For what?

You'd have to pretty majorly change the US Constitution before that is even remotely legal.

> Perhaps that is why other heads of state choose their words carefully... there are places where snark, innuendo and sarcasm are in poor taste.

Sure but what constitutes crossing the line is debatable. Plus he wasn't a head of state at the time, he held no office whatsoever and was only a candidate in arguably the dirtiest election of most people's lives.

> What is the purpose of said “joke”? Did it enhance your life in some way?

I thought it was funny and enjoyed the line. As a human I generally enjoy laughing so yes it enhanced my life.

> Did it advance the interests of the USA in some way?

I'd wager others thought it was amusing as well and that may have lead to a more positive opinion of Trump which in turn may have lead to greater voter turn out. A sense of humor can connect with a lot of people. Those that agree with his policies and agenda for the country would see things that lead to his election, such as demonstrating a sense of humor, as positive things.

> What are the limits?

There's no specific rule, it's up to the public to decide. Harping on Clinton's missing emails and private server setup was a go-to topic for Trump including commenting about how it was likely a hacking target by foreign governments. Joking about one of those governments providing the emails as evidence is (IMHO) well within bounds.

> Would you consider Strozk’s texts as “jokes” as well? Why or why not?

There's definitely a lot of hyperbole in Strozk's texts but even stripping that away I wouldn't want him anywhere near an investigation of a political ally or adversary. It's the same reason you wouldn't want him on a jury. It's not that people aren't allowed to have opinions or even strong opinions. It's that once there's been a demonstration of animus or bias the end product will be tainted.

> To bring this back to hacker news, would you prefer a language syntax where you could insert meaningless statements that the interpreter or compiler could selectively decide to execute or not based on some non deterministic property? Lord knows we have enough problems with UB in C already ;)

Politics, and more generally human interaction, is non-deterministic. As much as I love strong typing and well formed expressions, I wouldn't want the entire world outside of software to be like that. There's beauty in the non-determinism.

The defendants will have the opportunity to dispute the evidence and challenge the legality of its acquisition before a judge and then several layers of appeals courts. What we know is that the prosecutors have already done their due diligence, that warrants were granted after judicial review, and that the evidence obtained from those warrants was enough to convince a grand jury to indict, regardless of whether the highly classified intel used to get that evidence was genuine or not.

More importantly we know that the career Republicans running the office of special counsel, who incidentally all left multi-million dollar a year jobs to be at the center of the most politically charged, controversial, and scrutinized investigations in American history, have staked their reputations and careers on the truth of all of the documents they have filed in court, under oath.

Knowing the details is very different from having access to the physical evidence that led to that knowledge. The latter can very often be used to trace intelligence operatives and expose the methods they use - either of which could have life or death consequences for the operatives themselves, the informants and dissidents they work with, and Americans working in the area in general.

For example, when it was exposed that the CIA was using a vaccination program in Pakistan to test for the DNA of known terrorists, their associates, and families, the backlash led to the death of many aid works and a massive drop in vaccinations in the country.