We hold these truths to be self-evident: Trump is a lawless authoritarian who tore up the Constitution
Commenter “JFM” writes:
I’m very confused when people on the left start, in all media, talking about Trump as “lawless” and “ripping up the Constitution”. Where did he do that? When did he do this?
And commenter “Wendy Laubach” adds:
JFM–I read this almost every day, the casual statement that the Republican party has embraced authoritarianism and that Trump was a lawless dictator. There is never any explanation, just as there is none for the “everyone knows” assumption that Trump’s term was nonstop “chaos.” It’s amazing how many people will read assertions like this in the paper, or hear them on TV, and adopt them serenely and uncritically.
The phenomenon is indeed very noticeable, and has been almost from the start of Trump’s political journey. It is in the nature of a creed – a formal statement of faith – rather than an observation requiring proof, defense, or even discussion.
Not only that, but belief in this creed is also a badge of honor and a sign of belonging to the righteous and the reasonable. Disagree with it, or even ask that an example be given, and receive disdain. You will be marked as an outsider to virtue, and perhaps even a Trump supporter or Trump defender, which puts you beyond the realm of reasoned discourse.
I am not overstating this. It’s not universal, of course, but it is very common on the left and even in rank and file Democrats. I think it accounts at least in part for the position of the NeverTrumpers. The effect is amplified, as all such effects are, by the echo-chamber nature of the left and of the MSM. If all the “smart people” believe that Trump is all those awful things, the only ones to doubt it must be dumb or evil or both. And a related conclusion is that if Trump is tearing up the Constitution, then the opposition is also justified in cutting constitutional corners and “cutting a great road though the law to get after the devil.”
All of this goes way beyond logic and way beyond any refutation through argument on the part of someone on the right. The weight and amount of evidence that would be required to refute it would be enormous, and even then the recipient of the information would have to be at least somewhat open to it on some level. This goes to the heart of people’s identity as good people who opposes evil, and since Trump is evil one must oppose him in order to be good.
I first noticed the strength of this feeling early on, when MAGA hats became the supposed symbols of racism, frightening and terrible to behold. Never before do I recall having seen the campaign symbols of the opposition be demonized to that extent, even if the opposition was despised (as it was, for example, with Reagan and George W. Bush). Now something that seemed so innocuous – a hat with an acronym that stood for “Make America Great Again” – was said to transmit tremendous evil.
Propaganda is a very real thing with very real effects, and Trump has been the target of negative and relentless propaganda from the beginning. The perceptual mental edifice that propaganda has built over the years is enormously strong.
Even after all the fabrications promulgated by the leading voices in the MSM (WaPo, NYT, CNN, and MSNBC, which have mis-reported on every single story, major as well as minor, since 2016, and, of course, long before then as well), it is difficult for many truly mis-educated persons, especially those who have attended university and belong to the managerial class, to understand how they have been lied to and misled by “experts” and officials, by teachers and professors, and by lawyers and pundits in print and on television, and, of course, it would be infra dig, to admit that a tabloid such as NYPost or a vulgarian such as Trump, to say nothing of all the “deplorables”, might be closer to the truth on many issues, and possessed of far more common sense, than they are.
I like to demand specifics, when in debates on the internet, even if they rarely do provide more than a half baked answer. Mainly for the benefit of fence sitters.
But as you allude to, there are lies, stacked on lies, that got them to that point.
If you recall, the “ Tea Party “ was the focus of lies before Trump.
They argue that Trump was a dictator want to be AND he should have instituted Federal Lockdowns and mask mandates for COVID instead of leaving it to the states AND all effects of lockdowns on the economy was Trump’s fault…..
I was listening to NPR this morning, running errands. I tune in less and less these days, at least for their news reporting, which has become hopelessly self-devalued and un-listenable in its bias. Anyway, today a quiz show was on, featuring progressive, left-leaning comedians taking guesses at current-event questions, while salting in their own made-up-on-the-spot jokes and witty humor. Kind of like the old Hollywood Squares game show.
The problem was, it wasn’t at all funny. They would confabulate imagery and word combinations in original but unlikely forms, and think that it was witty – but the humor was obvious, unfunny, and tedious instead.
I don’t think you are over-stating your case at all; I think this is at the heart of the Progressive Never-Trump mentality – a belief that we, the Progressive Intelligentsia, are righteous in our thinking and superior in our ideas. It’s an absolute conviction, held as a mindset. It is often unshakeable, even in defeat.
Although this group views themselves as Intelligentsia, they are comfortable with denying any intellectual challenge to their ideas, reverting instead to vehement emotional outbursts, and indulging the more violence-prone to act out with impunity. And those that call themselves Republican Never-Trumpers are simply members of the big-tent Uniparty, RINOs by any other name, Democrat sympathizers in the cheap seats – and often reliable legislative votes in deed (reference the latest gun legislation votes).
What to do? Simply winning an election would never be enough to defeat the ideology; Defeating the Nazi and Japanese war machines was not enough to vanquish that ideology; the homeland had to be reduced to utter burning ruins, the leadership gutted, the populace demoralized and made dependent on the victor’s largess. But no such picture is in the forecast for our political system, even with the outrageous extremes we witness today that are claimed to be ‘normal’ while we are instructed to accept the new belief system within which they are defined.
For some reason, I get two or three posts from lefty sites on my FB. I block them, but there are always two or three more.
And they take the same mega-extreme lying tack as referred to above.
Leftist dogma is but an outer layer of the progressive onion.
Seizure of power but a bit deeper layer.
At its core lies the ideological imperative; to save the village, it must be destroyed.
The thing about the specific “tearing up the constitution” charge is that it is progressives who are openly and explicitly declaring that the constitution is either obsolete or was never anything but a slaveholders’ scam in the first place, and therefore should have no power over us.
Aggie: when I’m able to view it with cynical amusement, I think it’s funny that the Enlightened are reverting to the dark atavistic ways of the past that they decry and believe they have “evolved” beyond: We and our ways are good. They and their ways are evil. And because they are evil, we hate them, and our hatred is good. And this is precisely in the name of their Enlightenment.
All the Trump propaganda is just more of the left accusing others of being like them.
I find is so very sad and unsettling that SO MANY folks have fallen for the propaganda. Then, I consider history. I think it is too late to fix. Only a true revolution or civil war…
My pronouns say it all: she it
I remember reading a particularly unhinged rant against Trump by a design blogger. Anyone who voted for or supports Trump for any reason does not meet her definition of a “decent person” and should be shunned from polite society. Sadly, her attitude is still quite common:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/design-mom-bourgeois-totalitarian-gabrielle-blair/
Yes before Trump was the Tea Party. I still have my yellow Don’t Tread On Me cap and still wear it. Yes I remember that Tea Party people were greatly disparaged.
Of course I could say that being a Navy person the DTOM cap represents the US NAVY.
This precise subject is how I first stumbled upon (happily!) Neo’s blogsite. I’d already written something about it (see below) in October 2016 at the VDARE website. Then in October 2020, an experience with one of my sisters and something Neo had written contemporaneously induced me to write about it again.
(VDARE is primarily about what immigration is doing to the American nation — and Western civilization more generally — but neither of these two blog entries deals with immigration.)
Here they are …
October 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20161021125837/https://vdare.com/posts/the-left-projects-its-own-rage-fear-paranoia-bigotry-and-wait-for-it-hate-on-donald-trump
October 2020: https://web.archive.org/web/20220331180255/https://vdare.com/posts/liberals-informed-by-their-ignorance-and-adamant-about-it
The second one links to the piece by Neo that I somehow encountered and that spurred me to write.
Both articles are still online, but the links are to the Wayback Machine archive versions because the VDARE website currently has a fund-raising effort in progress that one has to click past. In the second blog item, the “cartoon” I refer to at the end is there at the top of the entry.
She has moved to substack and removes all doubt all the time
https://designmom.substack.com/
Honestly her mind is just blank slate full of gunk, the consequemce of mind arson
Retired newspaper guy Don Surber wrote literally 3 books about media lies regarding Trump. One for the Repub primary, one for the election campaign against Hillary and one for the first year or so in office.
Don has a knack for turning a phrase so the books are both informative and entertaining.
I gave my copies to a friend in hopes they would circulate samizdat style till the pages fell out. But more likely they are on a shelf …
Perhaps it’s time to buy another set in case I meet an intellectually honest liberal or a curious low info voter …
Propaganda and projecting. One can usually assume that the left is doing almost exactly what they accuse the right of. They rush to get accusations out while the right is sitting on their hands. Surely one of the things the left hates about Trump is his willingness to throw dirt at them, to call them what they really are. Then, of course, the press rides in and runs interference.
Aggie, you must have been listening to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.
I stopped listening to Wisconsin Public Radio when they cancelled Old Time Radio Drama on Saturday and Sunday nights, because it was racist.
It was the best six hours of programming they had.
“Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities”. ~Voltaire
“Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities”.
~ Voltaire
“Propaganda and projecting. One can usually assume that the left is doing almost exactly what they accuse the right of.” T-Rex
Sad evidence–excoriate Trump and replace him with Biden.
They are all what the lawyers call “conclusory statements”. IOW, no proof, and not even the slightest effort to provide evidence.
If you ask for evidence, you get another conclusory statement or a question suggesting you’re as much a criminal as Trump is. “You mean you don’t believe….?” Were it verbal, you could hear, hell, you can hear it on the screen, the suspicious, accusatory, can’t-believe-I’m-hearing-this tone Phil Donahue perfected.
“Propaganda is a very real thing with very real effects……….”
Yep, very true.
The media today in the USA is a more effective propaganda orgen, due to TV, internet, etc. , than was Julius Streicher’s Der Sturmer or Pravda and Izvestia during the rule of Stalin.
“Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth;” Joseph Goebbels.
“The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed,” Adolph Hitler
I have an old friend who’s really trying, I think, to come to grips with her assumption that anyone who questions these verities is stupid or evil. She can’t quite make herself believe I’m stupid or evil, and you can see the dilemma working its way out on her face when she casually states some TDS belief and I tell her, as gently as I know how, that my husband and I are fervent Trump supporters, though we clearly don’t match the picture in her head. The message doesn’t really sink in, either; the last time she brought the subject up and we disabused her, her face literally blanched. I’d always thought that was a literary convention. We just changed the subject; it’s too hard for her.
To this day she can’t quite believe that I harbor doubts about the validity of the 2020 election. She’s been told that’s a concept entertained only by racist people ranting on street corners, who are only waiting for a chance to shoot up their garden parties with scary black rifles with the thing that goes down.
I’m not just commenter “Wendy Laubach,” by the way, that’s my real name.
“…really trying…”
Brings to mind this “golden oldie”
“LA Times op-ed slammed for comparing Trump-supporting neighbors to Hezbollah”—
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/la-times-trump-supporters-neighbors
…which includes a link to this tweet, which “says it all”…
https://tinyurl.com/mr3n85ct
…and we’ll throw this one in “for good measure”….
“NYT reporter deletes tweets urging Trump supporters to be called ‘enemies of the state’ amid backlash”—
https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-katie-benner-deletes-tweets
Yep, the power of the press!
(All in the name of “creating a better world”, no doubt…)
Trump derangement is real. The ironic part about it is that it only helps Trump.
Look – As messed up as the 2020 election was (and it was), there was no legal mechanism to allow Trump to stay in office. Trump had no hard evidence that was the rightful winner in 2020. There is still no hard evidence that Trump was the rightful winner in 2020. Given the nature of Democrat’s actual monkey business in the 2020, there may never be any hard evidence that Trump was the rightful winner of the election. There is a name for when someone tries to keep or take power (i) without a legal mechanism to take power; and (ii) without evidence proving that they rightfully should take power. It’s called a putsch. That’s what Trump tried to pull off. That’s why he isn’t fit to hold any public office ever again. It’s really not that complicated.
But man, you’re right about the TDS. It’s as though what Trump actually did isn’t enough. He has to be Hitler 2.0. The January 6th committee is a clown show. The sensational hearsay that ends up being immediately contradicted – the committee members going on TV to say that they don’t bother to corroborate other witnesses testimony – Who really cares whether Trump grabbed the steering wheel. What litigator in his or her right mind would put on an uncorroborated witness to testify to hearsay about a sensational event that is completely irrelevant to the overall case? I can’t figure out if they are really that stupid or if they’re actully trying to goad Republicans into nominating Trump again in ’24.
On the bright side, I recently talked to a relative who is 100% Democrat. She is not smart, or well informed, and lives in a total bubble. Yet she asked about the Jan 6 committee, and why they were investigating so many things that WEREN’T part of the “uprising”. So if even she can see there’s a problem, there is a bit of hope.
That said, I object to one thing in the OP. “It is in the nature of a creed – a formal statement of faith – rather than an observation requiring proof, defense, or even discussion.”
This bears no relation to actual religions I know of, and actual creeds. The most famous, the Nicene, was debated for years before the Council, and years after. And as to proof and defense, have you ever read what actual theologians and apologists say? That’s about all they do. (My wife, the first time she picked up the Summa, was surprised to see “It would seem that God does not exist….”)
This is a common attitude, but none the stronger for that. It really partakes of the first error; something repeated without being examined.
you see have they have wrought with their theft, they were skillful to have the support of the media, the professional class, and the military, all the elements that lord mountbatten, as played by charles dance, relates to the coup plotters, in that apocryphal crown episode but what happened on that november was a coup nonetheless, I almost pity the likes of miss blair, except they would turn all of us in a heartbeat,
I have a daughter who is a hard lefty (and lawyer of course) , who was visiting us a couple of years ago (pre-Covid) and she was watching the Sunday talk shows. As I walked past, she said, loudly, “Trump is such an incompetent.” I replied “3% unemployment and the Dow at 30,000 is incompetent?” Yes ! she replied. More recently, we were having dinner together in CA and she told me, “Daddy, you have to stop watching Fox News.” Since I don’t watch it, except recently Tucker Carlson, I wondered where that came from. The left are convinced that Fox News is even more evil than Trump. It’s a sickness.
It’s one thing to say the media barrage of distortions and lies influenced people’s attitudes toward President Trump during the 2016 election, but doesn’t explain the intensity of the hatred and loathing towards the President.
My wife’s niece, a very bright woman, became so outspoken about her contempt for the President that she couldn’t bring herself to refer to him as President. He was “orange-man” or “Drumpf” or “45”. It was the level of her hatred that was concerning.
I think it was easy for the left to build the narrative of President Trump as an inveterate liar– building on his reputation in New York over the years. Even Neo was skeptical he would keep his campaign promises, based on his reputation.
While his supporters could explain most of what the left called his lies, there were unexplainable inconsistencies that we chalked up to his temperament– he was a blowhard, a braggart, you had to take him seriously, but not literally.
There was his bragging about women, what men could dismiss as locker room talk, but incensed women. Much of liberal women’s contempt for the President can be explained in the fact he defeated Hillary. She may have been a horrible candidate, with an equal amount of baggage to overcome, as least as much as the President, but she was women’s standard bearer.
Then there was the Al Smith roast of Hillary. I was shocked at the level of “truth” Trump heaped on Hillary– all the while, she had to sit and feign laughter.
Hillary had already started the Russia collusion narrative, but the old adage, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned must apply here. Is there a timeline here that shows a correlation?
Then there is the evil pervading the left– the critical theory using “social Marxism” to transform the recalcitrant USA to a full fledged partner of the global “community”. This has been going, full force, for 30 years or more, and as we’ve seen, isn’t confined to one party– but President Trump was a major roadblock. Obama had set the table with his fundamental transformation of the USA. A President Hillary may have finished the work.
The Russian collusion narrative built on the perception of the President as an authoritarian. Putin is just as much a roadblock to the Global Reset as Donald Trump is. Hence the supersized, new-found contempt for Russia. Putin, after all, is a consummate nationalist. As is Trump. Hence the narrative of fellow travelers. But Putin is the wrong kind of authoritarian. The President didn’t do himself any favors when he bragged about his relationship (apparently non-existent) with Putin. While Putin is a true authoritarian, there is no ready mechanism in the US for the President to assume that role, except– as we have seen, a willing media, a corrupt, transformed judiciary and a neutered congress can make the constitution irrelevant and lead to the sort of global authoritarianism the left pines for.
Why Russia and not China? Because China fits the Corporatist model of compliant cheap labor. What the left fails to recognize is that China has and will continue to assert their foundling dominance– in ways that will hold the west hostage.
The full Roast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOUFsCS7xYE
you can’t blame the left (it’s like blaming a scorpion) but you can blame the frog, for believing the scorpion, with hillary it’s about projection, her scam shop was loaded with rubles, it abetted the technical capabilities that the Russians supposedly used, yes trump was the last to get to the punch bowl re Russia,
now Trump apparently solicited business from some characters like Ivankov (sic)
Manafort was known to lobby all sorts of dubious interests as did Podesta and Greg Craig and Lanny Davis, yet the arrows only pointed in one direction, Roger Stone had apparently a long time friendship with longtime gadfly and sometime comic, Randy Credico, who was in turn to the bridge to Assange, who aired everyone’s dirty laundry
Remember, they are the anointed, per Thomas Sowell.
Remember, when they do it, it’s in service of the collective. When anyone else does it, it’s selfish and of harm to the collective.
This really sounds like an unhinged rant from a grad student who ate to many edibles…
para: Man, this country sucks, we need to tear it down and do it “right”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/15/democrats-are-facing-asymmetrical-warfare-its-time-to-wake-up-and-fight-back
The Democratic party must reorient itself around radical democratic reforms and disempowering the supreme court, the Senate, and state governments. This is both necessary and inevitable. If Biden doesn’t do it, the next Democrat will need to. If they don’t, it will be impossible to exercise power of any sort, no matter the opinions of citizens.
Mike K:
I’m sometimes told I need to stop listening to Fox News. And it doesn’t matter how many times I have told the person I very very seldom watch TV news of any kind. Being on the right equals being brainwashed by Fox News in their eyes.
Eeyore:
I don’t think most believers today debate the matter, do they? The people who set the creed down as a creed did debate it and there were differences of opinion, but I think that once a creed is set most believers probably just accept it as a matter of faith and a basic tenet of the religion.
I am not an expert on that, but that’s my impression anyway.
Neo. The accusation of Fox discredits anything you say. Even if what you said came from, say, the Bureau of Labor Stastics.
zenman:
That Guardian lament by Ben Davis could have been from The Onion, not the Babylon Bee. The Bee does satire so much better. Lamentations of democrats playing by the rules and such.
Too funny.
Only one rule for them; whatever it takes to gain and increase power.
“doesn’t explain the intensity of the hatred and loathing towards the President.”
It’s a class thing. Most of the managerial/professional set come from upper-middle-class backgrounds. They’ve never known poverty or tough times. They’ve never served in the military and don’t personally know anyone who has. They’re not awful people but very few of them are spending their Sundays working in the local soup kitchen. Their very high regard for themselves is not based on their own achievement or moral qualities. It’s from belonging to that managerial/professional class and elevating the social mores of that class to the status of holy commandments.
Then along comes Trump, a man who is wildly more successful than they are who craps all over those divine niceties. That level of Trump hatred is basically a form of xenophobia, which say a lot about how alienated such people are from the rest of their society.
Mike
Projection tends to bite the projectors on the behind.
One of the most common insults thrown at Trump is that he’s “incompetent.” It was always odd given his level of success in life but then he actually got to be President and PROVED he wasn’t really any more incompetent than Obama or Bush or Clinton. That cognitive dissonance led Trump-haters to disconnect the concept of “competence” from any actual real world standards or performance…which is how Democrats ended up with legitimate incompetents like Biden, Harris and Buttigieg in positions of authority. And we see how that’s working.
Or take Trump playing nice with Saudi Arabia. The media and the Left crucified him for that, even though Trump was more honest about why he was doing it than any previous President in my lifetime. But now Biden is having to kiss Saudi butt, just like Trump and Obama and Bush before him, but a lot of the media is losing their minds over it because…again…the need to demonize everything Trump did led them to project the worse possible spin on everything Trump did and now a lot of them have trouble with the rank hypocrisy
of completely letting Biden off the hook.
Mike
Leftists always scream their Democracy is threated when it’s them who are dragging us into totalitarianism.
one might say this camarilla is effective in so far, as he has had no opposition, but not competent as one would understand it, when you see that robert malley (I dubbed him nod) was the pressure point on the khashoggi matter, he was one of the players of the iran deal, wendy sherman no 3 in this chenga set up took point in the negotiations, having done a bang up job with korea, everything else was vapor ware, because malley might as well have been ‘brother from another mother’ they shared the same islamist sympathies,
The propaganda is so thick and nasty it is obviously a lie. The focus on Trump is ridiculous. He has been out of the Presidency for closing in on two years and the lies continue. Is it a cover for Joe’s corrupt ways, and his senile, incompetent management of the Country? They say only one third of the population are critical thinkers.
I just voted in Wyoming’s Republican Primary. A liberal friend told me to vote for Cheney because of Trump. I was surprised that this person would vote for someone with such opposite views then they possessed.
I voted for Hageman. Trump aside, she lives in Wyoming, not Virginia, and she cares about issues concerning Wyoming.
Neo, like you, I don’t watch TV news–but my leftist acquaintances can never believe that. I’m waiting for them to wise up and tell me to quit reading Neo.
Bauxite: I agree we didn’t have the legal goods to overturn the election. I take AG Barr’s view of this: there are some kinds of election hanky-panky that can lead to convictions a couple of years later, and sometimes reform of the system. They should certainly inform our votes and our policies going forward. There are only a very few kinds of election hanky-panky that can be used to change an election result in real time. We didn’t succeed in making any of those cases. I don’t challenge the election in the latter sense, but it was still a seriously garbage election.
Of course they could have but barr didnt want to impound the machines which were one leg of the fraud and hence he is partly responsible for what has transpired of course kemp and ducey also enabled the fraud through inaction
Wendy Laubach. I am interested in the mercy you show your demented friend. I would be easier with it if she didn’t vote or have any influence.
It would be interesting to know how she came to the point where actual facts may break her brain. She’s not alone, of course.
“…garbage election…”
That’s rather kind of you….
Time to once again dust off the “BBBBUT (helps if you sputter) THERE’S ABSOLUTELY NO-PROOF! File…(sigh, here we go again….):
“Bombshells undercut the ‘Big Lie:’ 21 confirmed illegalities, irregularities from 2020 election;
“There are now nearly two dozen credible confirmations of wrongdoing, irregularities and illegalities that undercut the claims of bureaucrats, journalists and Democrats that the November 2020 general election was flawless.”
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/bombshells-belie-big-lie-21-confirmed-illegalities-irregularities-2020
…which is precisely—or at least one of the main reasons—why the Jan. 6 “Commission of Enquiry(!)” has to embark on its own irrepressibly impressive three-ring circus of “lies, damn lies and [gymnastics]”…organized and directed by a very special cast of clowns and freaks.
Looks like it’s Bannon’s turn to face these conniving kangaroos.
“Contempt trial for ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon to begin;
“Bannon faces two criminal contempt charges, each carrying a sentence of 30 days to one year behind bars.”
https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/contempt-trial-ex-trump-advisor-steve-bannon-begin
Just a reminder: Bannon’s being charged for two counts of “contempt of Congress”—a Congress that itself shows unrelenting, drooling, seething contempt for the Constitution of the US and its citizens.
Maybe there is one thing we can all agree on and that is that 80 is too old to be President no matter how much you like your guy! If everyone could agree not to nominate anyone over 60 years old this cycle it would sure remove one source of tension. After all, can’t we all just get along?
Things are pretty depressing….
Gotta lighten up a bit….
And so…time to re-introduce “The Humorous Tidbit of the Day….”:
“Black candidate compares Democrats to KKK;
“The ad doesn’t attempt to hide what the black GOP candidate for Congress really thinks about Democrats.”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/356714
Ah, those wacky Australians….
Barry Meislin – I completely agree that there is plentiful evidence that the 2020 election wasn’t on the up-and-up. There is a difference though between evidence that things were fishy and proof that Trump was the rightful winner of the election. We have a lot of the former and none of the latter, even now nearly two years after the election. It cannot be OK to nullify an election because you have an argument that you were the rightful winner. Stacy Abrams had an argument that she was the rightful winner. John Kerry’s supporters had an argument that he was the rightful winner in 2004. (Remember Diebold? It was Dominion before there was a Dominion.) Al Gore had an argument that he was the rightful winner in 2000. Would it have been OK for Stacy Abrams to show up at the 2019 GA inaguration with a mob and demand to be sworn in? Would it have been OK for Al Gore to do the same at the 2001 inaugeration?
You might say that Trump has a stronger argument than Abrams, Kerry, Gore et al. If you said that, I would agree. If you want to nullify an election, however, you need more than a better argument. You need a level of proof that would cause a neutral observer to believe that your candidate was the rightful winner of the election, enought to justify the completely unprecedented act of nullifying an election. (Unprecedented at the national level at least.)
Trump did not, does not, and probably never will have that level of evidence. If he had succeeded in staying in office, we wouldn’t have a republic anymore.
Wendy Laubach’s cite to Barr is correct. Absent hard proof that Trump was the rightful winner, the only way to deal with Democrats’ monkey-business from 2020 is prospectively to keep it from happening again.
Richard Aubrey: My friend is not that unusual. She’s a fine musician and artist, grants almost complete primacy to feelings, and pays little attention to politics other than to absorb what’s typical in academia and the arts world. Conflict alarms her, so when she finds we disagree, she freezes up mentally.
My sister is the more mysterious case for me. She and I are practically identical in intelligence and education, but her politics are completely mad. I’m at a loss to explain it.
Bauxite; Wendy Laubach; Barry Meislin:
Once election security is jettisoned there is no way to prove that fraud changed the outcome of an election. It’s not just that the Trump team couldn’t prove it in 2020; it’s that it is unproveable even if it happens. That’s the beauty of loosening the laws. It makes such fraud both more possible and highly undetectable. Even if fraudulent votes are cast by mail, for example, you cannot prove they were for Biden once the envelopes are disconnected from the ballots.
Mail-in voting invites fraud.
Early polling place voting seems here to stay.
Notable, ’tisn’t it, that Trump cannot mount a challenge to the conduct of the 2020 election: nope – all he is allowed is a “baseless” challenge. It must be in everyone’s style book, because I always see that characterization attached to any remarks about it.
even though pbs and hbo did exposes of dominion (they thought trump would win) now when you’ve secured the secretary of state in at least two of the states, and compelled another by consent decree, it’s easy to steal,
“Even if fraudulent…”
Well we’re all, I’m sure, very grateful to the Democrats for their inspiring transparency, in offering to so assiduously clear up all the doubts, questions and skepticism engendered by their, um, efforts….
File under: Getting to the bottom of things….
“…the only way to deal with Democrats’ monkey-business from 2020 is prospectively to keep it from happening again.”
Version A:
Indeed, which is PRECISELY why the Democratic Party is trying as hard as possible to ensure that all practices—and laws—that abet and encourage electoral fraud REMAIN IN PLACE.
Version B:
Indeed, which is PRECISELY why the Democratic Party is trying as hard as possible to ensure, with the Republicans, that practices—and laws—that abet and encourage electoral fraud are THOROUGHLY TIGHTENED UP AND ERADICATED.
Version C:
Screw it. Trump lost and there’s NOTHING that A**H***E—WHO SHOULD HAVE WON EXCEPT THAT HE’S AN A**H**E—can do about it.
Version D:
Joe Biden’s extraordinary, historical, unprcecedented VICTORY have given the Democrats a CLEAR MANDATE to “govern” the country….
Version E:
???
Trump was a NY Democrat for 40 years. The hatred of him is so intense because he was a traitor to their cause when he ran as a Republican.
If he had campaigned as a Democrat they might have actually supported him, because he’s not particularly conservative.
I’m feeling really down—I don’t usually wear these things on my sleeve—but, well, it’s the truth…
In fact, I’m so down that I am desperately in need of a Kamala Harris motivational quote.
Fortunately—thanks to Instapundit—here’s exactly what I needed…and just in time…
https://instapundit.com/531866/
…and thanks, of course, to Kamala!
(Is there anything she can’t do???)
here you go barry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNcQNjxZ0C8
Molto therapeutic.
Thanks… Feel better already….
Your welcome, and still he makes more sense then joseph gambolputty sivonser nagglethrasher …of ulm
At least now I understand why he slapped Chris Rock…
(Had to be a flashback….)
– – – – –
Anyway, back in Georgia, I didn’t remember that Joe Biden won by a whopping 0.2% margin…and this following days and days and days of counting ballots after the fact—in a glorious come-from-behind victory (where ballot counting had to be stopped in the middle of election night because…um, because, um…well, um, BECAUSE!!).
“Grand jury subpoenas Rep. Jody Hice in Georgia election probe;
“Trump ultimately lost the State of Georgia to President Joe Biden by 0.2% of the vote”—
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/grand-jury-subpoenas-rep-jody-hice-georgia-election-probe
…with similar miracles occurring in PA, WI, MI, AZ.
Simply miraculous. Yep, those states all went Democrat days and days and days after the fact.
(But don’t ask HOW that happened…cuz if you do, yer an INSURRECTIONIST…)
As Hillary said, she’ll be damned if she allows Trump to steal another election.
(ANOTHER??)
is it any wonder her last speech writer, ejected like mickey rooney over toko ri
Mickey Rooney did not eject in The Bridges at Toko-Ri. His helicopter is shot down and he is killed in the ditch with William Holden.
The democRATS second impeachment was unconstitutional and this fool calls Trump lawless. The chump.
Bauxite, there is just as much “hard evidence” that the 2020 US election was rigged as there is that the elections in Belarus, Russia, China, Iran, etc are rigged. Hell, there is more evidence. And in spite of that lack of “hard evidence” in the case of those other countries, nobody doubts that their election are rigged.
That’s because when the election process itself is transparently fraudulent, it’s meaningless to get hung up on questions such as “can you prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that X number of ballots were fraudulent?” When the people rigging the election are the same as the people running the election, and the same as the people sitting in judgement on the validity of the election, only one outcome is possible. That is why having a fair process is much more important than your “hard evidence”.
batenjo, Trump is the most conservative President we’ve had in the last hundred years. If that’s “not particularly conservative” then you have very peculiar political beliefs.
Severn – Yes – have a fair process. Do what is being done in FL, TX, GA and other states to button up the process to prevent shenanigans. I’d do more if I had the power. I’d get rid of (most) early voting and mail-in voting without an excuse and all of that mess.
It’s lousy that Democrats got away with what they did in 2020. It’s frightening that so many Democrats believe, as matter of principle, that destroying the integrity of our elections is their moral duty. (Just as they see it as their moral duty to destroy families with their crazy culture war, destory the economy with their green insanity, and destroy our culture with their Jacobin equity ideology.) They are the real enemies of democracy, though they will never see that.
Even given that, if you declare the election “transparently fraudulent” and nullify it, you throw out the Constitution too. There is no, “That’s enough evidence for me” exception to the portions of the Constitution that govern elections and the transfer of power. As Democrats learned with the filibuster, there is no way to say “The rules still apply to you, but I’m going to ignore them just this time because I have good reasons.” If you throw out the rules governing the transfer of power, you throw out the Constitution with it.
Given that the left controls nearly every institution in our society right now, throwing out the Constitution is NOT something that the right can afford to do. What succeeds the current Constitutional arrangement is guaranteed to strongly favor the left.
The late and very great Charles Krauthammer pointed out over 20 years ago that liberals believe conservatives are evil. And he noted that one cannot understand politics in America without understanding that.
Yes, liberals are absolutely convinced that conservatives are evil. Jonathon Haidt has made a decent first step on trying to explain why.
And yes, liberals engage in projection regularly.
They hated Nixon with a serious viciousness. They genuinely hated Reagan who was a really nice person and hard to hate. They hated Limbaugh. They hate Gingrich. They hate W Bush. They hate deeply.
Their hatred is an all-encompassing, deep hate. And Trump raised the temperature on their hate because he was the first person to ever call them on it. Even worse for them, he was the first Republican with the guts and honesty to expose the hatred and raw, partisan propaganda of the mainstream news media.
They hate. Always have. Always will. The hatred isn’t rational. It’s a religious, cult-like, emotional state. It’s how they define themselves and their moral nature.
If they didn’t have a ready target to hate, they’d have to invent one. See E. Goldstein.
A couple of things I’ve observed about many in my age peer group (age 68) . . .
They are children of the 60s-70s, Vietnam era. Being a Republican is unthinkable to them. It’s equated with being conservative (ie., Nixon) and backward looking. R’s are fascists.
They seem to be issue driven. Abortion is the main issue, followed by issues surrounding race and women. If you’re not totally down with these causes, you’re seen as exactly what’s wrong with this country, and the cause of it.
Never do I hear anything about attempting to understand issues in a historical context. And absolutely never about the deeper, longer term consequences of their progressive ideas.
I’m not as clear on the much younger generations, except that being taught a one-sided, basically unopposed, version of history seems largely to be largely at fault.
Regarding the “This goes to the heart of people’s identity as good people who opposes evil, and since Trump is evil one must oppose him in order to be good” – i think it’s the opposite.
It’s more like “we oppose Trump, so for us to be Good People, Trump must be Evil”.
The Left is certain the current opposition leader is the most vile man alive, until the next opposition leader arrives on the scene. And, remember they provide the truth, regardless of the facts.
B Ruhmsen — yes. You’re right.
As someone once said of Hillary — she wants to help people so she supports policy X. If you disagree with her about policy X, you don’t want to help people. You are evil.
Of course, that’s extraordinarily immature and morally stunted. But typical of liberals.
Trump’s term WAS “Nonstop Chaos”.
In the media.
Once election security is jettisoned there is no way to prove that fraud changed the outcome of an election.
Exactly, Neo. Process matters.
The compromises in the election processes – junk-mail voting, hasty changes in election rules, and irregular activity in counting the votes; perpetrated by judges, governors and other unauthorized parties in haste in a crisis-not-to-waste – tainted the election as much as bad police procedure taints courtroom evidence that leads to its exclusion … and the government, as opposed to its individual operatives, does not qualify for the presumption of innocence.
“Because we say so” is not sufficient.It is the job of government to proactively prove that this election was on the up-and-up, in the face of those compromises.
And there was/is an existing Constitutional process that could have been used as a remedy for the impasse caused by the compromises – but was IGNORED because too many on the Right either saw an opportunity to preserve their status quo ante by removing the man who was threatening it, or were too timid to risk being blamed for that man being “selected, not elected”. And that was reinforced by the courts ducking their duty to adjudicate the process on technicalities, for the same reasons.
The compromises are all the evidence that is needed, that this election can’t be trusted and should have been sent to the House per the Constitution to vote in a President, not merely certify a compromised election.
Of course, that would have led to Trump winning a second term, and they couldn’t validate 75 million deplorable people like that.
Jester Naybor – I’m sorry, there simply is no Constitutional method to throw out election results because you suspect fraud unless you have proof of fraud. Your proposal to shift the burden of proof to the government to prove that the election results are legitimate is completely unworkable. It is impossible to prove a negative. Every losing candidate would be able to come up with some reason to claim that the government had failed to prove that the election was legitimate.
The result would be chaos. It certainly would lead to the end of the current constitutional arrangement. If you think Democrats are upset about the Electoral College now, wait until you have to hold a majority of state US House delegations in order to win the White House. There would be a revolution.
There probably will be or this country will be a memory the yangs from the omega glory episode
Asls, trump is always furious with anger, yet no one has ever gotten a picture of him actually, you know, furious.
But we know he always is, because, ketchup.
Bauxite, if the government clearly shows its adherence to Constitutional and statutory requirements in the conduct of the election, the losing candidate has no case to challenge it. Minor errors that would not affect the outcome would be seen as such. Chaos is not inevitable.
The 2020 election process was compromised, well beyond “minor”. Enough so that the outcome remains in doubt except in the eyes of those who wanted Trump out. Therefore no proof of actual acts of fraud are required to justify rejecting the election and moving on to the Constitutional alternative, for the compromises themselves call into question the legitimacy of the election.
The government, as an entity, does not enjoy the presumption of innocence. It has to prove that it did its job right. Proper processes, clearly adhered to, prove that case.
And doubt about the accuracy of the election is itself a source for continued chaos, so legitimate leadership should be concerned about that vector for turmoil, as much as accusations that the President is “selected, not elected”.
Now, it is incumbent upon us and our elected leaders to assure that the design of the processes assures reliability, and not get swindled into expansions of mass-mailed ballots and ballot harvesting that break the chain-of-custody, and/or limits on the total transparency of the tabulation and verification processes.
It’s like the adage that the best way to thwart counterfeiting, is to have a thorough knowledge of the legitimate product.
A segue
https://youtu.be/qiAx_Fs6mdQ
I would post this on FB or MeWe, but all the horses have left the barn.
I believe I have heard the last from liberal relatives and classmates. One cannot even broach this subject with them.
Jester Naybor – There are minor violations of election law in practically every election. (Case-in-point – Democrats find sympathetic judges who allow them to keep the polls open in urban areas beyond scheduled closing time in every single election.) You mention that minor errors that would not effect the outcome would not make a case for the loser. OK, fine, but how do you decide which errors would affect the outcome and which would not?
That also shines a light on the biggest problem that Trump had in 2020. For all the evidence of monkey business, there is no proof whatsoever that the violations of election law changed the outcome, at least at the presidential level. In most states, courts made them keep track of mail-in ballots that wouldn’t have been counted but for ignoring the legal requirements. I don’t know of a single state where the number of improperly counted mail-in ballots exceeded Biden’s margin of victory. (I am aware of a State Senate race in PA where the Democrat won because of illegally counted ballots – it’s no wonder that the radicalized Republican running for Governor is a current State Senator.)
Next look at Zuckerbucks and illegal drop boxes and all of that monkey business. You cannot prove how many extra people voted in blue precincts because of Zuckerbucks, illegal drop boxes, ballot harvesting, 24 hour drive-through voting, and the like. Did these things affect the outcome? There’s a good argument that they did, but it will never be provable.
Another problem is that even if you could prove that a certain number of blue precinct people wouldn’t have bothered to vote without these extra-legal novelties, in the real world those people did vote. You’re proposing to disenfranchise them. Courts don’t like that (which is why the PA State Senate seat ended up going to the Democrat) and the general public isn’t going to like that either.
You might say that Democrats’ extra-legal shenanigans were a fraud magnet. (I agree.) Trump can’t prove enough fraudulent votes to flip any states, meaning that he can’t prove that the outcome of the election was affected. He laughably failed when he attempted to do this in court.
Next look at the Hunter Biden whitewash, which I think was probably the biggest vote-shifter of all. Sure, there are a number of polls suggesting that Trump would have won had it been known that Joe was enabling his corrupt, miscreant son (and taking a cut). There is absolutely no way to prove to effect this had on the election, though. Given the direction that the polls have failed over the last two presidential elections, do you really want to empower Democrats to nullify elections based on polls?
This is why Trump’s legal team never argued the things that Democrats actually did (i.e., ignoring election laws, couting illegal ballots, and the like). It was impossible to prove that those things affected the outcome. Instead, they argued specific instances of fraud and that Dominion voting machines switched votes. Those are things that they could have proven if they had occurred. Unfortunately, neither the specific instances of fraud argued by Trump’s team nor the Dominion theory were supported by evidence, so it was game over.
In short, changing the standard of proof from “Trump was the rightful winner” to “illegality affected the outcome” doesn’t really make a difference. There is no evidence to prove either proposition, and isn’t likely to be in the future given the means that Democrats have used.
(Finally, that doesn’t change if you shift the burden to the government. If it is impossible for a candidate to prove that illegality did affect the outcome, in any close election, it will also be impossible for the government to prove that illegaity didn’t affect the outcome – hence you’re back to chaos.)
They stole the country to tear it apart the evidence is all around you the Court was derelict in ignoring the evidence
I dont know how much of the country can be salvaged after these last two years
Bauxite:
but how do you decide which errors would affect the outcome and which would not?
By the number of votes involved in the compromises. Which would be large enough in 2020 in key areas to have affected the results.
Next look at Zuckerbucks and illegal drop boxes and all of that monkey business. You cannot prove how many extra people voted in blue precincts because of Zuckerbucks, illegal drop boxes, ballot harvesting, 24 hour drive-through voting, and the like. Did these things affect the outcome? There’s a good argument that they did, but it will never be provable.
The effect on the outcome doesn’t need to be proven – enough votes were involved in the compromises that the election cannot be trusted. The government doesn’t enjoy the presumption of innocence that would allow them to ignore that.
Either they prove the compromises were insufficient to affect the outcome, or they must declare the election untrustworthy and invalid.
The problem with the Trump defense, is the same assumption the GOP Establishment conveniently hid behind IMO … they assumed they had to prove the effect on the outcome, instead of insisting that the compromises involved enough votes to change the outcome and therefore were prima facie evidence that the election could not be trusted … and Congress should have instead moved on to the Constitutional contingency procedure.
If the government follows sound process, with the total number of votes involved in deviations from the process (adjusted for their effect upon Electoral College results) insufficient to change the outcome, the election can be considered legit.
Otherwise it is not.