Other clips from the rally went viral as well, including Trump saying, “I’m for us. You know how you spell us, right? U.S. I just picked that up. Has anyone ever thought of that before?”
I hate this timeline so much.
I just picked that up.
More evidence he's a challenged 5 year old trapped in an old man's body.
ImTrumpAndThisIsDeep
ExplainLikeImTrump
Reading this made me wanna cry. It's so fucking sad that millions of people actually voted for this man. Wow, just wow.
What's even sadder is that it's millions of people that some of us used to look up to and respect, now we just have a bunch of sad brainwashed shells of the people they used to be before Trump/conservative propaganda got ahold of them. They broke our communities and now they've broken our families, now all that's left is for them to break is us.
I'm not the biggest Hillary fan but she's been right about the Trump Qult from day 1 and this is a great essay from her about this topic:
Hillary definitely isn't the person who needs to be delivering this message, but the message resounds.
Her being right about the Trump cult doesn't make her any less of a milquetoast Democrat who only started caring about things like gay marriage when public opinion supported it. Any politician who can't stand by values and instead changes tack based on public opinion is a shitheel.
She was right about them being Deplorables and she is right about their isolation and loneliness being part of why they're able to be weaponized.
That doesn't make her any less of the person whose campaign strategy was to promote Donald Trump during the primaries, and then failed to do on-the-ground rallies in swing states that she lost electorally. She actually won the popular election, by quite a bit. She was pretty much one of the few people who could have lost to Trump. Jeb Bush was also running the same year, and after two Bushes and one Clinton presidencies, I think the Democratic party really underestimated people's dislike of political dynasties.
Anyway, right message, wrong person to be delivering it because her fucking hubris and thinking that Trump was gonna be easy to beat is part of what got us in this stupid fucking festering mess.
My neighbors have started putting out trump 2024 flags. I have no idea how anyone can look positive at that man...
Jesus. This sounds like literally every parody version of George W Bush, trying to get a laugh out of how massively exaggerated they made his stupidity.
USA: We couldn't possibly elect a president dumber than GWB
GOP: Hold my beer...
Just because Donald Trump is a moron doesn't mean George W Bush wasn't incredibly stupid. Both things can be true.
Let's not forget that Bush only graduated from college because his parents donated money to keep him from being given failing grades and flunking out.
There are entire buildings on the Yale campus that only exist because W was such a poor student.
Bush was an average student academically, not excelling but also not failing. He excelled in social skills though. He was able to remember names and details of everyone in a room. He was convivial and enthusiastic. He was a member of many clubs, groups, and societies. He was proof that being liked is sometimes more important than being smart.
Trump is not either. He's proof that if you keep telling people that you're better than them then lots of them will believe you.
Just because Donald Trump is a moron doesn’t mean George W Bush wasn’t incredibly stupid. Both things can be true.
I'm not saying otherwise, but do you remember when parody movies were all the rage, and GWB was always portrayed as having the intelligence of a 5 year old?
“I’m for us. You know how you spell us, right? U.S. I just picked that up. Has anyone ever thought of that before?”
Tell me this doesn't sound like a line from one of those.
You aren't wrong, and I do think they are both dumb as shit, I do however still hold that Trump is stupider than W.
No argument there at all, on scale of 1 to 10 of stupid, 10 being the dumbest, W is a 6 or 7, while Trump marks an 11 on the scale and then claims he's a 50.
From the guy who you could insert him saying me/Trump whenever he said United States, this country etc. Of course he doesn't think about the word us, that's means including people who aren't him.
lol okay that’s a fair point.
/im14andthisisderp
For the past 30 years I'm still not sure if it's US Weekly or U.S. Weekly. So yea, I guess I've thought of that before.
It's a little 's'. I too have made that mistake...
No Don, no one has thought of that. Just like no one has ever remembered “person man woman camera TV” before.
sigh everything is terrible lol
Awww, Donnie just learned how to spell a two letter word! What a smart boy he is!
Well, that's because Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart —you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.
Sometimes you have a thought or idea that you think is 100% unique and original and then you do five seconds of Googling to discover that not only have a lot of other people thought of it before, but they thought of it long before you ever did and may already be a thing you never knew about. You have a Today I Learned moment and life goes on.
...and then there's whatever the fuck this idea is that should have never even left his mouth to begin with. It's one thing to drop this granule of insight down on the bar while you're sharing a beer with your pals after you've had one too many already. It's another to hear it come from someone that once led the country and some people think is smart. Holy Jesus.
When will Jason Bateman be cast as Batman?
When he stops being “Master Batesman”
I'm really high and I really don't mean this to come across as critical but what was the thought process in adding the s to bateman? If you skip the s the joke still makes sense and you get to keep the last name intact.
Honestly? You ascribe far more intentionality than I had.
It was probably autocorrect or habit. Used to have an employee by that name, who, may have frequented our texts…
The final straw was going on a crusade to figure out who ate his “Craft cup cakes” (from a cup cake shop. Disgusting things- they used shortening in the butter cream.)
The thing was, he left them on the coffee service where we leave things for sharing. (Donuts, bagels. Cupcakes.) basically everybody walked by and had them a slice of cupcake.
1969 - Hogan's Heroes. Col. Klink is shown a insignia button found in the woods. "it says 'us'" he says (to canned laughter)
So only 54 years ago confirmed evidence that it had been thought of before
Sounds like another coup attempt being foreshadowed by Trump
Yeah, though I wouldn't be surprised if he legit didn't really want to be president in the first place, but the opportunity to fleece more people was too great for him to pass up so he just ran with it and can't stop now.
The grift is 100% there but I think he does want to be president again because he believes that that will absolve all crimes.
Not in Georgia!
He'll just pardon himself.
He'll pardon himself in Georgia, too, even though that's totally not a thing, then double-dog-dare Georgia to do something about it.
It obviously has never been put to the test, but all the hypotheticals about the subject I've ever heard about conclude that what would most likely happen is that the verdict would still stand, but any kind of incarceration would be deferred or outright eliminated because the execution of his Presidential duties would take precedent.
He wouldn't be able to pardon himself, but Trump would clearly spin the fact that he avoided punishment as "TOTAL EXONERATION", which is often enough for his ego and to placate his base.
deleted by creator
I don't think Trump realizes we're all aware of what he's capable of.
I'm not going to worry about voting on election night. Because I will have voted days/weeks earlier through my state's effective vote by mail system.
That's why they hate it so much.
Unfortunately I'm in a red blood state with some really corrupt officials. I can't trust that my mail in ballot won't be "lost"
Fill out your mail-in ballot, then just drop it in the secured ballot box at your polling location. Then DeJoy doesn't get to fuck with your vote.
I never knew that such a large portion of our population was so far below what I would have thought was the average intelligence until I heard they thought this man was smart. This guy is an idiot and that scares me to think what that means about his cult members’ intelligence levels.
No one dumb enough to think this guy is smart should be trusted with any adult responsibilities; not gun ownership, not voting and definitely not reproducing.
Fun fact: half the population has below average intelligence.
The issue is how far below average most of his supports appear to be.
This is apparent to me every day at work. The public washroom has an indicator beside it that will light up green with the words "OCCUPIED WHEN LIT" any time the door is locked from within. This is a very obvious indicator, though to the average person, green mean go. And every single time I'm using it, you bet your ass some fucking Neanderthal approaches that door, immediately becomes confused over the meaning of occupied, and decides it must be synonymous with vacant. They then grab ahold of the handle and not once, not twice, but often attempt to rip that fucking door down three times before their meat brain tells them "DOOR LOCKED!". You can literally feel the desperation and confusion in every one of those attempted breaches.
Every. Fucking. Time.
And I don't shit at work, so I'm not often in there more than a couple of minutes. I think I'm going to start bellowing "GREEEN MEEANN GGOOOOOOOO!" from inside every time this happens.
One of customers told me how much he likes Trump thinks he his smart. This was after him and his son were talking about how dumb Biden is.
I have lost respect for customer and wouldn't want him our his company working on my floor.
In fairness, I don't think Biden is some genius, either. Perception of his intelligence isn't helped by the fact that he apparently can't stop plagiarizing other people's speeches.
This gem also from the article should have made even the really stupid people in the audience walk out.
I'm for us. You know how you spell us, right? U.S. I just picked that up. Has anyone ever thought of that before?
Right? That one hurt my head so much reading it that I couldn’t make myself watch the video out of fear my own brain cells would commit suicide.
By definition almost half of the population has an IQ of below 100. And IQ is obviously a flawed metric by itself, you can have a high IQ and still struggle with getting through a day without saying something stupid.
Me after reading the headline: "Haha, that's hilarious! Yes, Trump voters, don't worry about voting!"
Me after reading the article: "Well, that was disturbing."
You don’t have to vote, don’t worry about voting. The voting, we got plenty of votes.
Why does it sound like he's got a mountain of fake ballots sitting in a warehouse that he's gonna drop from a blimp or some shit.
I'm wondering if he doesn't really want to be President
I honestly don't think he wanted to be president the first time. It would have made sense for him to make a big show of running, but lose, and just embrace the publicity.
Of course that assumes a level of foresight and planning that he hasn't demonstrated since, so it's hardly a firmly held belief.
I think he's much too fragile of ego to intentionally lose. I doubt he even let his kids win at games as children.
Partly because I doubt he ever actually played with them but also because he's a complete cunt.
Im sure he played plenty of games with Ivanka, all of them he learned from prostitutes.
2016 was not the first time he ran. He had multiple presidential bids in previous election years, most of which amounted to nothing other than free publicity for him and a stroke of his own ego. He was never taken seriously and would always bow out after raking in some donations that he probably embezzled.
Then 2016 happened and suddenly everyone was taking him seriously this time. I really do believe he didn't expect to have a chance at winning against Hillary and that's the only reason he didn't bow out early in the race like he usually did. He was having fun shit-smearing the other Republican candidates live on stage at debates and must have thought nobody would actually vote for him. The look on his face when they announced the winner wasn't the look of someone overjoyed to have been elected President.
He needs to win. The crimes he's committed are obviously crimes, well documented, and he has gone right up to the line on publicly admitting this. The only way he stays out of jail is if he wins and pardons himself. Or if the hamberders block his heart in the next year.
Because he has an IQ below room temperature and I'm talking Celsius.
Covfefe logic. Simple as that.
"Watch the voters"
We already have poll watchers, is he really trying to go full 1933 nazi and have his zealots "monitor" voters?
Great.
Watch them for what exactly? For... Voting for another candidate? I don't understand. Like. They are looking for fraud? What would that look like?
I don't get it. Like if I went and watched the people at my local voting center, I would see a bunch of senior citizen voulenteers handing out ballots, and then I would see people putting their ballots into the big scantron machine thing. That's what it would look like. That's what it looks like every time.
He doesn't want them "watching" for anything. This is a dog whistle for textbook voter intimidation tactics.
Sane people may be too scared to show up and vote because they actively fear for their safety due to threats of violence or social reprisal.
Watch that be what all of these mass shootings have been about. People hanging out in some random chat room or forum getting talked into shooting up schools, movie theaters, churches, concerts, etc... And the whole thing ends up being connected to this creepy cabal of people like Roger Stone and Steve Bannon. They get people to stand around the polling places with AR's and then people are afraid of becoming another statistic.
If you have 2 people charging into a voting place and being stupid they get arrested. If you have 100 people then the voting place gets shut down for safety.
Shut down enough places in the other guys territory and you win.
And if you have 100 people charging in while the votes are being counted? I wonder what happens then.
Florida 2000. The Supreme Court gives itself the power to supersede the Constitution and Congress and the State Secretary. They then hand the election to the GOP. (Who promptly lost the recount but too late, SCOTUS said so!)
Thanks, too many folks forget that Jan 6 was the second violent coup perpetrated against the United States in the last few decades. Not only does the Brooks Brothers Riot absolutely count as one, it actually succeeded.
Asking your supporters to engage in voter intimidation for the next election when you've been charged, and will be tried shortly, for leading an insurrection after the last election seems like a great game plan. /s
I can't imagine being this guys lawyer. You must either be eating a handful of Tums every night, or your just as loony as him and actually don't see how everything he says and does it toxic to himself and everyone in his orbit.
His lawyers are just there to drag it out, they plan on using mob violence to settle things when time runs out if he hasn't been elected.
There are two things his lawyers are going to bank on: that toxic and illegal are very different things and that their real goal is to drag things out in hopes of a second term for Trump.
Maybe the ones that aren't co-defendants with him ... yet. Although helping him win a 2nd term gets them what? If he gets his 2nd term, and the GOP gladly allow him to assume his dream of being dictator:
he will have just as much chance of paying them (probably less than 1%).
he would also have no need for the law/lawyers/judges. I think anyone that could challenge him would be in the first wave of the "purge" .
It seems that his remaining lawyers are grifters rather than true believers...
their real goal is to drag things out in hopes of a second term for Trump.
... their real goal is to drag things out because they get paid by the hour.
It's a convenient scenario where the best strategy for the client is also the highest billing strategy.
It's so he can start bitching more and more after he loses again and his cult can try to overthrow the government again.
He wants to break the system, dumbasses.
He is prove the system is already broken. When in a democracy, voters who can read and write, who are impoverished and on avg can't even afford a $500 emergency vote for a billionaire, I'd say that is a failure of the system.
edit: I am not saying billionaires are worse than anybody else, I am just saying their interests probably don't have a lot of overlap with the avg voter.
It's ok, I'll say it, billionaires are greedy fucks killing our society, individuals who should not exist in a functional society.
Billionaires are worse than everyone else. Greed on their scale is killing the planet and people.
No one becomes a billionaire through ethical means. You have to grind people down to make that kind of money.
To prove it, just how rich can someone get without making any unethical choices?
Imagine waking up with billions of dollars. What would you do with it? If you say keep it and try o take more from the populous then you are an enemy of the populous. They have brain damage from greed. They are worse than everyone else.
I would spend all but 1 billion on just buying wetlands and the legal resources to make sure they never get touched. Doing good the laziest way possible.
With the remaining billion I will start my own space program.
Oh don't apologize! Let me show you something:
10,000 seconds = 2.8 hours
100,000 seconds = 27.8 hours
1,000,000 seconds = 11.6 days
10,000,000 seconds = 115.7 days
1,000,000,000 seconds = 31.7 YEARS
I haven't even lived for a billion seconds yet and I was born in 94! A billion is a truly obscene high quantity. I don't think there's a moral way to gain that much wealth, and if there is, it's an exceptionally rare possibility.
I am 1,735,668,000 seconds old, and so I have seen some shit. Donald Trump is just an unseemly hiccup in an insignificant span of time. There were ghastly horrors before him and there will be ghastly horrors after him. These nuisances seem important because this is your now, you'll realize how little they meant when this is your then. As in, it seemed so important then, while you look back at the Land of Then from the clear hilltops of After.
I hope so. I'd rather this all be something my kids or grandkids ask me about.
They are objectively worse - it's immoral for a billionaire to exist (meaning to amass that amount of money, not to physically exist). You can't get to that point without knowingly/actively hurting others. They are worse people, period... and you don't have to cover your bases and backpedal on this point. Starts to sound line the famous "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" quote.
That’s why the Electoral College exists
If people are voting for Trump then they will put their votes towards a better alternative
Ironically Hillary Clinton had 3 million more votes than Trump. Without electoral college it would have been a Hillary Presidency.
We've had 6 presidential elections in the 21st century. The Republican candidate won the popular vote one out of those 6 times. Yet we've had 3 Republican Presidential terms resulting from those elections.
Yes, it doesn’t work as intended but political parties weren’t intended either
I think it works as intended by those who put it in place.
A lot of things brought in were done so because they didn’t know how to exploit it
He's leading the polls?
Only in certain polls, and as we have seen time and again, the polls don't mean shit. Bernie was leading in the polls this far out from the election in 2019. "Somehow" he isn't president.
Hell, Hillary was leading in the polls on, and after, election day 2016. She won the general election.....
The electoral college needs to be abolished.
Agreed. If the Superbowl was "won" by the losing team 17% of the time people would riot.
That being 8/13 at the time of writing with Biden only leading in one.
"The polls"
If I go outside and ask the three young kids riding their bikes what their favorite ice cream is, I've joust conducted a poll.
Apropos to this specific scenario, if I go to a chocolate lovers convention and ask their favorite ice cream flavor, guess which flavor might leaf the way. Now what is while along the question, I was wearing a t-shirt that says "vote for chocolate and I'll give you $20 bucks".
"Chocolate is leading in the polls, okay... You know it, I know it."
What point are you trying to make?
Are you implying that only live and die Trump voters are being polled?
I mean, to a degree, polling in general is still conducted with a very antiquated structure that tends to bring in responses predominately from the underemployed, undereducated and elderly (so huge cross section of enthusiastic trump voters over represented in those groups). But my specific point here was that he's ambiguously citing "polls" and not a specific poll - They aren't all created equal and in fact, you can bet the ones that trump would proudly reference are typically biased as fuck in how they ask questions and analyze results.
"Dont worry about voting, just intimidate and threaten the other people who are voting."
Other clips from the rally went viral as well, including Trump saying, “I’m for us. You know how you spell us, right? U.S. I just picked that up. Has anyone ever thought of that before?”
No, Donnie. No one has ever thought of this. You're the first, you beautiful genius. /s
Trump has killed satire.
The Onion and the like have nowhere left to go...
"Very stable genius."
Sounds like he's instructing his people to harass and intimidate voters. Add it to the pile of crimes?
This actually concerns me a bit. Not that I believe Trump can actually coordinate anything, mind you.
But at the same time, Trump really didn't lose the election by several million votes. He lost the election by a few thousand key votes in key swing states. Many of those states have passed dranconian laws, took over election boards, and put in rules that would allow them to just throw the election Trump's way regardless of the actual vote count. It's very possible that he's simply banking on those to carry him through the day regardless of the actual vote totals. If Trump believes (or is led to believe) the fix is in in those key areas, telling ruby-red voters in ruby-red states to stay home is no big deal.
I'm very concerned.
Diminishing faith in elections is one of the fourteen characteristics of Fascism.
While I agree with the sentiment, Trump did lose by millions of votes. There was a 7.61 million vote differential. He also lost the popular vote to Hillary by 2.9 million votes.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than any other losing presidential candidate in US history.
Going back further, incumbency aside, there hasn't been a Republican who has won the popular vote since GHW Bush in 1988..35 years ago
Those numbers don't matter though.
What they were saying, accurately, was that the election was decided by a few tens of thousands of voters delivering swing states with tight races.
Trump lost by a few million votes in 2016 too, but that's not what mattered then either.
Those numbers do matter for clarity. Saying he didn't lose by millions blurs the truth. Saying he lost by a few thousand votes is not at all accurate when electoral college votes are the only ones that matter, and adding "in a few swing states," only fuels those stop the steal Maga idiots
Those numbers do matter for clarity.
They do not. They only matter in the context of a discussion of the election among those familiar with how the system works, where all parties specifically understand that the popular vote is a meaningless metric as it relates to electing a president.
Saying he didn't lose by millions blurs the truth.
Again that's just factually incorrect. By the same standards, you'd logically have to argue that Trump lost the 2016 election, which is obviously nonsense.
If anything, the opposite is true: using terms like "won" and "lost" based on the popular vote is what's really blurring the truth.
It's like talking about an American football game and who won and lost based on overall yards gained or time of possession instead of the final score.
Saying he lost by a few thousand votes is not at all accurate when electoral college votes are the only ones that matter
Interesting angle, considering this is the first possibly valid point you've made...but that it also completely contradicts the rest of your argument. You've been here arguing the popular vote matters then turn around and say the EC votes are the only ones that matter...bold strategy.
In concession, I'll admit you're right on this one and I stand corrected.
Trump lost by 74 votes.
Yeesh you really don't know how to keep to a side. Thanks for the props, thanks for saying what I already said, thanks for rehashing what you already said, and thanks for not understanding the point and drawing this out. This whole exchange is unnecessary and has been a waste of my time
While I agree with the sentiment, Trump did lose by millions of votes. There was a 7.61 million vote differential. He also lost the popular vote to Hillary by 2.9 million votes.
Yeah, I know all of that. But about 5 million of that 7.61 million, for example, came from California. There was never a chance that California was going to Trump, so those 5 million extra votes were largely overkill votes that had no bearing on the overall election outcome. Those 5 million could have stayed home and it wouldn't have changed the outcome a single bit. The same goes, to a much lesser degree, with states like New York and Massachusetts, which are about as blue as you can get.
The same holds true for Trump, by the way. Trump won several southern states by double digits, leading to himself getting millions of overkill votes in states that were never in danger for him. A few million people in those states could have stayed home and the outcome wouldn't have changed a bit. But a few thousand more votes in a couple of key states could mean we'd be sitting in the midst of Trump's 2nd term while Biden goes down as a footnote who ran his campaign from his basement.
It's all about the crucial votes in key areas of swing states. Georgia is a prime example. A swing of just over 11,000 votes out of a pool of 5 million could have thrown the state to Trump. A 20,000 vote swing in Wisconsin could have turned Wisconsin red. Between the two of them alone, 31,000 votes could have sent two states and their 26 Electoral College votes to the GOP. The same could be said about half a dozen other states where Biden's wins were razor thin.
The popular vote is great for bragging rights, but in reality has no actual bearing on the outcome of the election due to the existence of the Electoral College. It's great for chest thumping, but winning by 7.6 million votes when 7 million of those votes came from heavily populated states that Biden was going to easily win anyway doesn't really say much. When you're talking about votes that actually have an impact on the results, Biden's victory was much, much narrower.
Look at it this way: Do you really think Biden is going to waste his time running up the score in California, or is he going to spend his time in swing states to try to at least maintain if not expand upon the narrow wins he got last time? He's going to spend his time in the swing states because running up the score in California by a few million votes will do exactly nothing for him, while ensuring he at least maintains the 11,000 votes he won by in Georgia will mean he doesn't lose 16 EC votes right off the top.
That was a lot of words to say what you already said, and I corrected. He didn't lose by a small margin, he lost by electoral votes. Saying he only won or lost by a few thousand votes is wildly inaccurate when it is electoral votes that matter
...i think bush the lesser won the popular vote for his second term: didn't make him suck any less, but wars win elections, which is a terrible incentive for the next minority-victory president...
That's what an incumbency is
That would involve planning on his part and he has not demonstrated ability. He responds not plans.
I agree, it would be a complete waste of time for they to vote
I am conflicted between everyone should participate in democracy and them participating in democracy
Everyone should participate and have their voices heard. However, if you think the whole thing is a farce and want to undermine the system from the get go, I'm not gonna be too broken up about it if you choose to exclude your voice from the process.
In some countries (I think Australia is one), you're required by law to vote. If you don't, you get a small fine. I think we need this system because there are a ton of would-be voters who don't see the point. If they were made to vote, I think there'd be greater engagement because they'd be more frustrated at the appalling candidates and demand more because they had skin in the game.
Very well. How has this ended up impacting things?
Pretty positively. Our politics have trended generally to the right as have most western countries (especially those with large Murdoch media owned presences) but the 2 major parties still sit relatively close to centre, and particularly wild right wing elements have been shredded at the last round of elections.
The hard-rights attempts at US style minority led major parties seem to be invalidated by the voting population, so I'd say our system of ranked choice voting with mandatory participation is working very well.
Let's compromise: everyone adult with a functioning brain should vote.
no more republican and democratic party? i'm down
tRump voters do not believe in democracy though. So I'm good with their uneducated hateful vote not being cast.
Seems like he is calling for his supporters to swarm polling stations and scare away anyone who looks like a Democrat. He is counting on violence or the threat of it to give him a win.
He's calling for a coup. And not subtly.
I think it's going to end up like how he discouraged mail in voting. The real crazies live in red areas, they are going to scare their own voters away.
I really hope you are right.
Ya know... This is actually super wild for him to say. lol
Right but it's consistent. He's going to keep pushing the election lie until he rallies another coup.
Let's game this out the way some of the comments are saying.
Scenario 1: Proud Boys and other right wing militant groups stand around polling places with open carry weapons to intimidate Democrat-leaning districts. Maybe it doesn't chase everyone away, but we know a lot of election officials are complaining about threats and have quit. So it's going to have some effect. Enough to swing the vote? I don't think that matters. It's still election interference.
Scenario 2: right wing militants show up, and so do various antifa groups to counter them. Maybe antifa show up armed, maybe not. Either way, it's an escalation. Escalating tensions with guns present significantly increases the chances that someone uses their gun, regardless of who shoots first. The first shots in a civil war? Then the right wing militants win, because they've been agitating for this for years. Who wins is immaterial to the millions of people who will suffer as a result.
Scenario 3: polling places are reinforced with police and National Guards as necessary to prevent any election interference. They can be present to "observe" but they're not allowed to intimidate anyone. This is the only scenario I can see where democracy is defended and preserved.
Agree or disagree? What am I missing? Where am I wrong?
You're missing that the police etc and the proud boys etc are the same group.
Nah, he's missing:
4. The Fat Boys only show up in red counties, having no impact whatsoever. They pass out drunk in the parking lot of the voting locations and their wives and kids have a quiet night to themselves.
They forget to vote. They don't intimidate anyone because the few liberals who live there voted early. They later complain it was "rigged".
Those people pride themselves at driving to another county to show up uninvited and unwelcomed. Source: Dealt with a few at protests in a "liberal urban" city.
Sure, ACAB. But that doesn't mean every cop who shows up to keep the peace at polling stations will enable right wing violence. Especially not with the press watching.
the press hasn't been a concern to the police for a good long while now, and internal unity is more important than stopping murders (half of what the FBI does nowadays is arrest precincts because they were covering for the cop who happens to be the guy dumping bodies in the woods, bonus points if it's the woman he knocked up while having an affair with)
(half of what the FBI does nowadays is arrest precincts because they were covering for the cop who happens to be the guy dumping bodies in the woods, bonus points if it’s the woman he knocked up while having an affair with)
When local cops manage to make the FBI look like the good guys.
Jesus Christ. This is a boring dystopia.
Look, consider why you believe the FBI to be the bad guys for a second, on the one hand you have a locally powerful person, easy to bribe, easy to influence, along with a strong insider friend group setting and only the local town will even care much, on the other hand you have the FBI that audits its own members in a beurocratic manner, and is heavily scrutinized by outside institutions.
I actually find it amazing that people trust their local branch of "the boys" more than the FBI...
I don’t think that matters. It’s still election interference.
Short of cancelling the election after the polling has happened, how do you expect to counter that if Trump wins because of it?
I mean it doesn't matter because it's election interference that will happen again and again because we don't seem to have the political will to stop it. Unless we get Scenario 3.
I think he thinks he'll lose, and he thinks a big loss is actually less believable to his supporters than a close loss, so he's trying to create a big loss, which will make more of his supporters Jan 6 2.0.
I'm not following that logic. If he tells everyone not to vote, and most comply meaning only a few vote, wouldn't the majority of them who didn't vote see the low results and understand that it would be the natural outcome? Where do they think votes come from if they don't vote?
You're assuming they think using logic. You're wrong. They go by emotion, and you can't use logic to reason with them.
Logic: "he lost by a lot, it's wildly unlikely that it could be rigged by that much."
Emotion: "he lost by a lot, that's impossible, NOBODY I know voted for BRANDON, I love Trump so EVERYBODY loves Trump, IT WAS RIGGED!!1!"
I imagine when they look at the lines of voters they categorize people into two bins: normal and not-normal. Trump is asking his supporters to do a Rorschach test but citizens are the ink blots and he's specifically telling them to look for scary things. Their Conclusion: If you see lots of normal people and he loses the election, then it's because of those voters that didn't look normal were there to rig the system.
Well that’s creepy.
Yeah I’m ok with that. If you’re a trump supporter, dont worry about voting!
It's the part where he wants those same people to go out and intimidate or attack anyone not voting "correctly" (read: Republican).
Nah I’m ok with that too- make sure you wear your maga hat large and proud, no mask because you’re not a pussy, and say you’re name loud and clear into the cameras to assert your alpha male dominance. Insist how DJT told you it was ok. Make some loud and specific threats against government officials. Then kick back and wait for your all expense paid federal vacation!
I'd rather have a country where people treat each other with respect and protect the right to vote.
The bitch about voter intimidation is that if they pull it off it won't matter that they're caught in the act. There's no mechanism to invalidate an election tainted by overt intimidation, so they can just do it then pardon themselves.
“So, we have to be careful. You got to get out there and watch those voters,” Trump said, adding, “You don’t have to vote, don’t worry about voting. The voting, we got plenty of votes.”
He's saying that he's going to win by force. And he probably will. It's over.
It isn’t over until it’s over. If I have to face armed gunmen to vote I will. People in other countries are brave enough to do it, I can be too.
They've been doubling down on voter suppression and various other legislative bullshit.
People are going to die at the polls.
Yeah, I'm a bit concerned about that myself. I live in a red state, but a blue city that is 43% black. They have arcane voting laws that force you to stand in line for hours. I can definitely imagine a scenario where long voting lines in the city are attacked by white nationalist gunmen, and all the law-abiding unarmed voters are defenseless. This won't stop me from voting or having my long gun in the truck, but it is something I've been concerned about.
Keep your eyes peeled for cars targeting the line. That's a popular method.
Very true. There are many vectors an attack could come from.
What is over exactly?
Why do you say "he probably will" as if it was a done deal?
Are you a trump shill?
@spaceghoti hit the high points. The presumptive nominee for President of the United States for one of two major parties is openly fascist, with exactly zero consequences. He has a lot of people on his side, many of whom are already in positions of power in government, in all three branches, and in the press.
There have been plenty of opportunities for consequences to be laid upon these people who are still working to overthrow the foundations of democracy. None have been laid. None. I have zero faith in the ability of a democratic government to be able to put down this fascism.
Are you a trump shill?
You are free to browse my comment history to make your own judgment on that. Or go fuck yourself, your choice.
"Go fuck yourself"
Ok, I deserve that for insulting you.
But moving on, I disagree with you. If he couldn't overturn the elections while being president, he won't be able to do shit now.
You forgot the "or ... your choice" part.
We will disagree until at least powerful fascists see real consequences. This very post is about Trump telling his followers to go strongarm polling places, voters, and election workers. And they will. They've already made life hell for some election workers. They've already been threatening House members over the Speaker votes.
It's getting worse, not better. It will continue to get worse. A lot worse. More people will die, and as yet, the people who are fomenting terrorism with their speech are not being held accountable at all.
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
Let's not throw in the towel, as dire as things look. It's not over yet. Organize.
Good plays by rules, evil doesn't. Good only wins by having overwhelming numbers. Just a majority won't do it.
It's sort of the strength of rules which is the advantage of good, though. The advantage of evil, short term gains, is great. In the short term. The thing about fascists is that they really actually can't make the trains run on time, or sustain any level of state for any extended period of time, because they're incapable of actual coalition building without self-sabotage. It's why they keep having to move to beating on the most extremely marginalized in society. After trans people, I have no idea what the hell they'll scapegoat, because they're already scraping at the bottom of the barrel there. It was incredibly unpopular to overturn abortion, it will be the same with pretty much any other healthcare, or really anything that's actually core to what they want to do once they get power. None of this is to say that they shouldn't be feared, but we didn't stay in the great depression, and we didn't stay in the company towns, you know? People faced with nothing left to lose have every reason to fight establishment power, and fascists and fascism does nothing if not create people with nothing left to lose.
I think you're not getting what I'm saying.
When Side A plays by rules, and Side B doesn't, then an overwhelming majority in Side A is required to hold Side B accountable. Side B doesn't need a majority - they can be a "moderately strong minority" - as long as they're willing to break the rules, refuse to comply, and act with enough threat of or actual violence, Side B wins.
There has already been actual violence, but the threat of more and greater violence is larger. Side A has to hold Side B accountable, for real, no matter what threats are made.
There's been no accountability, Side B is continuing to break the rules, with impunity.
I disagree with you. It's not getting worse. The peak was Jan 6.
And a lot of supporters have realized that Trump abandoned the Jan 6 constitutional traitors.
You're a fucking fool if you think the peak was Jan 6. Are you familiar with the Beer Hall Putsch?
No. Enlighten me without resorting to name calling, then.
Edit: it's a nazi era event. You win Godwin's Award of the day.
Lol "Godwin" that means I can ignore everything you say!
If you say so. Or you could, you know, learn something.
These people are literally open fascists. Comparing their actions to that of the Nazis is completely fucking appropriate.
The Nazis didn't take power their first try. Their first insurrection (the Beer Hall Putsch) failed, and Hitler and his fascist buddies got slaps on the wrist.
Then they did it again and that time they didn't fail. With something like only ~30% popular support.
Thanks for the info. Now was that fucking difficult?
If you're gonna go through life relying on random people to explain things to you, especially when the Internet exists, you should be more polite about it
No, I do fucking not.
They're saying democracy in the US is over. The slow walk of prosecutions against the Jan. 6th insurgents, particularly its organizers, has given the fascists the confidence to do it again at a national level. We'll either have to fight back with equal violence, flee, or submit to their dictatorship.
I hate this timeline so much.
More evidence he's a challenged 5 year old trapped in an old man's body.
ImTrumpAndThisIsDeep
ExplainLikeImTrump
Reading this made me wanna cry. It's so fucking sad that millions of people actually voted for this man. Wow, just wow.
What's even sadder is that it's millions of people that some of us used to look up to and respect, now we just have a bunch of sad brainwashed shells of the people they used to be before Trump/conservative propaganda got ahold of them. They broke our communities and now they've broken our families, now all that's left is for them to break is us.
I'm not the biggest Hillary fan but she's been right about the Trump Qult from day 1 and this is a great essay from her about this topic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/08/hillary-clinton-essay-loneliness-epidemic/674921/
Hillary definitely isn't the person who needs to be delivering this message, but the message resounds.
Her being right about the Trump cult doesn't make her any less of a milquetoast Democrat who only started caring about things like gay marriage when public opinion supported it. Any politician who can't stand by values and instead changes tack based on public opinion is a shitheel.
She was right about them being Deplorables and she is right about their isolation and loneliness being part of why they're able to be weaponized.
That doesn't make her any less of the person whose campaign strategy was to promote Donald Trump during the primaries, and then failed to do on-the-ground rallies in swing states that she lost electorally. She actually won the popular election, by quite a bit. She was pretty much one of the few people who could have lost to Trump. Jeb Bush was also running the same year, and after two Bushes and one Clinton presidencies, I think the Democratic party really underestimated people's dislike of political dynasties.
Anyway, right message, wrong person to be delivering it because her fucking hubris and thinking that Trump was gonna be easy to beat is part of what got us in this stupid fucking festering mess.
My neighbors have started putting out trump 2024 flags. I have no idea how anyone can look positive at that man...
Jesus. This sounds like literally every parody version of George W Bush, trying to get a laugh out of how massively exaggerated they made his stupidity.
USA: We couldn't possibly elect a president dumber than GWB
GOP: Hold my beer...
Just because Donald Trump is a moron doesn't mean George W Bush wasn't incredibly stupid. Both things can be true.
Let's not forget that Bush only graduated from college because his parents donated money to keep him from being given failing grades and flunking out.
There are entire buildings on the Yale campus that only exist because W was such a poor student.
Bush was an average student academically, not excelling but also not failing. He excelled in social skills though. He was able to remember names and details of everyone in a room. He was convivial and enthusiastic. He was a member of many clubs, groups, and societies. He was proof that being liked is sometimes more important than being smart.
Trump is not either. He's proof that if you keep telling people that you're better than them then lots of them will believe you.
I'm not saying otherwise, but do you remember when parody movies were all the rage, and GWB was always portrayed as having the intelligence of a 5 year old?
Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BAM5hMMp0M
Tell me this doesn't sound like a line from one of those.
You aren't wrong, and I do think they are both dumb as shit, I do however still hold that Trump is stupider than W.
No argument there at all, on scale of 1 to 10 of stupid, 10 being the dumbest, W is a 6 or 7, while Trump marks an 11 on the scale and then claims he's a 50.
From the guy who you could insert him saying me/Trump whenever he said United States, this country etc. Of course he doesn't think about the word us, that's means including people who aren't him.
lol okay that’s a fair point.
/im14andthisisderp
For the past 30 years I'm still not sure if it's US Weekly or U.S. Weekly. So yea, I guess I've thought of that before.
It's a little 's'. I too have made that mistake...
What could be a more fascist thing to say?
If somebody else gave incorrect voting instructions, that would be election interference.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/social-media-influencer-douglass-mackey-sentenced-after-conviction-election
They don't usually do it in a way that would tank their own election though.
jfc
You know this sounds super smart to a certain group of people...
im7andthisisdeep
imMAGAandthisisdeep
Impeggyhillandthisisdeep
No need to slander Peggy like that.
My dad...
No Don, no one has thought of that. Just like no one has ever remembered “person man woman camera TV” before.
sigh everything is terrible lol
Awww, Donnie just learned how to spell a two letter word! What a smart boy he is!
Well, that's because Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart —you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.
Sometimes you have a thought or idea that you think is 100% unique and original and then you do five seconds of Googling to discover that not only have a lot of other people thought of it before, but they thought of it long before you ever did and may already be a thing you never knew about. You have a Today I Learned moment and life goes on.
...and then there's whatever the fuck this idea is that should have never even left his mouth to begin with. It's one thing to drop this granule of insight down on the bar while you're sharing a beer with your pals after you've had one too many already. It's another to hear it come from someone that once led the country and some people think is smart. Holy Jesus.
When will Jason Bateman be cast as Batman?
When he stops being “Master Batesman”
I'm really high and I really don't mean this to come across as critical but what was the thought process in adding the s to bateman? If you skip the s the joke still makes sense and you get to keep the last name intact.
Honestly? You ascribe far more intentionality than I had.
It was probably autocorrect or habit. Used to have an employee by that name, who, may have frequented our texts…
The final straw was going on a crusade to figure out who ate his “Craft cup cakes” (from a cup cake shop. Disgusting things- they used shortening in the butter cream.)
The thing was, he left them on the coffee service where we leave things for sharing. (Donuts, bagels. Cupcakes.) basically everybody walked by and had them a slice of cupcake.
1969 - Hogan's Heroes. Col. Klink is shown a insignia button found in the woods. "it says 'us'" he says (to canned laughter)
So only 54 years ago confirmed evidence that it had been thought of before
https://youtu.be/clTCMZIoVMQ
https://giphy.com/gifs/wtf-obama-wth-pPhyAv5t9V8djyRFJH
Two letters. Two. Dude thinks he invited the idea. What an absolute skid mark.
Sounds like another coup attempt being foreshadowed by Trump
Yeah, though I wouldn't be surprised if he legit didn't really want to be president in the first place, but the opportunity to fleece more people was too great for him to pass up so he just ran with it and can't stop now.
The grift is 100% there but I think he does want to be president again because he believes that that will absolve all crimes.
Not in Georgia!
He'll just pardon himself.
He'll pardon himself in Georgia, too, even though that's totally not a thing, then double-dog-dare Georgia to do something about it.
It obviously has never been put to the test, but all the hypotheticals about the subject I've ever heard about conclude that what would most likely happen is that the verdict would still stand, but any kind of incarceration would be deferred or outright eliminated because the execution of his Presidential duties would take precedent.
He wouldn't be able to pardon himself, but Trump would clearly spin the fact that he avoided punishment as "TOTAL EXONERATION", which is often enough for his ego and to placate his base.
deleted by creator
I don't think Trump realizes we're all aware of what he's capable of.
I'm not going to worry about voting on election night. Because I will have voted days/weeks earlier through my state's effective vote by mail system.
That's why they hate it so much.
Unfortunately I'm in a red blood state with some really corrupt officials. I can't trust that my mail in ballot won't be "lost"
Fill out your mail-in ballot, then just drop it in the secured ballot box at your polling location. Then DeJoy doesn't get to fuck with your vote.
I never knew that such a large portion of our population was so far below what I would have thought was the average intelligence until I heard they thought this man was smart. This guy is an idiot and that scares me to think what that means about his cult members’ intelligence levels.
No one dumb enough to think this guy is smart should be trusted with any adult responsibilities; not gun ownership, not voting and definitely not reproducing.
Fun fact: half the population has below average intelligence.
The issue is how far below average most of his supports appear to be.
This is apparent to me every day at work. The public washroom has an indicator beside it that will light up green with the words "OCCUPIED WHEN LIT" any time the door is locked from within. This is a very obvious indicator, though to the average person, green mean go. And every single time I'm using it, you bet your ass some fucking Neanderthal approaches that door, immediately becomes confused over the meaning of occupied, and decides it must be synonymous with vacant. They then grab ahold of the handle and not once, not twice, but often attempt to rip that fucking door down three times before their meat brain tells them "DOOR LOCKED!". You can literally feel the desperation and confusion in every one of those attempted breaches.
Every. Fucking. Time.
And I don't shit at work, so I'm not often in there more than a couple of minutes. I think I'm going to start bellowing "GREEEN MEEANN GGOOOOOOOO!" from inside every time this happens.
One of customers told me how much he likes Trump thinks he his smart. This was after him and his son were talking about how dumb Biden is.
I have lost respect for customer and wouldn't want him our his company working on my floor.
In fairness, I don't think Biden is some genius, either. Perception of his intelligence isn't helped by the fact that he apparently can't stop plagiarizing other people's speeches.
This gem also from the article should have made even the really stupid people in the audience walk out.
Right? That one hurt my head so much reading it that I couldn’t make myself watch the video out of fear my own brain cells would commit suicide.
By definition almost half of the population has an IQ of below 100. And IQ is obviously a flawed metric by itself, you can have a high IQ and still struggle with getting through a day without saying something stupid.
Me after reading the headline: "Haha, that's hilarious! Yes, Trump voters, don't worry about voting!"
Me after reading the article: "Well, that was disturbing."
Why does it sound like he's got a mountain of fake ballots sitting in a warehouse that he's gonna drop from a blimp or some shit.
I'm wondering if he doesn't really want to be President
I honestly don't think he wanted to be president the first time. It would have made sense for him to make a big show of running, but lose, and just embrace the publicity.
Of course that assumes a level of foresight and planning that he hasn't demonstrated since, so it's hardly a firmly held belief.
I think he's much too fragile of ego to intentionally lose. I doubt he even let his kids win at games as children.
Partly because I doubt he ever actually played with them but also because he's a complete cunt.
Im sure he played plenty of games with Ivanka, all of them he learned from prostitutes.
2016 was not the first time he ran. He had multiple presidential bids in previous election years, most of which amounted to nothing other than free publicity for him and a stroke of his own ego. He was never taken seriously and would always bow out after raking in some donations that he probably embezzled.
Then 2016 happened and suddenly everyone was taking him seriously this time. I really do believe he didn't expect to have a chance at winning against Hillary and that's the only reason he didn't bow out early in the race like he usually did. He was having fun shit-smearing the other Republican candidates live on stage at debates and must have thought nobody would actually vote for him. The look on his face when they announced the winner wasn't the look of someone overjoyed to have been elected President.
He needs to win. The crimes he's committed are obviously crimes, well documented, and he has gone right up to the line on publicly admitting this. The only way he stays out of jail is if he wins and pardons himself. Or if the hamberders block his heart in the next year.
Because he has an IQ below room temperature and I'm talking Celsius.
Covfefe logic. Simple as that.
"Watch the voters"
We already have poll watchers, is he really trying to go full 1933 nazi and have his zealots "monitor" voters?
Great.
Watch them for what exactly? For... Voting for another candidate? I don't understand. Like. They are looking for fraud? What would that look like?
I don't get it. Like if I went and watched the people at my local voting center, I would see a bunch of senior citizen voulenteers handing out ballots, and then I would see people putting their ballots into the big scantron machine thing. That's what it would look like. That's what it looks like every time.
He doesn't want them "watching" for anything. This is a dog whistle for textbook voter intimidation tactics.
Sane people may be too scared to show up and vote because they actively fear for their safety due to threats of violence or social reprisal.
Watch that be what all of these mass shootings have been about. People hanging out in some random chat room or forum getting talked into shooting up schools, movie theaters, churches, concerts, etc... And the whole thing ends up being connected to this creepy cabal of people like Roger Stone and Steve Bannon. They get people to stand around the polling places with AR's and then people are afraid of becoming another statistic.
If you have 2 people charging into a voting place and being stupid they get arrested. If you have 100 people then the voting place gets shut down for safety.
Shut down enough places in the other guys territory and you win.
And if you have 100 people charging in while the votes are being counted? I wonder what happens then.
Florida 2000. The Supreme Court gives itself the power to supersede the Constitution and Congress and the State Secretary. They then hand the election to the GOP. (Who promptly lost the recount but too late, SCOTUS said so!)
Thanks, too many folks forget that Jan 6 was the second violent coup perpetrated against the United States in the last few decades. Not only does the Brooks Brothers Riot absolutely count as one, it actually succeeded.
He has said this shit each election how are people surprised still?
Yes.
He is consistantly pulling from Hitler's playbook. Why is this surprising?
Here's something few of the libs think about; Many of us are armed as well.
Lol, not nearly enough compared to American conservatives. 30% to 69%. You are outnumbered over 2-1.
I am not an American, I just look at statistics for everything.
Asking your supporters to engage in voter intimidation for the next election when you've been charged, and will be tried shortly, for leading an insurrection after the last election seems like a great game plan. /s
I can't imagine being this guys lawyer. You must either be eating a handful of Tums every night, or your just as loony as him and actually don't see how everything he says and does it toxic to himself and everyone in his orbit.
His lawyers are just there to drag it out, they plan on using mob violence to settle things when time runs out if he hasn't been elected.
There are two things his lawyers are going to bank on: that toxic and illegal are very different things and that their real goal is to drag things out in hopes of a second term for Trump.
Maybe the ones that aren't co-defendants with him ... yet. Although helping him win a 2nd term gets them what? If he gets his 2nd term, and the GOP gladly allow him to assume his dream of being dictator:
It seems that his remaining lawyers are grifters rather than true believers...
... their real goal is to drag things out because they get paid by the hour.
It's a convenient scenario where the best strategy for the client is also the highest billing strategy.
It's so he can start bitching more and more after he loses again and his cult can try to overthrow the government again.
He wants to break the system, dumbasses.
He is prove the system is already broken. When in a democracy, voters who can read and write, who are impoverished and on avg can't even afford a $500 emergency vote for a billionaire, I'd say that is a failure of the system.
edit: I am not saying billionaires are worse than anybody else, I am just saying their interests probably don't have a lot of overlap with the avg voter.
It's ok, I'll say it, billionaires are greedy fucks killing our society, individuals who should not exist in a functional society.
Billionaires are worse than everyone else. Greed on their scale is killing the planet and people.
No one becomes a billionaire through ethical means. You have to grind people down to make that kind of money.
To prove it, just how rich can someone get without making any unethical choices?
Imagine waking up with billions of dollars. What would you do with it? If you say keep it and try o take more from the populous then you are an enemy of the populous. They have brain damage from greed. They are worse than everyone else.
I would spend all but 1 billion on just buying wetlands and the legal resources to make sure they never get touched. Doing good the laziest way possible.
With the remaining billion I will start my own space program.
Oh don't apologize! Let me show you something:
I haven't even lived for a billion seconds yet and I was born in 94! A billion is a truly obscene high quantity. I don't think there's a moral way to gain that much wealth, and if there is, it's an exceptionally rare possibility.
I am 1,735,668,000 seconds old, and so I have seen some shit. Donald Trump is just an unseemly hiccup in an insignificant span of time. There were ghastly horrors before him and there will be ghastly horrors after him. These nuisances seem important because this is your now, you'll realize how little they meant when this is your then. As in, it seemed so important then, while you look back at the Land of Then from the clear hilltops of After.
I hope so. I'd rather this all be something my kids or grandkids ask me about.
They are objectively worse - it's immoral for a billionaire to exist (meaning to amass that amount of money, not to physically exist). You can't get to that point without knowingly/actively hurting others. They are worse people, period... and you don't have to cover your bases and backpedal on this point. Starts to sound line the famous "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" quote.
That’s why the Electoral College exists
If people are voting for Trump then they will put their votes towards a better alternative
Ironically Hillary Clinton had 3 million more votes than Trump. Without electoral college it would have been a Hillary Presidency.
We've had 6 presidential elections in the 21st century. The Republican candidate won the popular vote one out of those 6 times. Yet we've had 3 Republican Presidential terms resulting from those elections.
Yes, it doesn’t work as intended but political parties weren’t intended either
I think it works as intended by those who put it in place.
A lot of things brought in were done so because they didn’t know how to exploit it
He's leading the polls?
Only in certain polls, and as we have seen time and again, the polls don't mean shit. Bernie was leading in the polls this far out from the election in 2019. "Somehow" he isn't president.
Hell, Hillary was leading in the polls on, and after, election day 2016. She won the general election.....
The electoral college needs to be abolished.
Agreed. If the Superbowl was "won" by the losing team 17% of the time people would riot.
.. specifically the majority of polls published in the last week: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/
That being 8/13 at the time of writing with Biden only leading in one.
"The polls"
If I go outside and ask the three young kids riding their bikes what their favorite ice cream is, I've joust conducted a poll.
Apropos to this specific scenario, if I go to a chocolate lovers convention and ask their favorite ice cream flavor, guess which flavor might leaf the way. Now what is while along the question, I was wearing a t-shirt that says "vote for chocolate and I'll give you $20 bucks".
"Chocolate is leading in the polls, okay... You know it, I know it."
What point are you trying to make?
Are you implying that only live and die Trump voters are being polled?
I mean, to a degree, polling in general is still conducted with a very antiquated structure that tends to bring in responses predominately from the underemployed, undereducated and elderly (so huge cross section of enthusiastic trump voters over represented in those groups). But my specific point here was that he's ambiguously citing "polls" and not a specific poll - They aren't all created equal and in fact, you can bet the ones that trump would proudly reference are typically biased as fuck in how they ask questions and analyze results.
"Dont worry about voting, just intimidate and threaten the other people who are voting."
No, Donnie. No one has ever thought of this. You're the first, you beautiful genius. /s
Trump has killed satire.
The Onion and the like have nowhere left to go...
"Very stable genius."
Sounds like he's instructing his people to harass and intimidate voters. Add it to the pile of crimes?
This actually concerns me a bit. Not that I believe Trump can actually coordinate anything, mind you.
But at the same time, Trump really didn't lose the election by several million votes. He lost the election by a few thousand key votes in key swing states. Many of those states have passed dranconian laws, took over election boards, and put in rules that would allow them to just throw the election Trump's way regardless of the actual vote count. It's very possible that he's simply banking on those to carry him through the day regardless of the actual vote totals. If Trump believes (or is led to believe) the fix is in in those key areas, telling ruby-red voters in ruby-red states to stay home is no big deal.
I'm very concerned.
Diminishing faith in elections is one of the fourteen characteristics of Fascism.
Related Beau of the Fifth Column:
https://youtu.be/1M6CXhUS-x8?si=nCJlz1eqs1oXvSn_
While I agree with the sentiment, Trump did lose by millions of votes. There was a 7.61 million vote differential. He also lost the popular vote to Hillary by 2.9 million votes.
Biden won 81,283,098 votes, or 51.3 percent of the votes cast. He is the first U.S. presidential candidate to have won more than 80 million votes. Trump won 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast. More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than any other losing presidential candidate in US history.
Going back further, incumbency aside, there hasn't been a Republican who has won the popular vote since GHW Bush in 1988..35 years ago
Those numbers don't matter though.
What they were saying, accurately, was that the election was decided by a few tens of thousands of voters delivering swing states with tight races.
Trump lost by a few million votes in 2016 too, but that's not what mattered then either.
Those numbers do matter for clarity. Saying he didn't lose by millions blurs the truth. Saying he lost by a few thousand votes is not at all accurate when electoral college votes are the only ones that matter, and adding "in a few swing states," only fuels those stop the steal Maga idiots
They do not. They only matter in the context of a discussion of the election among those familiar with how the system works, where all parties specifically understand that the popular vote is a meaningless metric as it relates to electing a president.
Again that's just factually incorrect. By the same standards, you'd logically have to argue that Trump lost the 2016 election, which is obviously nonsense.
If anything, the opposite is true: using terms like "won" and "lost" based on the popular vote is what's really blurring the truth.
It's like talking about an American football game and who won and lost based on overall yards gained or time of possession instead of the final score.
Interesting angle, considering this is the first possibly valid point you've made...but that it also completely contradicts the rest of your argument. You've been here arguing the popular vote matters then turn around and say the EC votes are the only ones that matter...bold strategy.
In concession, I'll admit you're right on this one and I stand corrected.
Trump lost by 74 votes.
Yeesh you really don't know how to keep to a side. Thanks for the props, thanks for saying what I already said, thanks for rehashing what you already said, and thanks for not understanding the point and drawing this out. This whole exchange is unnecessary and has been a waste of my time
Yeah, I know all of that. But about 5 million of that 7.61 million, for example, came from California. There was never a chance that California was going to Trump, so those 5 million extra votes were largely overkill votes that had no bearing on the overall election outcome. Those 5 million could have stayed home and it wouldn't have changed the outcome a single bit. The same goes, to a much lesser degree, with states like New York and Massachusetts, which are about as blue as you can get.
The same holds true for Trump, by the way. Trump won several southern states by double digits, leading to himself getting millions of overkill votes in states that were never in danger for him. A few million people in those states could have stayed home and the outcome wouldn't have changed a bit. But a few thousand more votes in a couple of key states could mean we'd be sitting in the midst of Trump's 2nd term while Biden goes down as a footnote who ran his campaign from his basement.
It's all about the crucial votes in key areas of swing states. Georgia is a prime example. A swing of just over 11,000 votes out of a pool of 5 million could have thrown the state to Trump. A 20,000 vote swing in Wisconsin could have turned Wisconsin red. Between the two of them alone, 31,000 votes could have sent two states and their 26 Electoral College votes to the GOP. The same could be said about half a dozen other states where Biden's wins were razor thin.
The popular vote is great for bragging rights, but in reality has no actual bearing on the outcome of the election due to the existence of the Electoral College. It's great for chest thumping, but winning by 7.6 million votes when 7 million of those votes came from heavily populated states that Biden was going to easily win anyway doesn't really say much. When you're talking about votes that actually have an impact on the results, Biden's victory was much, much narrower.
Look at it this way: Do you really think Biden is going to waste his time running up the score in California, or is he going to spend his time in swing states to try to at least maintain if not expand upon the narrow wins he got last time? He's going to spend his time in the swing states because running up the score in California by a few million votes will do exactly nothing for him, while ensuring he at least maintains the 11,000 votes he won by in Georgia will mean he doesn't lose 16 EC votes right off the top.
That was a lot of words to say what you already said, and I corrected. He didn't lose by a small margin, he lost by electoral votes. Saying he only won or lost by a few thousand votes is wildly inaccurate when it is electoral votes that matter
...i think bush the lesser won the popular vote for his second term: didn't make him suck any less, but wars win elections, which is a terrible incentive for the next minority-victory president...
That's what an incumbency is
That would involve planning on his part and he has not demonstrated ability. He responds not plans.
I agree, it would be a complete waste of time for they to vote
I am conflicted between everyone should participate in democracy and them participating in democracy
Everyone should participate and have their voices heard. However, if you think the whole thing is a farce and want to undermine the system from the get go, I'm not gonna be too broken up about it if you choose to exclude your voice from the process.
In some countries (I think Australia is one), you're required by law to vote. If you don't, you get a small fine. I think we need this system because there are a ton of would-be voters who don't see the point. If they were made to vote, I think there'd be greater engagement because they'd be more frustrated at the appalling candidates and demand more because they had skin in the game.
Very well. How has this ended up impacting things?
Pretty positively. Our politics have trended generally to the right as have most western countries (especially those with large Murdoch media owned presences) but the 2 major parties still sit relatively close to centre, and particularly wild right wing elements have been shredded at the last round of elections.
The hard-rights attempts at US style minority led major parties seem to be invalidated by the voting population, so I'd say our system of ranked choice voting with mandatory participation is working very well.
Let's compromise: everyone adult with a functioning brain should vote.
no more republican and democratic party? i'm down
tRump voters do not believe in democracy though. So I'm good with their uneducated hateful vote not being cast.
Seems like he is calling for his supporters to swarm polling stations and scare away anyone who looks like a Democrat. He is counting on violence or the threat of it to give him a win.
He's calling for a coup. And not subtly.
I think it's going to end up like how he discouraged mail in voting. The real crazies live in red areas, they are going to scare their own voters away.
I really hope you are right.
Ya know... This is actually super wild for him to say. lol
Right but it's consistent. He's going to keep pushing the election lie until he rallies another coup.
Let's game this out the way some of the comments are saying.
Scenario 1: Proud Boys and other right wing militant groups stand around polling places with open carry weapons to intimidate Democrat-leaning districts. Maybe it doesn't chase everyone away, but we know a lot of election officials are complaining about threats and have quit. So it's going to have some effect. Enough to swing the vote? I don't think that matters. It's still election interference.
Scenario 2: right wing militants show up, and so do various antifa groups to counter them. Maybe antifa show up armed, maybe not. Either way, it's an escalation. Escalating tensions with guns present significantly increases the chances that someone uses their gun, regardless of who shoots first. The first shots in a civil war? Then the right wing militants win, because they've been agitating for this for years. Who wins is immaterial to the millions of people who will suffer as a result.
Scenario 3: polling places are reinforced with police and National Guards as necessary to prevent any election interference. They can be present to "observe" but they're not allowed to intimidate anyone. This is the only scenario I can see where democracy is defended and preserved.
Agree or disagree? What am I missing? Where am I wrong?
You're missing that the police etc and the proud boys etc are the same group.
Nah, he's missing: 4. The Fat Boys only show up in red counties, having no impact whatsoever. They pass out drunk in the parking lot of the voting locations and their wives and kids have a quiet night to themselves.
They forget to vote. They don't intimidate anyone because the few liberals who live there voted early. They later complain it was "rigged".
Those people pride themselves at driving to another county to show up uninvited and unwelcomed. Source: Dealt with a few at protests in a "liberal urban" city.
All of them? Curious.
A few bad apples spoil the bunch, homie.
Sure, ACAB. But that doesn't mean every cop who shows up to keep the peace at polling stations will enable right wing violence. Especially not with the press watching.
the press hasn't been a concern to the police for a good long while now, and internal unity is more important than stopping murders (half of what the FBI does nowadays is arrest precincts because they were covering for the cop who happens to be the guy dumping bodies in the woods, bonus points if it's the woman he knocked up while having an affair with)
When local cops manage to make the FBI look like the good guys.
Jesus Christ. This is a boring dystopia.
Look, consider why you believe the FBI to be the bad guys for a second, on the one hand you have a locally powerful person, easy to bribe, easy to influence, along with a strong insider friend group setting and only the local town will even care much, on the other hand you have the FBI that audits its own members in a beurocratic manner, and is heavily scrutinized by outside institutions.
I actually find it amazing that people trust their local branch of "the boys" more than the FBI...
How many are doing something to stop it?
Short of cancelling the election after the polling has happened, how do you expect to counter that if Trump wins because of it?
I mean it doesn't matter because it's election interference that will happen again and again because we don't seem to have the political will to stop it. Unless we get Scenario 3.
I think he thinks he'll lose, and he thinks a big loss is actually less believable to his supporters than a close loss, so he's trying to create a big loss, which will make more of his supporters Jan 6 2.0.
I'm not following that logic. If he tells everyone not to vote, and most comply meaning only a few vote, wouldn't the majority of them who didn't vote see the low results and understand that it would be the natural outcome? Where do they think votes come from if they don't vote?
You're assuming they think using logic. You're wrong. They go by emotion, and you can't use logic to reason with them.
Logic: "he lost by a lot, it's wildly unlikely that it could be rigged by that much."
Emotion: "he lost by a lot, that's impossible, NOBODY I know voted for BRANDON, I love Trump so EVERYBODY loves Trump, IT WAS RIGGED!!1!"
Something, something, democrats, something, something, racist dog whistle, something, something, democrats, something, something, Hunter's Biden laptop, something, something.
I imagine when they look at the lines of voters they categorize people into two bins: normal and not-normal. Trump is asking his supporters to do a Rorschach test but citizens are the ink blots and he's specifically telling them to look for scary things. Their Conclusion: If you see lots of normal people and he loses the election, then it's because of those voters that didn't look normal were there to rig the system.
Well that’s creepy.
Yeah I’m ok with that. If you’re a trump supporter, dont worry about voting!
It's the part where he wants those same people to go out and intimidate or attack anyone not voting "correctly" (read: Republican).
Nah I’m ok with that too- make sure you wear your maga hat large and proud, no mask because you’re not a pussy, and say you’re name loud and clear into the cameras to assert your alpha male dominance. Insist how DJT told you it was ok. Make some loud and specific threats against government officials. Then kick back and wait for your all expense paid federal vacation!
I'd rather have a country where people treat each other with respect and protect the right to vote.
The bitch about voter intimidation is that if they pull it off it won't matter that they're caught in the act. There's no mechanism to invalidate an election tainted by overt intimidation, so they can just do it then pardon themselves.
Setting the stage for January 6th 2.0.
No. Stop. Don't.
I'm a lib and I certainly don't want to get owned like this.
So if you actually read the article, he’s effectively encouraging his supporters to engage in active voting interference.
Sounds like a solid campaign to me.
everytime tfg gets a headline a kitten dies
He's saying that he's going to win by force. And he probably will. It's over.
It isn’t over until it’s over. If I have to face armed gunmen to vote I will. People in other countries are brave enough to do it, I can be too.
They've been doubling down on voter suppression and various other legislative bullshit.
People are going to die at the polls.
Yeah, I'm a bit concerned about that myself. I live in a red state, but a blue city that is 43% black. They have arcane voting laws that force you to stand in line for hours. I can definitely imagine a scenario where long voting lines in the city are attacked by white nationalist gunmen, and all the law-abiding unarmed voters are defenseless. This won't stop me from voting or having my long gun in the truck, but it is something I've been concerned about.
Keep your eyes peeled for cars targeting the line. That's a popular method.
Very true. There are many vectors an attack could come from.
What is over exactly?
Why do you say "he probably will" as if it was a done deal?
Are you a trump shill?
@spaceghoti hit the high points. The presumptive nominee for President of the United States for one of two major parties is openly fascist, with exactly zero consequences. He has a lot of people on his side, many of whom are already in positions of power in government, in all three branches, and in the press.
There have been plenty of opportunities for consequences to be laid upon these people who are still working to overthrow the foundations of democracy. None have been laid. None. I have zero faith in the ability of a democratic government to be able to put down this fascism.
You are free to browse my comment history to make your own judgment on that. Or go fuck yourself, your choice.
"Go fuck yourself"
Ok, I deserve that for insulting you.
But moving on, I disagree with you. If he couldn't overturn the elections while being president, he won't be able to do shit now.
You forgot the "or ... your choice" part.
We will disagree until at least powerful fascists see real consequences. This very post is about Trump telling his followers to go strongarm polling places, voters, and election workers. And they will. They've already made life hell for some election workers. They've already been threatening House members over the Speaker votes.
It's getting worse, not better. It will continue to get worse. A lot worse. More people will die, and as yet, the people who are fomenting terrorism with their speech are not being held accountable at all.
Let's not throw in the towel, as dire as things look. It's not over yet. Organize.
Good plays by rules, evil doesn't. Good only wins by having overwhelming numbers. Just a majority won't do it.
It's sort of the strength of rules which is the advantage of good, though. The advantage of evil, short term gains, is great. In the short term. The thing about fascists is that they really actually can't make the trains run on time, or sustain any level of state for any extended period of time, because they're incapable of actual coalition building without self-sabotage. It's why they keep having to move to beating on the most extremely marginalized in society. After trans people, I have no idea what the hell they'll scapegoat, because they're already scraping at the bottom of the barrel there. It was incredibly unpopular to overturn abortion, it will be the same with pretty much any other healthcare, or really anything that's actually core to what they want to do once they get power. None of this is to say that they shouldn't be feared, but we didn't stay in the great depression, and we didn't stay in the company towns, you know? People faced with nothing left to lose have every reason to fight establishment power, and fascists and fascism does nothing if not create people with nothing left to lose.
I think you're not getting what I'm saying.
When Side A plays by rules, and Side B doesn't, then an overwhelming majority in Side A is required to hold Side B accountable. Side B doesn't need a majority - they can be a "moderately strong minority" - as long as they're willing to break the rules, refuse to comply, and act with enough threat of or actual violence, Side B wins.
There has already been actual violence, but the threat of more and greater violence is larger. Side A has to hold Side B accountable, for real, no matter what threats are made.
There's been no accountability, Side B is continuing to break the rules, with impunity.
I disagree with you. It's not getting worse. The peak was Jan 6.
And a lot of supporters have realized that Trump abandoned the Jan 6 constitutional traitors.
You're a fucking fool if you think the peak was Jan 6. Are you familiar with the Beer Hall Putsch?
No. Enlighten me without resorting to name calling, then.
Edit: it's a nazi era event. You win Godwin's Award of the day.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/08/mike-godwin-of-godwins-law-about-hitler-calls-out-nazis.html
If you say so. Or you could, you know, learn something.
These people are literally open fascists. Comparing their actions to that of the Nazis is completely fucking appropriate.
The Nazis didn't take power their first try. Their first insurrection (the Beer Hall Putsch) failed, and Hitler and his fascist buddies got slaps on the wrist.
Then they did it again and that time they didn't fail. With something like only ~30% popular support.
Thanks for the info. Now was that fucking difficult?
If you're gonna go through life relying on random people to explain things to you, especially when the Internet exists, you should be more polite about it
No, I do fucking not.
They're saying democracy in the US is over. The slow walk of prosecutions against the Jan. 6th insurgents, particularly its organizers, has given the fascists the confidence to do it again at a national level. We'll either have to fight back with equal violence, flee, or submit to their dictatorship.
Nope. Don’t vote. Show up with guns and attempt to steal it.
Such a smart man
Londonderry*
Im definitely not voting in this presidential election (Because I am Australian)
It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes.
Like they proved in court dozens of times since 2020?