go before the battle against the most serious threat to our democracy since the Civil War is finally won, and the Trump threat is totally vanquished and eliminated. We pat ourselves on the back, praising the rule of law when, by all impartial and objective standards, our system of justice has fallen a long, long way since Donald Trump first came down the escalator that fateful day.

Donald Trump is the single greatest threat to our democratic republic since the Civil War. What tore the country asunder in the Civil War was the institution of slavery, but that was a whole institution, and not just one man. OK - you can rightly say that Trump couldn't do it without his Republican sycophants and enablers but still, Donald Trump, just one man, spearheaded it all.

Please forgive me for being so cynical and pessimistic here, but with my Scorpio Ascendant, that's just the way I am.

and say, with my Scorpio Moon, I feel you. I feel all of it. It's hard not to be cynical and pessimistic... and want, in the worst way, to somehow make it all better... knowing you're all but helpless to do anything but vote. Every day I point my emotional stinger towards the man, hoping against hope karma will take care of him. Like, now... so I can see it before I'm 6' under!

propaganda blasting from the am radios throughout the nation. Anyone of us in rural areas who experienced the terrorism of Limbaugh, etc have long ago realized the threat. But nobody in urban areas, and no one who was a professional seemed to take the threats to the Democracy seriously.

Now Trump simply decided to lead a very large pack of disgruntled people. Many of whom were not only indoctrinated by the hate media, but also raised on the "take all you can get, me first" style of capitalism that also was rising alongside in the general business culture. Then the hate radio morphed into Fox and the like on cable.

Add the rise of evangelical non denominational and uber right wing factions of the older religions all banding together with these amped up government hating groups all looking for someone to force births and get us back to something that they could understand culturally, and he just decided to use his star power as the ultimate womanizing villain to his advantage.

All these people want is the government to be gotten rid of and rules to go back to the '50's (except not the tax rates).

It strikes me as a mix of cultural and religious extremism. That has not been taken seriously enough by the Democrats or the educated. until T "won" the presidency in 2016. This was a shock to everyone who did not live and work in rural areas.

It was very clear to most of us that he would take the presidency when Brexit passed. I remember the day it dawned on me. I called other scientists working in other rural areas- and everyone of them that I spoke with had all concluded the very same thing that day.

The same forces that did that worked here. Social media simply tapped into what was already present in this third of the population (who hold power over the country via their out-sized power in the Senate) who get their news from all of these hate filled media platforms.

This will take a very long time to reverse. Trump may or may not be removed from the public leading of this group. But the forces that put him in the lead of such a mass of our fellow citizens may very well find a new jerk to lead the pack. Talk to anyone in these rural bastions where 95% vote for T no matter what to get an idea of the effect of these 4 decades of very targeted propaganda spewing. It is demoralizing and shocking how much power such a cheap mechanism created. And how much they want to harm liberals of any sort.

Our side never took hate radio seriously. We still don't. We should have hired George Lakoff or at the very least read his books & hired a damned marketing department. WTF? It's like we don't believe in marketing. The right has more successfully defined our side than we have ourselves. Tax & spend dems. Weak on the border. Baby killers.

Hate radio definitely played a big role, but I think The Apprentice also had a lot to do with it. I don't know how long that show was on, and I never watched it myself. But it's my understanding that the show presented him in an extremely (and misleadingly) favorable light.

There are far too many credulous people who believe that what they see on "reality" TV is indeed reality. Watching him portrayed week after week as an uber rich, powerful, and highly astute businessman convinced unknown numbers of people that he was exactly that and won him millions of fans. As he said himself, it made him a "star," which is the last thing a sociopathic malignant narcissist needs.

I believe that becoming a household name to millions of people who had been primed by that show to see him as smart and savvy gave him a boost with a significant segment of voters before he ever opened his mouth on the campaign trail, in addition to feeding his towering narcissistic ego in a way he had never experienced before.

The fame and the fan base he got from The Apprentice made it easy for him to get a ton of nedua coverage when he harassed President Obama over his birth certificate. That stunt also served as a dog whistle to those who were upset about the nation having a *gasp* black president.

Once he announced his candidacy and started giving speeches, the dog whistles began to multiply exponentially, reaching the hordes of American voters that hate radio had prepared to respond to such a message.

I think Trump managed to get elected due to a perfect storm with many ingredients, including hate radio, conservative backlash after 2 terms of having a poc as potus, and the reality TV stardom that both conditioned millions of people to view him as a brilliant leader and fed his narcissism in ways that were extremely unhealthy for someone with his psychological makeup.

I'm sure thst propeling an incompetent, hate-spewing malignant narcissist to the White House was the last thing the creators of The Apprentice had in mind, but they unwittingly created a monster by putting him on that show. All kinds of other things, most definitely including hate radio, helped to complete the picture.

Thanks for adding it to the conversation! I agree.

This something no one ever talks about, AFAIK, but I believe it's definitely been a factor in his political success. I think it explains why the rubes were so quick to believe he was a very smart guy who knew what he was talking about from the very start. If he hadn't said what they wanted to hear, it probably wouldn't have gotten him very far, but he did, and here we (still) are!

No matter how cynical I get I can't keep up. ~Lily Tomlin

he is sitting (or sleeping!) and can't leave. He is being forced to listen to someone else in authority. It's very important that no one be held above the law - although I have a hard time believing they'd actually imprison the guy. Personally after watching him for the week I think folks are worried about the wrong thing if they view Biden as "too old" to be president. Biden clearly has his wits about him even if he is older, while this guy can't even stay awake in a court room where HE is the one on trial. I'm a pretty average person so if I'm seeing this, I'm quite certain a lot of other folks are seeing it too.

Criminal piece of stink shit.

And I’m just warming up

[link:https://www.redbubble.com/i/art-board-print/Full-of-shiticus-by-AlexKW/97673032.7Q6GI|

He’s jumping like the proverbial one legged man in the ass kicking contest.

Independent votes. Once the testimony starts it will accelerate those daily losses IMO.

Popcorn lovers unite, this is gonna be wonderful.

I'm really looking forward to the coming weeks in "As the World Turns: TSF on Trial"...

Nothing to hide behind here. No immunity, official duties, MAGA patriotism. That's why he keeps blaming Democrats.

toddler. His 'candidacy' and perceptions of him certainly should not depend on one trial. We know who he is.

You’re correct in principle, but politically, he needs to be convicted, even if it’s for a misdemeanor.

maximim damage on Trump's prospects of destroying America as we know it.