That's a good clip. Certainly applicable to Trump (who does deserve the benefit of the law). Unfortunately, Trump is the one trying to cut a road through the law. He wants all legitimate legal cases against him dropped. And if not dropped outright, delayed until he can become Potus and drop them himself. However, his critics should not try do end runs using regulations regarding the political system (like dropping him from the ballot or whatnot) because the actual legal system is failing to do it's duty (in this case, grinding too slowly). And why the hell didn't these legal cases get underway in 2021?
I believe, that deep down, all politicians feel they should be above the law, regardless of political affiliation. So they are very reluctant to go after their own. We'll see if crooked Menedez ever sees the inside of a jail cell. I predict not.
Re: Claudine Gay. I wonder if it was the plagiarism that did her in vs her antisemitism? We'll see if the MIT president continues to get a pass.
Glad you liked the clip, it is one of my favorite monologues from anything ever.
Regarding Trump, he talks a big game but lets see what turns into action. As always he holds sway over exactly none of the institutions that could enforce his dictates.
From a certain perspective, and this comes from a dear God please let us not devolve into a sectarian civil war place, I think candidates running should be rather difficult to indict on charges barring obvious stuff like he killed a guy etc etc. that partisans of all stripes can agree on. Not oh he misrepresented the value of Mar-a-lago on his loan agreement (when it was clearly as valuable as what he said otherwise the bank wouldn't have loaned him the fucking money and he paid the loan back in full [so there was no materially damaged party]). Like seriously that is a fishing expedition. I don't have time to read the 90+ other indictments so forgive me for assuming that it's mostly similar nit picky process garbage that doesn't surpass what most politicians get up to except of course Menendez as you astutely noted.
More importantly I value not having citizens shooting each other in the street over pursuing judicial political witch hunts. This mostly applies to just the prez here. No one's gonna fight in the streets over a senator or rep getting got by the cops. This isn't some cynical political thing but a genuine worry about things that could really happen. If you don't think so think about it.
I get that this creates a moral hazard where presidents can get away with anything but they already do, cough cough Burisma and the biden family china dealings etc. Which is why I don't care much about the Hunter Biden stuff except insofar as the New York Post was forced to keep it out of the news before the election. Thats some 1st Amend bullshit that shouldn't have happened. But I don't think Biden fam global rent seeking should land him in prison while prez or while running. That leniency I extend there ends the instant they try to pull judicial shenanigans against Trump to keep him off the ballot. If thats fair game then Biden is too (but as I said at the beginning of the post we don't control the institutions that could do anything about it).
Can you tell me honestly that should the judicial ploy against Trump work (or even if it doesn't) that the same wont be done against candidates in the future? Charges becoming a normal part of campaign season.
You know why they didn't do it in '21. Because its not an election year. You have to know this.
Regarding Gay, the antisemitism stuff put the eye of sauron (MSM hyper focus on her) making her vulnerable to the plagiarism stuff. I think Harvard in its bones agrees with her on the Gaza stuff. I don't think they'd get rid of her just for that. Penn has a lot of big Jewish donors I hear (Wharton business school) and I don't think Penn could stand the financial hit that sticking with their president would entail as Harvard obviously could.
The plagiarism stuff is a different matter. Harvards whole point is being the shining beacon of academic rigor in the USA. The plagiarism strikes directly against that point. I think Harvard (rightly) deduced that the loss of reputation of standing by a serial plagiarist as prez would not be worth the satisfaction of sticking with her.
On a larger note I think that Uni prez's all over the country are furiously scrawling through the papers they've written at this very moment to try and minimize the damage should this become a larger campaign that Chris Rufo et. al. pursue. Which Im sure they will, having actually given academia a bloody nose they wont be satisfied with just one punch.
If this turns into a wider study of Uni prez's plagiarism across the country... I wouldn't be surprised if presidents with especially poor records on this to be quietly pushed out of power by their boards lest they go through the public humiliation that Gay and Harvard did. Penn fired their prez but did so quickly and for the Gaza stuff that doesn't make you say "Oh I really think Penn is a shit school now" as the Prez of Harvard getting multiple counts of plagiarism does to Harvard.
I would expect the presidents of Big Elite uni's with a liberal bent to be most worried. I don't think these guys are going to immediately start targeting SEC schools in the south over this, though thats possible if this turns into a big super common thing and Rufo starts taking a bunch of scalps. If they get AI to go through a bunch of prez papers and they find problems with a bunch of prez's they very well could just say fuck it, we're going to go through all papers by all prez's.
MIT strikes me from the outside as a much more rigorous school than harvard (stem and all that) I would be at least a little surprised if that prez was guilty of the same thing.
Thanks for your reply.
