It doesn’t take much calculating at all. It’s just easy to convince right-wing audiences that sexual misconduct allegations are all a conspiracy by the Deep State^TM to silence them. It’s a pretty basic grift.

Oh for sure. He’s been soft-pedaling his right-wing transformation ever since the initial allegations went public years ago. The hard turn recently is probably exactly as you say, he knew charges were coming.

Ah yes, Martian script.

Dennis Miller was a great writer himself, and wrote all of the Weekend Update stuff that he did, and a bunch of sketches. It’s ok to say he was once great at what he did, because he was. But I would recommend going back and watching Dennis Miller Live on HBO. I went back and re-watched it during the pandemic, and it’s pure Libertarian garbage wrapped up in snarky wit and big words. So he’s always been kind of a right-leaning douche, but 9/11 broke his brain and he dropped all the Libertarian pretense.

unless there is video and audio proof. how the fuck could someone be charged for this 20+ years later over “he said she said”?

Same way a cold murder case gets investigated when all the DNA has degraded. They rely on circumstantial evidence. Now, that word has been corrupted by procedural crime drama TV shows, but make no mistake, a LOT of criminal cases are successfully prosecuted based on circumstantial evidence, because it is still legitimate evidence even though it’s not direct evidence. They’ll go through his electronic devices and look at text messages and photos and retrieve voice mails, they’ll conduct interviews with others who were told about the allegations at the time and see how those stories line up, and so on.

I’m not as familiar with this particular case as others are, but from the other comments I’ve read, it looks like the victim(s) had already filed police reports 20+ years ago, but those didn’t go anywhere for whatever reason (lack of evidence, incompetent police work, etc). So that helps the case quite a bit.

Could i just pick a random person and say they raped me in 2002 and then they will go to prison?

Technically, yes. There have been cases where this has happened, although it is extremely rare. The police would investigate your allegations and almost certainly find them lacking, at which point you would be charged with filing false police reports, and most likely sued by the person you accused.

Here’s a fun statistic: A man is more likely to be raped than to be falsely accused of rape. Just in case you were wondering how often the latter happens.

He’s been a regular on Bro Brogan for years. That’s where his shift to the right-wing began a few years ago, shortly after his sex pest behavior became public knowledge.

Were the allegations not brought to the police before the tv documentary?

I might be speaking out of my ass here, but it could be that the allegations were brought to the police first, but there wasn’t enough evidence at the time for the police to file charges, and then the documentary investigation turned up more evidence than the police had.

And his right-wing transformation is now complete.

The racist sexist bigots aren’t going to vote democrat no matter what.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that racism and especially sexism don’t exist within the Democratic voting base. They are much less of a problem than within the Republican voting base, but they are still significant enough to swing elections.

And honestly to even suggest the radicalisation of the right was due to Obama is crazy.

Not solely due to Obama, but his existence in the White House did get a lot of people to take off their masks.

Why not ask Canada, the UK, Finland, etc? Ah yes, because cruelty is the point.

“Very well” = “according to plan”

I suppose fuck-it-up-and-leave is his M.O.

Yep. Just ask his kids.

I sometimes have this weird fantasy where Trump is an actual genius, and his plan all along was to destroy the Republican party. I imagine him sitting on the crapper with a McDouble in one hand and his phone in the other, trying to come up with the most insane tweets he can, getting frustrated that his plan is taking so long and thinking to himself “why are these people liking this shit? It’s obviously bat shit crazy!”

Then I come back down to this Hellscape reality and sigh as I accept that the world is just full of stupid, greedy, selfish people, and Trump is an avatar for all the worst human impulses, and that tens of millions of people would gladly follow him off a cliff so long as they get to drag the rest of us over the edge with them.

I truly hate this place.

That’s why they added the terrorism charges to his murder charges. That makes it federal, which means they can seek the death penalty.

“There are, there are methods which you could do it, as you know,”

Those methods are:

Serving as VP, followed by ascension - The 12th Amendment says no one ineligible to be president can be VP, but the 22nd Amendment only bars election to a third term, not holding office. Trump could potentially be Vance’s (or someone else’s) VP, then that President resigns, making Trump president for a third term without being elected. This is legally untested and would be widely challenged. It doesn’t seem like a route Trump would take.

Repealing the 22nd Amendment - This requires the proposal and ratification of a new amendment. This new amendment must be passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, or by a constitutional convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures, followed by ratification from three-fourths of the states. This is an unlikely path for Trump to take. Even with massive cheating, he would never get the numbers in his favor.

Ignoring the 22nd Amendment - AKA the “what the fuck you gonna do” method, which the Trump regime has employed with great success in lots of other areas. This is almost certainly what he means.

Any other method to remain president, such as declaring martial law, declaring a national emergency, using the Insurrection Act, etc, would basically be a military coup that would spark a civil war and Balkanize the US.

Surely this will not go over well with President Elon “Free Speech Absolutist” Musk, right? RIGHT???

Elon Musk (after buying Twitter): “Comedy is now legal.”

Elon Musk: “[the] Left found nothing funny, wanted to make comedy illegal.”

Trump tried to get DOJ to go after Saturday Night Live for mocking him

“As president, Trump briefly attempted to get Justice officials to twist campaign finance laws and the federal equal-time rule to declare that anti-Trump material broadcast by Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and others was somehow illegal,” the publication writes.

“During his 2024 campaign, according to a source with direct knowledge, Trump has raised this topic again, venting about the need to punish late-night comedians for giving “illegal” campaign contributions to the Democratic Party — in the form of jokes and on-air satire.”

While career officials at the DOJ ignored these orders from Trump during his first term, the publication notes that they could actually become a reality should Trump win a second term given how much his allies have worked to weed out anyone who might be disloyal to his agenda.

“There are no guardrails,” Yale scholar Jason Stanley told Rolling Stone of Trump. “He already has control of any institutions that might stop him.”

This story is so depressing on so many levels.

First and most obviously, we have a biological male entering a women’s bathroom to harass and threaten a biological woman because he doesn’t want biological males entering the women’s bathroom to harass and threaten biological women. Dumb redneck stared into the abyss and it stared back, as it always does. Congrats, dickhead. You are the thing you claim to hate.

But then we have this shit:

Dani Davis, who is queer, took to social media on March 24 and wrote a post about what she said happened while she was at work. The incident occurred on March 14 at the Walmart in Lake City, Florida. She noted she was a nearly seven-year employee of Walmart and holds several other part-time jobs, including the “joy and privilege" of tutoring "special-needs children as requested,” describing herself as a hard worker who has never been in trouble.

How many more reminders do we need that Capitalism hates us and our employers don’t even see us as human? A person should not have to work “several part-time jobs”, one of which is with the biggest private employer on earth, just to get by.

Does anyone else remember the ‘Hey Mon’ sketch from ‘In Living Color’ about an immigrant family that all had like 10 jobs each? It was supposed to be a joke to have to work that much to make ends meet. We weren’t supposed to make it a reality for everyone.

I hate this world.

Car salespeople work longer than 8 hours. More like 10, especially nowadays where pickins are slim. Still a bunch of bullshit numbers no matter how you slice it. This really gives the same vibes as Trump inflating the value of his properties by lying about the square footage. I would bet there’s some kind of financial gain being made from this claim.

Glad someone else got it.

This is mafioso protection racket language.

“Be a real shame if someone came into your shop and busted up the place… Howz about youz guys let us take ownership? You can still manage the joint and we’ll protect it as a favor to youz. We take all the risk.”