It is done. Donald Trump is the 45th President of the United States of America

The race has been called. Donald Trump is the winner.

Donald Trump is now the President-Elect of the United States thanks to the state of Pennsylvania being the final electoral call in his favor.

Discussions:

Empty SCOTUS spot. Do Republicans hold fast until he takes office? Or do they do something stupid and confirm Obama's pick? I think they will hold.

Does Obama pardon Hillary? And anyone else? Yes. And I think he will pardon Huma and a couple others.

Does Obama fire Comey? Yes.

Will Trump get pissed off and mouth off over both the above? Yes. Also he will still demand the investigation go on.

Wall Street - does it continue it's collapse or does it wake up to reality and deals with it? I think it falls further but eventually stops and comes to its senses.

@gturner will become even more insufferable then he already is? HELL FUCKING YES.

Anything else?

How do presidential pardons work considering that Hillary hasn't actually been charged with anything?

Simple, he signs a "get out jail free" card from any monopoly board game.

There will be salt. So much salt.

Illegal immigration into Canada spikes harder than Syrian immigration into Germany

Same as Nixon's pardon: "Now, THEREFORE, I, GERALD R. FORD, President of the United States, pursuant to the pardon power conferred upon me by Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, have granted and by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974."

http://watergate.info/1974/09/08/text-of-ford-pardon-proclamation.html

Basically you pardon them for anything between a certain date. For Hillary that might be a big date range. It also might be limited to certain things. It's going to be tricky for Obama IMHO.

Edit: Could you sticky this thread? At least for a little while.

I hope she serves time (even a token 6 mos. sentence), as I hope of any purported public servant who has amassed such personal wealth during the execution of their "public service" using criminal means or betraying the public trust; assuming they can prove a crime and she's not pardoned. I think the Clinton Foundation will bring her down absent the pardon.

Interesting, didn't know that Presidential pardons could be that open ended.

It is certainly a tricky situation. Even if Obama doesn't think there is anything to pardon that's irrelevant if he thinks Trump will come in pushing for charges. Issuing a pardon would be seen as him conceding that Hillary had done something wrong, and given his public support for her he probably wouldn't want that connection.

It's going to be a wild ride.

This is a powerful win for Trump.

He had the Democrats against him. He had the entire media against him. He had a significant portion of the Republican party politicians against him.

He still won.

They'll hold. The good news (yes, from the liberal standpoint) is that since it's Scalia's seat, the balance of the court doesn't change.

No, because she won't be charged with anything -- there's no more political advantage in it.

No -- he has nothing to gain by it. As for Democrats in general, they would have nothing to gain, and plenty to lose appearance-wise.

Hard to say what he'll do.

I assume it will rebound. It responds badly to uncertainty and unexpected events.

What will Republicans do about health care? They've spent the last eight years throwing rocks, but now they're going to have to face the fact that things like the ban on discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions are popular. Can they actually come up with a workable plan?

Ramen and gturner will be along shortly enough to get this thread all sticky.

Plus part of the problem is if Obama pardons Clinton and others and a investigation reveals real criminality he's going to take a big hit in the history books.

And in a true worst case scenario people could be facing jail time while Clinton sits free and clear. That would really piss off people.

Come to think of it, has there been any President in recent memory who didn't hold a single political office before winning the Presidency?

I mean, a lotta Trump voters threw shade on Obama for his few years in the Senate....

See, it's hard to take you seriously when you lie like this.

Forgot to add -- Trump won't actually want the investigations against Clinton to continue. Saying he would put her in prison was good red meat for rallies, but there are enough people around him with the sense to point out that (a) it would just be a distraction from anything he wants to do, and (b) winning an election and then trying to throw your opponent in jail looks really, really bad.

I think the last one was Eisenhower.

Eisenhower.

It's not a lie. The media was against him once he became the nominee. Just like the media was against Romney and McCain.

So much for it being rigged, huh?


Shit, how is Alex Jones going to sell his snake oil now?
His whole worldview depended on a Hillary-pocalypse.

Oh, that's different. Obama was black. A black man who was a junior Senator is easily outranked by a white man who has no political experience whatsoever. Whitey always wins with the least qualifications.

Hillary is going to prison unless Obama issues a bizarrely broad blanket pardon for an almost inconceivable range of felonies. It's likely that Rudy Giuliani will be the AG, and he'll prosecute her without mercy.

I never claimed it was rigged.

What was rigged was Hillary and the DNC rigging it against Bernie Sanders.

So why don't you go complain to them?

Hopefully the joy of a Trump win kills him with a heart attack.

Hillary is refusing to speak tonight, probably because she can't because her Parkinson's is giving her an off period.

I disagree. He's got to carry out the investigations and let it go where it goes.

He's probably secretly hoping that Obama does pardon her so he can't do anything.

OH, and I hope even more this doesn't turn out to be a case of 'dewey beats truman'.

Oh, bull. He got $2 billion worth of free press to spew his bile. More than Clinton had. More than any other candidate.

I'm not overly sad that Clinton lost, but I wish people would cut that BS out about the poor little rich boy getting good picked on by the big, mean press. When Trump begins flying nukes all over the world, the blood will be on their hands too.

Fuck the media.

I think that the most likely scenario is Obama not pardoning Hillary, and Trump dropping the lock her up rhetoric.

Instead he will make a big deal about how they have already destroyed her, erased her legacy blah blah and now energy is better spent on accomplishimg things for the future.

Of course this all comes with the disclaimer that we are in a timeline where Donald Trump has been elected President of the USA, so who the hell knows anymore.

So, are you actually retarded, or do you just parrot whatever Breitbart tells you?

He employed people and made money for people. It's a refreshing change for the first time in American history to have a non-politician as President (aside from those who served). He's run a few businesses and failed a few times, but kept on building and employing people in actual jobs.

That's the opposite of politicians who cost money and get paid for producing nothing, generally speaking. [Aside from e.g. agencies like the IRS, the SEC and a few other self-funding agencies, I mean. Yes, I just conflated politicians with government workers too, although that's too broad.]