2024 US Presidential Election

As it was originally written, yes. Amendments 11 through 27 were add-ons, not intended by the later generations that ratified them, and certainly not intended by the framers, to be construed into any type of weapon/tool to be used by one political party to interfere in a presidential election.I understand the First Amendment was originally included in the Constitution, and I understand it was violated when Democrat judges issued, and are currently issuing, "gag orders" on former president Trump. If the right to free speech includes all U.S. citizens, a case can be made that it especially includes former presidents, no matter how much one political party hates him. And I also understand the Eight Amendment, another original, that referred to "excessive fines". Again, if that applies to all U.S. citizens, it should especially include a former president. That would be true, if it were an undisputed fact that what happened on January 6th was an "insurrection". It's a subjective term, coined shortly after January 6th by a partisan Democrat. No way to know who, whether it was a news anchor, political commentator, or Congressperson. One thing for sure is that the term caught on like wildfire. It's been trumpeted over and over and over and over again for over three years now, but that doesn't make it any more true. January 6th was in no way comparable to the civil war. January 6th was a small riot, compared to most past riots, including of course the 2020 BLM Democrat riots. January 6th wasn't an open rebellion against the United States, it was a protest, however stupid and careless, of recently enacted vote tabulating methods, including todays new electronics, mail-in voting with no ID required, ballot harvesting, precinct hostility, etc. Things unheard of in most all past presidential elections. It's been determined that it was a fair election, and most Republicans have accepted that, I have. But Trump wasn't present at the riot, in his speech earlier that day he used the words "peacefully and patriotically", which are almost always covered up in news reports about that day.If January 6th was an insurrection against the United States Government, then so were the 2020 BLM Democrat riots. They were more of an open rebellion and war against the U.S. than was the comparatively small January 6th riot. They were a rebellion against all of U.S. law enforcement. And they were clearly INCITED by the mainstream news media, who sensationalized the killing of George Floyd. They sensationalized that dozens of times more than one person, Trump, sensationalized his opinion that the election was stolen. The mainstream media was more responsible for January 6th than Trump was, they were irresponsible in how they sensationalized Trump's opinion, rather than doing their jobs of actually reporting news. And I suspect that you believe the news media had not one little thing to do with the 2020 riots. Shame on you! That's another topic, but it's a fact that most pro-lifers don't put the life of a fetus above the life of the mother. It's a complicated issue, since it's doctors who determine what's best for the life of the mother, and they also determine where the most money is for themselves. Again off topic, I won't respond to anything more about that here. Again, that conclusion now seems to be accepted by most Republicans. I honestly thought, in late 2020 and early 2021, that Trump was going too ballistic about it, but I'm not so sure now. Trump probably had a much better foresight in how much Biden was going to screw up. I had no clue that the Afghanistan debacle was going to go like that, or that the southern border would be this open. I was pretty close with my guess on how inflation, food prices, interest rates etc were going to skyrocket. But the January 6 riot was wrong of course. Food prices, gasoline prices, interest rates were lower from 2016 to 2020, than from 2021 to today. You enjoy paying higher prices? Again, I believe that's settled. But there is evidence that the U.S. is worse off under Biden than it was under Trump. The Keystone XL pipeline would be done, the border would be much more secure than it is now, and there would be far less turmoil in the middle east, if he'd have won his second term. And his time would almost be up by now, and the hate against him would FINALLY be subsiding.​Will you accept the results if Trump wins again? RFK jr. is now polling higher than any independent since Ross Perot. He has a running mate picked. Will you accept it if he splits the vote just like Perot did in 1992? All indications currently are that that is exactly what he is poised to do. He was a guest on the Fox News morning show today, and he seems to have (slightly) more disdain for Biden than he does for Trump. Republicans grudgingly accepted when Perot cost Bush 41 that election. Most of RFK jr's actions are being covered up in the mainstream media of course. They're going to have to start reporting it soon, and from their normal Trump hate, I don't see them accepting his candidacy with near the grace that Republicans gave to Ross Perot.

I didn't expect another new helper for you, not a liberal, not a leftist, not a Democrat, just a Trump hater, just like you! And you know how it can be with Christianity, a day can be like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day. And now it's been 168 hours! since that message of mine. And that can seem like 6 months to me, after a nice Easter weekend! That's what Biden has done. Only one? Biden and his Justice Department have appointed several to attack Trump. "Insurrectionists" isn't his term, that's only a Democrat term. Most of the summer of 2020 rioters were pardoned, or never prosecuted. Most of the recent attackers at the southern border were turned loose. That all sounds good to me (and millions of others). And Biden has invited Trump to a physical fight, he's said he'd love to "take him behind the gym". Republicans don't constantly cherry pick little off-the-cuff remarks and blow them all out of proportion. For people who are not necessarily part of Biden's base, all these things sound like they could be a welcome change. Sorry, the "wink wink" was a Grover Cleveland reference. He was the 22nd AND 24th president. If RFK jr. crackly voice keeps going like he is, Trump 45 will easily coast to become Trump 47. Presidents don't control countless variables that determine the health of a free-market country. Nutrition habits, socializing habits, vaccine companies falling all over themselves to make the bucks, it went on and on, and it would have under any president. A LOT, especially when it involves a young celebrity, influencing young people. That's because the Democrat party and mainstream media block most all references to anyone who attempted to challenge him. They thumbed their nose at RFK jr, and now he's getting even. They were caught between a rock and a hard place, they know crackly voice has no chance at winning a general presidential election, but if they'd have shown him some respect and let him challenge, even he could have beaten Biden in the primaries. A lot of the public doesn't think much of Biden OR Trump, just like they didn't think much of Bush 41 and Clinton. RFK is in the drivers seat as a spoiler, and I think he likes it. The southern border, terrorism, the middle east, there are a lot of things that are just as scary as an upcoming presidential election.

Abortion is a patchwork of lots of different people, none of whom have any personal political power. The president is one person, with fairly even political power over all 50 states. The term "insurrectionist" is not a fact, it's a Democrat talking point. That's why it hasn't gained any traction in keeping Trump off the ballot. Haha, she lost her job at NBC because of temper tantrum meltdowns by Scarborough, Maddow, and several others at NBC, who are terrified at the prospect of having to sometimes have a political discussion with an actual conservative. She was undoubtedly hired by NBC because MSNBC is regularly smoked in the ratings by Fox News, the employers of Jessica Tarlov, Juan Williams, Leslie Marshall, Maria Barf (whoops, I mean Maria Harf, she's quite hott, actually) and to a lesser extent, former Democrat Congressman Harold Ford Jr,, who is a reasonable Democrat. And other non-conservatives. NBC wanted to try having an actual conservative. Unlike Fox commentators who like to have actual discussion, MSNBC commentators aren't crazy about that idea. Southern border, middle east, Biden mumbling and falling down, also sad and scary. Did you know about the belligerent protests outside of Biden's (and Obama's, and Bill Clintons) lavish fundraiser a few days back, by anti-Israel, pro Hamas Americans? I missed a few evening news reports over Easter, but I'm confident that nobody who watches ABC World News Tonight knows a thing about it.

WTF? Are you trying to say the first 10 amendments are not actually amendments?Please show evidence of these BLM riots and how they were attempts to overturn an election.

Members of the Proud Boys were convicted of insurrection for their actions on Jan 6. It's a fact. They are literally convicted insurrectionists, and they were there at the bidding of Donald Trump. They were pissed because Ronna McDaniel supported an insurrection and lied about voter fraud in an attempt to support Donald Trump. It's not hard to see why journalists would be worried about someone with no journalistic integrity.

I think they intended that our constitution and laws apply equally to everyone without regard to any individual's status as a candidate for office. Are you arguing that gag orders in general are unconstitutional? Or only when issued to Trump? Or only when issued by judges appointed by non-Republicans, making Judge Merchan's gag order unconstitutional, since his appointment traces back to Mario Cuomo's administration, but making constitutional the Washington DC Appeals Court decision to let stand Judge Chutkan's gag order since that body includes judges appointed by Reagan, Bush I, Bush II and Trump. There was nary a dissent. Aren't you ignoring equal protection under the law again? Just yesterday Nexus Services was ordered to pay $811 million in restitution and penalties, more than double Trump's $355 million. Both Nexus Services and the Trump Organization are privately held companies, but Nexus Services has multiple owners. The owners and company are the targets of default judgments, and the owners are being sanctioned.The same happened to Trump, but he's sole owner of the Trump Organization. The monetary judgment was against him and his company, and he and the other officers of the Trump Organization were also sanctioned. Same as Nexus Services. What word would you use to describe the violent invasion of the halls of Congress and the interruption of the counting of the votes of the Electoral College that forced the evacuation of the Capitol by the members of Congress? I don't think you meant to use the word "coined." The definition of insurrection is not "comparable to the United States Civil War." Comparing January 6th with the BLM riots, which one invaded the Capitol, interrupted the counting of the Electoral College, and forced the evacuation of members of Congress with the intent of illegitimately keeping Trump in office? It's also been described as a tourist visit. Now you're just making things up.Who told the insurrectionists that the election had been stolen and caused them to think these things had happened? Actually, 70% of Republicans still believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen. But he sure wanted to be. I hear it mentioned all the time, usually something like this: "He did use the word 'peacefully' in reference to marching to the Capitol early in his speech, but much of his speech included calls to fight, some of them unambiguously violent."Here's are excerpts from Trump's January 6th speech. Sorry about the length - there was more that was relevant than I expected:

Donald Trump:

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All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they're doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That's what they've done and what they're doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved.

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Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that's what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with: We will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.
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We will not let them silence your voices. We're not going to let it happen, I'm not going to let it happen.

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(Audience chants: "Fight for Trump.")
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We want to go back and we want to get this right because we're going to have somebody in there that should not be in there and our country will be destroyed and we're not going to stand for that.
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And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
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Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.

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I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
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I'd fight. So I'd fight, they'd fight, I'd fight, they'd fight. Pop pop.
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But it almost seems that they're all going out of their way to hurt all of us and to hurt our country. To hurt our country.
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But it was done in such a way that we can't let this stuff happen. We won't have a country if it happens.
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The radical left knows exactly what they're doing. They're ruthless and it's time that somebody did something about it. And Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories.
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Make no mistake, this election was stolen from you, from me and from the country.
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Well, I say, yes it does, because the Constitution says you have to protect our country and you have to protect our Constitution, and you can't vote on fraud. And fraud breaks up everything, doesn't it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you're allowed to go by very different rules.
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So today, in addition to challenging the certification of the election, I'm calling on Congress and the state legislatures to quickly pass sweeping election reforms, and you better do it before we have no country left.
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And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
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So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

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Pretty incendiary stuff. Four January 6th defendants pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy (insurrection), and eight (Enrique Tarrio, Proud Boys national chairman, Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, Joseph Hackett, Roberto Minuta, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo) were convicted of it. They were all given long sentences, 22 years in the case of Tarrio.No one in the 2020 BLM riots was charged with seditious conspiracy, let alone convicted and sentenced for it. It's been explained to you before that your judging the two comparable makes no sense, and it continues to make no sense. If you've got arguments for your position then make them. Just repeating the same debunked claims over and over with no evidence becomes equivalent to lying after a while. The news media sensationalizes everything. Here in New England the news is telling us we're about to get hit by a crippling snowstorm that will bring the region to its knees. Amazingly, by Friday morning the roads will have been cleared and it will be business as usual. Some schools and businesses actually paid attention to the sensationalizing and are closed today, which is crazy since it's currently 44° and cloudy and the snow won't start until tonight sometime.So I agree about media sensationalizing, but this isn't a recent phenomenon. They're been doing it all this century, the previous century, and the century before.But some news events do deserve a lot of attention, and the George Floyd murder seems like one of those events. I don't know if anyone's been keeping count, but for the nearly past four years Trump has kept up a steady drumbeat of claims that the election was stolen, ramping it up this year. I think Trump likely wins on this one. The media caused January 6th? This is out there even for you. Unless you're talking about Fox News, and even that would be a stretch, this claimed connection of the news media to causes of the January 6th insurrection continues to make no sense. Again, untrue. 70% of Republicans still believe the election was stolen. Ya think? Ah, shucks, and you were doing so well. Are you seriously making the argument that the more incompetent an opponent the more justified are false claims of election fraud? Right once again. I'm just enjoying living in a democratic republic, while it lasts. If Trump had won a second term I think his administration would not have been as damaging to democracy as will be the "Trump Vengeance Tour" administration should he win this November. I know you're asking Rahvin, but I want to answer, too. Of course I'll accept it. I accepted his victory in 2016, and should he win in November I'll accept that, too. Why would that make a difference to accepting the outcome? We may not have a perfect system, there's probably no such thing, but we have a system, and when that system is judged to have been properly followed then we should all accept the outcome. You are once again complaining about the media not reporting about something that they report on all the time. I see headlines mentioning RFK on a regular basis. He's in the news again today. You are hopelessly delusional about the news media.--Percy

Gag orders have already been found to be constitutional if they meet certain criteria:

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In the 1976 case Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, the Supreme Court created a three-part test to evaluate the constitutionality of a gag order that stopped a newspaper from publishing any confessions an accused murderer made to law enforcement: whether the publicity would harm the defendant’s right to a fair trial, whether the gag order is the least restrictive means possible to ensure that fairness, and whether the gag order will be effective.[6] Requiring a gag order to satisfy each condition, the Court said, would ensure that both the First Amendment and the Sixth Amendment would be respected.[7]
When Silence Isn’t Golden: How Gag Orders Can Evade First Amendment Protections | Yale Law School

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If Trump feels that a gag order violates his First Amendment rights he is free to appeal, but there's no validity in saying that gag orders are unconstitutional on their face. That has already been ruled on. What are you smoking?

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The Insurrection Act of 1807 is a United States federal law[1] that empowers the president of the United States to deploy U.S. military and federalized National Guard troops within the United States in particular circumstances, such as to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion.
Insurrection Act of 1807 - Wikipedia

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1807. Read that again. 1807. Not 2020. 18 freaking 07.It was a word more than 200 years ago, and it still means the same thing today. It wasnt' coined in 2020. Please learn what insurrection means. A protest is not insurrection. Attacking the government is insurrection. There's a big difference. Fox News lying about the 2020 election had a lot to do with it.

You could only contrive an argument for that by making stuff up. Trump, on the other hand, has been very explicit about what he would do if reelected:

Donald Trump:

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I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family. I will totally obliterate the Deep State.
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If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say go down and indict them.

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I can only repeat what I have already said many times. I think people should be held accountable for wrongdoing. That includes both Biden and Trump. So far only Trump has been indicted or found to have committed wrongdoing. You're playing "whataboutism" again.Trump calls those convicted of January 6th offenses (which range from trespassing to insurrection (seditious conspiracy)) patriots and heroes. Trump says he'll pardon them. As long as you know what you're voting for. More "whataboutism." These aren't remotely equivalent. The Biden quote is from nearly eight years ago and is typical political hyperbole, like when Reagan budget director Stockman said he'd been taken to the woodshed after screwing up. Trump's comments, on the other hand, are recent and had international and defense implications, causing concerned reactions from senior European and NATO officials. Overheating the economy and causing more inflation, building cities in the middle of nowhere, rolling back emission standards, and more tax cuts for the rich, these all sound like good ideas to you? Of course that's true, not just about health but everything. But in the case of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump mismanaged everything except vaccine development, which ironically he can't claim credit for in his campaign because his base tends strongly toward anti-vax sentiments and is highly skeptical of public health measures in general like masking, quarantining and shutdowns. It is well known that vulnerability to celebrity influence decreases with age, but we don't really understand the degree of influence at a quantitative level. Certainly Trump is a good example of the influence of celebrity, but his celebrity is also a polarizing force that works both for and against him. You're making things up again.--Percy

Abortion rights affect women's health across all 50 states. That over ten people have been sentenced for insurrection is a fact. Don't forget Chuck Todd. I think they all had principled objections to the hiring of a participant in a conspiracy to manufacture false slates of electors who was continuing to spread false doubts about the integrity of the election. Yes, reported on by the mainstream media. No one's buying your ridiculous claims about the mainstream media or ABC World News Tonight (about which you have an irrational obsession) because they're so obviously untrue.--Percy

YOU HAVE DEFEATED ME!!!!!!!!!!

That's the term that was used, yes. It's been a popular term for years now, among Democrats. You'd think Trump would have told them to take guns. No, he just said "peacefully and patriotically. So you think Scarborough and Maddow are "journalists"? (asking for a friend)

That's the correct term. Here's the seditious conspiracy law that around ten or so January 6th rioters were convicted of or pleaded guilty to:

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18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy

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If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

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But instead of "seditious conspiracy" people usually just say "insurrection", which Dictionary.com defines like this:

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noun

1. an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government.

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They seem pretty close, but if you don't think the two words are similar enough then we can start saying "seditious conspiracy" instead. Trump used the word "peacefully" once and the word "fight" twenty times. Text of speech can be found at Trump's Jan. 6 Speech.--Percy

Equally, yes. But when election interference is a real possibility, while one political party attempting it shows no interest in how laws are applied to their own favorite president, (bribery, treason) I think they'd have intended that there'd be no forceful blockage of inquiries into it. What forceful blockage of it you ask? Gag orders against Trump maybe? News media coverups? Probably not now, with all the revisions and add-ons and weakening of the original intent of the Constitution. A gag order on the news media would have saved billions of dollars in damages and several lives lost in the BLM Democrat riots of 2020. If that would have been proposed, do you think journalists like Scarborough and Maddow would have brought up past uses of gag orders, or do you think they would have brought up the First Amendment? I guess so, since Biden gets a LOT of protection from inquiries about his bribery. Testimony has been going on recently with Anthony Bobulinski's testimony.Key Excerpts from Tony Bobulinski's Transcribed Interview - United States House Committee on Oversight and AccountabilityViewers of ABC World News Tonight know nothing about it. Safe to say that neither do viewers of the other mainstream media television news. You can say that you know all about it since it was buried on page E-27 of the NY Times. You'd have me there. So excessive fines are getting more and more common now, so the Eighth Amendment no longer applies? You've used that argument against me before, when you said it's common that the Tenth Amendment is violated, so that must make it okay. The same word I used in a past message, a RIOT. It was beyond stupid for them to think their little ragtag group, unarmed especially, could change the outcome of a presidential election. They had their twisted fun as they were laughing at how little police protection the capitol had. They knew that most of the BLM rioters of the summer of 2020 got off scott free, why would they themselves get more than a slap on the wrist? They misunderestimated the actual unequal protection under the law, when the Democrat party and a corrupt news media are involved. Why not?

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Coined 1)(of a word, expression, etc.) invented or made up:

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COINED Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com"invented or made up", looks like a good fit to me. Then why does it appear in the text of the 14th Amendment? The one that had far fewer deaths, less monetary damages, and didn't target ALL of the U.S. congress, like the BLM riots targeted ALL police. I guess they're not very comparable. The news media! They could do a lot better if they'd be more careful about what they choose to cover up and what they choose to constantly trumpet from the rooftops. It's a good thing they didn't harp over and over and over again all of Al Gore's crying about the 2000 election being stolen, or Hillary's about the 2016 election being stolen. It's hard telling what all the BLM inner city mobs would have done. Yet they've accepted that there's nothing they can do to change it. That many, or more, of Democrats believe that Gore, and later, Hillary, won their elections. Yet like Republicans, they know there's nothing they can do to change it, so they accepted it. The term "fight" is a commonly used political term, used quite often by Democrats, Fox News has played a montage of Democrats publicly using it dozens of times. Chuck Schumer threatened the LIFE of Brett Kavanaugh, we've talked about that before. You dismissed it by saying that Schumer said he was sorry, so that was the end of it. If Trump said he was sorry for anything he said in his speech on January 6th, you think maybe the mainstream media would have went ballistic over that? "HE ADMITTED IT, HE'S OBVIOUSLY UNFIT TO BE PRESIDENT!!!! GET HIM OFF THE BALLOT IN THE NAME OF DEMOCRACY!!!!" Worse than what Schumer said? Ever hear Maxine Waters shrieks at her public speeches? But since the news media doesn't make a huge deal out of them, there weren't any insurrections by Democrat groups. They sure were, they got a surprise. They learned the hard way that punishments are much more harsh for those who anger Democrats than those who simply attack the population, law enforcement, or Republicans. They probably heard about the physical attack on Rand Paul, or the shooting of Steve Scalise. The Scalise shooter got shot and killed, if that hadn't happened, he'd be out by now. Rand Paul's attacker, he got 30 whole days! Then an additional 6 months! What harshness! The capitol attackers probably knew about that. What a surprise for them. I concede that point. The BLM riots were committed by mostly black people, a superior race. The capitol riots were white people. Of course the blacks weren't charged very harshly. The general public, in public areas, were in much more danger in the 2020 riots than the public was at the capitol on January 6th. It makes no sense to compare them. Except suspicions, with plenty of evidence, that Biden committed bribery and treason while vice president. But not Biden's lie that he knew NOTHING about his son's Ukraine business dealings. Belief, and acceptance, two different things. No Theodoric, I don't know where you got that from. The Biden Vengeance Tour has been quite damaging, just because Biden didn't proclaim it as loudly as Trump has doesn't mean it hasn't been happening. But I suspect that when a lot of Democrat voters don't accept it, and resort to some type of violence, you won't mind too much. I disrespectfully disagree.
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What does that mean? It was a simple question.

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18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy
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If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

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"If two or more persons" BLM riots consisted of many more than two persons,"in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, "BLM rioters took over by force a police station, they opposed the authority thereof,"or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof,"Any property? A police station?

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Polls in the summer of 2020 estimated that between 15 million and 26 million people had participated at some point in the demonstrations in the United States, making the protests the largest in U.S. history

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George Floyd protests - WikipediaBut I'm not comparing that to a couple of hours on January 6th! These riots involved dozens of times more "property of the United States". Not near as seditious as the BLM riots. Not comparable! Here it is. You won't watch it, but here it is.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG5BcU1ZGiA