Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner Threaten Defamation Suit Over Lincoln Project's Non-Defamatory Billboards
from the Trump,-Kushner:-give-this-entity-we-dislike-more-attention-please,-fellow-Americ dept
Donald Trump's offspring are as thin-skinned as the President himself. And, like him, they apparently have access to the worst legal counsel money can buy. First Daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, apparently can't handle being criticized for their involvement in the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Lincoln Project -- formed by Republicans who've distanced themselves from Trump and the current Republican party -- has been routinely and harshly critical of Trump and his presidency. Recently, the group purchased billboards in Time Square that feature Ivanka Trump gesturing towards COVID-19 death counts in the US and New York State, along with a quote from Jared Kushner -- the head of Trump's business-facing COVID-19 response task force -- stating that anything New Yorkers suffer is their own problem.
Here's a photo of the billboard as posted by the Lincoln Project's Twitter account:
The hand gesture appears to be an approximation of the one used by Ivanka Trump when she tweeted a plug for Goya Beans earlier this year.
If it’s Goya, it has to be good.
Si es Goya, tiene que ser bueno. pic.twitter.com/9tjVrfmo9z— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) July 15, 2020
The Kushner quote comes from a Vanity Fair article published in September. It was attributed to him by an attendee of one of Kusher's COVID task force meetings -- ones in which he pushed the idea the "free market" would control the spread of the virus.
The same attendee explained that although he believed in open markets, he feared that the system was breaking. As evidence, he pointed to a CNN report about New York governor Andrew Cuomo and his desperate call for supplies.
“That’s the CNN bullshit,” Kushner snapped. “They lie.”
According to another attendee, Kushner then began to rail against the governor: “Cuomo didn’t pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state…. His people are going to suffer and that’s their problem.”
There's the factual background. Here's the response from the couple's lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, who seemingly has no idea how defamation law works.
We represent Mr. Jared Kushner and Ms. Ivanka Trump. I am writing concerning the false, malicious and defamatory ads that the Lincoln Project is displaying on billboards in Times Square. Those ads show Ms. Trump smiling and gesturing toward a death count of Americans and New Yorkers, and attribute to Mr. Kushner the statement that "[New Yorkers] are going to suffer and that's their problem" (alteration in the original), with body bags underneath.
Of course, Mr. Kushner never made any such statement, Ms. Trump never made any such gesture, and the Lincoln Project's representations that they did are an outrageous and shameful libel. If these billboard ads are not immediately removed, we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages.
LOL. First off, Ivanka did make "such gesture," even if it was to cradle an innocuous can of beans rather than proudly present the COVID death toll. Second, whether or not it's ever proven Kushner made this statement, the Lincoln Project reasonably relied on reporting indicating he did. There's nothing false, malicious, or defamatory about the quote posted on the billboard.
Finally, I have no doubt that Kasowitz is capable of writing a complaint demanding "enormous damages." But writing a complaint is not the same thing as winning a lawsuit. And it's not even in the same area code, nevermind ballpark, of collecting any damages of any amount.
The Lincoln Project has responded appropriately to this idiotic attempt to silence it with legal threats.
The level of indignant outrage Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have shown towards the Lincoln Project for exposing their indifference for the more than 223,000 people who have lost their lives due to their reckless mismanagement of COVID-19 is comical. While we truly enjoy living rent free in their heads, their empty threats will not be taken more seriously than we take Ivanka and Jared.
[...]
Jared and Ivanka have always been entitled, out-of-touch bullies who have never given the slightest indication they have any regard for the American people. We plan on showing them the same level of respect.
The billboards will stay up.
The Lincoln Project issued a longer "go fuck yourselves" via their legal representation a few hours later. It's just as caustic as its first riposte.
You boldy predict that the result of your lawsuit "will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages."
Please peddle your scare tactics elsewhere. The Lincoln Project will not be intimidated by such empty bluster.
[...]
Contrary to your claim that "Mr. Kushner never made any such statement," Vanity Fair reported in a widely circulated article that Mr. Kushner did indeed say that New Yorkers "are going to suffer and that's their problem" during the time that he was entrusted to lead our nation's COVID-19 response. The Lincoln Project explicitly cited Vanity Fair as the source for Mr. Kushner's featured statement. Please contact us again if at some point you somehow succeed in convincing Vanity Fair to retract its article, but I trust this supplemental explanation settles the matter for now as to Mr. Kushner's remark.
[...]
The Lincoln Project would welcome the opportunity to further establish the truthfulness of its Time Square billboards through litigation and discovery, so sue if you must. In the meantime, may I suggest that if Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump are genuinely concerned about salvaging their reputations, they would do well to stop suppressing truthful criticism and instead turn their attention to the COVID-19 crisis that is still unfolding under their inept watch. These billboards are not causing Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump's standing with the public to plummet. Their incompetence is.
I'd like to say I'd be very surprised if this legal threat actually becomes a lawsuit. But it's been four extremely long years and it feels like nothing Trump or his offspring do is still capable of surprising me. If the power couple wants to pay Marc Kasowitz an enormous amount of money to waste everyone's time, that's up to them. But the Lincoln Project shouldn't be forced to waste its own time and money just because Ivanka and Jared feel like wasting theirs. So, for that reason, I hope this is the last we hear from Jared and Ivanka about the Times Square billboards.
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Filed Under: 1st amendment, billboards, defamation, free speech, ivanka trump, jared kushner, lincoln project, marc kasowitz, slapp, streisand effect
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Winter is coming. Shouldn't these snowflakes not melt?
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They're the first A-Circle to realize how badly they've burned their brand. Get ready for an "Independent tour" about how Ivanka kept her disagreements "private"
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Re: Re:
Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber won't be able to navigate their way out of the bag of shit they've dunked themselves in, much less the one they were born into.
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Dear Mr. and Mrs. Ivanka Trump:
The truth can only defame you if you feel shame over it.
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Re: Dear Mr. and Mrs. Ivanka Trump:
Dear Mr. Stephen T. Stone, I cannot agree with you. The truth can never defame you. But I could agree if you said "You can only feel defamed by the truth if you feel shame over it."
I do think the power(less, soon, we hope) couple is experiencing far more of a "how dare they" moment than a "that's false" moment.
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How dare you improve my axiom with a better axiom crafted through logic.
how dare
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The Lincoln Project is clearly in the legal right here, but I still think they're a bunch of assholes, and their attacks on the Trump Administration have all the sincerity of Baron Frankenstein grabbing a torch and joining the villagers storming his own castle to destroy the monster he created.
The Lincoln Project doesn't object to Trump because he's stupid, or cruel, or an international embarrassment who has hurt America's standing overseas, or because his negligence has allowed Americans to die in preventable disasters. If any of those factors were a deal-breaker for the members of the Lincoln Project, we'd have seen these ads back during the George W Bush Administration.
Members of the Lincoln Project include Steve Schmidt, the campaign advisor who convinced John McCain to choose Sarah Palin as his running-mate. He didn't have a problem with Trumpists back when they were called the Tea Party.
No, their problem with Trump is simple: he's threatened the Republican Party's grip on power. The Lincoln Project is a ratboat swimming away from a sinking ship -- and trying to set themselves up as the reasonable Republicans who never liked Trump anyway so they can continue to push far-right candidates who are no different from Trump in policy but don't call quite so much attention to themselves on Twitter.
The letter gives away the game: "While we truly enjoy living rent free in their heads..." That's what this is about, and that's all this is about. The Lincoln Project exists for the sole purpose of annoying the Trumps. Which isn't exactly a challenge.
How much money are they spending on this campaign, running anti-Trump ads on Fox News and putting up anti-Trump billboards in Times Square? They could spend that money on something that's actually useful instead of just professional-grade trolling. Hell, if they want to annoy Trump, they can contribute some money to shark preservation and actually do some good in the world.
But doing good in the world isn't their goal, and it never has been. Remember that after the election, when (assuming Biden wins, which seems likely at this point but is not a certainty) they immediately turn around and start tut-tutting that the Democrats are far too extreme and the country needs to go back to the days we had reasonable moderates who were willing to reach across the aisle, like George W Bush.
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The Lincoln Project group are a bunch of useful idiots that the Democrats would do well to exploit now and disavow as soon as the election ends, regardless of the outcome.
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This ^. I don't care one whit for anyone in the Lincoln Project but, for now, anyone that helps get the trump clan the hell out of the White House has my backing regardless of their approach. Once that is done then all bets are off.
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While I understand the emotion behind this response, this is the kind of reasoning used by the CIA on multiple continents for the last several decades.
I don't think it has worked out well for them(us).
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" regardless of their approach"
I could be wrong but ... isn't that sort of thinking mostly by the GOP what got us to where we are today?
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Re: Re: Re:
It is, but that's how bad things are. The house is on fire and the only way you have to put it out is to corral the herd of incontinent politicians milling around and aim them in roughly the same direction.
An actual fire hose would be nicer, but by the time you can get that one to the site only ashes will be left.
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I don't see that, really. For better or worse, the U.S. political system in the medium-term future is a two-party system. People become disenchanted with the encumbent and the pendulum swings back eventually. The total blockade politics of the Republican Senators during Obama's terms led to the Democrats killing the filibuster for normal appointments, and once the Republicans were back in the seat, they killed it for Supreme court appointments.
That means that the traditional role of the Senate as a compromise-finding body is gone and the damage that destructive politics like that of Trump can cause in a single term is immense.
If the Democrats don't want to do the same kind of destroying the institutions of democracy, they need a Republican party that is able to make sensible compromises with people they don't paint as evil incarnate. That is not the Trump way, and it is not the McConnell way.
If the Democrats are not intent to join the Republicans in destroying the Republic, they have an interest in cultivating a reasonable opponent that, unless the U.S. were to revert to a one-party system, is not going away.
They have, of course, little enough direct influence on where the Republican party chooses to go. But creating the impression of meddling in the form of anything that could be viewed as "exploit now and disavow as soon as the election ends" is not going to make it easier for comparative sanity to regain the upper hand in the Republican party.
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And if you think that’s going to come from a group of conservatives who were more than happy to play the same games as currently-in-office Republicans until Trump came along and flipped the table on everyone, you’re deluding yourself. The GOP did an “autopsy” of itself after the 2012 elections; any recommendations in that report were summarily forgotten come 2014 and (especially) 2016.
The current slate of Republicans in government aren’t there to govern. (Whether Democrats are is a different argument for a different day.) They’re in government to exploit power for personal gain. Whether that exploitation helps the average American is beside the point, at least to them. The only way to get conservatives in Congress who will work with Democrats is, ironically enough, to elect more Democrats — because only a handful of Dems are actually left-of-center and the GOP has drifted so far right as a party that calling them “conservatives” instead of “fascists” would be lying.
I’m under no illusions about the two-party system of U.S. politics. I’d prefer we have a better system — preferably via ranked or scored voting that gives non-Dem or non-GOP candidates a better chance to win in all elections — but until that happens, we have to live with what we’ve got. That means calling out the truth when it’s necessary. Doing that means calling the GOP exactly what it is: a group of racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, Christianity-pushing, oligarch-humping fascists who’d rather see Trump have another four years to destroy the United States than do the right thing and tell him to fuck off because taking the second option means they’ll have to actually find work outside of using their positions in government to grift gullible conservative voters.
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"I’m under no illusions about the two-party system of U.S. politics. I’d prefer we have a better system — preferably via ranked or scored voting that gives non-Dem or non-GOP candidates a better chance to win in all elections"
A viable third party is a very important thing to try and achieve, but it's not a fix by itself. If you look at British and Spanish politics, it's also a mess. The "viable" third party in the UK (Lib Dems) were instrumental in securing the beginnings of a decade of Conservative rule, which has culminated in Brexit and all round disaster (while ensuring that the Lib Dems will not be a viable third party again for a while as their voters felt betrayed by the Tory coalition), while Spain has been dogged for years by multiple elections having been unable to secure an actual majority party that can effectively run the country, as the vote is constantly split between the major viable parties.
Getting rid of the binary race to the bottom will be a good thing, but while things like populism and rampant disinformation are infecting politics, that's only a start.
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So, you've met every single Republican in existence, then? Because that's the only way you can make a statement about all of them and have it have any sort of credibility. You wouldn't want sweeping generalizations to be made about those you agree with, so don't make them about those you don't - they're almost always wrong. Your post reeks of hate and bile, so why don't you show us on the doll where the Republicans touched you, eh? Sure, many are not what they should be, I don't deny that, but not all of them (more the everyday people) are like that. People aren't monolithic sets of clones. They're all different. Drop your generalization and add a qualifier to indicate you acknowledge they're not all the way you describe. Or admit to being a hypocrite who won't criticize those supposedly on his side.
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Re: Re:
“ People aren't monolithic sets of clones”
But, people who have chosen to identify themselves with a particular label, such as “Republican” are more likely to share certain beliefs. I’m sure there were IRA members who were fun guys to hang around with if you got to know them but, you know, the bombings still happened under the banner they chose
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Ironically the same people who keep screaming "there's a difference" when it comes to the US republicans are the same who eagerly condemn BLM over rioters, the palestinian PLO over Hamas and Sinn Fein over the IRA.
While forgetting that principle in frenzied exculpation when it comes to condemning US police when it kills people in custody.
"Republican" today means "White Taliban".
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Re: Re:
"People aren't monolithic sets of clones."
True enough, but "republican" is something you yourself must identify with. And today that self-identification tells us everything we need to know - that you are willing to ignore, let slide, or tolerate racists, bigots, misogynists, and frigging doom cult religious extremists just so you can preserve whatever it is still has to clinging to the party name.
Someone who claims to be none of the above and still thinks s/he is a republican is in the same position as a Rabbi in the american nazi party. It literally makes no sense at all why such a person would still be in that party.
"So, you've met every single Republican in existence, then?"
We haven't met every white supremacist or fundamentalist IS member around either. No one needs to, in order to condemn them as bad.
The republican party today represents malice on so many levels the only things they still have is hatred and a cult-like adherence to Dear Leader. The DNC demonstrated that for four days straight. And after that shit-show there are still deluded morons who think calling themselves "republican" today is different than just hauling out a KKK membership card and being done with it?
Sheesh.
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"For better or worse, the U.S. political system in the medium-term future is a two-party system"
This is true, but there's no law that says that the two parties have to be Democrats and Republicans. Trump appears to have made a lot of people reconsider whether they actually belong to the same party as his cult, and hopefully there will be some change with where their public loyalties lie.
"That is not the Trump way, and it is not the McConnell way."
It's my opinion that McConnell has been the most damaging thing to US politics over the last couple of decades. Trump is a con artist who temporarily managed to get the podium position, but things won't really change unless such cancerous influences are removed from office and replaced with people who actually serve their constituencies instead of broken ideologies.
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"If the Democrats don't want to do the same kind of destroying the institutions of democracy, they need a Republican party that is able to make sensible compromises with people they don't paint as evil incarnate."
Emphasis mine.
The issue is that if we are to talk about a gainful political debate, there almost HAS to be at least one party willing to argue in somewhat good faith.
Even if Trump goes away that's currently going to be a very tall order for either democrats OR republicans, neither of whom have expressed any real interest in furthering democracy where it is inconvenient to their personal four-year tenure as the guys on top.
And that's a massive problem right there. You don't have a single party willing to uphold democracy. You have one party which has slid all the way beyond the extreme right and which unashamedly advocates outright fascist, racist, and/or bigoted legislation...and their "opposition" who in desperation to appear "moderate" keep trying to appease the extreme party by marching to the right in lockstep every time someone calls them "leftist".
You don't have one party calling for inhumane fascism and another party trying to do the right thing. You've got one party calling for ever more horrible acts of inhumane fascism and another party always trying to compromise so the result is just a little bit fascist.
If democrats had the moral courage to stand up in the Reagan era and actually taking republicans to task rather than just spend the time mouthing platitudes and feathering their own nests we wouldn't be at this point today, where we who live outside of the US look in and see something we'd have expected to find in history books about europe 1930-40.
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First you stop the bleeding, then you worry about the wound
I'm anything but a friend of the republican party but if a minority segment of it wants to undermine and hopefully oust a republican president by highlighting said president's atrocities and lies then their motives would definitely take second place for me, because even if they are only doing it to try to keep their party in power by trying to keep it from being so overwhelmingly corrupt and toxic that it only attracts the most deplorable individuals that doesn't change the fact they're still trying to undercut and ousts a horrible, monstrous individual.
Even if their long-term goals may be bad their short-term goal of ousting a monster is a good one, so like Stephen said those that oppose Trump should make use of them while the goal of getting Trump out is needed and shared, and then should they change tactics and start making terrible arguments of their own the temporary 'alliance' can be tossed and we can go back to sniping on topics less likely to get people killed.
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Re: First you stop the bleeding, then you worry about the wound
On the one hand, "the enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, no more, no less" (maxim #29)
On the other hand, there is no shortage of things to fault the Democrats for, either. Incompetence and monstrosity are not currently among them, but give them time and license...
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Re: Re: First you stop the bleeding, then you worry about the wo
Not quite right - while monstrosity is not currently among them, incompetence is highly prevalent or they wouldn't have lost to Trump in 2016, and would have taken the Senate as well as the House in 2018. They're also doing a bang-up job of making the 2020 race tight despite the fact that the Republicans are all but outright owning to being Fascists and racists and several other -ists that should make it simple to beat them in any popular vote.
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Re: Re: First you stop the bleeding, then you worry about the wo
"On the one hand, "the enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, no more, no less" (maxim #29)"
I find it excessively disturbing that the "70 Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries" would make for a comprehensive guide to US politics today...
Concensus on these board so far make The Lincoln project fall under maxim 4; "Close air support covereth a multitude of sins".
Both parties are fond of maxim 21; "Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll figure out how to catch another one for you to take tomorrow."
Which is why the canny voter really needs to start using maxim 30; "A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go."
What US politics really need at this moment is a hungry carbosilicate amorph.
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"they're a bunch of assholes, and their attacks on the Trump Administration have all the sincerity of Baron Frankenstein grabbing a torch and joining the villagers storming his own castle to destroy the monster he created."
I wonder how many of them will be voting for the Supreme Court nominee.
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"The Lincoln Project is clearly in the legal right here, but I still think they're a bunch of assholes, and their attacks on the Trump Administration have all the sincerity of Baron Frankenstein grabbing a torch and joining the villagers storming his own castle to destroy the monster he created."
Sad and oh, so true. I'll join the chorus clamoring for a button expressly to express that sentiment.
The Lincoln project is no different than the rest of the GOP in that what they have isn't a way forward, any actual policy, or any idea on how to mend the "tension" - for lack of a more descriptive word of the "pending civil war" - polarizing the nation.
Instead, identical to the rest of the party of "No We Can't" they have negative partisanship expressed in kitschy one-liners they stole off the same people they decried as "liberal scum" a year ago.
This is just part of the GOP splitting off to cannibalize the rest of the GOP in the hope of a continued political career.
"They could spend that money on something that's actually useful instead of just professional-grade trolling."
Well, yeah, but if they did they'd have a harder time with the expected followup of "Want a republican candidate who ISN'T openly nucking futz? Who'll make sure to condemn the Very Fine People while still keeping the lesser races out of your neighborhood? Who'll keep up the Good Works of Reagan and GWB while still letting your local pastor thump his pulpit about society's sinners with a clean conscience? Look no further, We Are Also Not Trump!"
I'd personally compare them to Carthaginians sneaking out of Hannibal's army to join the romans on the wall only to heckle the approaching horde about Hannibal's failures as an elephant wrangler in comparative safety.
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Well, that's the point, isn't it? They want to be able to continue their political career based on goals that made them enter the Republican party in the first place. Being active members of a party means having (or at least wanting) more direct influence on its course than a voter.
If your roof leaks, the normal recourse is to repair it rather than look for a different house to move to.
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"If your roof leaks, the normal recourse is to repair it rather than look for a different house to move to."
Yeah, that analogy doesn't really fit.
More like the company retained to maintain the roof from leaking is embroiled in a long-standing massive battle of finger-pointing to determine whose fault it is that the roof of one of their clients is leaking - with a few of the repairmen recently coming up with the idea of blaming the leadership in order to grab the top jobs.
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After SCO v. IBM, I wouldn't be at all surprised at anything anyone might sue over and what lengths they might go to to try and avoid admitting they'd lost. The only problem the Trumps might have is that they haven't managed to finagle the sweetheart deal SCO got from their lawyers so they might balk at having to pay their own legal fees as they go.
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The Trumps are marked "No Credit" to their lawyers and for good reason. They sue everyone, they sue people to "send a message" they sue a random news station to show your not safe from the randomness of the Trump outlash and you better not get in his way.
This all ends when his presidency ends of course. He needs the power of the office to keep himself safe from any bad outcome.
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Ah hypocrisy...
Gotta love how the family that never passes up a chance to insult, denigrate and lie about other people throws the most epic of tantrums when someone uses their own words and actions to paint them as anything other than paragons of kindness and honesty.
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Re: Ah hypocrisy...
Which noone expected them to exhibit in the first place.
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Re: Re: Ah hypocrisy...
Indeed, I am shocked, shocked I say to find hypocrisy in this Trump family.
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The discovery on a lawsuit about this could be amazing/brutal. Okay Jared, to prove you didn't say that, please hand over all recordings, notes, and minutes from all of the COVID-19 committee meetings.
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They'll threaten it, but when push comes to shove, the only way they'll actually go through with it is if they believe Bill Barr will let the justice department take over and foot the bill. The Trump family really do not like dipping their hands in their pockets for these things and I doubt any reputable lawfirm wants to represent a client who'll rip them off to get in the middle of a republican catfight.
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These are not the good guys
"But the Lincoln Project shouldn't be forced to waste its own time and money just because Ivanka and Jared feel like wasting theirs."
The Lincoln Project are making serious bank out of this endeavor, so I have absolutely no issue with them wasting a ton of money that would otherwise be used to line their own pockets. If anything it'd provide even more defamation law precedent and probably be entertaining to watch.
https://www.pajiba.com/politics/the-lincoln-project-is-the-biggest-grift-of-them-all.php
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Re: These are not the good guys
With the level they're playing at, you can bet those books are immaculate.
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Re: These are not the good guys
Shrug. This is the U.S. If there is a good cause, it will find a set of people who are willing to invest all their heart and all your money into it. That's how politics and fundraising work here.
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My Take
Observing from the Great White North - one major problem with US politics is the primary system. While it replaces smoke-filled back rooms and crony politics, the system encourages extremism - the more fanatically committed are more likely to vote en masse in the less notable primaries, so the effect of crazies like the Tea Party (and the folks who rile up these "hard of thinking" masses) is exaggerated at the outset of the election cycle. It either scares off the moderates, or displaces them, or cows them into submission. Trump is simply the ultimate end game of this behaviour. Having criticized this behaviour, I have no idea how to correct this - except maybe an everyone runs, then run-off election of the top two like Georgia or like the French presidential race.
Whether the Lincoln Project is a competing herd of differently crazy, or a voice for (slightly) more moderate Republicans, or possibly even principled ones - who knows? For now, their goals overlap the Dems, and if they also target the fringes of Trump Crazy to ensure that party domination does not continue for 4 more years, to destroy the political brand going forward win-or-lose, good for them. The end justifies the meanies.
As for the lawsuit - this is the standard "I can write them a letter" lawyerly behaviour. Any competent lawyer, even Jared's, will know that the US first amendment gives an extremely wide latitude to criticism of public figures, such as White House employees. Ivanka doesn't have a Manolo to stand on.
The Trump tactic is to sue their opponents to a stalemate, running up the legal bills. This only works if the other side does not have the time or deep pockets, a small individual or business. For those with deep pockets or determination, the tactic will backfire. Just ask about the Trump University fiasco.
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Re: My Take
"Whether the Lincoln Project is a competing herd of differently crazy, or a voice for (slightly) more moderate Republicans, or possibly even principled ones - who knows?"
Anyone casually checking the people in the Lincoln project knows. They were all too eager to back GWB and Trump all the way until they started finding their own careers in politics hindered. Then they suddenly came up with the idea of "We are also not Trump!".
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