It doesn’t take much calculating at all. It’s just easy to convince right-wing audiences that sexual misconduct allegations are all a conspiracy by the Deep State^TM to silence them. It’s a pretty basic grift.

Oh for sure. He’s been soft-pedaling his right-wing transformation ever since the initial allegations went public years ago. The hard turn recently is probably exactly as you say, he knew charges were coming.

Ah yes, Martian script.

Dennis Miller was a great writer himself, and wrote all of the Weekend Update stuff that he did, and a bunch of sketches. It’s ok to say he was once great at what he did, because he was. But I would recommend going back and watching Dennis Miller Live on HBO. I went back and re-watched it during the pandemic, and it’s pure Libertarian garbage wrapped up in snarky wit and big words. So he’s always been kind of a right-leaning douche, but 9/11 broke his brain and he dropped all the Libertarian pretense.

unless there is video and audio proof. how the fuck could someone be charged for this 20+ years later over “he said she said”?

Same way a cold murder case gets investigated when all the DNA has degraded. They rely on circumstantial evidence. Now, that word has been corrupted by procedural crime drama TV shows, but make no mistake, a LOT of criminal cases are successfully prosecuted based on circumstantial evidence, because it is still legitimate evidence even though it’s not direct evidence. They’ll go through his electronic devices and look at text messages and photos and retrieve voice mails, they’ll conduct interviews with others who were told about the allegations at the time and see how those stories line up, and so on.

I’m not as familiar with this particular case as others are, but from the other comments I’ve read, it looks like the victim(s) had already filed police reports 20+ years ago, but those didn’t go anywhere for whatever reason (lack of evidence, incompetent police work, etc). So that helps the case quite a bit.

Could i just pick a random person and say they raped me in 2002 and then they will go to prison?

Technically, yes. There have been cases where this has happened, although it is extremely rare. The police would investigate your allegations and almost certainly find them lacking, at which point you would be charged with filing false police reports, and most likely sued by the person you accused.

Here’s a fun statistic: A man is more likely to be raped than to be falsely accused of rape. Just in case you were wondering how often the latter happens.

He’s been a regular on Bro Brogan for years. That’s where his shift to the right-wing began a few years ago, shortly after his sex pest behavior became public knowledge.

Were the allegations not brought to the police before the tv documentary?

I might be speaking out of my ass here, but it could be that the allegations were brought to the police first, but there wasn’t enough evidence at the time for the police to file charges, and then the documentary investigation turned up more evidence than the police had.

And his right-wing transformation is now complete.

Agreed.

Why not ask Canada, the UK, Finland, etc? Ah yes, because cruelty is the point.

Goddam what an obvious fucking name. If you wrote a procedural cop show where the child traffickers ran a site called KidFlix, you’d be laughed out of the building for being so on-the-nose.

up to $1 billion

It will be much less than a billion.

If a fine can be paid without causing financial strain, then it just becomes part of the cost of doing business.

If you want results, fine him $100 billion.

“Very well” = “according to plan”

Kinda subtle, but I notice they like to use the word “truth” instead of “facts”.

I suppose fuck-it-up-and-leave is his M.O.

Yep. Just ask his kids.

That’s why they added the terrorism charges to his murder charges. That makes it federal, which means they can seek the death penalty.

You are working under the assumption that these “pedo hunter” groups are all acting in good faith and on good information. I encourage you to do some reading. There are many cases where these groups pretend to be 18 year olds, lure an unsuspecting person into a meeting, and then lie to their audience about the age they originally claimed to be online, as Xatolos has pointed out.

Lots of them do it to lure in and attack LGBTQ+ folks, while others act on false accusations they receive from third parties:

Innocent dad tortured and killed by group of chainsaw-wielding ‘paedophile hunters’
A gang of vigilantes tortured and killed a father of eight as they tried to force a confession out of him for crimes he didn’t commit.
The case of the brutal torture and murder of Bradley ‘BJ’ Lyons, which shook Australia in December 2018, is once again under the spotlight as a jury has brought to justice the gang leader, Albert Thorn, and some of his mates who helped during the hideous attack.
Mr Lyons was referred to the gang by his wife Jana Hooper, who had falsely accused her husband of sexually assaulting two of her teenage daughters.
Thorn, the leader of the vigilante gang with a specific hatred for paedophiles, was found guilty this month of the torture, imprisonment and murder of Mr Lyons. Later this year, he will face a pre-sentence hearing.
Two other members of the gang who took part in the ordeal, Jordan Bottom and Rikki Smith, were found not guilty last week of the killing of the father.

And I can’t tell you how many times they just straight up confront the wrong person. Here’s one example, and here’s another, here’s one more, and here’s yet another.

These are not professionals. They are YouTubers looking for fame and relying on outrage and violence to get it, and they all-too-often don’t care who gets hurt or killed in the process.

“There are, there are methods which you could do it, as you know,”

Those methods are:

Serving as VP, followed by ascension - The 12th Amendment says no one ineligible to be president can be VP, but the 22nd Amendment only bars election to a third term, not holding office. Trump could potentially be Vance’s (or someone else’s) VP, then that President resigns, making Trump president for a third term without being elected. This is legally untested and would be widely challenged. It doesn’t seem like a route Trump would take.

Repealing the 22nd Amendment - This requires the proposal and ratification of a new amendment. This new amendment must be passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, or by a constitutional convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures, followed by ratification from three-fourths of the states. This is an unlikely path for Trump to take. Even with massive cheating, he would never get the numbers in his favor.

Ignoring the 22nd Amendment - AKA the “what the fuck you gonna do” method, which the Trump regime has employed with great success in lots of other areas. This is almost certainly what he means.

Any other method to remain president, such as declaring martial law, declaring a national emergency, using the Insurrection Act, etc, would basically be a military coup that would spark a civil war and Balkanize the US.

Some of these “pedo hunter” groups have attacked completely innocent people where the accusation of someone being a pedo was completely unsubstantiated. This is the problem with monetizing vigilantism: It creates a demand, and if that demand is not being met by a supply of actual criminals, then it will be filled by vigilantes criminalizing innocent people.

Sorry, Captain Ron. Gorillas are native to equatorial Africa.