All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[JCAll]

But Qanon talk is starting to be shut down on social media as violent, anti-Semitic, white nationalist conspiracy theories.

If Twitter and Facebook really do take the air out of that, they're gonna need something more than, "PEDOPHILES!!! ALL THE PEDOPHILES!"

Especially when Trump never did the military tribunals they predicted for years, and Ghislaine Maxwell is on trial. Also, the number of other people who are sketchy in Trump's orbit far surpasses Biden's.

I hope you're right, that losing their biggest platforms will break the conspiracy theory.

[Tami]

TikTokers post videos of themselves appearing to troll Trump voter fraud hotline

A woman told the hotline she had gone down to Georgia and "I was in line to vote and ... this guy challenged me to a fiddle competition."

From Twitter:

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1...061071872?s=20

https://twitter.com/Jackasaurus3/sta...450086406?s=20

[worstblogever]

TikTokers post videos of themselves appearing to troll Trump voter fraud hotline

A woman told the hotline she had gone down to Georgia and "I was in line to vote and ... this guy challenged me to a fiddle competition."

From Twitter:

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1...061071872?s=20

https://twitter.com/Jackasaurus3/sta...450086406?s=20

The creator of Gravity Falls also made multiple calls to warn them about the Hamburglar and then called in as Stan Pines, from the show, asking to speak to Rudy Giuliani.

By his third call, he mused about how tired the people on the hotline already sounded from all the crank calls.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

One last thing, and this is a purely silly opinion, I don't think a judge will want to send him up the river. I mean, what judge, even the most liberal one would want it on his (or her) resume that they put a former president in a cell? Taking all that into consideration, don't hope to see Trump in prison, because I think that's unlikely to happen.

Dude. Most any judge would like nothing better than to send a POTUS to prison. Short of going to SCOTUS it's the guarantee of immortality. They get to join the ranks of Judge Welch, the Earl Warren Court. Most likely, Trump and his lawyers will try their best to make sure the case gets dismissed and/or settled or cast doubts on evidence here and there, claiming stuff like "classified information" "federal secrets" and so on.

Due to the unusual circumstances of the election, there might be some kind of legal maneuvers to reject large swaths of ballots, so the election wouldn't have to be anywhere nearly as close as Florida in 2000.

Biden will win even without that. His lead in PA for instance...the official count doesn't include the tally that's disputed legally. So even without that he's winning.

What GOP messaging did in 2009 was... pretend Obama was a secret Muslim who would oppress all the Christians and who should be disqualified because "he wasn't born here".

That strategy isn't going to work with Joe Biden. He's pretty established as a U.S. Citizen, you know? Also, Joe Biden isn't a secret Muslim. He's a lifelong Catholic, and that would be odd for him to start "waging Jihad" against Christians. The idea that he is some socialist maniac is also laughable, as he's been widely viewed as centrist.

The enthusiasm to go to tea party on him...it won't be easy to muster that.

The country needs to come together to fight Covid-19, and it's not just that the GOP should.... it's that I don't know given who Biden is that they have a path to obstructing in public opinion compared to twelve years ago.

Let's not underestimate them their creativity in malice.

Odds are, they're going to start trying to demonize Kamala and AOC in advance of either being a 2024 threat.

It won't be easy because unlike HRC, none of them have the vulnerabilities that she did...she was associated with a very controversial President (Bill Clinton remember was no Obama, or for that matter Biden, he won the plurality of the popular vote, but not the majority of 50% in both 1992 and 1996), there were issues like Whitewater and so on.

Granted they are going to try, but it's not going to be the same thing.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

A comical thing Trump supporters are now doing is "Hold on , he's not in office yet. The electoral college doesn't meet til December !" Like , ya know the EC will negate the election and listen to Trump's silly lawsuits.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

A comical thing Trump supporters are now doing is "Hold on , he's not in office yet. The electoral college doesn't meet til December !" Like , ya know the EC will negate the election and listen to Trump's silly lawsuits.

Theoretically it's still possible.

Remember all Trump needs is to convince a chunk of the 300 plus electors Biden will surely have by December to turn their votes for him, enough so Biden has 269 electors and Trump has something like 250 or so. That would throw the election to the House of Representations where vote is by State and not absolute majority.

That would however be extremely unlikely. There are faithless elector laws. There's also the fact that the odds of convincing some faithless electors to Trump is possible but not such a high number. If Biden won 270 on the dot, then Trump might have had a chance. But it's higher than that.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Theoretically it's still possible.

Remember all Trump needs is to convince a chunk of the 300 plus electors Biden will surely have by December to turn their votes for him, enough so Biden has 269 electors and Trump has something like 250 or so. That would throw the election to the House of Representations where vote is by State and not absolute majority.

That would however be extremely unlikely. There are faithless elector laws. There's also the fact that the odds of convincing some faithless electors to Trump is possible but not such a high number. If Biden won 270 on the dot, then Trump might have had a chance. But it's higher than that.

Were looking at like 300 electoral votes for Biden at this stage. Its gonna be hard pressed to turn on half the country and do this as Trump and his supporters want.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

This is probably true.

The people who want Trump to go to jail are most likely to be disappointed. Fraud cases tend to be settled, rather than resulting in jail time.

The Intercept has a decent overview of the potential charges against Trump.

https://theintercept.com/2020/10/18/...s-prosecution/

One danger for Trump is that putting a shameless liar on the witness stand is likely to result in said liar committing perjury.

Oh, yeah, forgot about the likelihood of Trump shooting himself in both feet by lying under oath. After the last four years, Trump can’t spell truth, much less speak it.

Meanwhile, as for the fantasy some people have about Trump fleeing the country (with Russia as the popular destination) to avoid that trial hanging over his head, to do that would mean Trump having to admit wrongdoing, and there’s no way he’ll ever concede to that, not even if there’s mountains of verifiable evidence against him. Remember, Trump was schooled at the feet of the infamous Roy Cohn, and the number one tenet he learned was to deny everything. So, like it or not, Trump isn’t going anywhere.

[lowfyr]

What GOP messaging did in 2009 was... pretend Obama was a secret Muslim who would oppress all the Christians and who should be disqualified because "he wasn't born here".

That strategy isn't going to work with Joe Biden. He's pretty established as a U.S. Citizen, you know? Also, Joe Biden isn't a secret Muslim. He's a lifelong Catholic, and that would be odd for him to start "waging Jihad" against Christians. The idea that he is some socialist maniac is also laughable, as he's been widely viewed as centrist.

Like... he's a hard guy to hate. Even Lindsey Graham has sung his praises about what a good dude he is.


The country needs to come together to fight Covid-19, and it's not just that the GOP should.... it's that I don't know given who Biden is that they have a path to obstructing in public opinion compared to twelve years ago.


Odds are, they're going to start trying to demonize Kamala and AOC in advance of either being a 2024 threat.

The most baffling thing was trying to paint Obama as a "Nazi Communist Islamist" and whatever sounds threatining like that someone would add to that.
They will not try that with Biden as you said but with Harris because they think they can get away with it.

[lowfyr]

Oh, yeah, forgot about the likelihood of Trump shooting himself in both feet by lying under oath. After the last four years, Trump can’t spell truth, much less speak it.

Meanwhile, as for the fantasy some people have about Trump fleeing the country (with Russia as the popular destination) to avoid that trial hanging over his head, to do that would mean Trump having to admit wrongdoing, and there’s no way he’ll ever concede to that, not even if there’s mountains of verifiable evidence against him. Remember, Trump was schooled at the feet of the infamous Roy Cohn, and the number one tenet he learned was to deny everything. So, like it or not, Trump isn’t going anywhere.

Adding to that if he flees the country(and finding one that would let him in would be difficult enough) he would have to admit to have lost. And that is one other thing he is incapable to.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The most baffling thing was trying to paint Obama as a "Nazi Communist Islamist" and whatever sounds threatining like that someone would add to that.

You have to wonder if that was the motivation for the hit on Bin Laden. I mean obviously "justice for 9/11", and an unambiguous victory that he could use for re-election was some of the motivation for it. But a big one has to be, "If I take out the Islamist then they'll have to eat crow." I mean when the news came out, Republican leaders who a week before slammed him, especially House Rep. John Boehner (remember him, looked like unkind Jimmy Stewart), suddenly had to praise him. It was awesome.

[Amadeus Arkham]

Soon-to-be ex-President Donald Trump is putting way more effort into preventing his successor from taking his job than he ever put into preventing the virus from taking lives...

[kidfresh512]

Soon-to-be ex-President Donald Trump is putting way more effort into preventing his successor from taking his job than he ever put into preventing the virus from taking lives...

Apparently on John Oliver's HBO show yesterday he discussed some of the recent Trump campaign emails going out asking for money

Oliver was able to obtain one of the emails, which read, “This is your FINAL NOTICE. So far, you've ignored all our emails asking you to join us in DEFENDING THE ELECTION. You've ignored team Trump, Eric, Lara, Don, the Vice President, AND you've even ignored the President of the United States.”

Oliver also highlighted the fine print, which states half of the money raised for legal defense will actually go towards paying off campaign debt. He believes that using the legal funds to pay off debt is the worst thing Trump has done to his supporters, aside from making them watch him dance at rallies.

I think its hilarious and sad that his supporters are so cultish they would pay for his narcissisms. But, they have literally done it his entire presidency. People who probably don't have savings, dont have 401ks and rainy day funds. College funds for their kids. Have paid to defend trump from his personal court cases for 4 years. Corruption, fraud, now these nonsense voter fraud conspiracy cases that have no shot at overturning a Biden win.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I think its hilarious and sad that his supporters are so cultish they would pay for his narcissisms. But, they have literally done it his entire presidency. People who probably don't have savings, dont have 401ks and rainy day funds. College funds for their kids. Have paid to defend trump from his personal court cases for 4 years. Corruption, fraud, now these nonsense voter fraud conspiracy cases that have no shot at overturning a Biden win.

Is it any surprise that so many people voted for Trump then considering how irrational and insane his backers have proven to be consistently?

[kidfresh512]

Is it any surprise that so many people voted for Trump then considering how irrational and insane his backers have proven to be consistently?

Not at all. I work with them everyday. My boss literally had a MAGA hat on against company policy for Election day. I just got off the phone with some of our guys offshore who aren't trump supporters telling me about the obvious anger from the overwhelming majority who are Trump guys out there.

These people mainline Fox news and these right wing radio shows. Day in day out. The conspiracy theories are living breathing things to them and its dangerous. Thats why I keep saying Democrats need to look at the big picture in all things. They MUST keep these nutjobs preferred candidates from power FIRST. Then worry about about how far and how fast to be progressive.

These guys don't need an inspirational figure to rally behind like Dems do. They vote like they go to get gas. Its only us overwhelming that at the polls do we win