Trump again vows to be a day-one ‘dictator’ in Iowa town hall

HLMenckenFan@lemmy.worldmod to politics @lemmy.world – 546 points –
Trump again vows to be a day-one ‘dictator’ in Iowa town hall
independent.co.uk
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Listen to him. He is not lying on this one. Make sure you vote or there will be no more democracy, even this extremely flawed one is better than a dictatorship.

The lie is usually accompanied by a truth.

In this case the lie is that he'll give up the power.

The people who support him sure as hell are listening. They absolutely want a Sulla figure to take full control and purge who they consider as undesirable.

Little do they realize that as soon as they cease to be useful to Trump and his ilk, they too will suddenly be considered "undesirable."

Because that worked out so well....

Less than 10 years after Sulla was dead the republic was run by bleeding Crassus and Pompey.

They're not a particularly smart bunch, that's for sure. Especially considering who ended up being targeted in the prescriptions.

There’s no downside for Republicans. If he succeeds they get to be close to the throne. If he fails they won’t be held accountable. It’s a win win for them because we don’t hold politicians accountable.

He's also pretty much guaranteed to be dead in less than ten years, so all those narcissistic Republican assholes assume it will be them personally that takes the throne when it happens. So of course they support him.

He’ll be replaced by one of his idiot children. It’ll be the dumbest monarchy in history, and that’s saying something.

Can we agree that's when we all do the guillotine bullshit everyone loves to talk about but would never really do?

The phrase "Trump monarchy" should be followed immediately by "executed by the citizens."

There are many downsides for Republicans, they just aren't thinking they will be effected like everyone else. All states rights are void on day 1. He doesn't give a shit about constituents.

Those idiots are no students of history and it won't be a win-win for them, either. If he succeeds, it is as likely as not they end up on the short end of the stick, too. These kinds of things always tend to end up that way.

The lying bit is where he claims that he'll only be a dictator for one day. How many dictators have given themselves ultimate power and then gave it up willingly after a single day?

If Trump regains office, he'll assert dictatorial powers. Maybe we can survive this via a mass uprising, but it's unlikely. It would be like needing to survive open heart surgery, chemotherapy, and five organ transplants all at once. Could a patient survive this? Maybe, but the prognosis wouldn't be good and even if they did, they'd be in horrible shape for quite a long time.

The best way of surviving Trump is to make sure he never gets close to the White House (or any other position of power) ever again. And, while we're at it, vote against any Republican who kisses up to Trump. (So, basically, all of them.)

He'll only be a dictator for one day because he'll declare himself emperor and disband the rest of the government.

No, we should actually put millions of vulnerable people at risk to preserve our very important ideological purity and my ego-driven stance that the US is irredeemably wicked ok? Also, I am definitely not a troll trying to get Donald Trump elected by pretending to be a leftist, so don't at me or whatever.

If Trump is reelected, he will immediately replace everyone he can with Red-hat toadies, and then sign a barrage of dictatorial, overreaching executive orders, most of which would likely be unconstitutional. Lawsuits would naturally follow immediately with the courts placing those orders on hold until they can be adjudicated. Trump's toadies, however, will go ahead and act on those orders regardless of the court's decisions. Some of the toadies will subsequently be arrested, of course, for any actions that are illegal. Trump will then pardon those toadies which will embolden all the rest of his Red-hats since they will now believe, rightly or wrongly, that they will be pardoned too. Trump will then keep signing even more orders as Democracy dies burning.

If Trump is reelected, he will immediately replace everyone he can with Red-hat toadies

This isn't a conspiracy. This is a fact: Project 2025 by the Heritage Foundation

Although the system appeared to be sufficient for the nation’s first century, progressive intellectuals and activists demanded a more professionalized, scientific, and politically neutral Administration. Progressives designed a merit system to promote expertise and shield bureaucrats from partisan political pressure, but it soon began to insulate civil servants from accountability. The modern merit system increasingly made it almost impossible to fire all but the most incompetent civil servants. Complying with arcane rules regarding recruiting, rating, hiring, and firing simply replaced the goal of cultivating competence and expertise

Such a reliance on holdovers and bureaucrats led to a lack of agency control and the absolute refusal of the Acting Attorney General from the Obama Administration to obey a direct order from the President.

Congress should also consider whether public-sector unions are appropriate in the first place.

Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy

During their terms, the three Republican commissioners have demonstrated with their votes and their public statements that they believe the FEC should not overregulate political activity and act beyond its statutory authority, construe ambiguous and confusing provisions against candidates and the public instead of the government, and infringe on protected First Amendment activity

Federal Election Commission

Leeja Miller - The Conservative Plan to Take Over the Country (you need to know about this)

Clicked on "Department of Education" and this is the first sentence:

Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.

The second paragraph praises Milton Friedman, someone who should be up there with Kissinger in terms of what a disgusting piece of shit he and his followers are. If anyone wants to know what's about to happen to the US, read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine to see how it's gone when we've had our "free market capitalist" hands in other countries' business. It makes me physically ill. I hope all the gEnOcIdE jOE people understand what this place, and several other countries, will look like with trump in office.

I think it's important to remember that he could care less if nothing works so when say replace, what he might actually do is just remove.

He could cripple the federal government and just not replace people.

Eventually, they will get replaced but he could do a ton of damage by removing any politically appointed officials, auctioning off those positions to business interests, and having them fire everyone they can (or will, really, becuase I think you'd be going to court over this).

The disgraced former president, who is currently facing more than 90 felony charges in four separate jurisdictions and is scheduled to go on trial in March for attempting a coup to keep himself in office after losing the 2020 election, promised to spend his first day of a second term ruling as an autocrat during a town hall broadcast on Fox News ahead of the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.

god damn

Oh, so he only wanted to be a dictator for the FIRST day. Got it, sir.

That anyone supports this fetid fecal stain is beyond my comprehension.

He revealed that significant Americans are also fecal stains. Anyone who supports Trump at this point is dead to me.

If you had told me ten years ago that a double digit percent of the US population would actively cheer for ending democracy in favor of monarchy I'd have thought you were nuts.

It's been very disappointing in my fellow citizens.

Ten years ago people WERE saying that... but it was just the maga precursor tea party goons saying that democrats wanted to make Obama the king. It's always been projection.

100%. It's not political anymore, it's moral.

I've been on the outs with my dad since 18 (36 now) but over covid didn't block him when he sent a friend request on fb. I ended up blocking him due to a comment he left on a post and my aunt bitched me out for blocking him over "politics." The comment? "those protesters wouldn't be a problem if we just gunned them down."

Last time I saw my best friend from high school, he called me a libtard for describing my one stop shop healthcare at the VA and mentioning I'd like everyone to have that simple experience of - See doctor, run tests, get meds, go home.

These are people I just don't fucking want in my life. Everyone screeches about cancel culture, no you're just a tedious asshole. Like with the comedians, crying about cancel culture to sold out stadiums. No you're not being canceled, there's just only so many ways you can make the #OneJoke of "trans women are men LULULULUL" before it gets old.

And yet the trolls or naive people here are saying that they won’t vote for Biden because he hasn’t flown over the Israel and slapped Netanyahu. Yes it sucks what’s happening in Gaza, but not voting, or voting for Trump will be oh so much worse.

Biden may not be as bad as Trump by far, but he's not a good candidate. If Trump wins, it'll be in large part because the Democratic elite once again put forward a bad candidate with bad baggage instead of finding someone that would energize those outside the core.

It's incredibly depressing we need to be energized in order to stop such an incredibly clear and obvious threat to democracy. Biden isn't my first choice by any means but the idea that I'd have to be convinced at this point on how to vote is insane. Yes the Democrats should be doing more and messaging better. Yes we need better candidates. But the Republican party is now an existential threat, we have to avoid giving them power at all costs. That has to be priority because that's the only way forward.

Then they need to pick a candidate who will appeal to a broader base of voters. This idea that Biden, a neoconservative only appealing because Trump is batshit crazy, is "owed" the candidacy is lunacy. If the priority is defeating Trump, then they need to select someone who can succeed with a healthy margin, not a candidate who has lost enough of his swing voters to make his victory extremely questionable.

Reality? Democrats... or at least the DNC... feel that they are "owed" those votes. Every time they lose, they blame third parties, voters who abstain, sun spots, dark sorcery.... anything that will allow them to avoid introspection. It's time they took responsibility, listened to the people who could actually win them this election.

"They" being the millions of voters who select Biden as the nominee? Or are you just removing their agency because they didn't vote for the guy you liked?

Is that what we're calling the extremely undemocratic process of nomination in the DNC? We do not select our candidates, the party elites do.

That's funny, I definitely voted in the primary. You seem confused.

Said like someone who doesn't actually grasp the DNC primary process.

Bernie was on my ballot. I know because I voted for him twice. But please, do remove the agency of the millions of voters who chose otherwise.

And nearly all 700 superdelegate party elite votes went to Clinton, which was more than enough to override any effort by grassroots activists to effect meaningful change. I mean, they've stated as much themselves; the superdelegate system is designed as a failsafe against the party commoners. Hell, they've even argued that if they wished, they could ignore the results and appoint who they like.

You can bury your head in the sand and pretend that your party elite haven't rigged the system to silence your voice if you like. Or, you can educate yourself on how your party nominations actually function.

For a Democratic party, the process is pretty undemocratic.

Clinton

Someone get this person the new script before they make a fool of themselves!

it was hard to believe anyone supported him before... but now it's surreal...
feels like a weird nightmare....

This is so dangerous. Why can't US citizens see that?

Decades of systematically undermining our education system by the party benefiting from the dumb-as-dirt electorate who will gleefully vote for a dictator. Now they're banning controversial books, such as 'The Dictionary.'

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Most of us do, and have been screaming it for years.

But the main issue here is that some of us are just catastrophically stupid.

Gerrymandering and disenfranchisement are tools the right uses at every possible chance as well, so we not only have stupid people but they’re being actively manipulated by bad faith actors.

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About 1/3rd of the country realizes he's dangerous, 1/3rd are apparently fine with it and actually think a dictatorship will solve all their problems, and the other 1/3rd are apathetic and will probably 'both sides' themselves into letting Trump plunge the country into third-world status and letting Russia/China/autocrats run roughshod over the rest of the world. It's absolutely ridiculous that we've gotten here in the short span of four years, as if people have already forgotten how shitty 2016-2020 was and all the felony crimes Trump is currently on trial for.

That last third is basically going "well he made gas prices go down". They don't, or can't, grok the bigger issues that Trump had, and instead really only focus on what he's done for THEIR LITTLE CORNER. They don't care about his crimes, or whatever else he's been dealing with, what they care about is that under Trump, things mostly seemed economically stable, and 2020 was just a blip that "nobody could've navigated better" (a lie propped up by a lot of GOP lawmakers, and sadly even a lot of Democrats who didn't want to challenge Trump too hard).

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He's saying the quiet part out loud. And all the monkeys in his teabagger base that are supposedly all for "freedom" and "the Constitution" beat off to it.

Every political story these days just ends in me saying “everyone who votes for ________ should be immediately launched into the sun”.

Day-one and one-day have very different meanings, and it seems telling that he seems to use the former…

America has some great food, people and nature, at least in my opinion as someone visiting from Australia. I think its just the political people and yhe majority of cops that suck.

Keep that in mind when we need Australia to take American refugees, friend.

Seriously, I don't need much. Just a bit of food and a dry place to sleep, cunt.

i don't eat American food because I'm not a goddamn fatass

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Former president Donald Trump on Wednesday again vowed to seize dictatorial powers if elected to the nation’s highest office once more but attempted to walk back his frequently made promise to exact retribution on his political enemies during a second term in the White House.

The disgraced former president, who is currently facing more than 90 felony charges in four separate jurisdictions and is scheduled to go on trial in March for attempting a coup to keep himself in office after losing the 2020 election, promised to spend his first day of a second term ruling as an autocrat during a town hall broadcast on Fox News ahead of the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses.

He also attempted to turn back Democratic criticism of his intention to be an autocrat by describing reporting of his pledge to rule as a dictator “on day one” as a “new narrative” meant to paper over a poor governance record by President Joe Biden, his successor and likely general election opponent.

The ex-president again complained about press coverage of his prior remarks, accusing media outlets of failing to report that he’d limited his dictatorial ambitions to his first day in office.

Mr Trump’s participation in the Fox News town hall comes just days before he expected to win the Iowa caucus, which he lost to Texas Senator Ted Cruz during his first run for the White House in 2016.

And despite his frequent promises from the stump to turn the machinery of law enforcement against top Democrats, he told the television audience that he wasn’t planning on weaponising the government to punish his enemies, though he also said “a lot of people” would say doing just that is “not so bad”.


The original article contains 719 words, the summary contains 285 words. Saved 60%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

The time lines of America elections confuse me a bit. Is he campaigning for the election itself or is this still the point where his party (the democrats?) are choosing their candidates?

It’s still the primaries where the candidate for the parties are being picked. trump is part of the republican party but is likely to receive the nomination because apparently we learned nothing during the four years this trash ran the country, took foreign money, insurrection, treason, etc.

Thanks. With all the articles I thought I'd somehow missed him winning the nomination and we were on the actual election campaign.

Your elections are normally in the autumn aren't they?

I forget exactly when the primaries end, but this is preparation for this year’s election in November.

because apparently we learned nothing during the four years this trash ran the country

His victory wasn't because his supporters were ignorant. They knew exactly what kind of shithead he was, they just couldn't admit out loud they wanted the sexism, homophobia, racism and authoritarianism.

Remember that when he was first elected, his support flowed out from the "alt-right". They were nothing more than rebranded white supremacists, but the name change gave them enough plausible deniability to dodge deplatforming.

When "Unite the Right" rolled around, many of them triumphantly tore of their masks, waved their swastikas, grabbed their tiki torches and started an antisemitic chant. One of them even started executing political dissenters then and there.

But their "ha, we were nazis all along" celebration was short lived. They'd undermined their plausible deniability and their platforms were crumbling. Even Fox News was hesitant to put any alt-right figureheads on air. Even better (for us), many of them lost their jobs, girlfriends and families after their face popped up on the news.

So the rule became "never go mask off". They could be openly advocating sending Jews to concentration camps but if someone says "that is blatantly Nazi behaviour", their reply will always "the left just call anyone they disagree with nazis".

They still want to do it. They'll still try to do it. The vast majority of their supporters know they mean it and that's exactly why they support them.

But as long as they never say it out loud, there will always be an army of useful idiots giving the benefit of the doubt.

For a country that prides itself on democracy, the process of picking party candidates Is decidedly undemocratic. Primaries weren't even used at all until 100 years ago or so, and didn't get used consistently in a binding fashion until 1972, after the shitshow that was the 1968 Democratic Convention.

And this year is super weird. Trump is still technically campaigning for the Republican Party nomination but is so far out in front of his competition in the polls that he hasn't bothered attending any of the debates. However, due to a dispute over election scheduling, Biden won't be on the Democratic Party ballot at all in New Hampshire, and that election won't have the same proportional power at the Democratic convention that other states have.

New Hampshire's Primary election also has the quirk that there are a lot of voters unaffiliated with either party, and in that state they can choose which Primary election to vote in. My favorite conspiracy theory of the moment is that the Biden campaign orchestrated the scheduling issues in New Hampshire specifically to give unaffiliated voters in New Hampshire "permission" to ignore the Democratic primary, and vote against Trump in the Republican one. Trump ignored all those debates out of the perception that his nomination is inevitable; even a close win by Trump in NH will be a big blow to that perception in following contests.

The USA is a shithole country and you cannot change my mind