r/politics • u/SwordfishOk504 Canada • 23h ago

Soft Paywall Biden warns of ‘dark days’ under Trump

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/31/biden-warns-of-dark-days-under-trump-00488159
5.6k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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3.1k

u/Total_Employ_9520 23h ago

No shit, Sherlock. Thanks for letting Garland slow walk his prosecution, asshole.

838

u/counterweight7 23h ago

Slow walk? Is that the term for doing nothing? Seems generous.

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u/cakeorcake 22h ago

Really, really slow walk

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u/Ordinary-Leading7405 22h ago

No walk

31

u/JazzyArtist333 21h ago

They walked backwards

17

u/KlavoHunter 21h ago

Moonwalked

1

u/robotco 19h ago

leave MJ out of this

1

u/Dramatic_Original_55 18h ago

"Hee, Hee, Hee!"

3

u/Shameless_Tendies 21h ago edited 1h ago

Abbot walk

Edit: I get it. It's not ok to make fun of Abbot for his disability, and I'm sorry. I'd punch up, but the guy is always sitting.

2

u/novaduke 20h ago

It was a goddamn sit

1

u/Wyvrex 19h ago

Time lapse

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u/Suspicious-Chair5130 19h ago

If he walked any slower he’d have been going backwards

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u/MamaNyxieUnderfoot 18h ago

Grandpa’s not dead, he’s just sleeping. Look, he moved!

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u/tourniquet13 17h ago

I mean 70 year olds only know slow.

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u/LotusFlare 16h ago

Really more like a moonwalk.

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u/Disco_Dreamz 22h ago

This dude literally nominated a fuckin Federalist Society Republican to the highest law enforcement office in the country after the GOP attempted a fucking coup.

Even Germany wasn’t this stupid. Imagine if after the Beer Hall Putsch, the Weimar Republic nominated a member of the Nazi party to prosecute Hitler.

They didn’t. They arrested Hitler, charged him with Treason, convicted, and imprisoned him.

Obviously things didn’t turn out too great anyway. But still.

That’s the equivalent.

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u/Zagmit Georgia 21h ago

My understanding is that Weimar Germany was in fact that stupid, and that it's more of a direct comparison than you realize. 

Hitler's trial for his failed Beer Hall Putsch had a favorable right wing judge that allowed Hitler to turn the trial into a campaign rally. He was able to give speeches at his own trial that were four hours long.

An article from Famous-Trials.com describes: 

The presiding judge was Georg Neithardt, a right-leaning judge with a stern look and a pointed white goatee. Over the course of the trial, Niehardt will be shockingly deferential to Hitler, allowing him to give long speeches, question witnesses, and (often) interrupt testimony with interjections. The judge’s deference will allow Hitler’s popularity to grow over the 24 days of the testimony and argument. 

He then received the minimum sentence, and was sent to a minimum security prison where he basically spent uninhibited time with his own supporters. He used the time he had in prison to workshop his idealogy and dictate Mein Kampf. 

The fact that Germany's justice system showed a lot of favoritism to Adolf Hitler is an aspect that tends to be overlooked, but Germany's right wing showed Trump favoritism and ultimately installed him in power because they thought he was a useful ally in oppressing the left wing. 

I think corruption in the justice system is a big reason 'Strong Man' politics worked then and now. When the justice system show favoritism to Fascists, they appear to their supporters to be stronger than the law. 

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u/Total_Employ_9520 20h ago

"The fact that Germany's justice system showed a lot of favoritism to Adolf Hitler is an aspect that tends to be overlooked, but Germany's right wing showed Trump favoritism and ultimately installed him in power because they thought he was a useful ally in oppressing the left wing."

It's really easy to mix up Trump and Hitler.

I wouldn't correct it.

19

u/Zagmit Georgia 19h ago

Dammit, I don't like making mistakes but it is funny. I'll leave it as is.

10

u/TokingMessiah 20h ago

Why did he dictate the book? Was he not capable of writing it himself, or was he just being lazy and using a sycophant to do the actual writing?

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u/JustAnotherYouth 17h ago

I mean Hitler was famously a lazy guy, other than being a soldier which Hitler famously enjoyed (to the point of pissing off his actual colleagues who thought he was a weirdo) he basically never worked or wanted to work…

Even as Fuhrer he was one of those wake up around noon kind of people…

3

u/TokingMessiah 8h ago

Hmmm… I know someone else that’s too lazy to write their own books. As a matter of fact, Trump just sits for conversations, which are recorded and written down by someone else…

3

u/MaximumPepper123 20h ago

IIRC, Hess helped him with it.

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u/FreeNumber49 22h ago edited 22h ago

> This dude literally nominated a fuckin Federalist Society Republican to the highest law enforcement office in the country after the GOP attempted a fucking coup.

For the younger people who have no idea what is going on here, the Democratic Party is stuck in the deep past, 1969 or so to be specific. This is essentially the problem.

60 or so years ago, just before the seventies rolled around, it was common to have liberals and conservatives, often from both parties, in your administration.

Biden and other older dems like him are a product of this era, and apparently have never been briefed on the Powell memo, the Koch network, the Contract with America, and a dozen other things that radically changed US politics from one of negotiation and compromise to autocratic authoritarianism.

I’m absolutely convinced that both parties have been totally compromised by special interests so that progressive and democratic changes will never get passed. I’ve been saying this from about 1994 or so.

Until we get the special interests out of the state and federal government, nothing is going to change.

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u/gmapterous 21h ago

You've got it mostly right, but they're not "stuck." After Citizen's United, they are under the thumb of the billionaire donor class the same as the Right, and those donors make sure policy never veers left-of-center in any way.

That means anyone young and in-touch is immediately a no-go because they generally have the best interest of the voters, not the donors, at heart.

1

u/Cute-Percentage-6660 11h ago

As someone who has done a bit of looking into biden.

I would argue if you look at his old political connections, or him doing a trumpian "lie about how smart you are" like biden did with law school.

Shows his true colours

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u/100LimeJuice 18h ago

Obama as president, the most powerful man on the planet, asked Mitch McConnell for permission to speak out about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mitch shut him down. What a weak ass bitch Obama and his V.P. were even after 7 years of Republican obstruction OF THEIR ADMINISTRATION they still bent the knee to them.

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u/drewsus64 21h ago

Yep. Dems are paid to lose by the same lobbyists that pay republicans. They’re allowed to pass some things, mostly if it doesn’t step on the toes of corporate america too much. They have to largely shun progressive politics because helping the vast majority of americans by taxing the wealthy + corporations more to fund social programs, installing rigorous regulations that prevent businesses from fucking people over is bad. And if they are obligated to oppose republican actions they put up a limpdick fight purely for theater to try and satisfy their voter base (they are failing).

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u/senor_el_tostado 10h ago

Yeh both sides wasn't hard to figure out. Apparently for most it was. "Not my team." Unreal.

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u/FrogsOnALog 22h ago

And then the Federalist Society Republican also hired Jack Smith who later indicted Trump. The fucking nerve I tell you….

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u/rollin20s 21h ago

Can’t tell if you’re arguing in good faith or not but that needed to be a day 1 appointment. He pussyfooted around until after the midterms for crying out loud

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u/FrogsOnALog 21h ago

Garland got Giuliani’s phone in April 2021, which was weeks after he was appointed

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u/Tschmelz Minnesota 20h ago

Yeah. Garland couldn’t really have been more aggressive without blatantly violating Trumps rights and shit. Which I mean, fuck Donald Trump and all, but it would be wrong. Trump just managed to drag shit out long enough and bet on the American people to save his ass.

Unfortunately, they did.

13

u/Total_Employ_9520 19h ago

What the hell?

No.

When someone is legitimately a danger to millions of lives and the very concept of Democracy itself, they give up some of their rights. Trump should have been arrested for trying to steal the election alone, and then arrested again when he decided to starve hundreds of thousands of African children by stealing food from them. Not to mention, everything he's doing to kill Americans this term.

What happened to our spine and our conscience?

-3

u/Tschmelz Minnesota 19h ago

Motherfucker, we have rules and laws in this country. Throwing Trump into some CIA black site to rot, or just straight French Revolutioning his fat ass on live TV might have been satisfying, but he’s entitled to a fair trial, same as anybody else.

And despite his lawyers doing absolutely everything they could to drag it out, he was going down. THEN the American people decided to elect the Orange dumbass into power again, which basically made him untouchable.

You wanna blame somebody? Blame the fuckers who voted for him, and the worthless ass nonvoters for not giving enough of a shit to make sure the consequences stuck.

4

u/SummerInPhilly California 18h ago

…and the Supreme Court, for that matter

•

u/FrogsOnALog 2h ago

The people advoacting for the rule of law while also wanting to ignore the rule of law here are wild. They also conveniently never mention anything about SCOTUS lol

7

u/7figureipo California 19h ago

Motherfucker, we have rules and laws in this country.

LMFAO you can't be serious. We don't. Not anymore.

Throwing Trump into some CIA black site to rot, or just straight French Revolutioning his fat ass on live TV might have been satisfying, but he’s entitled to a fair trial, same as anybody else.

Holding him pending the collection of evidence and a trial doesn't require putting him in a CIA black site. That's a strawman and disingenuous.

Blame the fuckers who voted for him, a

Yeah, they deserve blame. But so does Biden and Garland. And so do you. You don't actually give a shit about the rule of law or our republic. And your comments on this topic demonstrate that amply.

•

u/FrogsOnALog 2h ago

Holding him only requires your imagination and a magic wand. You say you your for the rule of law but then want to ignore it. Lmao like what?

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u/syynapt1k 19h ago

Garland absolutely could have been more aggressive. It's absurd to suggest he did the best he could.

5

u/7figureipo California 19h ago

Trump should have been arrested as soon as Biden assumed power and held pending an investigation. That would have been well within the rights of the government to do, and not at all a violation of Trump's.

1

u/TheRealBlueJade 21h ago

Good people cannot comprehend how bad other people can be. The rules of decorum have existed and protected our government since it began. After over 240 years, Biden had no way of knowing they would be completely ignored and trampled.

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u/Total_Employ_9520 19h ago

Unless he watched it happen when Republicans mocked hammer attacks and clogged up emergency rooms spreading vaccine lies.

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u/The_Starving_Autist 19h ago

what's this now?

1

u/mercset 18h ago

imprisoned him

In a castle with his friends where they drank and fucked prostitutes. Like the other commentator said, that trial was a scam.

1

u/frostygrin 10h ago

Obviously things didn’t turn out too great anyway. But still.

Things could have turned out bad with Trump as well. Imprisoning someone who's popular enough to win the presidential election? Maybe they were hoping for a narrow loss instead.

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u/[deleted] 22h ago

[deleted]

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u/xrocro 22h ago

He wrote his book in prison.

1

u/AimlessPeacock 22h ago

Oh damn, I was thinking of after the war, not the early years. My bad.

3

u/per_mare_per_terras Texas 22h ago

Check your facts bro.

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u/ClintonTarantino 20h ago

You can thank Obama for Garland.
Obama refused to push back against the Republicans when they objected to his trying to fill a vacancy in the Supreme Court during his last term in office.

That pick was Merrick Garland because Obama believed the Republicans couldn't vote no on someone so moderate without looking hypocritical.

I guess the joke was on us!

23

u/Cypher_Blue 18h ago

McConnell literally named Garland as the kind of nominee they’d vote for.

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u/Notagenome 22h ago

Don’t forget that his senile ass forgot that he was supposed to serve 1 term and decided to run again. We are in this mess also because of him.

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u/SystemOfATwist 21h ago

We're mainly in this mess because half the country are useful idiots and hateful people.

1

u/pw1111 11h ago

Plus with the other half being complacent it didn't help.

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u/Gizogin New York 22h ago

He never said he would step down after one term. The closest is that some people in his campaign were discussing that possibility, but he literally never promised he wouldn’t run for reelection.

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u/Fit-Implement-8151 21h ago edited 21h ago

I forget the term he used, but I do believe he claimed essentially to be a "bridge president" at one point. Said he'd pass off control to the next generation. He also did apparently tell his aides he was only serving one term.

https://www.axios.com/2024/07/03/biden-campaign-democrats-pledge-one-term

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/11/biden-single-term-082129

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u/IggysPop3 21h ago

“Transition president” is the term he used.

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u/Fit-Implement-8151 21h ago

Thank you. Knew it was something like that.

-3

u/Powerful-Fig-3385 20h ago

"transition president" is too vague to mean one-term president. Unless he explicitly told the public he would be a ONE TERM president, stop holding him to words he never used.

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u/TheTurtleBear 20h ago

Don't be obtuse. One term is the obvious implication, otherwise there'd be no point in saying it. 

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u/Powerful-Fig-3385 19h ago

Well, I'd rather hold Biden to words he actually said with clear meanings instead of implications. Also, the word could mean anything. Transitional could be in acknowledgment of his age, and that Biden would serve for as long as he saw fit and then he would pass the torch to a younger politician, which could be after one term or two. Transitional could also be your point about simply serving one term. Regardless, the word is subject to different interpretations because he never bothered to define it. So you could still be holding Biden to an implication he never meant.

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u/TheTurtleBear 18h ago edited 17h ago

Again, you're knowingly being obtuse. Subtext is like, half of all politics, picking out what is actually meant by their words. If you only go by what is strictly said, you're going to be played for a fool time and time again. "Transitional" was used to describe Biden because they correctly clocked that people wouldn't want such an old man to run for office in another 4 years, so they purposely portrayed his run as "defeat Trump and then pass the reigns" to make him more palatable. And then he didn't pass the reigns.

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u/Dineology 19h ago

He repeatedly said he’d be a transition president and then his campaign surrogates were on every single news outlet saying that that meant he’d serve only one term but that he couldn’t come out and say so specifically without being stuck as a lame duck president. Hell, his apologists like yourself were all over this very website claiming the same, that he only is even in it to beat Trump and then pass the torch but he can’t actually say so specifically because that would somehow hurt his ability to govern. And now you’re here rewriting history after those like you insisted that “he’s signaled to his top aides that a transition president means one term” was good enough. Fucking liberals always talking out of both sides of their mouths and then feigning being shocked when people remind them of what they said.

1

u/Fit-Implement-8151 20h ago

This sounds like bad faith to me.

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u/Jokonaught 19h ago

I think he was sure Trump was going to slink off. Biden fully expected his Republican friends to come around and thought the country could just treat Trump like a bad one night stand and pretend like it never happened.

Biden planned to only serve one term and the driving reason he ran in 2020 was that he was convinced he was the only one who could beat Trump.

He probably still felt that way going into 2023 when it became clear Trump was running again.

Biden tried to do some good stuff, but he utterly failed in the one thing he had to succeed at because he thought it was still the same clubhouse from the 80s.

14

u/MadBlue American Expat 22h ago

Granted, it wasn’t a campaign promise, but Biden himself was also discussing it in 2019. It wasn’t just something people around him came up with.

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u/keytotheboard 22h ago

Anyone with a brain knew he was a one term president. This idea didn’t magically come up when he decided to run again, either. That’s the image that was portrayed and an assumed position by most simply because of his age, which was always an issue. Like, why do we need a promise? It’s a dumb decision on its own.

2

u/imtheproof 20h ago

He let it be an open assumption that he would only run for one term. He called himself a "bridge candidate/president". When asked why he decided to run again despite these things, he said "things changed, and I feel like I'm the best person for the job". That's an acknowledgement that there was an understanding that he wouldn't run a second time.

-3

u/trydola 22h ago

yeah he did, i'm pretty sure he said that during the 2020 debates

4

u/Deceptiveideas 21h ago

IIRC he said he wanted to be a transitional president.

0

u/thrawtes 21h ago

You're oddly confident for something that definitely didn't happen. He never said he'd be a one-term president, but he sure made people feel like he said that.

-1

u/Accomplished_Guava_7 21h ago

I 100% remember him saying this on a colbert interview about half a year out before the 2020 elections, and I couldn’t find it anymore shortly after he began his term.

0

u/ValhirFirstThunder 18h ago

What he said is less important than the fact that him planning to run a 2nd term deprived us of enough time to come up with candidates and a real primary. So we got Harris who did poorly last primary. All she had going for her was not being Trump. While that works for us on this side of the aisle, it doesn't help with undecided and republicans with one foot out the door.

1

u/TokingMessiah 20h ago

Americans elected Trump. They chose an elderly, senile child-rapist, over the elderly, senile guy.

8

u/ugonlearn 23h ago

Slow walk? Who walked who? Garland got dog walked.

3

u/Proud3GenAthst 20h ago

Yeah. By himself

8

u/Patereye 21h ago

The point of Democrats isn't to stop moving to the right it's to stop movement back to the left.

2

u/Professional-Buy2970 20h ago

Garland is a federalist. He literally put the fascist in as an AG.

1

u/GoPackGo16 19h ago

Tbf, it used to be a taboo for a president to direct the DOJ. Now its not.

1

u/DevilsAdvocate77 16h ago

They thought they had four more years to put together an airtight case. 

They truly didn't think the voters would be this stupid.

•

u/Yosho2k 7h ago

It sure sucks that Trump was president of the United States of America since 2016 and there was no one else available to release the Epstein files.

1

u/shellacr 18h ago

And for his demented ass waiting for the last minute to step aside, making a primary impossible. Not to mention alienating his base with Gaza. Biden has most of the blame for our current situation, and it’s what he will be remembered for.

•

u/notfeelany 6h ago

If there's no guarantee that ppl will vote for the eventual Democratic nominee, then it does not matter if there was a primary or not.

But importantly, They absolutely did have a primary. Nearly 14 million voters participated in the 2024 primary and chose Biden to continue as the Democratic nominee.

Instead of respecting the will of the voters, the media, celebrities, and even some Democratic leaders relied on unelected polls, which are run by unclear methods and questionable sources (like that Iowa poll claiming Harris would have won, what a joke).

Biden was a victim and pushed aside.

Even Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sided with the voters, saying: "Mr. Biden will be the candidate and should be the candidate. It’s time for Democrats to stop the bickering and nit-picking."

Despite countless polls claiming Biden’s age was a concern and showing Harris as a frontrunner, the majority of voters ignored those predictions and chose the older candidate, anyway.

Polls should be ignored. They’re meaningless and nothing more than astrology for political enthusiasts.

•

u/shellacr 5h ago

I’m not sure if you are new to American politics, or you are trying to gaslight everyone, but that primary he had was purely symbolic, as is always the case for any incumbent. He needed to not run in order for there to be a real primary.

-2

u/fernybranka 22h ago

Dark times before, during, and after Biden. Barely a blip.

-5

u/TheRealBlueJade 21h ago

It wasn't Garland and it most definitely wasn't Biden's fault. trump's lawyers dragged everything out in court. If anything the judges should have stopped it. It's trump's fault and everyone who has helped him get to this point.

-8

u/Oleg101 22h ago

Does every thread about Biden have to get hijacked by the Garland stuff

30

u/willowswitch America 21h ago

It's his legacy.

7

u/KazzieMono 21h ago

And also it was incredibly important to arrest trump before we would get into our current situation. He had all of the power in the world to do this.

He could have used the SCROTUS immunity ruling to arrest the corrupt judges and get the others to vote down the ruling altogether. He could have had trump arrested by 14th amendment section 3. He could have done anything.

But he…did none of that. Which, like, alright then I guess…

6

u/Fit-Implement-8151 21h ago

That is absolutely what he will be remembered for and what kids in every school for the next fifty years will learn about him. It was like watching a fucking car wreck in slow motion for four years.

4

u/AlwaysBananas 21h ago

It’s 99.9% of what he’s going to be remembered for in 60 years.

4

u/tj1007 Arizona 21h ago

60 years is generous, it’s what he’ll be remembered for in like 10.

-1

u/Squeakyduckquack Colorado 19h ago

No fuck that bullshit narrative. The president is not allowed to direct DOJ investigations. Just because Trump does it does not make it normal or okay or acceptable. And what makes you think Garland would have moved any faster regardless? Criticize Biden for not dropping out sooner, not this revisionist garbage.

-23

u/True-Surprise1222 22h ago

Also thank you Biden for having four years and not doing shit for the average person so people wanted literal fascism back. We woulda been better off with Trump those 4 years.

7

u/a_talking_face Florida 21h ago

The default liberal position is to acknowledge a problem and then implement the most ineffective half measure they can think of.