Home » Muzzling Trump

Comments

Muzzling Trump — 72 Comments

  1. neo,

    I agree with your final paragraph and I’m already disgusted that it looks like we will be forced to relive 2016 again.

    I know a lot of comment’ers here get mad when this is pointed out, but this is why Trump should not be running for the GOP nomination. It sucks all the air out of the room and turns the race into a complete circus.

    This is how we got Woodrow Wilson.

  2. So outrageous, so egregiously destructive of the traditional norms of the republic, so uncomfortably reminiscent of the totalitarian tactics of many a police state is this truly “unprecedented” persecution (dating back to his descent of the escalator in 2015 and taking multitudinous forms over the last eight years) that Ric Grenell has recently suggested that all the other potential candidates should drop out and endorse Trump (as reported, several days ago, by Breitbart).

  3. I think a gag order guaranteed. The prosecutors and the judge want him silenced all while they leak to the press relentlessly.

  4. The question I ask is this- will Trump comply this time? I wouldn’t in his circumstances.

  5. Rufus, the Rubicon has been crossed. I don’t care who the nominee is, the same will be done to them as has been done to Trump, and largely because the Right can muster no pushback whatsoever. Instead we get complaints about how Trump should shuffle off and stop annoying us so that we can get back to running respectable lose……..candidates who the press and justice system will treat fairly.

  6. Blatant election interference on the part of Bragg, and whoever he reports to, and whoever it is that they both answer to. Hillary Clinton?

    And yet Douglass Mackey faces 10 years in prison for “election fraud.”

  7. I have to concur completely with Yancey Ward. Trump is anything but flawless but he is the canary in the coal mine. We can all have our differences and preferences for if he should be the nominee in 2024 or not, but that is secondary. They are committing hideous breaches of American law and ethics.

    And the dominant reason why 2020 played out the way it did was opaque voting accountability, illegal changes to the methods, and fraud. Arguments that it was easier with Trump are ultimately secondary details. Without that in mind, we have to stand strong or else every election might be a repeat of 2020.

  8. I respectfully demur. In my daily encounters with people in my neighborhood and its near abroad (as the Rooskies are fond of calling it), there is almost universal disgust at the blatant political shenanigans being orchestrated and the reaction is frequently that, although they were not really enthused about another Trump run at the White House, they intend to vote for him if he runs just to send a message to the crooks in DC that their reign of BS is over. So, we’ll see.

  9. The ‘progressive’ left is determined to never again lose a Presidential election and will resort to whatever means are necessary to retain the Presidency. They are “all in”.

    Political persecution. Electoral fraud. Assassination.

    Whatever it takes…

  10. “NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition — a legacy put into humor by Brits some 50 years ago.

    I FULLY expect this muzzle to occur. EXPECT it.

    Yancey writes “ The question I ask is this- will Trump comply this time? I wouldn’t in his circumstances.”

    Nor would I. I expect Trump to bait them and the fascist’s party to clamp down, and our great President become an international martyr.

    Rally’s of Patriots and Black Bloc and Antifa violence sure to follow.

  11. A gag order on Trump? They may try. Trump will get his message out, just like they do – leaks and stand-ins. My gawd, the man owns a social media network. He has backers and supporters in every phase of American life. People will gladly leak, speak, or write in ways that get his message out. Unless the judge tries to gag the entire society.

    There are a lot of lefties who are thrilled by this indictment, but a large number of moderates and all conservatives recognize the plain unfairness of this outrageous show trial. It is, IMO, helping Trump.

    Rufus T., I know you long for normality, as we all do. These are not normal times. Joie Biden is not a normal POTUS, Garland is not a normal Attorney General, Mayorkas is not a normal Secretary of Homeland Security, and the country is teetering on the brink of economic disaster or worse. These are times that try men’s/women’s souls.

    It’s a long time before the 2024 election. A whole lot of things can happen, surprising things. We don’t know who the nominee will be, but IMO, if Trump is the nominee, we’ve got to0 back him. It’s pretty simplle.

  12. “THIS is Tyranny” states Mark Levin — no different than those seen in communist countries or fascist countries.

    The fact that we are supposed to be different, and have long been different, does not mean that a Party and a movement cannot go rogue and self-congratulatorily cross the Rubicon into Tyranny.

    This video clip has. SPINE STIFFENING words from Levin, just days ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT8jCvHY9yc

    EVIL days are upon us — EVIL doing to us.

  13. Good point, JJ, on the multiple ways Trump can get his message out. A gag order would be ridiculous with all the leaks on the other side; speaking of which, someone has noted that the leak of the prospective charges from the grand jury is a felony.

  14. thats what the RESTRICT act is about it, maybe Lindsey brought it from his good pal Erdogan, who makes common cause with Maduro’s Venezuela,

    there were only border skirmishes when Trump was in charge, now with Shambling, we have 100,000 dead perhaps on both sides, our strategic reserve,
    depleted, Children being twisted in mind, and mutilated in body, cities ravaged by modern day vandals, but sure Orange Mad bad,

  15. charles mccarry, company man, ghost writer, was very prophetic in the late 70s, in better angels he predicted a group like al queda, the eye of gaza, a media culture that was in full thrall to their madness, the target was a former businessman who would challenge the deep state, until he was replaced by a pliable figurehead, lockhart, who would run the country into the ground,

  16. franklin mallory runs again, after this interval, and is defeated by digital voting machines, in the sequel written almost a quarter century later, lockhart is impeached even though he ‘won’ because there is a darker scheme afoot,

  17. Democrats have ruined my family, and I am damned sick of it, but they want to do it to the whole country now.

  18. Fun facts to do with what you will:
    USSR Leaves Afghanistan: 02/15/89
    USSR Collapses: 12/26/91
    Days elapsed: 1044

    US Leaves Afghanistan: 08/30/21
    US date + 1044 days: 07/09/24
    Days until that date: 463

  19. While unprecedented, I do not consider this sequence of events unusual where Trump is concerned. There is a special set of rules & reactions for him, all his own. The most common name, ‘derangement’ seems to be the most accurate description for these seemingly bizarre and extreme emotional activities, backed by a ruthless exploitation of the letter of law or parliamentary rules. What madness could drive such single-minded mania across a group?

    It’s the same exact set of behaviors that brought about the first, and then second sham impeachments. By any historical measure or comparison, the two impeachments were absurd and poorly supported, if at all, by evidence of sufficient gravitas that would support the effort. It’s the same here. Leftists will celebrate ‘Indictment’ just as they crowed exaltedly about ‘Impeachment’, as if the opportunity to use the word carried some special totem magic.

    Right now the imbeciles on Fox are covering ground over and over again on the substance of potential charges, the statute of limitations, etc. etc. etc. The fools; these things are of little importance. The fingerprints, the mugshot, the hopes for a perp walk – these are the important, powerful, symbolic magical things.

  20. miguel: Nice to see your allusion to Charles McCarry, that peerless author of espionage and political fiction.

  21. The question in my mind is why do they have this continuing obsession with the man? He’s not a threat to their massive power and there’s no way they would allow him to win in 2024. Not that it would matter anyways, as we can’t vote ourselves out of the comprehensive mess we’re in.

    The conclusion I reach is that it’s out of sheer hatred, spite, and thirst for revenge over 2016.

  22. @Marisa: “The conclusion I reach is that it’s out of sheer hatred, spite, and thirst for revenge over 2016.”

    This. That’s all it can be.

    Some say the point of this maneuver is to ensure that Trump wins the GOP nomination in 2024, Trump supposedly being the only opponent Biden can beat. But with Our Democracy (TM) well and truly fortified, it doesn’t matter who the Republicans nominate.

    That said, it doesn’t matter who the Democrats nominate, either. I’m betting it won’t be Biden.

  23. Aggie, it’s called pure hatred, unadulterated demonization, deep-down, evisceral loathing.

    To be sure, where these things are concerned there is always a rather large element of fear (but we’ll leave that to the armchair psychologists…).

    It bears repeating that in this sense, Trump is the FIRST Jewish president, insofar as, for historical-religious reasons, the Jews were no strangers to such treatment. (And one must keep in mind his being given—repeatedly, continually, consistently, unceasingly, self-righteously and FEROCIOUSLY—the Alfred Dreyfus treatment while president).

    What is rather curious—to me, at least—is that in the case of Trump, so many people who would seem to identify as Jews decided, for whatever reason, to position themselves on the DEMONIZING side….

    (Did I say “curious”? Actually, I probably should have said “HORRIFYING”….)

  24. VDH is correct https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/02/indict-one-and-all/ :

    “the Left is saying to America something along the following lines, “We are so morally superior to you that we can and must employ any means necessary to achieve our unpopular political ends. But you cannot respond in kind or deter us by mimicking our own tactics, because should both parties do so, the resulting disorder would undermine the republic. And that is something you won’t dare do.”

    1. The belief in moral superiority is, itself, evil. It’s the essence of evil.

    2. The destruction of the constitution, rule of law, and foundations of America is so horrifying that most Americans aren’t able to fully comprehend what is happening. Are afraid to.

    3. Democrats/liberals/progressives/leftists have been waging an all out war on truth and reality. Big Brother is real and here. Democrat voters have embraced all the horrors of “1984” and are cheering a dystopian future. Evil is all around us.

    If the horror of Big Brother isn’t evil, the word no longer has any meaning.

    Powerline’s Hinderaker used the word “demonic” to describe Democrats the other day. He’s also correct.

    Six innocent people were gunned down in Nashville. Democrats blamed the victims. Because Democrats are evil.

  25. I think Marisa and Molly are right.

    Getting Trump isn’t about 2024. Democrats already know how to steal the election. Getting Trump is about hate. It’s about petty, immature, morally defective people using whatever weapon is available to try to destroy someone they hate.

    The animating hatred driving the Trump witch hunt is the same that targeted Clarence Thomas and Kavanaugh. It is the same animating hatred that created the Russia collusion hoax, the impeachments, the Jan 6 persecutions, and the Whitmer hoax.

    People of the Lie hate. Period. The hatred drives them, motivates them, animates them, and slowly destroys their humanity.

  26. I Don’t give the Dems as much credit as some of you think – that they are deviously ensuring that Trump is the nominee, because they think he’ll be the easiest to beat. They simply want power and control, always have and always will, and that is their only goal, and Trump stands in their way to achieving permanent power.
    BTW, it doesn’t matter a whit who the Republican nominee is, because the Dems will NOT allow him/her to ever win in blue battleground cities. It’s ballots they count and not votes.

  27. I will not be surprised if Trump is subjected to the most humiliating experiences possible.
    It is no big deal to find in NYC a judge, jury, prosecutors, witnesses that have a white hot hatred of Trump and they will bend or outright violate the law and lie through their teeth to humiliate if not convict Trump.

    Find me the man and I will show you the crime.
    Lavrentiya Beria would be proud.

    The real big lesson of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, Castro, etc., is the ease and facility it is to find many thousands of “ordinary” folks to do the real dirty work; those that carry out the orders without hesitancy , including the killing.
    Bragg, et. al., are no different, metaphorically speaking, than those “willing executioners” one reads about in history books.

  28. A bit off topic, but what happened last night in the Tennessee legislature, is I’m afraid, a preview of what’s in store for us all. As I said before, the political violence is ramping up.

  29. If Trump runs I will vote for him again. I reluctantly voted for him the first time because I didn’t want Hillary. However, he totally surprised me and did all sorts of wonderful things – despite being mocked and challenged every step of the way.

    I have come to realize that we do NEED Trump because the usual candidates that the Republicans put forth in the past such as McCain and Romney just don’t have what it takes to properly challenge/take on the dirty tricks of the Democrats. While I do believe either of them would have made good presidents; at this point our Republic needs someone who can keep the Democrats from ruining our country as we know it.

    If Trump isn’t the Republican nominee and it is DeSantis I can only hope that he will have the moxie (how’s that for an old fashioned word?) to do a Trump number on them and be successful.

    Yea, I would like to have politics return to a somewhat normal and civilized state; but, that Trump is indicted on charges that should have also put slick Willy and others in jail while they went free tells us that the politics-as-civility ship has sailed.

  30. @Marisa:The conclusion I reach is that it’s out of sheer hatred, spite, and thirst for revenge over 2016.

    I think it’s more pour encourageur les autres*. They have a nice little scam going in Washington D. C., sucking money out of our pockets and spending it with their friends, and outsiders are not invited. Trump is an opportunity to deliver that message to the rest of us. An ideal President, from the D. C. perspective, does not meddle with the system of rent-seeking, pork-barrelling, and regulatory capture which Red-Blue drama exists to distract voters from.

    Beyond that, Democrats publicly oppose the changes Trump was sent by Republican voters to make, and a plurality of elected Republicans found that Trump made it harder to pretend to support those changes publicly, since his election made it possible for those changes to really come to pass, at least on paper. (The actual people who work for the Federal government, enforce its laws and carry out its policies, are overwhelmingly Democrat and simply weren’t going to allow any fundamental change.)

    Beyond the Presidency, it’s a message that no one is to work to support outsiders even if they get in. Trump’s new lawyer had to resign from his law firm in order to represent Trump. If Trump were to be reelected–which we’re not going to see happen, since the purple states in the Electoral College are now “fortified”–no one who went to serve under him would be allowed to do anything else in Washington, D. C. again, even if they managed to avoid being charged with felonies. The system is protecting itself.

    *”…in this country it is considered useful now and again to shoot an admiral, to encourage the others.”

  31. JJ and others,

    I don’t long for normalcy and I agree the Democrat party is out of control. Trump served his purpose and he is not the one to lead going forward.

    Trump can be a great, inspiring voice for many as well as a vicious attack dog fighting the left without also running for President.

    neo is spot on when she writes:

    “… this indictment is designed to foster the ultimate goal of boosting Trump among his supporters and leading to his GOP nomination while simultaneously making those in the middle recoil from voting for him in the general.”

  32. And, I will add, this is also about Ron DeSantis. Trump overshadows everything, as he always does. Imagine Trump had never run for President, nor been President. Now look at Ron DeSantis. Whether you like him or not he is, on paper, literally one of the most viable candidates the Republicans have ever run. With his resume, intellect and shrewdness he can easily appeal to many moderates and he has shown he is more than willing to fight the left. If you were the Democrats who would you rather have run against the extremely weak and unpopular Joe Biden?

    DeSantis’ Resume:
    Great, great grandson of Italians who immigrated to Pennsylvania.
    Working class background; mother was a nurse, father installed Nielsen ratings boxes.
    Got into Yale where he worked part time jobs to help pay his way.
    Voted captain of Yale’s baseball team and had the team’s highest batting average.
    Graduated magna cum laude.
    A year after graduation was accepted to Harvard Law school where he graduated with a Juris Doctor cum laude.
    Commissioned as a Naval officer while at Harvard law.
    Served in Iraq.
    Awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, and the Iraq Campaign Medal.
    Three terms in the U.S. Congress.
    Governor of the second most populous state in the U.S.
    Re-elected governor with the largest vote margin in state history.

    Show me another Presidential candidate in the past 40 years with a resume like that.

  33. @Rufus T. Firefly:If you were the Democrats who would you rather have run against the extremely weak and unpopular Joe Biden?

    If I were a Democrat I wouldn’t care who ran against Joe Biden because whoever my party puts in that slot, Joe Biden or not, will win. There’s only a few states that tip the election and my party has sewn up the system of how ballots are counted in those states. My party already elected a brain damaged guy and a dead guy in the last election. At any rate if I’m a Democrat I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with Joe Biden.

    If I’m a Democrat my party controls the national media and social media, so no voter is going to hear about DeSantis’ resume, they’re just going to hear that he’s Hitler and not one of the old principled conservatives like George W. Bush who was only ever respectfully shown he was wrong and never ever compared to Hitler.

    Given that whoever my party puts in that slot will win, I want the one who will see to it that the my friends get paid and my foes go to jail, and who wants to keep it that way forever, and Biden’s been delivering on that.

    It’s not 1980 anymore. The voters don’t decide the elections. The people harvesting and counting the ballots decide the elections. The quality of the candidates counts for sweet FA.

  34. Frederick,

    By your reasoning:

    In an election cycle that was less controlled by the Democrats in 2018 Ron DeSantis barely beat the Democrat candidate.
    Then, after four years of Democrats instituting a plethora of voting shenanigans that ensure they get much higher vote margins, the same guy, DeSantis, wins by 20 points.

    How do you explain that?

    I don’t disagree that there are states where Dems are playing games with elections but I don’t agree those games are insurmountable, or unbeatable. Florida seems to have figured out how to ensure fair elections, even with mail-in voting. Other states have also.

    The GOP has to get busier ensuring the same controls are in place across the country. And they are.

  35. Frederick,

    I also disagree that the Dems don’t care who Biden runs against.

    They care a great deal. And the majority know there is plenty wrong with Biden. If he wins he’ll be 85 years old at the end of his next term.

    Trump faced ridiculous, insane attacks from Leftists. And Trump’s personality resulted in his base getting more energized but folks in the middle growing repulsed by his personality.

    DeSantis faced ridiculous, insane attacks from Leftists and, through his response, grew his base by huge margins.

    To be clear; I am no DeSantis fanboy. I’m just trying my best to look at the facts on the ground in an unbiased manner. Do I want a wounded, controversial, recent loser and 76 year old businessman heading the ticket, or a victorious, youthful, scholar, lawyer, Congressman, athlete, Governor on the ballot?

  36. @Rufus:In an election cycle that was less controlled by the Democrats in 2018 Ron DeSantis barely beat the Democrat candidate.

    In Florida. Which is not the whole country. It’s not the states that are needed: Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota.

    Then, after four years of Democrats instituting a plethora of voting shenanigans that ensure they get much higher vote margins, the same guy, DeSantis, wins by 20 points.

    In Florida. Which is not the whole country. It’s not the states that are needed: Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota.

    How do you explain that?

    Because the states DeSantis needs to win the Presidency are not Florida. He needs to win Florida plus other states where they don’t know him and the machine that controls elections is held by the other party.

    The GOP has to get busier ensuring the same controls are in place across the country. And they are.

    How are they doing in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin? Because of the Electoral College, it doesn’t help if they improve election controls in Texas and Florida. It doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t help.

    If you read Powerline you have a good idea about how Minnesota and Wisconsin are doing. Minnesota seem receptive to letting Republicans get elected? And if the D justice gets elected in Wisconsin today, how you think their Supreme Court is going to handle any election shenanigans in 2024?

    DeSantis faced ridiculous, insane attacks from Leftists and, through his response, grew his base by huge margins.

    In Florida. How’s he doing in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

    Do I want a wounded, controversial, recent loser and 76 year old businessman heading the ticket, or a victorious, youthful, scholar, lawyer, Congressman, athlete, Governor on the ballot?

    Yes, I’m sure the media will get right on telling the public the facts about DeSantis.

    Everyone already knows Trump. Nobody knows DeSantis except people like us, who are like 0.1% of the electorate. The media will define DeSantis like they do every Republican and social media will not allow people like us to get our views out.

    They’ve already been running “worse than Trump” stories. They’ve already made an episode of “The Good Fight” where he’s accused of gay rape!

  37. @Rufus T. Firefly:. And Trump’s personality resulted in his base getting more energized but folks in the middle growing repulsed by his personality.

    I separated this one out. How do you even know this is true? If you read it somewhere, the original source was the same media that “lies” to you and about you about everything else, right, and cherry-picks polls?

    It’s pretty easy to determine how many Electoral College votes Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin have, and compare that with the states Trump won, and it’s easy to see that 270 is a majority of the Electoral College. The media cannot really mislead you about that.

    But they can feed you stories like “Trump’s personality lost moderate voters” and you can’t independently check that. Just think about how you know the things you think you know, is all I’m asking.

  38. Would Trump defy a gag order? Why not? Let them put him in jail, his poll numbers will go through the roof. I would actually kind of like the “defy the gag order” tactic. If Democrats are going to act like tyrants, make they go whole hog.

    To Rufus’s points, you have to consider who can win and who will be effective in office.

    On the first point, if you are a rigth-of-center candidate and you have to work hard to convince people like Rufus and me to vote for you, it’s game-over man. You will not win. If people like Rufus and me are seriously considering sitting out an election or voting third party rather than voting for Trump as the Republican nominee, the chances of winning the persuadable voters that a Republican needs are precisely zero. Trumpers say that we have to vote for Trump because the alternative is Biden. I say that they need to vote for someone other than Trump in the primary, because the alternative to nominiating someone other than Trump is four more years of Biden. (Rufus – I recall you stating earlier that you would not vote for Trump in 2024 – Please correct me if I’m misrepresenting.)

    On the second point, what progress did Trump make against the woke in his first four years? He certainly sampled his share of woke tears (mean tweets and all), but were the woke weaker in 2021 than they were in 2020? No way. They were clearly stronger. Maybe we need to try something else.

  39. Frederick:

    Anecdotes from 2016, lots of voters were turned off by the Trump personality effect. It seems many of those voters in 2020 decided to ignore the Trump personality effect.

    Yeah and its not Florida. Globetrotters.

  40. Another point – to those who say that Democrats will do this to anyone: Do you really not see how much weaker Trump’s position is because of the sleaze factor?

    How would they charge DeSantis? I suspect it will be kind of like what they tried to do to Rick Perry a few years back. Rick Perry’s indictment was more ridiculous than Trump’s, but it happened before Trump when there was still a certain respect associated with a criminal indictment. Rick Perry beat the rap because the charges were beyond silly, but also because Perry was right on the merits.

    Do you really not see how many people Trump is losing just because of the sordidness of the raw material he provides to his enemies?

  41. @Bauxite:the chances of winning the persuadable voters that a Republican needs are precisely zero.

    The ballots that will decide the 2024 Presidential election will not have been cast by “persuadable voters”. This is not 1980.

    the alternative to nominiating someone other than Trump is four more years of Biden

    We’re getting four more years of a D President, Biden or not, unless you have a plan for Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. I’ve asked you before, and you’ve said nothing, and you’ve presented no Electoral College alternative to those three states.

    Do you really not see how many people Trump is losing just because of the sordidness of the raw material that he provides to his enemies?

    And when the media is using “gay rape” and DeSantis together in the same sentence, you’ll say that’s not fair. But they already know he didn’t do it, the point is get people talking about him doing it, and they’ll run clips from “The Good Fight” as many times as needed.

    Vote for DeSantis if you want. Don’t vote for Trump if you want. Do what makes you happy. But I suggest having a plan for what you’ll do and where you’ll go when the R doesn’t win two out of three of Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin.

  42. Trump doesn’t need to speak about the case!

    He needs to speak about the simple fact that Biden has committed TREASON, and Congress has the receipts. That’s ALL he needs to speak about, over and over, until the truth of it breaks through.

    If Trump quits speaking about himself, the Dems will be caught flatfooted, and he wins!

  43. all states where they stole in 2020, and 2022, to keep the murder governors in place, meanwhile they draw every drop from the strategic reserve, including the critical diesel reserve,

  44. Frederick – You want a plan? How about, don’t run the guy who lost MI, WI, and MN last time? Maybe try something (or someone) different?

    Trump won MI and WI in 2016 by about 20k votes combined. He lost MI and WI in 2020 by ten times that amount. Trump lost MN by over 40k votes in 2016, and then lost by about 250k votes in 2020. With the possible exception of WI, Trump’s 2020 numbers in these states were not “margin of fraud” type results.

    Again, the popular definition of insanity – doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. If you’re saying that no Republican can win so we might as well run Trump, I’m not onboard. Again, if what you do the first time doesn’t work, try something different.

  45. @Bauxite: If you’re saying that no Republican can win so we might as well run Trump, I’m not onboard.

    Absolutely not what I am saying. I’m saying this is not decided by voting. It’s being decided by counting ballots, which is not the same thing as voting.

    doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result.

    Have you been voting for Republicans and conservatives all your life? And here we are with taxpayer-funded sex changes for children, on pain of having the state take them from you if you refuse, which is where Minnesota is today? And are you expecting different results by continuing to vote for Republicans and conservatives? You didn’t vote for any of that and you still got it. It’s not about voting, and hasn’t been for a while.

    …try something different.

    It’s going to take a lot of different things, and Trump vs DeSantis is perfect to keep you distracted from knowing what those things are and working toward them.

    By all means. Work to get DeSantis the nomination, watch him lose MN by 50K votes instead of 250K, watch him lose Wisconsin by 10K votes instead of 20K, and then execute your backup plan. Hopefully you made one.

    You didn’t say what the vote totals were in Wisconsin, just the margin. I’ll rectify that. In 2016 Trump got 1.4 million votes, and in 2020 Trump got 1.6 million. Trump didn’t lose votes, he gained them. Somehow, the Ds in Wisconsin got 200,000 more ballots in and counted over and above Trump’s extra 200K than in 2016. Somehow. See my point? If DeSantis makes it 1.7 M then they have to count another 100K for the Dems to make it up, that’s all.

    You can’t compare blame 2020 on votes Trump “lost”. He didn’t lose votes, he gained votes. If you think Trump’s behavior put off hundreds of thousands of people then how did his vote total go up by so much?

    The Dems found more to count, that’s all. They’ll keep doing it.

  46. Frederick,

    It is up to the GOP to fight the Democrats tactics in MN, WI, MI and PA. In each election cycle the GOP always seems to be surprised and amazed that the other side is trying to win. Trump did a terrible job of anticipating what the Dems would do in the run-up to the 2020 election and he did an awful job of leading the GOP in the run-up to the election. Trump is great at bombast and offensive verbiage. Leading long term actions that result in positive change? I didn’t see a lot of that during his Presidency.

    Yes, it was not a fair fight because much of the mainstream GOP was not in favor of Trump and wanted him to lose, but that’s another data point. A lot of Republicans HATE DJT. Is it fair? Is it right? We can debate that for hours, but it doesn’t matter regarding the next campaign. Reality is what matters.

    And, as someone who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, I will tell you, in my personal experience, DJT made it very hard for me to vote for him. About 1/3 of the stuff he said and wrote was off-putting and a good 1/3 of that was outright insane. The leader of the free world cannot be verbally assaulting people who we are not at war with. Donald Trump makes a lot of extremely exaggerated, absurd remarks. When they are aimed at one’s enemies one tends to ignore them*, but that doesn’t warrant the behavior. The President of the U.S. has immense power and his or her statements can affect a great deal. DJT’s lack of impulse control is a continual risk.

    *Or laugh. Many of them are downright hilarious! The guy has a quick wit.

  47. @Rufus:I will tell you, in my personal experience, DJT made it very hard for me to vote for him.

    I believe you, but Trump got 11 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016, and that’s hard to explain if he’d been “putting off” voters, and so how you feel doesn’t seem that representative.

    Reality is what matters.

    Agreed, and the reality is that 2024 election hinges on how ballots are counted in 3 states, one of which will now take your kids away if you don’t let them become transgender. So, you might want to plan for what you’ll do if the R doesn’t win 2 out of those 3 states, and be ready to do it. By all means, don’t vote for Trump if it wouldn’t make you happy. By all means, vote for DeSantis if it will.

  48. How to break through the media wall protecting Biden? Easy – use a simple message, “Biden took money from China”.

    Repeat that to the exclusion of everything else. If Republicans keep hammering on that, and the proof of it, there won’t be anything else the media can report. Sure, let Mitt Romney try to help them out with some juicy anti-Trump stuff. Let the Chinese try to help the Dems explain away the money, too!

    Starve the media of anything except “Biden Sold America!”

  49. Rufus T., makes a strong case for DeSantis as opposed to Trump. My argument is not that Republicans must choose Trump but that, if he is the nominee, we have to stick with him.

    DeSantis has a great resume and has done a good job as governor. He would make a good candidate for President. Can he win the nomination? If he does, I will certainly support him.

    We need to put aside these differences over which Republican is the perfect candidate. ANY Republican is superior to whoever the Democrat candidate will be. I mean that, If the candite turns out to be Nikki Haley, or Mike Pompeo, or Vivek Ramaswamy, or ???; I will support that person.

    I also agree with Frederick that the candidate doesn’t matter as much as the ground game in swing states. The GOP needs to spend a lot of money in the swing states working to clean up the voter registration rolls, ensure a proper chain of custody of the ballots, and make sure the counting of votes is closely monitored by both parties.

    When candidates liker Fetterman, Hobbs, and Murray can be elected, it’s clear that candidate quality means less and vote counting reigns supreme. That’s the reality of today’s world. If we want to win in 2024, we have to deal with it.

  50. CC™ considers sitting out 2024 or voting 3rd party because, ….. forgets 2016 – 2020, and 2020 – 2022.

    Sad indeed.

  51. JJ
    If I were a Democrat (thankfully I am not) I would want Donald Trump to be the GOP nominee. His big mouth always sinks him.

    “DeSantis has a great resume and has done a good job as governor. He would make a good candidate for President. Can he win the nomination? If he does, I will certainly support him.” – The fact is Donald Trump cannot win a genreal election any more. 2016 was a one-off – Hilary did not take him seriously and felt that she could coast to a vicgtory. Combine that with her unlovable personality, and ignoring the MidWest states – Trump was able to sneak in. In 2020 he could not beat one of hte worst Democratic candidates ever (yes Big Tech refusing to allow any mention of the Hunter Biden laptop helped) and the public has grown weary of the Trump saga with his whining aobut the 2020 election.

  52. Trump is anything but flawless but he is the canary in the coal mine. We can all have our differences and preferences for if he should be the nominee in 2024 or not, but that is secondary. They are committing hideous breaches of American law and ethics.

    Yes. Lots of comments about Trump’s negatives. Trump could ask voters, as Reagan did in 1980, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

    The outrageous actions by the TDS left cannot be left to stand. If a gag order should be imposed, defy it. I was more enthusiastic about DeSantis before I saw who was running and funding his campaign. Karl Rove and the Bush team are almost all the support DeSantis has.

  53. Frederick – It’s really not that hard to explain. Trump is the greatest GOTV machine ever invented, but he gets out the D vote as much as (and likely more than) he gets out the R vote.

  54. @bauxite:but he gets out the D vote as much as

    Where are the ballots coming from? Voters not required. No ballot can be traced back to a voter. It just has to be counted.

    You’re assuming elections worked like they did in 1980, and they don’t. What follows is not from a tinfoil-hat site, it’s from the people who did it bragging about it in Time magazine:

    They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. “The untold story of the election is the thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation,” says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and former Obama Administration official who recruited Republicans and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program.

    Yeah, Trump got those D voters out. The “fortifiers” won’t do the same to DeSantis. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.

    You show me how DeSantis is going to pull Wisconsin and Michigan. There’s plenty more ballots to count over and above 2020’s totals.

  55. Stan
    I try to follow the political discussions on this board. There is the least flaming and insulting of anyplace I’ve seen. And the most knowledgeable.

    But your description of the “hate”, I fear, trumps all else. I know people like that. Nearly spitting, irrational, misinformed, lying, fact-free (“fifty seven thousand documented lies”) hate with absolutely zero interest in reality.

    As it happens, we are keeping two dogs for those out of town on spring break. I note that they operate in pursuit of their welfare; food, outside to poop, soft place to lie down, come up for attention, in what could be called rational actions based on their understanding of their world and the extent of their training of their temporary humans.

    You spoke of dehumanizing. These two dogs, calm german shorthair and a muscular black lab of almost two years with too much energy, are more human in the sense of acting rationally than the haters you describe and whom I know.

    I hope, but I fear it’s vain, that the haters aren’t the swing vote.

  56. @Bauxite

    It’s really not that hard to explain. Trump is the greatest GOTV machine ever invented, but he gets out the D vote as much as (and likely more than) he gets out the R vote.

    Yeah, that MIGHT work as an explanation….. except you have cases like Milwaukee where several wards “accidentally” turned in more than 100% of the vote. Something that is completely impossible on a theoretical level. And which was then “corrected” down to “merely” being PRACTICALLY impossible with 90% and 80% turnouts. Rates that would raise eyebrows in highly contentious, passionate ITALIAN elections, but which are utterly alien to modern US ones.

    You simply do not get those rates among Americans in major urban areas. Pretty much ever. Which tells me that while your explanation isn’t hard to put out, it’s also incredibly easy to break over my leg and ratifies what Frederick has claimed.

    Would Trump defy a gag order? Why not? Let them put him in jail, his poll numbers will go through the roof. I would actually kind of like the “defy the gag order” tactic. If Democrats are going to act like tyrants, make they go whole hog.

    Agreed.

    To Rufus’s points, you have to consider who can win and who will be effective in office.

    Which is why it is important to point to people with a history of somewhat effective governing, which I do think fits both DeSantis and Trump.

    On the first point, if you are a rigth-of-center candidate and you have to work hard to convince people like Rufus and me to vote for you, it’s game-over man. You will not win. If people like Rufus and me are seriously considering sitting out an election or voting third party rather than voting for Trump as the Republican nominee, the chances of winning the persuadable voters that a Republican needs are precisely zero.

    Which isn’t supported by the voter tallies, especially since as Frederick pointed out Trump did not lose votes in most jurisdictions in 2020, even according to the “official” figures and even facing the massive combined headwind of the left and a GOP Swamp.

    You and Rufus have generally been solid commentators and your votes should be counted as any others (doesn’t mean they WILL be) but they aren’t the end all to be all of what determines an election. Whether or not 2024 will be done legitimately or not. If legitimately it will be determined by the magnitude of those who vote. If not it will be determined by the magnitude of imaginary people turning in bogus ballots to be counted by left wing machines.

    In either case blaming Trump is at best touching on a tertiary issue.

    Trumpers say that we have to vote for Trump because the alternative is Biden. I say that they need to vote for someone other than Trump in the primary, because the alternative to nominiating someone other than Trump is four more years of Biden. (Rufus – I recall you stating earlier that you would not vote for Trump in 2024 – Please correct me if I’m misrepresenting.)

    To which I say GO STUFF YOURSELF.

    WHAT PART OF THE PAST THREE YEARS HAS SATISFIED YOU?!!?

    I’m one of those few people on here who is prepared to give the Junta its due because I find SOME of their policies like on Ukraine to be moderately competent. .But that absolutely does not translate into being willing or able to swallow down everything. People have been kept without charge in inhumane conditions for years in DC. The Left has been engaging in massive censorship writ large using social media, which we are only just getting into. They are now further weaponizing the legal system.

    And you want to sit here on the sinking ship of the US and issue demands for what you will vote?

    TO HELL with THAT.

    I am not by any stretch of the imagination a fanatical “Trumper.” I am generally supportive of him even now and believe he is blamed too much, though obviously he deserves plenty of blame. If nominated for President, I WILL VOTE FOR HIM. If DeSantis is nominated for President, I WILL VOTE FOR HIM, and indeed I am likely to support him in the Primary.

    At this point, if the dead tuchus of Theodore Roosevelt were nominated to run for Republican Candidate for President, I VOTE FOR IT. Precisely BECAUSE I view the situation as so dire and desperate that I am willing to unite around just about any moderately conscientious and moderately capable candidate to oppose that. And I would be so desperate I am prepared to start lowering standards in terms of the “consciencious” and “capable” qualifiers.

    Issuing ultimatums to us indicates you are not taking this situation anywhere near as seriously as you should be, and that you would rather blame Trump than the people who suppressed exculpatory information about people like the J6 Shaman. That tells me your precious opinion and judgement are not of great value on this issue, and it makes me LESS likely to want to throw you a bone.

    Because you’re acting like the NeverTrumpers who happily turncoated to the Left back in 2016.

    And you want to issue orders and conditions to the rest of us on high like Moses on Mount Sinai?

    Yeah, No.

    On the second point, what progress did Trump make against the woke in his first four years? He certainly sampled his share of woke tears (mean tweets and all), but were the woke weaker in 2021 than they were in 2020? No way. They were clearly stronger. Maybe we need to try something else.

    Delusion isn’t helping you.

    Firstly: Trump did make rather broad strides in restraining LGBTQ+ and DIE, especially in American Schools. They were not as effective as they should have been but they were starts.

    Secondly: Trump went through and fired or removed from power a great deal of the left among the civil servants, which is one reason why so many of them quickly shifted to feigning compliance and loyalty to him. Which unfortunately worked far better than it should have but also limited their scope for action.

    Thirdly: Have you literally not studied his championship of Conservatives in the judiciary?

    Ingratitude AND lack of good judgement and situational awareness are not an appealing combination. They also make it seem as if you would readily abandon DeSantis as you have abandoned Trump if and when things start to go South for Him (as they unquestionably WILL at at least some points). That does nothing to make me weigh your opinions and stances more clearly.

    And I’m one of the people who is practically “anybody but the left” at this point and who is happy to embrace DeSantis and mostly blames Trump for the spats he has with DeSantis.

    Another point – to those who say that Democrats will do this to anyone: Do you really not see how much weaker Trump’s position is because of the sleaze factor?

    Answer: No, and neither do you.

    Especially since we don’t order people Al La Carte, and Trump’s sleaze is in a package deal with the rest of him, including his charisma and spontaneity and sometimes good, sometimes poor judgement and common touch.

    And that helped increase his votes and gave him a fairly successful in spite of the odds 2016 one.

    How would they charge DeSantis?

    Answer: any way they can.

    I suspect it will be kind of like what they tried to do to Rick Perry a few years back. Rick Perry’s indictment was more ridiculous than Trump’s, but it happened before Trump when there was still a certain respect associated with a criminal indictment. Rick Perry beat the rap because the charges were beyond silly, but also because Perry was right on the merits.

    And also when naked abuse of our criminal justice system was much less blatant and much less targeted against the vox populi. After January 6th and what happened to those defendants, I have no interest in gambling.

    Which is why even if you oppose Trump, we have every right and justification to DEMAND you stand alongside him at least in terms of legal defense precisely BECAUSE if they can screw him on this case, they can and will screw DeSantis.

    Do you really not see how many people Trump is losing just because of the sordidness of the raw material he provides to his enemies?

    Do you?

    Because I mostly see a lot of anecdotes and vague statements. Which aren’t worthless but are not exactly able to compete with voter turnout results in 2016.

    Frederick – You want a plan? How about, don’t run the guy who lost MI, WI, and MN last time? Maybe try something (or someone) different?

    So your answer is fucking delusion?!?!

    And you wonder WHY I am not inclined to take you seriously!?!?

    One of the things you and other people obsessed with Trump do not seem to understand is that this is only partially about him. And a lot of times even not that.

    Trump improved his voter tallies there.

    Trump won MI and WI in 2016 by about 20k votes combined. He lost MI and WI in 2020 by ten times that amount. Trump lost MN by over 40k votes in 2016, and then lost by about 250k votes in 2020. With the possible exception of WI, Trump’s 2020 numbers in these states were not “margin of fraud” type results.

    Except as Frederick points out, this claim does not fit. Trump capitalized on improved votes in those. It’s just that “magically” more D votes turned up. The exact method and source of those votes is not particularly important. Whether it was genuine voters alienated by Trump, whether it was (as I suspect) leftist fraud, or some combination thereof. The point shows that Trump did better than a vast majority of Republican and Conservative candidates, which means that there will be high standards FOR LITERALLY ANYBODY in this position.

    And it is jarring to me how you insist on paying lip service to the idea that Biden won the most votes of anybody in American Political History – more than Obama – purely because your disdain for Trump blinds you to REALITY.

    This is not fundamentally about Trump.

    Attempts to make this about Trump are ultimately deluded and discreditable.

    Again, the popular definition of insanity – doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. If you’re saying that no Republican can win so we might as well run Trump, I’m not onboard. Again, if what you do the first time doesn’t work, try something different

    You blithely cite platitudes about the definition of insanity (ironic considering how Einstein was a fervent, avowed Socialist whose grasp of economics and apologias for the Soviets were so feeble I the Basement Dwelling Autist could rip them apart), but then completely ignore the actual voter tallies for those states.

    And you really think you have a good strategy?

    Hah.

  57. @BrooklynBoy

    If I were a Democrat (thankfully I am not) I would want Donald Trump to be the GOP nominee. His big mouth always sinks him.

    It obviously didn’t in 2016. And if you believe the official results of 2020 it would not have done so against pretty much any Democratic Pol except a magically-popular Joe Biden.

    “DeSantis has a great resume and has done a good job as governor. He would make a good candidate for President. Can he win the nomination? If he does, I will certainly support him.”

    Which I concur with.

    – The fact is Donald Trump cannot win a genreal election any more.

    To which I would say: Kindly prove that.

    2016 was a one-off – Hilary did not take him seriously and felt that she could coast to a vicgtory. Combine that with her unlovable personality, and ignoring the MidWest states – Trump was able to sneak in. In 2020 he could not beat one of hte worst Democratic candidates ever (yes Big Tech refusing to allow any mention of the Hunter Biden laptop helped) and the public has grown weary of the Trump saga with his whining aobut the 2020 election.

    The problem with this narrative is actually looking at the numbers – the OFFICIAL, Regime Sanctioned Numbers – for 2020 and realizing that if placed against virtually any Democrat’s performance in the history of the world, Trump would have won. Indeed, you basically have to go back to pre-Jacksonian days to change the status so much that you start putting serious question marks into Trump’s performance (which itself should raise red flags that the problem wasn’t with Trump so much as with the methodology and nature of the counting).

    The idea that Trump “could not beat one of the worst Democratic candidates ever” does not pass the smell test. He could not beat the Democratic Candidate that attracted more votes than any other in the history of the US. And when you combine that with the fact that this Great Dem – stronger than Roosevelt, Landslide Lyndon, JFK, and Obama – was Biden should raise your stink o meter. Especially since as Frederick pointed out this occurred against the backdrop of Trump largely bettering his vote tallies from 2016.

    And you wonder why people like me are so obsessed the 2020 election? And why we don’t think you are taking it seriously or are coming up with a tenable plan against the Left?

  58. I know of no Presidential candidate that stirs up more people’s emotions than Donald J. Trump. It is nearly impossible to discuss him and his candidacy dryly, unemotionally. But let’s look at this from the standpoint of the GOP wanting to win the Presidency and let’s look at what we know.

    DeSantis will attract a lot of military voters. He is a decorated veteran who served honorably.
    Trump would also have a lot of military support. Trump had the armed forces’ back during his Presidency and kept us out of foreign wars.
    DeSantis is younger and more telegenic. That should play well with female voters looking to elect a strong, husband-type figure*.
    Trump does fairly well with religious conservatives, but the guy has had multiple wives and at least one extra-marital affair. I don’t believe he attends any church regularly. Trump pulled a miracle with the Supreme Court and got Roe v. Wade overturned. That could be a big plus with a lot of devout religious folks. I would likely vote for him again on that alone. I know my wife would.
    DeSantis is from a Catholic family and attended Catholic schools. Not sure if that helps or hurts. We’ve only elected one other Catholic and his Dad bought that election. However, DeSantis has been strong on social issues Christians, Orthodox Jews, Muslims… care about.
    DeSantis has a strong, Ivy league pedigree. Could be a plus in some states, but they are not states the GOP would win electorally. Could help with some of those suburban women.
    DeSantis’ family background could help win Pennsylvania.
    Trump would probably do better with blacks and hispanics than DeSantis.
    DeSantis would almost certainly do better than Trump with undecideds or folks who lean Dem but don’t have confidence in Biden/Harris.
    DeSantis understands the system much better than Trump. A DeSantis campaign would likely do a good job of getting boots on the ground in the run-up to the election, and on election day.
    DeSantis did an incredible job during the pandemic. Much better than Trump. I know a lot of Michiganders and Wisconsonites who spent a lot of time in Florida during their state’s lockdowns. Would that help in those states?
    The untrustworthy wing of the GOP, the Mitch McConnell/Ronna McDaniel wing would work to sabotage a Trump campaign. They would work to elect Ron DeSantis.
    A DeSantis run would make age a huge issue. Trump is definitely more alert and energetic than Biden, but they are not that far apart in age. Biden side by side with DeSantis would sway a lot of people that Biden is simply too old.

    *Does the Kennedy rule still hold? Has the less telegenic man/woman lost the Presidency since the Kennedy/Nixon contest?

  59. Turtler,

    Hard to say if 2020 was a one off or a trend. No question there were shenanigans, and I won’t go down that rabbit hole, but I will agree the Dems benefitted from some shenanigans in some places.

    However, there were also huge changes in many states to promote mail-in voting and that mostly will not go away.

    Of Western democracies the U.S. has had poor comparative voter turnout for many decades. Yes, Biden/Trump had an historically large vote total. Google says:

    In 2020, 67% of all citizens age 18 and older reported voting, up 5 percentage points from 2016.

    33% of U.S. citizens still did not vote for President in 2020! 51.3% of 33% is 16.9%. Joe Biden received less than 17% of potential U.S. voters in 2020.

    So, yeah, there were some odd jumps in 2020, but there were also some new changes in how Americans vote. Laxer early voting rules and laxer mail in ballot rules, including mailing ballots to registered voters without a request, may have changed the way Americans vote going forward.

    Did a lot of people who would have failed to get to a polling place on election day vote in 2020 because a self-addressed, stamped ballot was mailed to their home weeks in advance, making their effort much easier, and allowing them time? Will that trend continue?

  60. turtler,

    Regarding “coming up with a tenable plan against the Left.” That’s up to the GOP, the candidate and his or her staff. That’s my point about DeSantis vs. Trump. DeSantis and his team made damn sure there was a fair election in Florida once he got the Governorship. DJT did not do that effectively as President. Frederick is right, DeSantis only had to do it in one state, but at least he showed he and his team know what to do. And, the guy is a Harvard educated lawyer. He knows the ins and outs of the law.

    People keep making the point the Democrats cheated. Yes. Of course. They have been doing that in every election since Andrew Jackson. Trump was effective at complaining about that and convincing his followers to get mad. He was extremely ineffective at addressing potential loopholes prior to the election to better secure it.

  61. @Rufus

    Hard to say if 2020 was a one off or a trend. No question there were shenanigans, and I won’t go down that rabbit hole, but I will agree the Dems benefitted from some shenanigans in some places.

    I’m less generous, both because of my stance and because the burden of proof should be and usually is on local election officials to prove that everything was above board. Something we know was not the case due to broken chain of custody in a host of places.

    However, there were also huge changes in many states to promote mail-in voting and that mostly will not go away.

    Of Western democracies the U.S. has had poor comparative voter turnout for many decades. Yes, Biden/Trump had an historically large vote total.

    Agreed, which is also why I am deeply suspicious at things that so buck the trend, ESPECIALLY in heavily Leftist, Machine-dominated jurisdictions like Baltimore and Milwaukee.

    And particularly where they buck against the trends both at other places in the same election and over time.

    33% of U.S. citizens still did not vote for President in 2020! 51.3% of 33% is 16.9%. Joe Biden received less than 17% of potential U.S. voters in 2020.

    Which is still staggering by American historical terms, especially in recent years, and more substantial on the whole than Biden.

    So, yeah, there were some odd jumps in 2020, but there were also some new changes in how Americans vote. Laxer early voting rules and laxer mail in ballot rules, including mailing ballots to registered voters without a request, may have changed the way Americans vote going forward.

    Did a lot of people who would have failed to get to a polling place on election day vote in 2020 because a self-addressed, stamped ballot was mailed to their home weeks in advance, making their effort much easier, and allowing them time? Will that trend continue?

    I’d say at least some of those trends will continue. The impulse is there and the incentives are just too good. Which is also why we’ve seen protracted lawfare in Arizona where it is clear McCain’s people helped.

    That is also why I concur with Frederick and JJ and the others. Trump has many strengths and weaknesses and I do not grudge people for being tired or opposed to him unto itself, but he isn’t the main issue.

    Regarding “coming up with a tenable plan against the Left.” That’s up to the GOP, the candidate and his or her staff.

    Bluntly, we no longer have that luxury. We are the GOP or at least the Conservative Movement now, which is why we have to take strides to start draining the swamp on our own time.

    That’s my point about DeSantis vs. Trump. DeSantis and his team made damn sure there was a fair election in Florida once he got the Governorship. DJT did not do that effectively as President. Frederick is right, DeSantis only had to do it in one state, but at least he showed he and his team know what to do. And, the guy is a Harvard educated lawyer. He knows the ins and outs of the law.

    I largely agree there and I will freely admit the track record in Florida gives me hope and is a powerful point in DeSantis’s favor. Which is also why I’d happily welcome him as the nominee in 2024.

    People keep making the point the Democrats cheated. Yes. Of course. They have been doing that in every election since Andrew Jackson. Trump was effective at complaining about that and convincing his followers to get mad. He was extremely ineffective at addressing potential loopholes prior to the election to better secure it.

    Which is fair, but most others have been ineffective too, as we are seeing in Florida. Trump arguably helped cause the exact magnitude of this problem by trusting way too much with Fauxi and co, but he at least is willing to vocalize the issue, which BrooklynBoy at least apparently finds distasteful.

  62. turtler and Frederick – I really don’t see how you’re doing any other than arguing the burden of proof. You say, “show me that a Republican other than Trump can win.”

    OK, show me that Trump can win. Every disadvantage that you have identified applies to Republicans in general, including Trump. I don’t see any good reason that Trump is better positioned to deal with these things than any other Republican.

    Most of the arguments in favor of Trump are also applicable to every Republican. Trump can ask whether voters are better off than they were four years ago? You don’t have to have lost the previous general election to make the argument. Every Republican can and will do it.

    So what is the case for Trump over, say, DeSantis?

  63. @Bauxite

    really don’t see how you’re doing any other than arguing the burden of proof.

    Meaning you haven’t read much of what Frederick or I wrote. Disappointing, but not that surprising.

    Unfortunately for you, that’s really all we need to do. You are the one making the thesis, it is your obligation to prove it.

    You say, “show me that a Republican other than Trump can win.”

    OK, show me that Trump can win.

    Logical Fallacy, Shifting the Burden of Proof.

    https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof

    You are the one who has chosen to hyperfixate on Trump and his real and alleged failings and how they supposedly would be a political liability in any election. This has gone so far that even I – who am hardly a “Trumper” as you define it and would willingly support DeSantis – feel disturbed by the utter lack of awareness your claims show.

    In particular, Frederick devastated your central claims about Trump being weak in comparison to Biden by showing that he increased his vote from 2016 to 2020. What “supposedly” defeated him was not defection from Trump voters (which did not happen on a large enough scale to hurt his voting pattern) but a deluge of Democrat votes, particularly in swing states where results went highly against probability and trends.

    That underlines that for whatever Trump’s personal failings and weaknesses, that was not what was decisive here. The Democrat voting (and probable fraud) was.

    That means that Frederick and JJ and myself have made the correct point. Hyperfixating on Trump is a mistake. As bluntly it always was and always has been. It is a distraction from the more pressing issues of how we retain or reclaim voter integrity and a strong Republican ground game.

    You have provided zero answers for that. Indeed, when you did you merely deflected and arguing we shouldn’t “nominate the guy who lost WI etc. al.” Which doesn’t work in terms of explaining things as Frederick pointed out.

    And when confronted on this, you have apparently fallen into outright logical fallacy. Trying to shift YOUR Burden of Proof (about the Thesis YOU have posited, that Trump is such a toxic liability he should be ditched in order to better win the elections) onto US, and then gratuitously begging the question.

    Both do not work.

    Both are wastes of everybody’s time. Mine, Frederick’s, Rufus’s, and even your own.

    You do not seem to understand that you are the one positing the radical hypothesis here, and that all Frederick, myself, and anybody else has to do to call question to that is stick to the Null Hypothesis, hammer you on your (lack of) evidence, and point to contradictory evidence.

    And that is all we will have to do if you carry on like this.

    Now, stop foisting your own burden of proof onto us and go about addressing it. Or simply concede the point that you cannot prove the claim you have made.

    Every disadvantage that you have identified applies to Republicans in general, including Trump.

    WHICH IS EXACTLY THE POINT FREDERICK AND I MADE. INCLUDING THE FACT THAT FOCUSING ON TRUMP TO TRY AND EXPLAIN 2020 WAS A MISTAKE.

    You very obviously do NOT want to address this FACT or the FACTS that Frederick has pointed out about the actual, official voter returns because they erode the idea that Trump lost 2020 because of *insert reason here* or that the loss was legitimate.

    I don’t see any good reason that Trump is better positioned to deal with these things than any other Republican.

    For starters he is much more willing to fight it out than MANY (by no means ALL, but MANY), including publicly, and much less willing to cave and admit that any hootenanny nonsense and even outright illegality conducted by the fine Electoral Overseers of Baltimore, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and So on should stand. He did not decide to take the Nixonian approach of “defeat with Grace” even in the face of obvious voter fraud, which helped devastate the American Republic so badly in the past.

    And he was willing to grapple with swampthings in his own party such as Georgia Governor Kemp to do so.

    Obviously he is not a Saint or even the infallible gutter tactician many make him out to be. His battlefield prep for these issues was mediocre at best and often outright poor, in particular the legal challenges. But going along to getting along is not a virtue in Current Year, certainly not given the stakes at play.

    And it also gives us some idea of what can be accomplished there.

    Most of the arguments in favor of Trump are also applicable to every Republican. Trump can ask whether voters are better off than they were four years ago? You don’t have to have lost the previous general election to make the argument. Every Republican can and will do it.

    A: I find you are much, much too generous to generic Republican, especially since some of us remember the likes of McCain and Romney.

    B: That also ties into the point Frederick and I were pointing out regarding WI and co.

    So what is the case for Trump over, say, DeSantis?

    I am half inclined to try and make that argument, more out of my love to play Devil’s Advocate than anything else. However that would ultimately be a deflection.

    Much like this entire post of yours is.

    I am not particularly interested in making a case for Trump over DeSantis, and indeed I would greatly support DeSantis. I MIGHT prefer him over Trump at this point, but I would GREATLY support either over the Left.

    YOU WERE THE ONE EXPLICITLY ARGUING THAT TRUMP WAS SO TOXIC YOU WOULD CONSIDER SITTING OUT AN ELECTION IF HE BECAME THE NOMINEE, EVEN DURING THE OBVIOUS ISSUES OF CURRENT YEAR.

    As in, when the left is redoubling censorship, has imprisoned and tortured domestic political opponents, is trying to prosecute one of its major political opponents on frivolous charges, and is working to delegitimize the politics of anybody to the right of Sleepy Joe.

    That’s all apparently something you are A-OK with sitting out an election for. And you wonder why I regard your arguments and stances as at best naively amoral if not actively immoral?

    Insert something something Triumph of Evil Good Men do Nothing quote Here.

    So I’ll say again. You are the one advocating so fiercely that we ditch Trump even if it means boycotting the election if he is the Nominee. You are the one arguing he is so uniquely toxic we have to ignore the official 2020 returns. You are the one arguing that doing this will help us.

    So the burden of proof is on you to make those points.

    Not on us to make a positive case to refute them (though Frederick has done a wonderful job of that).

    Stop trying to shift the burden of proof.

    Stop begging the question.

    Stop wasting our time.

    If you have your points, please make them.

    And if not, perhaps that’s an indication there is something wrong with many of your premises.

  64. turtler – Trump failed. In 2020, he was up against what we all agree is the same thing that the Republican nominee will be up against in 2024 and he failed. He does not appear to have any different plan other than to repeat the same thing over again. It won’t matter one wit whether Rufus and I vote for him in the general, as I suspect that I, at least, will end up doing. If a Republican candidate makes conservatives like us think hard about the lesser of two evils, that Republican candidate doesn’t have a prayer of victory. That’s not complicated or difficult to understand, unless you don’t want to understand it.

    That Trump increased his vote totals from 2016 to 2020 is also perfectly irrelevant. Elections have more than one candidate and you have to have more votes than the other candidates to win (at least in enough states to win the EC). Trump didn’t do that. And appeals to fraud are also irrelevant because (I) you can’t prove it; and (ii) to the extent that fraud occurred in 2020, there’s very little reason to believe that it won’t happen again in 2024.

    As to Trump fighting election fraud. We would have been better off if he had played the Nixon role. Even though we agree that there was a lot of monkey business in the 2020 election, Trump has utterly failed to expose or correct any of it, before or after the election. In fact, his crazy lies about Dominion and such have been successfully leveraged to smear the entire opposition to Democrats’ election “reforms” as crazy conspiracy theorists. The most effective Republican opponents of the Democrats’ election sabotage have been Ron DeSantis and Brian Kemp. Trump has been less than useless.

    I don’t know if DeSantis or Scott or another Republican can win. But I do know that Trump is very, very unlikely to do so. Hence, nominating Trump for the third cycle in a row is folly.

  65. @Bauxite

    Trump failed. In 2020, he was up against what we all agree is the same thing that the Republican nominee will be up against in 2024 and he failed.

    That depends on how you measure success. Like I said before – and which you are painstakingly trying to avoid dealing with – against every other Democrat Turnout in the History of the US up to that point, Trump would have won. And not only won, but won with more votes than had ever been put together.

    And yet we are supposed to not merely discount this, but never even Consider it, because Biden officially got more? Albeit concentrated in a highly inorganic and utterly suspicious fashion where his voting rate shot through the roof in key swing states dominated by Leftist dominated urban political machines that “coincidentally” stopped counting near simultaneously across the country?

    Bauxite, you want to have it both ways.

    You want to demonize Trump as a failure and a buffoon while ignoring both what that means and the situation. It is only now that people like myself, Frederick, and others have called you out onto the carpet with facts such as how even the official narrative and tallies of the election do not support your narrative, that you are even paying lip service to these facts.

    And even then you are doing so dismissively, as if trying to avoid the points.

    Your thesis is that DeSantis or frankly most other candidates would not merely be able to exceed that performance, but do so in a way that would have won them the Presidency.

    The problem you face is twofold.

    Firstly: The Onus is on YOU, not anybody else, to provide evidence and argumentation to support that.

    Secondly: That bluntly, there is very ample reason to doubt that. It stands fully to reason that most conservative and Republican candidacies would not be able to gain the results Trump did in 2020 (let alone better), precisely because none had before. Some may be able to, and I hope DeSantis and others can, but that does not change the fundamental fact that apparently drawing out more R voters than any previous Presidential Candidate in American History is not good enough.

    Which again squarely points the core problems as being somewhere other than Trump. Which Frederick and other shave hammered you on and which you have no answer to beyond deflect, evade, and burden shifting.

    Which does not help your case. Especially since while you are happy to engage in grandstanding about your own considerations and how you will consider sitting things out (in the state of the American Republic during current year?!?!) if Trump is the Nominee, but apparently put very little thought into how to convince others like myself, who are not hard core Trump Cultists but who recognize his accomplishments and successes, into your point of view.

    He does not appear to have any different plan other than to repeat the same thing over again.

    And even if that were true (and I certainly am not prepared to concede that), would you WANT him to be advertising his strategies and tactics for next time for all the world to see? Especially given the endemic problems he faced with leaks before?

    Especially now that he is under indictment?

    One of Trump’s major problems (and I would argue strengths) has been his mouth, and in the case of running his mouth off and spilling things that need to be kept under wraps. I am more than happy to hope that he is being more circumspect behind the scenes because – and this is a big one so pay attention – of the same reasons I’d hope for others like DeSantis to do so. Because I have no other choice in the matter and firmly believe that.

    Unlike, apparently, yourself.

    And this is ironically before I get into the fact that your central critique has been quite literally not having a different plan beyond “Vote Harder” (which has been a joke and subject of ridicule for years) only this time with the “right candidate.”

    While conveniently dancing around all mentions of Trump’s electoral successes, not just in 2016 but in 2020. Because apparently if you DO have a concrete plan to “unfortify” the election and get voting turnout for our side on par with or greater than the official records indicate for Trump, you have been monumentally vague (or should I say “circumspect”?) as to how to do so.

    It won’t matter one wit whether Rufus and I vote for him in the general, as I suspect that I, at least, will end up doing.

    Obviously you don’t seem to think that, or else you wouldn’t have made such a point on the matter.

    Especially since I was almost prepared to sit out 2016 in a rage after Trump’s depreciation of the Iraq War and Truther-like nonsense about Saddam, but then I took a look at Hillary Clinton and remembered what the alternative was. An unconstitutional, criminal usurper.

    I am under no illusions my vote had great effect in the election, but unlike the other national election votes in my life it was in a swing state (Ohio) and I did bring it up, so at least I can sit true knowing I did what I could and that what is likely to follow cannot seriously be laid on my feet.

    If a Republican candidate makes conservatives like us think hard about the lesser of two evils, that Republican candidate doesn’t have a prayer of victory.

    2016 begs to differ, especially since, as I mentioned above, Trump did have that effect on me before. To the point where I was so mad as hell I was seriously considering it. But Hillary Clinton was still Hillary Clinton and that helped show me the way. And for all of his many flaws Trump helped give a few years stay of execution to our troubled nation.

    That’s not complicated or difficult to understand, unless you don’t want to understand it.

    It’s not complicated or difficult to understand, it’s just that it is vastly easier to debunk.

    Again: 2016 and even 2020 make utter mockeries of your claims that “If a Republican Candidate makes conservatives like us think hard about the lesser of two evils, that Republican candidate hasn’t a prayer of victory.”

    And also why people like myself and Frederick will keep hammering you on the 2016 and 2020 vote tallies, even in their undoubtedly mutilated forms. Trump won narrowly in 2016 but win he did (against an opposition that if anything was far stronger but more complacent than in 2020, at least electorally), and improved his tallies almost across the board in 2020. That should be all the proof needed to drive a stake through your particular brand of posturing.

    Because while I’m not good at math and never really have been, I absolutely respect the power of math. And when our enemies tell us that Trump got more votes than any Republican in the history of the US, but only lost because Slow Joe Biden somehow beat him out and got the most votes in American History period, more than Obama, I take note.

    Especially since that’s a hell of a lot easier to quantify and harder to dispute than reading psychological tea leaves and ethical or political consciences in yourself, Rufus, or myself.

    Hence where I feel inclined to dig up Ben Shapiro’s famous retort about facts not caring about one’s feelings. It’s trite and overused and even abused, but it’s that way because it is fundamentally true.

    And just so we are perfectly clear; You can argue that Trump will not be able to get that number of votes again if he is the candidate in 2024. And maybe you’re right, but that is certainly talking past the main point. That he is reported to have gotten that many in 2020 and almost certainly didn’t get much below that, meaning that we have ample reason to believe that a conservative Republican candidate can get more votes than any candidate in American history and still lose.

    That underlines a problem in American electoral politics that goes far beyond Trump personally and demands a response. And snide evasions of “not run the person who lost WI, etc” do not count as valid responses. While strawmen that “If you’re saying that no Republican can win so we might as well run Trump, I’m not onboard” not only isn’t a valid response, it does Less Than Nothing to sway people like myself- who would be more than willing to run someone other than Trump and who has been extremely leery of DeSantis demonization and the God-Emperor Trump Crowd, but who want at least a method to our madness for getting out of this going forward – to see your point.

    Do we understand each other?

    Because while I confess my stance may not be so easily intelligible as your own, it is both the stance I hold, and I am confident nowhere as easy to falsify.

    That Trump increased his vote totals from 2016 to 2020 is also perfectly irrelevant. Elections have more than one candidate and you have to have more votes than the other candidates to win (at least in enough states to win the EC). Trump didn’t do that.

    You know what also does nothing to sway me?

    Misplaced condescension.

    Because I too understand basic civics. Indeed I have studied it a fair bit. Which is why I know that you are WRONG when you try to dismiss “that Trump increased his vote totals from 2016 to 2020 is also perfectly irrelevant.”

    Because ever since direct voting for the EC was finalized, Electoral College Votes are determined by majority vote within a given jurisdiction (whether that is statewide or in subsets of a state).

    What’s at least as important is that Trump had voter totals increase in most of the swing states he lost, including the ones you and Frederick fought over.

    This tells me two things.

    Firstly: This isn’t a case of Trump jacking up his vote totals in Texas but having them dip elsewhere like in WI, which was a classic failure from the likes of Hillary and Dewey. Trump remained extremely competitive across a wide swath of the countryside like the EC is structured to reward.

    Secondly: Attempts to dismiss that as perfectly irrelevant speaks of a staggering ignorance of how the EC is actually determined, or an attempt to deflect and dodge the question.

    And appeals to fraud are also irrelevant because (I) you can’t prove it; and (ii) to the extent that fraud occurred in 2020, there’s very little reason to believe that it won’t happen again in 2024.

    Which is the point we’re reaching.

    Though point 1 at least somewhat deserves an asterisk next to it, for two reasons.

    A: We CAN prove it, and people have been charged and even convicted. The issue – as Neo pointed out – is that it’s not only mind-bogglingly hard to prove but also even harder to prove it was enough to change the effect of the election. Which not coincidentally became one of the left’s favorite weasel words when the trial balloons over corruption in 2020 brought up, much like I remember the technically-true-but-staggeringly-dishonest bullshit about how Saddam had “no direct connection” to Al Qaeda (because he instead had connections to Al Qaeda vassal groups like Abu Sayyaf and Egyptian Islamic Jihad that in turn had direct connections to Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden).

    B: We can definitely prove there was failure of due diligence, failure to withhold the chain of custody, and grotesque negligence and unethical behavior that is strong circumstantial evidence of fraud. Arizona and particularly Maricopa County are key examples of this.

    Now the failure to secure groundwork before the fact and to capitalize on it after the fact IS one of Trump’s great failures and something I and many others (including our host) have flogged him for, and it is unlikely to get any easier to do it right. But that does show that it can be done.

    As to Trump fighting election fraud. We would have been better off if he had played the Nixon role.

    Because the world and the United States benefitted so staggeringly from the results of that last time in 1960? Forgive me if I am somewhat skeptical of that, especially given how confronting the entrenched Dem political machines like Tammany Hall proved to be so crucial to our nation’s health.

    Even though we agree that there was a lot of monkey business in the 2020 election, Trump has utterly failed to expose or correct any of it, before or after the election.

    Half-agreed regarding the correct any of it.

    In fact, his crazy lies about Dominion and such have been successfully leveraged to smear the entire opposition to Democrats’ election “reforms” as crazy conspiracy theorists.

    This would be a hell of a lot more convincing had Dominion not had a host of “software features” that should never have existed in an electoral voting machine (if private enterprises such as a stockholder meeting wish to monkey around with fractional voting, then by all means they have the right to do so and Dominion has the right to dally with it, but those should not appear anywhere near proper ballots). While most of the fraud almost certainly happened in the “good old fashioned” way of jamming ballots in, disposing of others, and so forth I have no reason to trust Dominion was not a part of it, ESPECIALLY since their rebuttal was less about disproving them than intimidating people into silence on threat of lawsuit.

    Something something the process is the punishment?

    The most effective Republican opponents of the Democrats’ election sabotage have been Ron DeSantis and Brian Kemp. Trump has been less than useless.

    Agreed with DeSantis. Kemp absolutely not. And the fact that he collaborated hand in glove in libeling the head of his own party alongside the Democrats and allowing partial leaks of the phone call when he knew the truth and had access to the full recording forever blackens his name far above and beyond Trump’s.

    I don’t know if DeSantis or Scott or another Republican can win. But I do know that Trump is very, very unlikely to do so. Hence, nominating Trump for the third cycle in a row is folly.

    I’m not entirely opposed to that conclusion, though I do think you are disregarding a great deal of evidence. However, that brings us back to what Frederick pointed out. Where do we go from here?

    Because even if we do jettison Trump as many people of good faith hope for, that cannot be anything like the end of the story. And to your credit I’m fairly sure that you don’t think it should be. So why don’t you offer a positive view of what to do to stop a 2020 style steal from happening again and look towards the future rather than hammering on Trump?

  66. turtler – Trump’s electoral successes in 2020? I’m sorry, that’s delusional.

    Don’t run the candidate that 60% of the population do not want to be president again. Don’t run the candidate who repulses significant chunks of potentially persuadable voters. That’s not just a plan, it’s common sense. Does it guarantee victory? No, but running Trump more or less guarantees defeat. (And do you truly believe that Trump has a secret plan to combat Democrat’s voting shenanigans? When has Trump ever had a secret plan for anything other than trying to bluster his way through?)

    The final flaw in your logic is this. Democrats’ novel voting rules do facilitate fraud, but they mostly goose turnout among low information, low propensity voters. You do not distinguish between illegal/improper votes and votes from people who wouldn’t have otherwise voted but for having a ballot mailed to their house or delivered by a harvester.

    Some, and I believe most, of Biden’s margin in 2020 is from this sketchily turned out, but otherwise legitimate vote. There’s no way to make this vote go away. The only solution is to win more votes. Trump won a record number of votes for an incumbent in 2020? Great. Give him a gold star, but it takes more than that to win. In this environment, Trump’s propensity to alienate voters who are otherwise inclined to throw Democrats out is a fatal flaw.

  67. bob mcdonnell, tom delay, conrad black, they were all targeted by jack smith or ronny earle or patrick fitzgerald, andrew mccarthy vouched for him, as he did for mueller and he would for vindman, even miss hutchinson,

  68. @Bauxite, @Rufus T. Firefly: Yesterday Wisconsin became unwinnable by a Republican presidential candidate. This is what Turtler and I are talking about. Primary drama and Trump drama distracts Republican voters from what they need to focus on. This drama is not Trump’s fault, because the media creates drama out of thin air when they wish to.

    Because Democrats control the Wisconsin Supreme Court now, the 2024 election laws are going to mean anything they want them to mean and will be selectively enforced to suppress Republican ballots and to inflate Democratic ones. It matters nothing now which voters might prefer DeSantis over Trump or vice versa.

    Wisconsin gone, Minnesota gone, Electoral College 2024 gone.

    Best focus on cleaning up your own state, or moving to a state that is already clean and will oppose the Federal government.

    Or just continue to obsess about the Stupid Party Primary and keep voting harder like it’s 1980; after all you’d hate to have voted for the less genteel loser. Keep showing up to vote and no doubt Lucy will eventually let you kick that football.

    Sometime late Tuesday evening, it became clear that Democrats had once again prevailed in a key toss-up race. This time, it happened in Wisconsin, with Republicans coming up short in a state supreme court election that could have a profound impact on the outcome of 2024.

    This wasn’t some low-profile, inconsequential contest. This was one of the most expensive supreme court races in history. Tens of millions of dollars were spent in an attempt to cement power in the all-important swing state. Unfortunately, most of it came from Democrats.

    What were Republicans doing while the polls were open? We were all obsessing over Donald Trump.

    I know that comment is ripe to make a lot of people mad but understand that I’m talking about myself in this article as much as anyone reading it. I’m not here to point fingers while pretending I’ve been perfect. What I’m here to do is offer some perspective in hopes that we can all learn a valuable lesson before the country sinks further into an irreparable state.

    Consider this: Nothing Democrats do is by accident.

    We all love to dunk on the left and rightfully so, but those pulling the strings are not dumb. They are ruthlessly capable, and they’ve learned to play the game. While Republicans are laser-focused on nationalized grievances, Democrats outspend and out-hustle them on the ground. And surprise, guess who provided the latest nationalized grievance. Do you think Trump was arraigned on the day of an election that could help decide the 2024 presidential race by sheer chance?

    As a voter, you must ask yourself what the end goal is. Is it to grasp the fleeting high of lashing out online? Or is it to win elections and make your political opposition pay?

  69. Frederick,

    I don’t disagree with your recent comment one bit, except for what is done about it. Roe v. Wade was overturned in the courts. Nothing political is set in stone. Good people in Wisconsin with help from the GOP and their nominee’s campaign and legal staff have to focus major efforts in Wisconsin and Minnesota (and Arizona and Georgia and…).

  70. @Bauxite

    Trump’s electoral successes in 2020? I’m sorry, that’s delusional.

    You’ve already acted delusional before, but this gaslighting attempt by you is flatly abusive and insulting.

    And if that is the way you are going to treat other commenters Bauxite, then you can kindly go fuck yourself because you are contributing absolutely nothing of great value here.

    But because I am a stubborn cuss and like citing my sources, let us go over the nature of the “Delusion” you so glibly accuse me of.

    The Official, Vouched and “Authenticated” Figures – that which went down in the annals of Big Brother – is that Trump got a bit over 74 million registered and authentic voters in the 2020 election. That is absolutely unprecedented in American political history. Even St. Obama never cracked the 70 million voter threshold. And that was with the machines of Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, and others behind him.

    And because I am not delusional, I do not think the Left was under any kind of great pressure to OVERcount Trump/R Votes. So that is almost certainly a lower bounds with the actual figure being somewhere North of that.

    So I will say it again, because you continue to peddle in gaslighting delusion: The only reason Trump Lost 2020 is because of the Absolutely Unprecedented, Jow-Dropping, Completely Ahistorical and Without Precedent or Logic number of D/Biden Ballots opened. Which again outnumbered Trump’s by more than five million and Obama’s by more than ten million.

    That indicates that trying to peg 2020 as an electoral failure on Trump’s part DOES NOT ACCORD WITH THE EVIDENCE WE HAVE.

    And on some level you seem to acknowledge this. Which is why you are at pains to try to weasel your way through this explanation that popular votes are “irrelevant” (in spite of being what controls the EC), and that talking about Trump getting more votes than any Republican in history as an electoral success is “delusional.”

    Well unfortunately for you, Momma didn’t raise quite the caliber of fool that would believe such blatantly incompetent, self-defeating evasions.

    And your attempts to gaslight me (which I might add is a form of psychological abuse) not only does nothing to convince me, it actively makes me disbelieve you more.

    Firstly because gaslighting is almost always a deeply evil, repulsive action and form of psychological abuse that is rarely justified outside of things such as war or a hostage situation.

    And secondly because even if I set aside the grave moral failing it indicates, the fact that you are prepared to resort to it in an attempt to wish away publicly acknowledged evidence that I can pull up on a whim indicates GRAVE STUPIDITY AND A LACK OF JUDGEMENT.

    So congratulations Bauxite. You managed to paint yourself as abusive, morally derelict, and outright stupid in a single sentence, and are no closer to proving your “points.”

    And I am not one to mince words about people or conduct like that.

    Don’t run the candidate that 60% of the population do not want to be president again.

    Again, doesn’t work. 2020 called.

    Don’t run the candidate who repulses significant chunks of potentially persuadable voters.

    Which does nothing to change the facts of what Frederick touched on.

    I told you to cut this bullshit and get to the point before. Your reiterating of it indicates you have no underlying point. Which is a shame on your part, especially given how you have sunk into dishonor and abuse to try and do it.

    Which is a shame because I can respect people who believe “Dump Trump” is the better outcome. I don’t call Rufus names, and even our host is broadly sympathetic to leaving Trump. But the difference is, both of them are far more honest AND LESS ABUSIVE than YOU HAVE BEEN.

    They’re also less goddamn incompetent in their analysis than you have been.

    That’s not just a plan, it’s common sense.

    The words of an idiot, a gaslighter, and a liar who apparently could not bring themselves to double check the official vote tallies for 2020 about what ‘”common sense” is do not hold much sway.

    If you wish to redeem yourself or your conduct, you’re going to have to do a hell of a lot better.

    Does it guarantee victory? No, but running Trump more or less guarantees defeat.

    According to what?

    (And do you truly believe that Trump has a secret plan to combat Democrat’s voting shenanigans?

    I believe it is possible.

    When has Trump ever had a secret plan for anything other than trying to bluster his way through?)

    Translation: you haven’t studied history, and you are now admitting to it.

    Please revisit Trump’s success in the negotiations between himself, Erdogan, and the Rojava or the Solemani Hit and get back to me.

    You are free to argue that those are different, but that isn’t the point. You were not-so-very-cleverly implying that Trump never has a secret plan other than bluster, which is simply ignorant, stupid, and historically illiterate. Which does nothing to help your credibility and a great deal to undermine it, especially since it indicates you are utterly unprepared to actually attack those pieces of evidence to argue why they don’t apply.

    Protip Bauxite: If I could make your argument better than you can, that’s a bad sign.

    The final flaw in your logic is this. Democrats’ novel voting rules do facilitate fraud, but they mostly goose turnout among low information, low propensity voters. You do not distinguish between illegal/improper votes and votes from people who wouldn’t have otherwise voted but for having a ballot mailed to their house or delivered by a harvester.

    Some, and I believe most, of Biden’s margin in 2020 is from this sketchily turned out, but otherwise legitimate vote. There’s no way to make this vote go away. The only solution is to win more votes. Trump won a record number of votes for an incumbent in 2020? Great. Give him a gold star, but it takes more than that to win. In this environment, Trump’s propensity to alienate voters who are otherwise inclined to throw Democrats out is a fatal flaw.

    Oh, the JOYS of being lectured by someone caught trying to peddle logical fallacies (including trying to shift THEIR burden of proof onto ME) about logical flaws!

    Let me break this down in terms even you may be able to understand, Bauxite:

    I can and will distinguish between outright fraudulent ballots and votes and those by low information or fanatical goose steppers where it is called for. Unfortunately for your line of argumentation, it isn’t called for much in the subjects we are talking about because they behave in almost exactly the same way (and indeed some particularly low quality fraud votes proved to be of less value to the Dems than real but harvested ones due to the dumb “Just fill in the top section” things).

    However, the problem is that it is impossible to precisely determine how much of one versus how much of the other is at play, especially since much of it would originate in the same way, ie by harvester or by intentionally insecure ballot mailing. And both have largely similar remedies.

    Also: I agree that most of Biden’s voter tally was created by goose steppers rather than by outright fraud. But unless one is to believe that Biden legitimately got more votes than Obama (something I find DUBIOUS AT BEST), then the margin for Trump’s defeat was fraudulent. Especially in the crucial swing states where he supposedly lost the election. The fact that you will not address this – and indeed go out of your way to avoid doing so – is something Frederick and I have pointed out and does nothing to engender confidence.

    It also makes the “get more votes” solution to be the height of hubris and folly.

    It also ignores the fact that there IS a way to make a lot of the votes we are talking about – both fraudulent and technically not – go away, and without even lowering ourselves to their level by engaging in mass fraud ourselves (which we almost certainly wouldn’t get away with because of the hypocrisy inherent there). The same low information voters that voted in this election but not in the others made disqualifying mistakes that should have been rejected, and probably will do so again. Actually enforce the rules there. Likewise, with restrictions on the harvesters and dropoffs then the low motivation goons have less outlets to muck things up.

    Add that to other voter integrity measures (like DeSantis has succeeded in doing) and you start hacking away at the votes.

    In short, almost the only thing you ARE Correct about in this dishonest, disgraceful, dishonorable, and frankly abjectly stupid comment of yours is that it does take more than a record number of votes (and NOT just for an incumbent) to win.

    The irony is that you don’t seem to understand – or rather do not WANT to understand – the implications of that FACT. Which is that you are barking up the wrong tree and wasting our time by obsessing over winning more votes rather than fixing the obvious fraud and other abuses of the votes.

    Which is why obsessing about Trump (especially in ways so irrational, illogical, and counterfactual as you have done), engaging in egotistical grandstanding about your precious moral quandaries about the “lesser” evil and if you will deign to vote for the lesser evil while the Republic is rotting at the heart from corrupt, authoritarian Leftists,and alleging that some Unicorn will be able to get more votes because reasons is not going to be persuasive.

    And insulting and gaslighting those who disagree with you is going to be doubly unpersuasive.

    Now, if this is the best you can do kindly shut up and leave it to others who are more competent and better versed in argumentation than you are to argue your case, lest you torpedo it more. And take your delusions and gas lighting and stick them where the sun don’t shine.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>