Mad idea: given that the US Supreme Court ruled that the President essentially has immunity from criminal prosecutions for acts during his term in office, could J. D. Vance plausibly shoot Donald Trump dead, thereby becoming President, and claim immunity?
(I know this is very silly and Won't Happen for several reasons, but is there a legal fig-leaf he could hide behind here?)
@jdboyd
He only pardons himself when he's away from his sofa.
@JamesPadraicR @cstross @etchedpixels DC has a city government with the usual power to charge people with crimes.
I agree that the Feds would apply enough pressure to prevent it, up to and including revoking home rule, but in principle it could happen.
@cstross At the time Vance shot Donnie he wasn't President and the SC ruling only covers acts the President carries out *while* he is President.
However, if President Vance travels back in time and shoots President Trump and thus becomes President ...
@cstross Another option: bodyguards, who are not who they used to be. Also, would go well with the good ol’ times vibes…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_emperors_murdered_by_the_Praetorian_Guard
@cstross As others have pointed out, killing the incumbent while VP would not be an ‘official act as president’, ergo immunity would not apply.
Vance could bludgeon Trump unconscious, assume office based on Trump's incapacity, and THEN kill him, reducing his potential culpability to assault rather than murder.
If the US were Nepal, it might be more clearcut. As the events of 1 June 2001 established, regicide is no barrier to assuming the kingship (although a self-administered 9mm bullet is).
@angusm @cstross We still haven't tested the legal theory about whether or not the president can pardon themselves
So he could do it, pardon himself for it, and then dare the court system to hold him accountable
(But vance wouldn't pull the trigger - more likely scenario he convinces a Secret Service agent to do it "for the good of the country" with the promise of a pardon once he assumes office. Then we get to see if 'felony murder' charges apply if you're powerful enough.)
@JamesPadraicR @angusm
Or Bond-esque poison-tipped click-activated daggers.
(How did Frau Rosa (??) get the daggers back in place, given how rapidly lethal the poison was?)
@cstross @angusm In the case of a notionally healthy person, yeah.
My personal expectation is that this is someone who was in the ICU with wild-type COVID, of advanced years, and in the time frame where rapid sunsetting would be expected; they're presumably emulating social function in consequence of a dynamically tuned array of pharmacological assistance so aggressive and novel that four milligrams of aspirin are a risk of a liver gone ex-thorax, motile, and resoundingly singing Don Giovanni.
“’tis a consummation/devoutly to be wished.”
@angusm @cstross There's been a bunch of "displeased Chinese muttering about lack of planning for Trump's state visit" going on.
We know, and the CPC knows, that this is incompetence; the flailing mass can't plan.
If they could plan, in the same way the utterly predictable blocking of Hormuz could be a dark-lord-of-the-Sith deniable attack on China's economy, sending Trump to China to die would be a great unifying move for the base. People will write their own narrative no matter what you did.
@cstross : from strategical perspective, given age and health of Trump, I would send him lot of prostitutes and try to make him do a Félix Faure.
Still wondering why nobody is doing that or why Trump is surviving those attempts.
Charlie Stross
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