Well, we finally had a courtroom laugh moment. Prosecutor asked Trump about his involvement in financials from end of 2021. Trump said his focus at that time was on China and Russia and “keeping our country safe.” Courtroom laughed. Note: Trump wasn’t president in 2021.
I’m sure that’s the case. “We all know about your credentials and breadth of experience.” And the crowd laughs already, before he even gets to the punchline of firing Gary Busey. Dude’s been a complete joke for decades.
Haha yeah I loved how he caused the deaths of so many innocent people through the largest growth in drone strikes.
Truely he seems so genuine, I’d love to sit down for a beer with him and Bush and than proceeded to kill myself for being a fucking idiot and having any favourable view on these scum.
He would never admit feeling humiliated, but I’d wager his entire personality is shaped around covering for his profound internalized shame and insecurity
Nah, I don’t think that’s true. The dude is insecure as fuck, he kinda laughs stuff off, but inside he’s fucking frothing at the mouth and then unleashes it on twitter. In response, he’ll just double down with his bullshit and play it off, but in private, he writes people down on his “list”.
NAL but I think if Trump had argued he was still the President during that time period instead of admitting he wasn’t, then it would have been perjury.
Perjury is more than just saying something factually wrong on the stand. Republicans spent years talking about how getting trump in a courtroom was a perjury trap because he would make a small mistake like recall the January 12 of 2011 was a Saturday and then they prosecution would be like, “no it wasn’t and now you go to jail because we hate America”. In reality, perjury basically takes someone knowingly and intentionally entering testimony that is false. Simply forgetting that he wasn’t president at the time would not qualify.
Ahead of today’s court session, a former federal prosecutor told BBC News that Donald Trump’s team was attacking the judge and the trial because “they know they’ve already lost”.
Renato Mariotti says he expected Trump to try to “deflect responsibility” and blame accountants or other employees for the false valuations of properties.
He says Trump is going to have to “walk a tightrope” giving evidence today, but adds he believes the former president’s legal team have internally “told him they’re going to lose this case”.
“They’re attacking the judge, not to try to convince him, but because they already know they’ve lost and are trying to spin, or add some colour, to a very bad result.” from Renato Mariotti, former federal prosecutor
It’s already been a finding of fact that Trump is guilty of fraud. This isn’t even up for debate and hasn’t been for some time. The only thing to decide is the amount of financial liability Trump is going to suffer for the fraud he committed.
So Trump would’ve known for weeks that he’s lost unless his plan is to redefine win as not lose as much as he could’ve.
Kevin Wallace of the attorney general’s team is pressing Trump about the several instances in which he has admitted to directing his team to lower the values of properties - after his team completed financial statements.
Trump is not providing many specifics. “They made a mistake,” he says, adding that the statements had an error disclaimer clause that mean “you don’t have to get sued by the Attorney General of New York”.
It’s the same way he’s been answering most questions today, evading a direct yes or no, and attacking the prosecution.
Trump’s attorney Chris Kise argued earlier in the day that Judge Engoron should allow Trump to give answers in his own way.
“With this witness, it’s far more efficient to listen and take it all in,” Kise said earlier, prompting Wallace to laugh.
The Hamas-run health ministry says at least 45 people have been killed in what it said was an Israeli air strike at the Al-Maghazi refugee camp.
The head of Gaza’s Al-Aqsa hospital said 52 people were killed in the blast on Saturday night, slightly more than the number given by the health ministry.
Residents have been trying to dig with their hands through layers of cement in an attempt to extract those trapped under the rubble.
While there has been no official response yet, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman told the BBC he was unable to confirm whether the camp was hit by an Israeli air strike.
“There is no safe place in Gaza,” Muhammad, a civil defence officer who rushed to the scene of Saturday’s strike to help, told the BBC.
“They ask the Palestinians to go to the south, but kill them everywhere - on the roads, in schools where people are sheltering, and even in hospitals.”
The original article contains 403 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 60%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Okay. 10 years. 20? How much time needs to pass before you admit when you’re wrong?
While they been talking about it for a long time, true, what’s change is that in recent times they’ve been building up their military forces a lot, and doing very political/military moves in the waters between them. They’re definitely ramping up on their actions and/or responses, signaling, probing. And this is new.
How far that escalation goes, nobody knows, but usually if somebody says they’re going to do something, you should take them at their word that they’re going to do what they said they were going to do, at some point in time.
I really think they do - looking at their comment history (after they commented on one of mine) Im not sure if they are trump-level clueless or a troll… think they are the most downvoted user I’ve seen on here.
“We are taking the Chinese military threat very seriously. And that is the reason why we are making more investment in our own defense capabilities. But we have not been focusing on one timeline only. For example, a lot of people are talking about 2025, some people are talking about 2027, some people talk about 2035, and etc. We take all kinds of assessments in a very serious way. And what we want to be prepared for is no matter when the Chinese are going to launch its military attack against Taiwan, we are prepared. But i think that 2027 is the year that we need to be serious about.”
How about you try to prove a positive instead of asking for a source to prove something isn’t going to happen, debatelord
True, you can’t prove a negative, but at the same time that person made a firm statement, so someone else’s totally in the right to ask for citation to backup what they said.
They could have supplied quotes from Chinese leaders stating that they were never going to invade, etc.
The number of opportunities they have to actually pull it off are so few and far between just from demographics, geography, and meteorology alone, that you can count with two hands the exact number of days between now and when the window will basically close permanently when they could even hypothetically make an attempt at it without cursing their entire invasion force to the bottom of the sea before they even encounter a defensive line.
Not to mention the rumours that Taiwan has developed a non-nuclear MAD doctrine which would allow them to instantly turn 400,000,000 Chinese citizens into refugees by blowing the 3 gorges dam. A scenario that would require China to turn any deployed forces right around to institute martial law.
My understanding is that they know it’s not worth it for them. But unfortunately the “glory “ of the “reunification “ makes it worth it for their leaders that want to be remembered for this.
A lot of things in China are going downhill: trade, banks, real state. China isn’t just going for Taiwan, it’s projecting imperialism all around, even with India, another BRICS member. Taiwan is just the biggest mark. I wouldn’t cross off options for what imperialist despots will or will not do when they become increasingly desperate.
I don’t know if China is going to collapse any time soon (at some point they will though). At risk of sounding like a conspiracy the world order is changing as America is no longer the sole leading power, trade and infrastructure development are heavily tied to China, and we are too reliant on their cheap goods to go against them.
It’s creating a new front in regards to the proxy wars. Russia still has the numerical advantage over Ukraine in regards of people it throws into the grinder, but now Iran can get more involved by trying to harass through the Israel-Hamas conflict which decreases the provisions available for Ukraine.
It’s kind of flying under the radar in the US but Africa (this region especially) had been enduring multiple failed and successful coups and more generally Africa is looking at drought, economic pressure, and terrorism. Africa is obviously enormous but there’s been a steady uptick in instability. Here’s a short article of you’d like to read more.
I think Israel right now wants to be Ukraine. Ukraine has won the people’s hearts by fighting so hard despite overwhelming odds. They’re paying with their lives to stop Russia not only from destroying them, but also from invading other parts of Europe.
I’ve heard Israel actually wants sympathy too, and get jealous of the support given to European nations when they get hit by terror attacks or random disasters like the cathedral burning. Israel should understand they are a military base in the middle of the Muslim world. They are percieved as a colony. And seeing the amount of military aid and impunity they recieve from the Europeans and America it’s only strengthened that view.
Well, the naming of the article has sure aged liked milk.
Any pro russian dumbass can point to it (without reading it, of course) and scream: “SEE SEE! THESE EVIL UKRAINIANS WANT TO KILL ALL RUSSIANS 😭😭😭😭” while the article just says they need to focus on security and intelligence which (until now) Israel was known for. The attack shows it wasn’t really true.
What is taking away the focus is the fact that he supported the ethnic cleansing and genocide that Israel is committing in Palestine. So he thought that these things are not inherently bad, but only bad when they are happening to yourself - and fuck everyone else.
Now he’s just finding out that that might not have been the smartest move, if he have to explain to the world again that they must give a fuck about his war.
“Zelensky was one of the first leaders to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and express support for Israel.
“In the face of such a terrorist strike, everyone who values life must stand in solidarity … Israel has the full right to defend itself against terror,” Zelensky said in a statement shortly after the attack.”
It’s a bit of a leap to go from that to full on support for ethnic cleansing.
That is not the same as calling for ethnic cleansing.
Someone punches you in the face, you have a right to defend yourself. You don’t have a right to kill them, burn their house down, murder their entire family, and then take out the rest of the block “just to be sure”.
Okay devoid of all context and reality and focusing only on the rhetoric, you have a point.
Now imagine if I commit a genocide while claiming a right to defend myself, like the Nazis did? How is that phrase being deployed in that historical example?
If you claim a right to defend yourself while committing a genocide, it is in fact the same as calling for genocide.
If you had asked them, they would have told you differently. They would have told you about the long and complicated history that brought them to that point and the necessity of their actions. They would have told you about the barbarism of their enemies and the atrocities they carried out.
There are heroic stories from the Warsaw ghetto and partisans who refused to be captured and took to the forests that you’d be erasing by making such a claim. Martyrs. Examples you and I could only hope to live up to if we found ourselves in their shoes. Resilience against pain and suffering the likes of which we can only read about. The human spirit will not allow itself to be extinguished without a struggle. Those who wish to extinguish it will always have examples of violence occurring against them.
Because his very political existence has been to pull Ukraine to the west and Israel is the US’s 51st state. Things are going very badly for him and he’s eager to get as much favor from the patron state as he can. He’s going to get eaten alive by his local politics.
I hate to say it, but within minutes of hearing about the attack by Hamas against Israel, the unexpectedness of it, and the scale of it, I asked myself, “Who’s funding this,” and, “Who gains by this?” And my brain replied, “Putin.”
Sure enough within days his puppets in our government (the USofA GOP) start talking about reducing/stopping aid to Ukraine.
It’s more complex than that, Israel and Russia have much more common geopolitical interest than you might expect if you follow analists: in Sirya for example. This while still having opposite positions about Iran. It’s just a mess.
Sure enough within days his puppets in our government (the USofA GOP) start talking about reducing/stopping aid to Ukraine.
I mean, not to say you’re wrong exactly, but that’s not a new thing. Those same people have been demanding the same for a year and a half. Using Israel as their current excuse doesn’t mean much, just that they’re opportunistic shits, which isn’t really news.
Plus Biden’s proposed answer to this was basically just to double down on continuing aid to Ukraine, the aid package he requested for Israel also had a significant sum for Ukraine.
Russia seems determined to relearn the mistakes that lost them the cold war the first time around, that America wipes its ass with more money than you can afford to throw at proxies, and that doing so isn’t even close to its largest military expense.
Israel was bombing Hamas for 15 years. Does your history start at October? Nonetheless this example is about killing civilians instead of the enemy and how it doesn’t accomplish anything.
The most likely intention for the brutality of the terror attack from October was stopping the diplomatic processes between Israel and other Arab countries to establish somewhat normal relations. Putin and Iran are definitely indirect beneficiaries, but there’s no need to create narratives where Hamas is the puppet of Iran or Russia because they did something that was aligned with their own interests.
And there more, including the Map they display during UN assembly calling for “The new middle East” and the agreement they signed with Lebanon, although Hizbollah control the government there. February of this year.
It’s not just Putin, there’s clear alliances forming: Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, China. Hamas was financed and trained by Iran, who have themselves been significantly supported by Russia. It seems that all MAD is doing is limiting the growing conflict to a Proxy World War.
It’s best that this conflict ends sooner rather than later. I’ve heard that Ukraine is outnumbered 3 to 1 and is sending injured soldiers and teenagers to the front lines. There’s no hope of them winning. Hindsight is 20/20 and it’s clear that the Ukrainians’ best option would’ve been to surrender in February 2022 and negotiate a peace agreement when they still had some bargaining power. Now they have none and this guy will go down in shame as Ukraine’s worst leader.
Unfortunately you don’t have to look very hard around here to find them. Lemmy is absolutely swarming with paid propagandists from the usual suspect countries.
They did have a peace agreement after Russia invaded…in 2014. Russia was handed Crimea. Yet, Appeasing dictators was proven yet again to not work. So, today they defend themselves from the invader.
We must continue to support them, we must continue to ensure Russia does not win their war of conquest.
You’ve lost the plot. More weapons can’t solve a lack of soldiers. Unless Western Europe/NATO plan to start WW3, the outcome has been decided. The humane thing isn’t to cheer for more war, but to understand that cheering for war itself was a mistake.
We were told Ukraine could win. We were told wrong. The people who gave us this false impression also told us we’d win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last I checked, those wars didn’t result in the victory we were promised, either.
Every gun and dollar given to Ukraine is a gun and dollar used against Russia, one of the US’s most obnoxious enemies. Every resource that Russia has to spend in the war is more expensive for them than it is for us, which will give them less resources to spend on being a pain to the US. Ukraine has almost no reason not to fight since losing means a loss of their country anyways, we could either take advantage of this opportunity or we can wait until Ukraine is weaker.
The better option would be to not help Ukraine and allow them to be steamrolled by a genocidal Russia? That is somehow better for Ukraine? They are fighting for their lives, we must continue to give them the tools to not be massacred by the invader.
bbc.co.uk
Hot