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posted by martyb on Wednesday August 26 2020, @08:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the plans-going-up-in-smoke dept.

Trump Is Petrified That Pro-Weed Forces Will Roast Him:

The president and some of his team, already obsessed with the potential drop-off of various demographic groups that make up his battered coalition, have begun openly worrying that the drive to legalize or decriminalize marijuana might hurt him and fellow Republicans at the ballot box.

According to two GOP strategists who've independently discussed the topic with Trump this year, the president believes that inclusion of marijuana initiatives on state ballots could supercharge turnout for voters who lean toward Democratic candidates and causes. The president, according to one of the sources, asked for updates on critical swing-states that could see such ballot measures in the 2020 elections.

"The president is keenly aware of how presidential elections [nowadays]... can be won at the margins," one of the Republican strategists said. "The pot issue is one of many that he thinks could be a danger... He once told me it would be very 'smart' for the Democrat[ic] Party to get as many of these on the ballot as they could."

Decades ago, Trump had publicly advocated full-on legalization, arguing that "we're losing badly the war on drugs," and that "you have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars." During this iteration of his political identity, he put the blame on politicians who "don't have any guts" to tackle drug legalization.

But by his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump had come out "strongly" against legal weed. By the time he reached the Oval Office, he was enthusiastically proposing executing drug dealers by firing squad. And his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, revoked an Obama-era guidance that discouraged the feds from prosecuting marijuana-based criminal cases in states where it was legal.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by epitaxial on Wednesday August 26 2020, @12:57PM (3 children)

    by epitaxial (3165) on Wednesday August 26 2020, @12:57PM (#1042102)

    The DEA employs too many people along with all the private prisons. No politician wants to go on record for costing people jobs.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 26 2020, @01:11PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 26 2020, @01:11PM (#1042108)

    Meat packing. Close the prisons and put everyone to work doing meat packing. It's the clear solution.

    • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday August 26 2020, @01:52PM

      by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday August 26 2020, @01:52PM (#1042121) Journal

      Soylent Green packing. Close the prisons and put everyone through a furnace grinder. It's the final solution.

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 26 2020, @07:27PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 26 2020, @07:27PM (#1042328)

    Don't fire them. Retire them. Add ten years to their length of employment and give them whatever retirement that number of years would entitle them. The ones close to retirement can just retire, and those far from retirement can get other jobs while having their lower retirement checks as supplemental income.

    No one in the agency will fight that. Sure it'll cost more, but no one in DC has even given lip service to the public debt for years now; what's a few billion more at this point.