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Classic twisting of the thumb screws. The prisoners dilemma is functional of how trustworthy your co-conspirator is.
And its safe to say when it comes to people who seriously would consider trying to overthrow an election for personal gain, you cant trust any of em, so of course everyone is gonna crack. 10/10 this will be fun to watch
Except they've been achieving the optimal prisoner's dilemma outcome until now by protecting each other. Idk, I won't believe he'll flip until he does. For all I know, this is just a way to plead for Trump's help for funding legal fees out in the open.
I don't think there are any funds.
Wouldn't that be marvelous if it turned out the RNC funding was one gigantic ponzi scheme and all the money was going to pay-off Trumps debts?
It's easy to stay in line while it's working. The moment you are actually in court looking at years in prison, that's when the dilemma really becomes tough to stick to.
Also, in this scenario, there is no guarantee that everyone staying in line will mean they get away. Which makes the calculus much much more complicated as opposed to when it's just trying to avoid an indictment all together
Also, there's an increased pressure to not be the first one to flip, but once someone flips, it'll be a race to flip ASAP.
If you're the first one to flip, you'll get attacked by MAGA folks. However, they're less likely to attack the second or third flipper.
Prosecutors will only take so many flips, though. What can the 10th person tell them that the first 9 haven't? So if you're waiting and someone flips, you want to flip early while prosecutors are still willing to make a deal.
I think we'll see one person flip and then a mad dash for others to flip. They night even wait for the expedited cases. If those go badly, the rest of the bunch will be flipping as fast as they can shout "give us a deal please!"
It's not really a Prisoner's Dilemma when one prisoner doesn't have the opportunity to flip, though - it's not like if Trump agrees to testify against Meadows they're going to reduce his sentence.
So bribery or extortion? That fits.
Meadows made clear in his own testimony at last week’s hearing that Trump viewed the false electors as a significant part of his strategy to remain in power. He said he sent an email pushing the campaign to assemble those slates because he feared a tongue-lashing from Trump.
“What I didn’t want to happen was for the campaign to prevail in court action and not have this” lined up, he said.
“Why?” prosecutor Anna Cross asked him.
“Because I knew I’d be yelled at by the president of the United States,” he said.
Yeah…great reason to try to upend democracy, Mark.
At first I was mad at Mark Meadows for trying to destroy American democracy and rob me of my freedom, but, gosh if he faced the possibility of being yelled at, I guess he didn’t have any choice. So brave.
Your sarcasm hit a note here. There is no excuse.
I'm so confused why anyone would be intimidated by traitor orange. The fuckin guy is a short fat turd who wears makeup and not in the cool way people wear makeup.
More accurate to say most are intimidated by drumpf's base. Not getting votes after he is no longer an option, getting death threats, etc. No one is actually intimidated by him personally.
Except for Mark Meadows, Chief Pussy.
I was thinking he has less guts and integrity than the average four year old sneaking cookies before dinner.
The Nuremberg Defense probably works better if the person whose orders you claim to have been following is still alive and ranting on Twitter about how they damn well were his orders and he takes credit for the whole thing.
Remember to bend the knees Mark, and look back as you follow through the flip.
feverently munching on popcorn
You probably meant fervently or feverishly (which may be even funnier)
Yup. It’s been a day already. Either works. 😔🤣
Lmao.
So, are you allowed to call in to Hannity's show from federal prison? What about state prison? Asking for someone who is definitely not a friend.
Joe Biggs (Proud Boys leader who was sentenced to 17 years last week) called in to Infowars TWICE from prison on the same episode.
Politico reported on Mark Meadows’ potential legal strategy as the White House chief of staff faces charges connected with Trump’s alleged conspiracy to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. The report referred to court documents showing a strong likelihood that Meadows will join Trump’s other former allies who will blame the ex-president and portray him as the “primary driver” of the racketeering enterprise they’ve been accused of.
Do it Mark, don’t go to jail for the orange buffoon.
He should still spend some time in jail, just not as long as the orange buffoon.
They have nothing to lose by turning on Trump at this point.
The rabid MAGA idiots will threaten them. But to that I say, oh no, too bad, let me make some popcorn
I don't see why all of them are not telling on Trump. Trump certainly doesn't care about them and I believe if Trump could blame it all on them, he would.
I think some of them are deluded enough to think that it really is like an impeachment and any jury is going to be hopelessly deadlocked between its Democratic and Republican members. Or that the deep state will work its magic, retire all the prosecutors, and there will never even be trials.
I mean, these are generally not smart people with firm grip on reality we're talking about.
Well, the Georgia legislature already has members trying to get rid of Fani Willis, and if they can stall them out that long, the federal cases will disappear under the next Republican president.
When you're coming off of a lifetime of anything being able to be smoothed over given enough money and power, it's hard to imagine an alternative.
Love watching sharks turn on one another.
Yeah that's kind of what I expected. The prosecution wants to pin down Trump, so they let a few conspirators flip to make that happen. The rest will get buried alongside Trump.
It's gonna be really interesting how trump will address/ spin this publicly. If it's only one guy who flipped, he could probably just feed him to the wolves in the media, but this is gonna be a bunch of ppl turning on him. Idk if he can convince his followers to instantly switch to hating on them. There's gonna be a bunch of ppl on the fence about trump who will take any evidence to hop off the bandwagon.
Either way, having a public criminal trial while running a campaign is about as much of a PR disaster as it's gonna get. Remember: the goal of the prosecution is to pin him down with every piece of damning evidence they can get, it's gonna get dirty.
He can turn his fans quite easily, I think.
The bad scary deep-state government, run by Joe Brandon, threatened them with so much jail time that they had no choice but to turn on me. It makes sense. I don't blame them. What else can you do?
And then there are my parents who will support him regardless.
My parents appear to be trying to move on, but without saying that Trump did anything wrong. For them, it's basically just "let's ignore all those crimes... Hey, did you hear about these great candidates Rick Scott or RFK, Jr?" (And, yes, my father did try to tell me how great those two are.)
The GOP Civil War rages on.
Rev up the circular firing squad and I'll grab some popcorn...
At this point, I don't get really what is gained by flipping people against Trump. The argument isn't that he did or didn't do something. The argument is (in the minds of the jury at least) is what he did against the law. Yes, it might seem clear to us that it was, but to some Trump supporter on the jury having someone else say 'Trump did a thing', doesn't change their mind that the thing he did and admits to doing is illegal.
Cooperation from co-conspirators is always helpful.
Trump's current strategy (or, at least what we can discern from his lawyers' TV appearances) is to blame the lawyers he had at the time of the election. If all these co-conspirators point the finger directly at Trump, that goes a loooong way to proving that he was the ringleader. Not some lawyer. Not some aide. Trump called the shots.
That's what they want.
Just imagine someone close to the whole situation turns against Trump as a witness.They could provide the extra juicy bits that would make impressing the jury much easier.
This promises to be the greatest media spectacle of all time.
And now we wait. Hopefully this guy follows through and flip like a gymnast on steroids.
Dooooooo it!
Delicious!!