Ready for the reckoning? President Donald Trump. Credit: Dustin Satloff/Getty
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How are you for Cope?
Are you a Copium addict? Do you spend your days with Lola at the Cope-acobana?
Cope is one of the supreme memes of 2020. It’s the idea that certain narratives are coping mechanisms that delay a painful collision with the truth. In short, it’s an amazing way to scythe through your opponent’s discourse, to write it off as mere conspiracy. Russiagate? Dems cope. Boris being crap because he’s in Carrie’s pocket? Tory copium so pure it comes from Afghanistan.
Cope is the thinking troll’s gaslighting, and equally on its way to being memed into sheer meaninglessness. Like gaslighting, cope is in the eye of the beholder. Your cope is my rock solid evidence. Yet another meme speaking to the cracks in our basic conceptions of reality.
In 2020, being under the influence of Cope is an accusation that must constantly be swatted away by the Trump loyalists of the online Right. There, in forums, on marathon YouTube chat sessions, a very different US election has been playing out. The various State Senate hearings, only muttered-of vaguely, if at all, on terrestrial TV, are taking centre-stage. They are raked over for the merest details, like latter-day OJ Simpson trials.
It’s a universe with its own stars: men like Colonel Phil Waldron, a former military intelligence officer, who gave detailed evidence at the Arizona hearings on how, statistically, the state’s ballot tallies are wildly improbable. Then there’s the Trump litigator Jackie Pick in Georgia, who showed the hearings video evidence of two women seemingly stuffing ballots in Fulton County. Or the US Postal Service truck driver, Jesse Morgan, from New York, who has testified that he broke the law by transporting ballots across state lines, into Pennsylvania.
The fraud was vast, but the scale of the swing to Trump took Democrat fraudsters by surprise, the narrative goes. In fact, it was such a landslide that the hacked Dominion voting machines algorithm, designed to output perhaps 13% more Biden votes than existed, couldn’t get past it. And that was why the counting stopped, so suddenly, in so many places, in the middle of the night of November 3. The classic illustration of this point being the famous ‘burst pipe’ in Fulton County: once given as the reason counting had to end suddenly, in the weeks since, it has been downgraded to “a urinal overflowing” — a twist of fate that did not impact the count.
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SubscribeYou can’t blame people for their reactions. There’s no question that there WAS fraud to some degree, even if only because there always is. But when the media speak with a single voice, and that voice is chanting monotonously “no evidence…no evidence…no evidence”, then it’s perfectly reasonable to suspect you’re getting hosed. We know there is evidence, in the form of bagfuls of signed affidavits under threat of perjury from election workers, count centre recordings from Georgia, and statements from postal workers. Therefore, when an MSM personality, “journalist” or newsreader says “no evidence”, they’re lying. It’s not an honest disagreement between people of goodwill. They’re lying. And they’re all lying in unison. Now, it may be the case that the fraud was not widespread enough to actually affect the outcome, but that doesn’t matter. They’re still lying, and we’re entitled to call them on it.
AFAICT they are only under threat of perjury if those affidavits make it into a court case. Until they get there, they are not under threat of any sort of penalty, and they really only constitute hearsay. We also know that some of the higher profile ones (Melissa Carone) are not consistent with other accounts or recordings of events that night.
So it’s a stretch to call any of it ‘evidence’, and it seems unsurprising to me that a politician who has built a cult of personality around himself like Trump could find enough people to just make stuff up for him.
What reinforces that for me is that all this stuff evaporates like mist in face of court proceedings where there are actual penalties for misleading the court, and many, many cases have been thrown out for lack of evidence or even lack of concrete allegations.
No, it is not a stretch. Philly, Detroit and Las Vegas would wind up on anybody’s top 20 corrupt US cities. Each has a history of corruption coupled with powerful Democrat political organizations(i.e., machine politics). The stretch would be to argue that there was no election corruption in these cities.
And Southern state (all Republican) have a very long healthy tradition of suppressing the black vote.
I’m sorry, but have you just peed down our backs and told us it’s raining? You’ve actually got the spheres to hold out the southern states as models of REPUBLICAN voter suppression when every single one of them was a bastion of the Democratic party from the end of Reconstruction up to the Civil Rights acts of the 1960s? When every single Jim Crow law in US history — every last one, without qualification or exception — was passed by a Democrat legislature, signed into law by Democrat governors and enforced by Democrat sheriffs and judges?
Bit out of touch aren’t you. You are clearly not talking about 2020
That’s nothing to do with what I wrote, which concerns the nature of the ‘evidence’.
It is certainly evidence. Whether it is credible is the matter at hand… 🙂
Yes I can blame people for their reactions!
Trump has lost (as of today) over 65 cases, he has won only 1 court case.
You say fraud here on this blog because you do not understand what that legally means. Read the court cases, AGAIN & AGAIN Trump lawyers have NEVER claimed fraud when they have gone to courts – including Rudy Giuliani.
Ah, I see. Thank you for being so much smarter than me. So it’s actually like when AOC claimed Trump was running “concentration camps” on the southern border. She really meant the term to be understood in its strict, original, South African sense of concentrating numbers of people in one location. It’s only us stupid conservative types who thought she meant in the sense that people commonly and habitually understand the term.
He has NOT lost 1 case. No cases have been heard anywhere despite the mountains of evidence.
I’m watching this play out on some American websites and it seems 100% certain that Trump will very soon declare Martial Law and the Election Fraud cases will be heard in a military court. The perpetrators will be charged with treason.
Trump and the military already have the Dominion Servers, and know the number of votes switched. Take it from me Biden will not be inaugurated.
“I’m watching this play out on some American websites and it seems 100% certain that Trump will very soon declare Martial Law and the Election Fraud cases will be heard in a military court. The perpetrators will be charged with treason.”
Thanks for explaining the right-wing approach to democracy. But rather than living in Britain, wouldn’t you be happier in Upper Volta?
If the civil judiciary are too corrupt or too intimidated to dispense justice what else do you propose? Just let the country subside into a one party state, and then a failed state? Someone has to take responsibility for cleaning up the corruption, the fraud, and the intimidation. Perhaps you think it already too entrenched to be tackled?
Many have been tossed out for being badly formed, some even not presenting any allegations. Others have been heard and tossed out (often with prejudice) for similar reasons. There was a mountain of litigation and it’s basically all failed.
If you don’t want to call that “lost” then that’s up to you.
Oh come now. The far left has been claiming that Trump was about to declare martial law for four years now. It’s just something they say. It has no basis in reality.
You can’t say a case has been lost if it wasn’t heard on its merits but just tossed out on a technicality without looking at the evidence.
These judges are either corrupt Obama judges or frit. Frit of the mob.
If anyone still thinks the 2020 presidential election was Democracy they have not been watching. One thing it was is a lesson on what happens when you are on the wrong side of Zuckerberg, Dorsey, Gates, and Bezos.
I have spent the last four years facepalming as my fellow liberals have made complete idiots of themselves grasping at every straw and wailing that this wasn’t allowed to be happening.
I gives me great pleasure to see the shoe on the other foot now. So hey, you keep on screaming and flailing and coming up with overheated conspiracy theories. It worked so well for us, after all!
While I’m tempted to agree, I think you’re wrong. The explosion of malicious glee from the Right in recent years has been toxic for us all. Trump’s rise, Brexit, EU populism have all ridden a wave of ‘stick it to the Libs’ where any constructive policies have taken a distant second place to the schadenfreude of over-turning liberal values. If we want to return to productive conversation, I think we need to bite back that impulse. Otherwise the cycle just amps up and keeps going. (Btw mea culpa)
I think the right is more likely to accept results than the left. The anti-Trump movement of the past 4 years has been terrible for politics (not just in the US). The liberals or so called progressives clearly did not accept the result and used everything in its power to overturn or negate the result. Until the left accepts that its not always on the right (no pun intended) side of an argument the divisive nature of the politics will continue (IMO).
The Dems won the popular vote in 2016, they won the congressional elections in 2018 and won the Presidential elections by 7m votes in 2020.
not a bad run for a party that has to deal with the electoral college (favors Reps)…
And I am a center right voter.
This is why it’s so odd that they fought losing the 2016 election so ferociously. In any case, there is no popular vote for president. There’s only the electoral college, no other way to win.
Compared to what’s going on now, they didn’t. Clinton conceded very quickly – the 9th of November.
Do you folks deliberately try to revise history, or do you really believe it?
Clinton isn’t the entire swamp but even she fought for 4 years to pretend she didn’t really lose. And that doesn’t count paying Russians for dirt and the other skullduggery she committed.
Did she? How? Seriously, were there court cases, did she try to take power she wasn’t elected to?
Yeah, she did and still does today. Pretending that Russia was behind Trump’s win, even paying Russians to come up with faux dirt, come on.
This is somewhat different from trying to overturn an actual result.
The only story like that I can find is from actions that pre-date the 2016 election, and involves paying a DC firm to use a British former spy to dig up dirt on Trump in Russia.
Dirty play, definitely. I always thought Hilary was a bad choice for a variety of reasons. Not sure it constitutes four years of pretending not to have lost.
I’ll happily agree US politics is filthy.
The effort to overturn the election was conducted on other parts of the swamp, HRC isn’t the whole swamp. Think James Comey, Robert Mueller, etc. It never crossed my mind that you would agree that HRC hasn’t yet accepted that she lost.
I’ll happily agree all politics is dirty.
I think US politics is far further into the filth and the dirt than other western democracies I’m familiar with. Certainly embroiling everything in lawsuits and t*t-for-tat low blows in a way that I’m not seeing elsewhere.
I mean, until you show me something that says such, why would I? The example you brought up appears to have been of something that happened before the election, so doesn’t really hold up the point
I’m not overly familiar with Comey and Mueller. I did think at the time the whole “impeachment” thing was going on that it was *really* grasping at straws and didn’t make anyone look good, and as I’ve said elsewhere, all those “Not my president!” marches were just cringeworthy.
Of course you think the US is worse than anywhere else. I would expect nothing less. But then how familiar are you with politics elsewhere?
You wouldn’t agree on HRC. That was my point. I don’t think you’re able to do so. That or you’re unaware of even the media and entertainment industry making fun of her for being unable to accept the results of 2016.
I’ve lived in a few countries, I’m familiar enough with western democracies in general that I’m able to make a reasonable judgement that US politics is dirtier, in terms of t*t-for-tat low-blows and lawsuits than various others. Maybe the others just hide it better, but I’m not aware of anything in, say, Canada, Australia, NZ or the UK that matches up to the current kerfuffle.
Also please note I did not say that the US is worse than anywhere else, I said than other western democracies that I am familiar with. There are many far worse-organised nations than the US, many whose politics are far, far dirtier and more violent. I actually really like the USA, which is one reason Trump’s ongoing attack on democracy is worrying.
If you gave me information that might help, I might. But you haven’t, even though I have quite genuinely asked. Straight out, what is it that makes you think “she fought for 4 years to pretend she didn’t really lose”?
The previous example, when I looked it up, turned out to be something that had happened before the election. Do you have anything else?
So you wouldn’t consider it a low blow for a politician to reveal that another politician is ineligible for the seat he or she holds in another country over that seat holders citizenship? When the party has a one seat majority.
Since you aren’t familiar with Comey or Mueller, you’re clearly not up on US politics and wouldn’t be expected to be familiar with HRC’s last 4 years. Try a bit of research and then come back to discuss. It’s far too much info for me to post it all.
I would need some context. Can you give me some specifics? I’m not going to claim anywhere is free from political scandal.
Why not humour me and share just one thing that leads you to believe “she fought for 4 years to pretend she didn’t really lose”?
I’ve shared my sources where possible, after all.
You said you were familiar with politics in Australia and New Zealand. If that were true, you’d be well aware of the case.
You need to do the research. HRC has a very active 4 years after 2016 under her belt. Would do you good to read it all yourself.
I am aware that there was a spate of “You’re not really australian! Cases a few years back. These don’t match up to what we’re observing in the US right now, which seems to be threatening faith in democracy itself.
I’m asking you to be specific, something you appear incapable of.
Where do I start if I’m looking for something which backs up the assertion “she fought for 4 years to pretend she didn’t really lose”?
Again, please be specific. I really want you to tell me. This is not a drill nor is it a disingenuous request. Give me some credit – I looked up your last claim about the ‘Russian’ dossier and found some more details on it.
Nope, it wasn’t about you’re not really Australian. In fact, the individual was Australian. Look it up.
Google Hillary Clinton and 2016 election. You should have a minimum basis of knowledge to be trying to discuss this. And you do not.
Well forgive me for paraphrasing! It was about MPs holding other citizenship and being ineligible. Again, it’s not on a par with what’s going on in the US right now.
Actually it’s beginning to look more and more like you have nothing to support your assertions here. You gave one example, which was wrong, and now you’ve fallen back to “well if you don’t know I’m not telling you”.
You weren’t paraphrasing. You said you were aware of a spate of “you’re not really Australian”. In fact, the case involved someone who was indeed Australian and no one said otherwise. That’s not paraphrasing, it’s just being wrong. But at least you’ve now looked it up. You’ve also illustrated that you are NOT familiar with politics in Australia or New Zealand.
You seem resistant to doing any sort of research to even begin to know what you’re talking about. If you want to understand why HRC has become something of a joke over the last four years in being unable to get over 2016, you can easily do that. If not, that’s okay too. It doesn’t change anything about HRC.
Actually the case involved far more than one individual, I followed it a little at the time. I have an interest in Aus politics having lived in Australia for a while and being on the way to moving back there next year.
And it’s still not as t*t-for-tat low and damaging as what the US politicians are getting up to right now.
OK, you have nothing to share on Clinton then, never mind.
Nope, only one person in the case was accused of being ineligible for office. And you didn’t even know about it until you looked it up after I mentioned it. You even asked for context of the case. That doesn’t sound like someone familiar with it.
You have been directed to do the research if you want to discuss Clinton as you’d need some minimum knowledge.
15 sitting Australian MPs were ruled ineligible or preemptively resigned. 15 is more than 1. I know pro-Trumpers have issues with which number is bigger than the other, but come on.
I asked for context for the case because your vague allusion could have been about more or less anything, including Obama and the whole Birther thing.
And I’ve asked for help, and in return you gave me a counter-example. I have no reason at all to believe your assertions at this point. If anything it appear like your own research is faulty.
(Edit: neither of us is getting anything out of this discussion any more, and I suspect both believe the other to be a vexatious, biased *****, so I’m going to leave it here. I hope you have a nice evening)
Not in the case I mentioned. It was one person, snitched on. But 15 sitting MPs found to be ineligible, wow. Can’t imagine anything like that happening in the US with 15 sitting senators found to be ineligible to serve in the Senate. Quite a load of dirt there. You might have just blown up your original point about US politics vs other western countries.
You’ve asked me to spoon feed you four years of HRC behavior regarding the 2016 election, her loss and her inability to come to terms with that loss, that anyone who follows US politics even in the slightest would be well aware of. I’ve invited you to educate yourself, you’ve declined. It’s fine to be unfamiliar with US politics, but maybe throwing out misinformation while admitting to being unaware of prominent, in the news, can’t avoid him, figures like James Comey, should make one slightly more willing to learn.
You have a lovely evening as well.
Trump has also been terrible for politics. It is unfortunate that the people who share his views have not had anyone to express them intelligently or courteously.
The people who share his views tried courtesy, they tried reason, they tried logic. Perhaps you remember the likes of George W Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. Whatever one might think of them, none was a bomb thrower. And how were they treated?
Bush was, predictably, equated with Hitler when not being called a chimpanzee. McCain was called a doddering old war monger, and lost to a guy who, well, kept the war machine going while engaging in a record-setting number of extrajurisdictional killings of brown people in the Middle East.
Romney was asked to return his foreign policy to the 1980s by the same people who spent the entirety of the Trump years searching for Russians under every bed. And that was after the DNC ran an ad that accused him of giving an ex-employee’s wife cancer that led to her death.
Are you talking about Trump here? Because AFAICT the number of “extrajudicial killings” (mostly drone-strikes) has accelerated under him, and exceeded the Obama count.
It’s a travesty whoever is doing it, but I don’t think at this point either side can claim to be ‘good’ here.
Because AFAICT the number of “extrajudicial killings” (mostly drone-strikes) has accelerated under him, and exceeded the Obama count.
That’s going to require a citation. Trump wanted to end endless war. People on both called this crazy. He authorized the takedown of an Iranian general and that, too, was called crazy. But there were no stories at all about dronings and with Trump perpetually called a racist for simply breathing, such stories would have been all over the place.
I’m not claiming one side to be good. I was responding to Judy’s point of why don’t people of like mind with Trump be more civil in their discourse. They tried that and each was called the same names as Trump.
I’d love to cite, but then Unherd would cast the comment into moderation and you’d not see it for hours or possibly ever.
I’ll just say a quick search has shown me –
The BBC reporting in March last year that Trump removed the legal requirement to report on civilian casualties incurred due to drone strikes outside of war zones
BusinessInsider reporting that in 2017 the US admitted to 133 air strikes on Yemen, as compared to 150 reported before then, since 2002.
The Chicago Tribune Reports that Trump’s level of drone strikes has exceeded Obama’s total, but that it’s been made more secretive at the same time.
The independent reported that Trump’s ISIS campaign in 2017 resulted in almost as many civilian casualties as were incurred during Obama’s whole term.
Various sources have reported that Trump both relaxed the criteria for performing strikes and reduced the oversight and reporting about them.
Trump did make a lot of noises about wanting to stop the “endless war”, but his actions don’t seem to have been entirely consistent with that.
If Trumps drone strikes are secret, how does the Chicago Tribune, which doesn’t report any numbers, know about them, much less whether they are higher or lower than Obama’s level?
They aren’t all secret, while reporting requirements have been reduced making data collection more difficult, it appears that the strikes that took place before the reporting was changed were already matching or exceeding the actions under the previous administration.
Trump did not stop the endless war. He may deserve (scant) praise for not opening up new fronts, but he didn’t end the killings. More’s the pity. I don’t imagine Biden will either.
But you said they were secret. And why no numbers?
In addition to being upset that Trump didn’t start any wars, the swamp is also upset about his troop withdrawals. I hope Trump can bring many more troops home. Let Joe justify sending them all back.
No I didn’t, I said they’ve been made more secretive, which I would say removing things like the necessity to report civilian casualties is.
*shrug*, you want to be blind to it that’s up to you. I’ll give him credit for not starting any more wars, we could all use an end to war. But on the subject of drone-strikes, civilian casualties etc, his record is not great.
Yes you did. Unless you can come up with another definition of the word “secretive”.
You wouldn’t have any idea of his record if the strikes were kept secret, if they were indeed somehow blocked from view. See you can’t claim to both know the numbers and that they were hidden from view. It makes no sense. And you have zero evidence. But don’t worry, Joe will have the war machine back in business shortly.
“secretive
/ˈsiËkrɪtɪv/
adjective
adjective: secretive
(of a person or an organization) inclined to conceal feelings and intentions or not to disclose information.”
I would say that removing reporting on civilian casualties fits very well with that definition, without making the existence of said airstrikes entirely secret.
They removed some of the reporting after some figures from earlier strikes were already known. Figures which make the Trump presidency look just as bad as the rest. Figures you can go out and find if you look up the articles I mentioned in the post above (but can’t link here because of the moderation system), instead of attempting to play semantic games in order to avoid reality.
(You were asking for figures, in March 2019 the BBC reported – “During Mr Obama’s eight years in office, 1,878 drone strikes were carried out, according to researchers. Since Mr Trump was elected in 2016, there have been 2,243 drone strikes.”. This was attached to the same article on the reporting change. Happy to be shown a ‘better’ source)
Nothing like providing the means to make the other guys point, eh Dave? Thanks.
Oh and BBC reporting is meaningless.
Please expand. So far as I can tell we have –
Secretive is a word meaning “inclined to conceal information”.
Trump changed the rules in 2019 to conceal information. So secretive would be a good word to apply.
Before 2019 and the rules change, Trump’s count on drone strikes was higher than the whole Obama administration.
What is it you dispute there?
Do you have some facts you would like to introduce to this discussion or are you just here to expel hot air?
You can argue the numbers are concealed or that you know them. Just not both.
I can argue that the rules were changed to conceal some things, which they were in 2019. And I can say that prior to that date we have some numbers. These two things do not contradict each other at all.
Especially when the rules change applied to reporting of civilian casualties, but the numbers we were talking about were the numbers of airstrikes.
Again, if you have a better source of info, please speak up.
You’re claiming that John McCain shared Trump’s views. You presumably mean the same John McCain who banned Trump from his funeral? To say those 2 men shared the same values and opinions is delusional.
Some of them, yes. For example, McCain was for the repeal of Obamacare before Trump. As for banning Trump from his funeral, he was just mad that Trump got elected and he didn’t.
Glances over at Trump’s twitter account
LOL. Seriously?
Well that’s just nonsense, they didn’t raise $200m from their supporters after the election to try to overturn the democratic process.
I’ll admit I did cringe at the various “not my president” protests that occurred after Trump was elected. But we didn’t have Candidate Clinton claiming it was all a fix and trying to disenfranchise millions of voters.
But we didn’t have Candidate Clinton claiming it was all a fix and trying to disenfranchise millions of voters.
you had a Candidate Clinton engineering surveillance of the Trump campaign, paying for a dossier, and spending four years trying to de-legitimize and undermine an administration, which has the net effect of disenfranchising voters. Had she simply claimed a fix, that would have been an improvement.
I disagree, I think the onslaught we’re seeing now is fundamentally damaging to faith in democracy, which I think is far worse than any previous partisan action.
I guess we’ll just have to disagree.
? That’s pretty much what did happen. The claims were all similar to today, fraud particularly voting machines (get rid), foreign interference (Russia then, now China). Both are nuts.
Absurd.
Trump should have drained the swamp. The fact that he didn’t means the Republicans will never hold office again and the Never Trumpers and the judges he appointed and all those Republicans who gained seats on the back of what he did manage to achieve as President will come to regret their looking the other way and not even allowing the evidence to be examined in court.
The war machine has won. In England while the Intelligence services, the Foreign Office the City of Lndon and BoJo, desperate for a bit of post Covid excitement, will cheer on the bloodshed all the Biden fans and those with Trump derangement syndrome will default to their usual hatred of the ‘bl*ody Yanks’ within weeks of the first bombs being dropped. But they will never admit they were wrong, they’ll still imagine they were always on the side of the angels.
Draining the swamp is not as easy as you suggest. It is grotesquely large and deeply embedded, and Trump had to spend so much time and energy refuting the fake and malicious Russia allegations, the impeachment etc. It’s a miracle that he got so much done – more than any president for many decades.
And remember, there are many who claim that JFK was shot because he was getting wise to the swamp and the Military Industrial Complex. One could argue that Trump got off lightly.
I think that even if he had tried and failed to drain the swamp, the world & the USA would be in a better position now. In the end he never had the necessary settled purpose.
He never had the necessary army to fight with him. The Republicans let him down bigly.
I never understood why Trump created a Presidential Committee on Election Integrity and then dissolved it before it had ever had a chance to conclude its work and present recommendations. As you say, he lacked the necessary settle purpose. He should have stood by his first National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, instead of letting him fall victim to the swamp. That being said, compared to Creepy Joe Biden he looks like Abraham Lincoln.
“…more than any president for many decades.”
what did he achieve – factually?
The judges were the product of as you say the SWAMP. It was the conservative movement that created, financed and nurtured conservative judges. It was Cocaine Mitch – the ultimate insider – that shepherd their appointment. Trump is ignorant enough to appoint Judge Judy to the SCOTUS – if she said something nice on TV about him.
“…there are many who claim that JFK was shot…” – a conspiracy theory that you embrace. Nothing else.
Trump renegotiated the trade agreements with China, got rid of NAFTA, created the conditions for various agreements in the ME. He created record levels of employment among blacks and hispanics etc, and cut taxes. Perhaps above, all he did not start any new wars, or escalate any existing conflicts. He tried to bring back the troops from Afghanistan, but almost everyone one in Congress and the Senate voted against it. He also got European countries to pay a bit more for their own defence.
I don’t particularly embrace the JFK conspiracy – I have never gone down that rabbit hole. I am merely repeating what many others say.
“……created the conditions for various agreements in the ME”
As in entirely backing Likud in Israel, abandoning the role of honest broker, and backing the occupation of East Jerusalem.
Israel is “occupying” part of Israel? That’s an odd way of putting it.
Ridiculous revisionism, and doesn’t become true just by repetition
There are people out there that say the Earth is flat…we don’t quote them.
He cut taxes… He did not, Paul Ryan did that.
He promised the American people that he would tax the rich including himself. Instead he gave himself a tax cut.
He promised the American people that he would publish his taxes, he has not.
He promised to balance the budget, instead (thanks to the Paul Ryan Tax cut) he blew up the budget. Before covid he managed to borrow in 3 years 3.6 trillion. That is your tax cut.
I can go on with your “examples”…but why bother.
He did bomb Syria…in case you missed that
The difference is he didn’t wade in to start wars. Syria was a war already in progress.
Wasn’t K being paid back by the Mafia for ditching them, with his brother, after they had delivered Detroit?
All Trumpists (are you one?) bang on about judges. OK, let’s roll with it.
Those conservative judges were not beamed from space and certainly were not the product of Trump Organization.
The judicial conservative movement (Trump never gave them a penny) that financed and nurtured them is part of the (brace yourself!) SWAMP. Yes, the SWAMP. And it was Cocaine Mitch – the ultimate insider – that shepherd the process of judges…while Trump was tweeting about his daughter shoes.
The same judges would have been appointed by any mainstream Republican.
Trump is ignorant (delusional, charlatan, etc.) to appoint Judge Judy to SCOTUS is she said something nice about him on TV.
Sounds like you’re still not over ACB and Brett Kavanaugh.
You’re kidding, right?
As an egotistical billionaire, he is the monied elite embodied. He was never going to “drain the swamp”, he is part of the swamp.
Then why is the swamp so upset about him?
Do the ‘elites’ live in ‘the swamp’ ?
The swamp isn’t a place. It refers to people who don’t like their established orthodoxy challenged. While DC is loaded with swamp creatures, there are swamp creatures all over.
Are they? I mean, a lot of the pro-Trump republicans look pretty swampy to me. Like the Texas AG who started last week’s case, who himself is under investigation for stock fraud.
Yes, they are. Have you been asleep for 4 years?
Paxton is not under investigation for SEC fraud. The charges have twice been tossed out of court. Don’t be dishonest.
Glad to hear it, but he is still under investigation by the FBI and was subpoena’d a few days ago. I’m not being dishonest.
You are about the SEC.
Nope. There’s a difference between being wrong/out of date in your info and being dishonest.
I’ll freely admit that I was misinformed about the stock fraud stuff. I had confused it with the more recent FBI interest in him. Thankyou for setting me straight, it’s important to get your facts right. That’s my whole schtick here.
(Reading a little more into it, the verdict that he had no legal duty to inform investors that he was getting a commission on the investment he was representing to them … he hardly comes off looking like a paragon)
Nah, you just didn’t think you’d be questioned. That or you think it’s okay to throw out dirt and just hope it sticks.
No, this was genuinely new information to me. Unlike others I observe, I won’t now go and repeat what I know to be wrong in other places, because facts and truth actually matter to me.
Whether you believe I am arguing in good faith or not is your issue, not mine. However if you believe ‘not’ then further discourse is pointless.
Shouldn’t you be sure before you throw out accusations? Or is it fair game as long as the person is connected to Trump?
Well given that he’s now under a different investigation by the FBI, and that the previous one concluded he had no legal duty to inform investors he was getting commission, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of character, I’m not really adjusting my opinions on the guy. He seems pretty shady.
Yes, one should generally try to be informed, but when new information comes along, take it on board.
So you’re saying the answer to my question is no? That you shouldn’t be sure that something is true, specifically that someone is under SEC investigation before saying it?
Would being “generally” informed include knowing if the SEC is investigating someone or not before saying so?
I’m saying sometimes people are wrong or misinformed, as I was there. Nothing more, nothing less. I am now in possession of more information and will not repeat that mistake.
An easy mistake to make, you understand, when you hear about the SEC investigation and you also hear about the subpoena a few days ago. But I will labour under that misapprehension no longer. He’s under investigation by the FBI over allegations of bribery and abuse, but was cleared of stock fraud.
I didn’t ask you if people are sometimes wrong or misinformed or if they should repeat mistakes.
I asked if you should be sure before you throw out accusations. Even if it’s about someone connected to Trump. You haven’t answered the question.
I’ll have to disagree that confusing the SEC and the FBI is an easy mistake to make. It looks to me like you were simply trying to pile on various accusations whether there was any truth to them or not. The SEC cases were thrown out, so no one was actually cleared, the cases were bogus to begin with. Which is quite different.
“Accusation” is something of a strong word there, I’m not accusing him of anything. Other people have and are, they are making accusations, I am merely talking about those accusations. And I got one wrong. Mea Culpa. Mea Maxima Culpa. Someone was wrong on the internet and admitted it. The horror.
Well, yes you did in fact accuse him of being under SEC investigation. And he is not.
Still haven’t answered the question though. Which is amusing.
Because the question is nonsense and I didn’t level any accusations. I misreported that he was under investigation for fraud, when he’s actually under investigation for bribery. Not seeing how that’s much better, TBH.
No, because you don’t actually believe that anyone has a duty to be sure of what they’re saying before they throw out accusations.
And yes you did accuse him of being under SEC investigation. Right here…..
“Like the Texas AG who started last week’s case, who himself is under investigation for stock fraud.”
I was sure, but I was wrong. I’m not sure what your issue is.
We can now update that to “Was investigated for stock fraud and was found not to have acted illegally, just like an arsehole, but is now under investigation for bribery and bullying”
Like I said, thanks for clarifying that for me. It doesn’t really change anything though.
It’s actually your issue, not mine. I do think that we should know what we’re talking about before leveling accusations.
No, Paxton wasn’t found not to have acted illegally. The case was found to be bogus and tossed out. Which is different but sometimes happens with politically motivated cases. Yet you still can’t get it right.
Clearly Dave H is a man with serious Trump Derangement Syndrome. No objectivity just relentless remarks on how bad Trump is and that the election wasn’t stolen using the same techniques as the MSM.
Now not being American I have no skin in the game, but as I posted elsewhere there were definitely some questionable activities around the actual vote. (I searched the Michigan voter database). Questionable, that is, except to Dave H who attempts to squash even vague suggestions of unusual findings let alone actual fraud. .
if you scan through the comments Dave H appears frequently chiming in to provide his vacant opinion on the threads. That he thinks Trump is part of the swamp is emblematic of out of touch the poor fellow is.
Allow me to summarize for Dave H’s comments. It will save him being so repetitive.
1. Trump = bad
2. Election Fraud = no evidence. Did not happen.
There you are Dave H. I’ve done your work for you.
You know you didn’t actually say anything there, right?
Evidently I’ve upset you, but it is customary to provide a counterpoint.
Your Michigan thing has been debunked, publicly and repeatedly, FYI. It appears the database is a bit inconsistent, not updated as frequently as it should be etc, but that’s not in itself any sort of proof of fraud. Is that what upset you?
I’m not American either, nor pro-Biden, nor democrat. Just very skeptical about the ongoing flood of fantastic claims. Particularly given the modern habit of just not giving a fig when something’s shown to be wrong, and repeating the assertions anyway.
But then neither have you……..just refutations and vacant claims AGAINST any opinion that does not comport with your Woke worldview.
You claim Michigan db is debunked. So you are saying I am a liar. But what if I am not? I am not giving second hand info. I saw it myself. You can too. Go have a look. What if you found the same? Would you still say it has been debunked. But that’s not how your kind work in the post truth world. Controlling the narrative, not accuracy, is your objective.
Still comfortable in your self righteous post truth delusions. DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. GO AND LOOK FOR YOURSELF. Surely you’ve learned to code?
Actually in several places I’ve produced references and in general I’ve tried to introduce facts, rather than innuendo or conjecture. I’m also not someone who claims to be “woke”, FYI.
I am not calling you a liar. 100% believe you that those records are present.
I’m saying your information doesn’t reveal fraud, just a poorly maintained database. What you haven’t got there is a smoking gun that shows that any dead people actually voted. Several journalists and various electoral officials have investigated it further and found reasonable explanations for it.
The swamp, alas, turned out to be bigger and deeper than at first thought. Difficult to drain when it’s in the office with you.
A makeweight like Biden now has 81 million votes. 12 million more than Obama in his epoch-making pomp. Does that feel logical?
That is among several things that do no feel logical. In the end, it may well be that Biden cleanly and fairly won. But the willingness of some to hand wave multiple red flags and anomalies does not engender faith in the system.
As it is, the American media makes politics look honorable. The polling industry beclowned itself. Multiple other institutions are in various stages of disrepute, and now the electoral system is under fire. Those are not good things for a healthy republic.
The media makes politics look honorable?
I have no idea whether there was enough fraud to swing the election in Biden’s favour, but I can tell you that I have seen fraud.
Consider:
I don’t live in the US, but I was able to access the Michigan Voters Roll database. (You can too if you have reasonable db / internet skills.) It is possible to issues queries to the database though it is tedious because it allows only one query per send. Nevertheless I was able to find, with little effort, ten voters who had changed their affiliation from ‘R’ to ‘D’.
Nothing wrong with that of course, but what was unusual was that ALL of these voters had died in the 1980s. We apparently had dead people voting. I contacted the media in the US (and Canada) providing details of my findings, but, no surprise, I was met with silence. The info was ignored.
I have heard of similar findings from others who have accessed the database with one fellow claiming he had located over 40,000 dead people in the database with changed affiliations. He too went to the press. He too was met with silence.
Was there fraud? Absolutely yes. Was it enough to swing the election? I cannot say though the very nature of successful fraud is that steps are taken to hide the fraud. After all the true fraud must be invisible.
Do you have evidence that these dead people voted?
When was the affiliation changed?
I find the whole “registered affiliation” thing deeply alien.
Edit: You may not have been listened to because these same claims (dead voters on the michigan roles) have been investigated previously and found lacking. Many of the “dead” have been identified as alive and well, either sharing a name with an older relative or with someone quite unrelated. There’s a BBC article about it if you search for –
“The ‘dead voters’ in Michigan who are still alive”
So to me this looks like yet more misinformation, that’s already been addressed, but that people nonetheless still pass around as gospel truth.
We truly are in a post-Truth era. Nobody cares about the reality any more, just their agenda.
Post-truth era indeed. Your insightful final comment casts a shadow over the BBC article you cite. It would seem that BBC journalists are only allowed to write election fraud stories these days if they serve to debunk rumours.
The BBC were far from the only ones that covered this story, there are a variety of investigation pieces out there about it. Clinging on to these wacky theories really is just a form of denial now.
Someone other than the dead voter him or herself, had to have changed their party designation, the question is who and why? And were party memberships of dead people changed from R to D or did any go the other way?
The likeliest fraud in the 2020 election would have to do with states changing voting rules at the last minute.
Was this written a few days ago?
The Supreme Court has now declined to hear the Texas case. The supreme court that has three justices who were confirmed by Trump. The verdict was that seven justices thought that Texas had no standing and the case was so poor that the court should decline to hear it at all, where the remaining two thought that Texas had no standing and the case was without merit, but that the court did not have the legal ability to decline and should have heard the preliminaries and dismissed it at the first opportunity.
While I agree with the article, that in the US there are various tribes who do live in different realities, surely at the point that a conservative weighted, Trump-packed supreme court just declines to hear two cases in a row, in each case with a pretty huge implied put-down on the quality of the application, you have to think “what if I’m in the wrong bubble here?”
I don’t doubt that the US ‘left’ (such as it is) are far from squeaky clean, but to an outside observer it looks like we have Trump and his dwindling cabal starting to turn on other republicans in a fit of pique, while not-quite-discouraging dubious actions by his supporters.
Biden, meanwhile, is staying mostly quiet on the subject AFAICT(Looks like that’s changed after the electoral college votes today, he’s broken his silence). Which is likely wise. Let the republicans eat each other, Trump is doing a fine job of delivering the Senate for the democrats at this rate. The main problem really is that Trump’s actions are undermining people’s faith in US democracy. It’s easy to see this degenerating in future.(AFAICT the Waldron calculation was based on faulty assumptions, and there’s no supporting evidence to justify his assertions of things like voting machines being connected to the internet)
Those seven justices made no comments on the merits of the case. They declined to hear it purely with regard to standing. (See the Court’s order here.)
My own view is that, had they taken the case, they’d have been forced to find in favour of Texas/Trump and simply weren’t prepared to take the heat. Lawyer Robert Barnes has some interesting views on how standing is a bogus doctrine that true originalists would reject.
Even the two dissenting views said that they would grant no other relief, i.e. they saw no reason to grant any sort of delay in the election process regardless, and analyses of the filing generally showed it to be the same recycled garbage that the Trump side have been failing with from day 1. Lots of republicans objected to the case, including Texas representative Chip Roy called the whole effort “a dangerous violation of federalism”.
Your own view there appears to be yet another layer of conspiracy theorising.
The simple truth is, this was an extraordinary election made up of two factions, those who loved Trump and those who hated Trump. Biden was only the standard bearer for those who hated Trump. The vote for him was very small and his presidency will be lame duck as a result.
My guess is there has been quite a lot of fiddling at the edges but in the end Biden will be the next President because the evidence is not there for major voter fraud.
The problem is the liberal media and the left in general have been terrified of any investigation because they know those who loved Trump will be so fired up in 2024 that Biden (or whoever takes over from him part way through) has no chance. The problem is that they should be using the disinfectant of light to prove the election was fair. Instead they are trying to suppress the questions and that will create it’s own narrative which could hang around the Democratic Party like a bad smell for a long time to come and will ensure President Biden is one of the worst presidencies in USA history.
But .. investigations have been carried out, haven’t they? Recounts have happened, the FBI has examined voting machines. No inconsistencies have been found. A ton of court cases have been filed and found wanting. It’s really hard to look at that, from over here in the UK, and conclude that investigations have been suppressed in any way.
It looks far more like an outgoing president is slinging mud as fast as he can, hoping that the very act of mudslinging will create that “bad smell”.
(Very much agree on Biden – anti-Trump feeling was high enough that the dems could have fielded a piece of damp bread and won)
The problem is the question of voter fraud it is not being reported, or might be better it is not being seen to be reported fairly.
As I said, Biden will be the next president. The problem the Democrats have is the narrative being created will make Biden a lame duck and make 2024 a very difficult election for them!
It might well do, and by then he will be an old(er) man. I suspect a big part of the upcoming narrative will be that Harris is shouldering most of the burden as Joe is too old, whether true or not. I’ve heard various bits of theorising already that he’s a deliberately single-term president, with the new VP in line to contest 2024.
I always thought he was a pretty poor choice, and an inspirational younger politician would have been better, but perhaps the perceived “return to normality” did them some electoral favours this time.
I would agree. He was picked because he could beat Trump. The party really want a more left wing candidate and Harris was that person.
I suspect Biden won’t be president in 2024 (either by natural causes or by political design) and President Harris will be up against one of Trump, Trump Jr, Ivanka or Pence.
If the Dems had wanted a more ‘left wing’ candidate, at least in the economic sense, they would have gone for Bernie. But the Dems exist to serve their donors in Wall St, Big Pharma, the Military industrial Complex (Raytheon etc). This is more than evident from Biden’s cabinet picks.
Harris only more ‘left wing’ in the sense that she is a woman ‘of colour’. She is a corporatist to her finger tips and will dance to the tune of the corporations. Don’t expect Medicare For All anytime soon.
But those corporatist policies will include a big chunk of “green new deal” ie more tax to pay subsidies for “green” energy generation and plenty of immigration leading to stagnant wages and reduced capital investment giving USA reduced productivity growth but bigger cash piles
All of the counting of ballots matters not a whit if the ballots themselves are a product of fraud. Batches of ballots with only Biden’s name selected and no further selections are too frequent, perhaps because of hasty creation. Someday if that happened, the public will know and all will be incensed. Best if that truth come later for national health. Meanwhile, the ability to create those kinds of ballots needs to be countered by greatly improved methods.
Do you have any proof that these “batches” even exist?
Do you have any proof that they were injected fraudulently into the system?
Do you have any proof that this “ability” exists outside of republican fantasy?
Because AFAICT this is all just hearsay, and given it comes from a source with massive incentive for bias it’s more or less worthless. Especially in the face of unbiased (and often Republican nominated) experts like Krebs saying that the security of the whole operation was top-notch.
This is the same media that ignored the story of Hunter, his laptop, and China, aided by Big Tech which worked double time to quash any mention of it. Only now it turns out there is a story, after all, and a US Attorney’s office is digging in. And so the Dems now have the pretext that will ultimately be used to drive Joe from office, replacing him with a woman who the party itself summarily rejected during the primary process.
Yep, Biden only ended up on the Ticket because he could beat Trump.
I don’t love Trump, but I could still be persuaded to see him as the lesser of two evils. Plenty liberals held their noses and voted for Trump.
And plenty of Republicans held their noses and voted for Biden. That’s a likely explanation for ballots where only one vote, for Biden, was present.
The Republicans who were voting for the swamp. But they didn’t know it 🙂
Me too. I don’t love Trump, nor do I hate him. Biden was just too old and befuddled and that was the choice.
In a run off between Trump and Harris, Trump wins hands down because Harris represents something the majority of US voters and at least a very large minority of Biden voters) will not accept.
You don’t have to like Trump to understand Harris will be disaster!
Not particularly a Trump fan, but…
I listened to that Colonel statistician guy give his sworn testimony. He claimed that 43 districts voted at 80% of registered voters (very anomalous), 23 at 90% (extremely anomalous) and 6 at 120% of registered voters (uh… what?)
Unless he’s lying under oath, which would land him in jail, I hope, then fraud is the only logical answer. You cannot have more people vote than are registered unless fraud is occurring. (Maybe I’m missing something, so please inform me.)
Also, what about the 135,000 consecutive votes in Wisconsin ALL for Biden? I never heard a refutation of that, so I don’t know where it stands now.
He wasn’t under oath, the hearings took place without anyone swearing in.
If there was a mite of proof that 120% of registered voters voted anywhere that would be an immediate court case.
Waldron also made claims in Georgia that truck loads of ballots were being brought in across state lines, but when pushed for evidence he admitted that he was referring to affidavits rather than hard evidence, and concerning other states, not Georgia.
Personally I wouldn’t take any of his testimony too seriously after that.
This is of course where you end up when you believe right-wing conspiracy theories.
British Conservatives, make sure you don’t go the same way!
As with all conspiracies that hang around, there are some grains of truth. First Biden’s victory was built on a very high voter turnout and exceptionally high percentage of the vote share in a small number of counties in very specific states. Statistically Biden’s victory is highly improbably. That doesn’t mean it is impossible but it asks statistical questions.
Second the flow through the ballot is unusual. There are dark mutterings about ballots that only had a vote for Biden and no one else. This is unusual (but not unheard of) in USA elections
Third Count monitoring. There are stories of votes being counted while Republican Party monitors were kept out of the room or being held further away from the ongoing count than those from the Democratic Party. Behaviour that would not be tolerated in this country and was evident in Tower Hamlets when the then mayor was up to no good!
These stories are anecdotal and, I suspect, over estimate any fraud, but they are based on a shred of truth which is building a head of steam in certain areas. If this narrative holds the results will be seen in 2022 and 2024 when the Republican Party could wipe the floor with the Democrats.
Tower Hamlets certainly raised questions about the very relaxed UK voting system.
Wherever you have postal voting you have fraud, ballot harvesting and all the rest of it. That’s why Labour introduced it in the UK, and why the Dems push for it in the US.
Wherever you have postal voting, you have people voting who don’t have a car and do have children to look after, maybe single-handed. That’s why the right doesn’t like it.
The poor manage it in South Africa if they want to vote. One person looks after many children and they get to the polling stations in buses and taxis. Your comment is frankly ridiculous. It is hard, but you cannot compromise the accuracy of the voting process so easily.
Vote suppression doesn’t have to involve completely taking people off the electoral role (though that is often done by Republican-run US States). It can also involve making it harder for people who are on the electoral roll to vote. The manager finds it easy to vote (Tory) – he just diverts the company BMW to the village school near his home for a few minutes while driving home. The children are being looked after by his wife, who only works part-time and voted (Tory) at 10am. The single mother who was at work at 8am and returned at 4pm to find the children on the doorstep having returned from school, will find it hard to get out and vote (Labour) because they need supervision. She doesn’t have a car. A postal vote allows her to cast a vote, which she might otherwise be unable to do. That’s why the Right has been working up a fetish against postal voting for the last few years. It’s also why the Tories are trying to bring in a photo-ID requirement for voting – the manager uses his passport twice a month and can find it in 20 seconds, the single mother has not been abroad for years and doesn’t have a driving licence, so whatever form of photo-ID she does have is at the bottom of a drawer and hasn’t been used (or seen) for months. The Tories know perfectly well what they are doing by introducing that requirement.
Did you read what I said? People can organize themselves to vote. And it is well-known that postal votes can be corrupted more easily. It is far better to create more supports to enable people to vote than it is to allow flawed votes. Maybe campaign for that.
For voter suppression read suppression of fraud.
Trump was entitled to challenge individual counts in court. All campaigns do that.
But the attempt to get Republican State legislatures to certify Trump as the winner and send Trump-supporting Electors to the Electoral College was an attempted coup against democracy, pure and simple. That’s spelt C-O-U-P.
All campaigns do that.
No they do not.
Aside from Florida 2000, all the losers (including Clinton 4 years ago) concede the morning after.
I believe that there are local challenges.
But that’s not the same as Trump and his acolytes have been doing.
The MSM narrative that there is no evidence is really odd. And the alternative media is biased to the other extreme.
I think quite a few here are using the only other viable source, going to publicly available documents from courts/governemtn websites. one thing that sits with me is the number of affidavits, essentially whistle blowers for Trump. Perjury is the least of these people’s issues. the “social” risk they are taking is incredible (being parodied on SNL etc for simply telling your story). I would imagine for every affidavit they have there’s another 2-3 who are unable to come forward. But enough of that…. There are so many angles to the whole thing from obstructing/removing observers, governors or SoS changing laws without legislature permission, postal/absentee ballots and then you have the machines.
What’s interesting is when you find a document that has some substance, there’s no discussion about it in the MSM, just fact checked to be wrong. For example the Antrim county forensic report, which is well worth a read. Is it fraud? Maybe but definitely extreme negligence/ignorance. “significantly, the computer system shows vote adjudication logs for prior years; but all adjudication log entries for the 2020 election cycle are missing.” nope nothing to see here.
https://www.depernolaw.com/…
The affidavit below is from a guy described by the NY times as “the smartest guy in the room” in Sept 2020. I have found that out of all the fact checking this guy has not (yet) been flagged as fact check false…..
https://www.scribd.com/docu…
I don’t understand why anyone with his repuation and experience would make that conclusion if he doesn’t believe it true. Lying = Perjury and Jail. Being wrong is career suicide. His CV reads as if he knows what he is talking about. but once again no mention of this in the MSM.
I suspect that the only aspect that will have a chance for Trump is the cyber/Machine side of things due to the sheer size required to change outcomes at a state level.
By the way the alternative electoral college votes are the “thing to do” if you have an outstanding case that could potentially change the outcome. It’s just process.
TLDR: there’s more to this than meets the eye, but be careful (as mentioned above) the media is extrememely biased on both sides.
Trump could set up an alternative White House. Trump type politics are gaining ground all over the world due to world overpopulation, and there is no sign of that slowing down.
To speak of Trump’s loyal supporters waiting for the always in the future deus ex machina sounds like accounts of the reactions of those so convinced that the end of the world is nigh that they give a date and time and, when it doesn’t happen, either via an apocalypse or a space ship landing, just move the date onward. There is the same desperation to be right as is seen on the face of the young woman on the opening article calling for the police to be defunded.
According to Tim Pool, who is generally very reliable and accurate, no less than 30% of Democrat voters believe there was fraud.
What were they were asked?
I can believe there was some level fraud. There’s pretty much always some level of minor fraud.
It does seem unlikely that a guy who hid in the basement won rather than the person who drew thousands of people all across the country just to see him.
They will just become the resistance to Biden.
Well, I’d simply like to *thank* GH right now for this superbly cool-headed overview, written as it is with the utmost taste, flair and decorum..
Well, I’d simply like to *thank* GH right now for this superbly cool-headed overview, written as it is with the utmost taste, flair and decorum..
Name another ‘brigade’ that has a hundred million members?
What you have presented here strikes me as political sorcery, potent in its veiled conspiratorial mystery, to which Lady Democracy would command “Out damned spot,” even as Trumpian wood doth move against Bidenenane.
The piece describes the triumph of post modern cultural marxism in the US. Remembering the strangeness of US campus political correctness of the 70’s which seemed at the time that like the hula hoop it would entertain the young, break a few ancient hips, then disappear forever. Its bigger brother PMCM (see above) will likely break necks before being recognised as empty, contrived, void of sense. What should stop its blind rampage? Famine, pestilence, war, depression (both kinds) accompanied by a rightward lurch. The Left will never clear their own mess let alone their consciences following their eternal folie a deux with marxism.