If you watch any video of politicians being confronted to something bad they did, they will almost always say "I don't know anything about it". It's a bad faith strategy but it works if they're never held accountable of anything.

Please stop doing: "They all do this it's normal"

No, they don't "all do this". No, it's not normal.

At least in Germany they do it when they have done something that's potentially illegal. You can't fuck up by saying you don't remember and nobody can prove otherwise.

Oliver North had famously poor memory during the Iran-contra hearings. But it was amazingly effective at deflecting accountability, he still appears as a 'expert' on fox news to this day.

Which is a joke, since there had to be a paper trail so his very unreliable memory wasn't the main evidence.

calling out lies only matters if there is accountability and punishment.

ollie north was also lying on behalf of the establishment who wanted to fund anti-communist partisans (the contras, a term only known to most millennials as a nintendo game)

Please stop telling me to stop saying things that I did not say. The word "all" is not even in my comment.

"'Any' video of politicians being confronted"

The only difference between this statement and "all politicians do this" is the politicians who are not confronted about bad behavior. It's a pretty big overlap and sufficient to assert you are coming across as normalizing this behavior.

"any video of politicians being confronted (...), they will almost always (...)"

So not "all" who are confronted, but "almost" all. Not a very big difference, but that's still not "all".

I didn't say "all".

You said:

> The only difference between this statement and "all politicians do this" is the politicians who are not confronted about bad behavior.

That means that in your view, phito's comment was essentially saying that "all politicians do this" (your words), unless they're not confronted. My point was that it's incorrect, because of "they will almost always say" in phito's comment - so the correct reading of that comment would be that almost all politicians do this when confronted, not all.

That's indeed what I meant. English is not my native language so I probably could have worded that better.

> "all politicians do this" (your words), unless they're not confronted.

Right. I arrived at "not all" and you arrived at "not all" for different reasons. The combination of our assessments is correct. Both of us are incorrect if you decide that we have to show all our work, correct in that they draw the correct conclusion.

This is HN-tier pedantry that is immaterial to the question of whether or not the above comment is normalizing something not normal.

Stop worrying about the use of words, none of this ridiculous exchange will change who does what.

I wasn't the one worried about it.

No one says it's Normal... they say it works.

Nothing is Normal when it comes down to it, reality is what you can get away with.

If that makes you uncomfortable, then buckle up because reality is what THEY can get away with.

Could be a lie? When are we going to stop pretending?

Honestly, I think both are plausible. I think they put things in front of him, and he signs it (and there's video footage of this; https://x.com/ArtCandee/status/1882531252735242622); all this stuff about Biden's autopen running the show is projection. I think they've given him the ballroom project to keep him occupied.

> I think they've given him the ballroom project to keep him occupied.

Maybe they just want to see him playing in the asbestos dust

That's far too long-term a plan for someone of his age, unfortunately.

Consider the possibility he ran only because the alternative was a conviction for the DC case or the documents case. And that he is only interested in enriching himself, paying back the Stephen Millers and Russell Voughts who got him back in office, and playing golf.

It doesn't make it better or worse, it just means the policies aren't his but the agenda of various puppetteers.

Are we still pretending to take any of this seriously? Any criminal can just buy a pardon now.

Any criminal could always buy a pardon.

I loathe Orange Man but the power to arbitrarily pardon any federal crimes for any reason is one of the powers of his office and Americans haven't ever seen fit to limit it. Trump is flagrantly corrupt and tries to flout the law at every turn, but he's also exposing the degree to which the American system has always just run on gentlemans' agreements and pinky swears.

I agree. He's always constantly testing limits, exploring gray areas, bending rules and "breaking" gentlemen's agreements. We should take this opportunity to limit the rights of presidents. Apparently, the president can shut down half of the government departments via executive order. How? Because they were created by executive order. How can he just shut down the department of Education without congress? Because Carter created it by executive order without congress. A variety of presidents have had us invade foreign countries without Congress declaring war. Let's take this opportunity to tighten things up.

> How can he just shut down the department of Education without congress? Because Carter created it by executive order without congress.

You are 100% incorrect.

> The Department of Education Organization Act is a United States federal law enacted in 1979, which created the Department of Education.

> In the Senate, 69 voted in favor and 22 voted against separating education from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.[3] In the House of Representatives, 215 voted in favor and 201 voted against.[4] President Carter signed the bill on October 17, 1979.[1]

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Education_Organi...

> Apparently, the president can shut down half of the government departments via executive order. How? Because they were created by executive order.

Please list the departments and cite the executive orders creating each, because I think you will find that this is far less than half (and, unless you are using a non-standard definition of what constitutes a department in the US federal government, that the proportion is actually 0%.)

(A sibling commenter has demonstrated that the single example you provided is wrong, but its not just a poorly-chosen example.)

I mean it should be a pretty resilient system. He has to convince, theoretically, >50% of the United States that either he is not corrupt or that his corruption is preferable to the alternative.

(Yes the 50% is assumes full voter participation and no third party candidate, also it can be slightly less than this if you have an incomptent state and friendly Supreme Court.)

I prefer a world in which a governor can pardon someone on death row than one where they can't. It's on us to not put in politicians that will abuse that power.

I'd prefer a world where we don't have death row.

A world in which we have to grant people arbitrary and unchecked power to overrule a justice system we can't trust, and can only hope they happen to be incorruptible, doesn't seem preferable.

Power of pardon could be limited in many ways, for example commuting a death sentence to a prison sentence could be allowed. Or commuting a long prison sentence to a shorter sentence, with some lower limit. It's not binary.

> Of course the ignorance could be a lie, which is worse, but neither option is good.

Why would it be worse?

If he knows, at least he has a plan, whether that plan is good or bad.

If he doesn’t know at all, then literally even more random shit can occur than what’s already happening.

Mathematically speaking, random actions can't be worse than actively bad actions.

Persistently bad behavior can be anticipated and accounted for, random actions cannot. Importer have as much issue with the tariffs as they have with the unpredictability of those tariffs.

In theory, you try to limit the influence of a persistently bad actor, but it seems the U.S. didn't get the memo.

That is a bizarre claim. Mathematics doesn't even enter into it.

Just worse in regards to intent, you're right that it's probably not indicative of how bad the outcomes are going to be.

This could have been an honest mistake. Surely he'll revoke the pardon and let Changpeng Zhao face a regular trial, so there's no misunderstanding, right?

He always knew, it's shameful how politicians behave like spoiled children instead of well-adjusted adults in a position of great responsibility. Why does this kind of people keep rising to the top?

Because every principled politician steps down over a mistake, so the only remaining ones are unprincipled (or the elusive spotless) politicians.