An excuse Trump could have used that didn't occur to him

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I know that the real reason Trump is investigating Biden is that Biden competes with him for re-election. However, he could have made the following excuse to hide it. What he could have said was that it has nothing to do with the fact that Biden is competing with Trump personally but, instead, it has to do with the fact that anybody running for president (regardless of whether Trump personally competes with them) should be scrutinized, since a corrupt president is worse than corrupt random person. To emphasize this point, Trump could also say that IF he gets to serve the second term, he would scrutinize future election candidates just as much (despite the fact that he doesn't plan on violating a constitution and running for the third term). Now, once again, I realize this would probably be a lie: the truth is that Trump is worried about his own re-election -- but that is something he could have said, that would be a lot more believable than anything else he has been trying to say.

The one problem with that is Trump howled bloody murder that Obama was investigating him.

Dude...that would just backfire for an obvious reason.

The obvious reason being that he himself is planning to run in the 2020 election. So he himself would have to be "thoroughly investigated and vetted", which would justify all of the many investigations against him, including the impeachment investigation, and would justify even more investigation into his many possible conflicts of interests. And make it harder for him justify he himself not making his tax returns public, and so on, and so on...

It's true that he would *still* have to prove he isn't as bad as Biden, *BUT* (and it's a big but) he wouldn't have to explain why Biden is the worst person in the entire country. Making a case that Biden is the worst one out of, say, twenty people (however many are running) isn't as tough as saying he is the worst of billions of people (since nobody else in the US got investigated personally by Trump). Sure, Trump would still have to make a bunch of really controversial points, but not as controversial as he is currently making.

This makes zero sense.

To be credible he would have to be even handed and conduct a thorough investigation of all 20 Dems, plus his two or three GOP rivals, AND (like I already said) he would hafta voluntarily come clean about his own issues of conflicts of interests, deals with Putin, and making his taxes public, etc. which is something he would never do.

I don't know that it's that bad of an idea. I've said before in PPR that maybe there should be an automatic special counsel enacted at the beginning of anyone's presidency and lasting for at least two years into the presidency. If any prior illegal activity is uncovered.....impeachment and booting out of office.

I don't see why that would be a bad thing. Unless illegal activity is something that some believe a 'blind eye' should be turned to?

I also don't see why an automatic special counsel for every president would be a bad idea since we're officially in the age of going back thirty years or more into someone's past to root out prior transgressions. An automatic special counsel therefore would have the latitude to go back to a president's grade school days if not high school days.

I don't buy the argument: "Then no one would run for office." If a person has nothing to hide.....they hide nothing.

Why not?

If Trump did ever make such a statement, then his tax returns and all his business records should be open to the public.

^ Exactly. Go all the way back, baby. Democratic president, Republican president....go all the way back. Automatic special counsels. Form an Office of Presidential Investigation. Once the president is in office, go all the way back. Boot them out if the O.P.I. finds anything.

Also, I'm thoroughly amused when the above proposal is met with crickets.

You seem to be saying that there are two extremes:

A. Investigate all presidential candidates as thoroughly as possible
B. Don't treat presidential candidates in any special way at all

What I am suggesting, however, is some intermediate option such as

C. Don't investigate presidential candidates systematically BUT if there are people with red flags, then paying attention to red flags of presidential candidates is a higher priority than paying attention to the red flags of other people.

If he makes a claim C, then he can say that his subjective opinion is that Biden is the most suspicious of the 20. So he doesn't have time to investigate (i) presidential candidates that don't look suspicious OR (ii) suspicious looking people that are not presidential candidates. The only thing he has time for is (iii) suspicious looking people that are presidential candidates. And, in his subjective opinion, Biden falls into that category.

Incidentally, the part about "not having time" is not even a lie. I mean, it would have been in HIS best interest to investigate all 20 democratic candidates rather than just Biden, in order to rid himself of ALL competition. Why doesn't he do that? Probably not enough time.

I wasn't following the news that closely. Can you elaborate on what you just said pertaining Obama? Did you mean that Trump said Obama used to be investigating him back when he was president, or that Obama is investigating him now? If so, is Trump implying Obama is a good guy for doing this (despite being a democrat and all that)?

Since Trump got elected, the mainstream media was after him. Donald Trump can say what he want. He's a human being just like you and me. We are not anymore in a world of pretenses and sugar-coated whatever.

Funny thought: With all the media said about Trump, they dramatically lowered the standard on reporting about politics. What, if Biden wins, they will suddenly become passive and complaisant toward him?

We are now entered the age of revelations. Time will has come that they cannot even walk safely in the streets.

How do you like my way of expressing myself? How can I improve?

The feds had kept tabs on Russian agents and ambassadors, including times they had talked to the Trump campaign. Then after Trump won the election, a paranoiac working for Breitbart claimed Obama had had Trump tower bugged, which Trump decided was actually happening and made a big public stink about it... even though there was nothing factual about any of it.

I am saying "there are only two extremes" for the obvious reason that there ARE only two extremes in order to be consistent, and for Trump not to look like he is just being self serving by just knocking out his strongest contender.

And you're admitting yourself that if he did your idea that it would still look shoddy and dishonest.

Its not Trumps own time that's being taken up with these investigations.

For starters, we shouldn't be going back to people's school days except in truly exceptional circumstances, like them committing a serious unpunished crime.

Moreover, this is a terrible case of closing the gate after the horse has bolted. There's not much point investigating someone after they've been elected unless you actually have evidence of wrongdoing, as was the case with Trump. A better option would be the parties forcing candidates to undergo deep vetting before they can run for President on their ticket. Of course, that depends on the parties actually doing it.

The counter-argument is that parties become "riggers" and undemocratic. It's not like the 2015 GOP wanted Trump to run, in fact most of the party officials opposed his candidacy until he won. There was a lot of talk of him losing at a contested convention.

Why don't we just impeach EVERY one who runs president while they are running.

Well.. not EVERY one.

Just the ones who qualify for federal financing.

The way it works now if you get enough support in enough states for them to define you as a serious candidate you get the benefit of the feds matching the money you raise from private donations with federal money. So if you get the benefits then, someone might argue, you also should get the burden of heavy vetting.

So the top ten or twenty candidites get racked over the coals - while also getting taxpayer help in paying for their campains .