2024 Presidential Election Shittastic Shittacular

[Sock Puppet]

I do think he means "It will be fixed" = "I'll have pardoned/rigged/extorted my way out of all these nasty legal troubles," although I doubt he intends it to be heard that way.

[erimir]

Trump doesn't have to mean only one thing.

For Trump, if there are no more elections (or they're rigged in his favor) and he's president for life, then good, and you don't have to vote anymore. But if he doesn't get to run again, he also doesn't care if you vote anymore. But either way, you won't need to vote anymore.

But confidently stating that he doesn't mean ending or rigging elections is being overly charitable. There's no reason to think he wouldn't say that other than the risk of blowback - it's certainly not the case that he would be opposed to the idea! So then you're left with "Trump would never be so stupid as to say that out loud."

The guy who openly called on national TV for Russia to hack Hillary's emails? The guy who said "stop the count!" before they were done counting the votes? The guy who said he should get a do-over election? The guy who said he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any voters? He would never openly state his evil intentions?

The most charitable you can get is to say that his meaning isn't that the elections will be "rigged" but that they'll eliminate so much voter fraud, the Democrats won't be able to win. But that only works if you're being charitable to the claims of voter fraud, which are lies. And Trump and his lawyers know they're lies, because when they were in court and had to limit themselves to arguments with evidence, they didn't advance such claims because they didn't have any evidence for them. The media is not obligated to treat those as good faith concerns - so when they suggest they'll be eliminating all the voter fraud that doesn't exist and thereby prevent Democrats from winning, what they mean is that they'll be preventing legitimate voters from voting, or otherwise corrupting the fairness of elections (i.e. "rigging").

[erimir]

Best thing you can say about it is that Trump didn't mean that, but he doesn't mind if you interpret it as meaning there won't be any more elections.

But a lot of the charitable readings remind me of people before January 6 confidently stating that Trump wouldn't try to stay in office through illegal means. Like yeah, he leaves some room for interpretation, it's not simply saying "There won't be elections and I'll be President For Life" but he wasn't saying before or on January 6th "And I will have a mob of my biggest fans assault the Capitol and attempt to force Congress and Mike Pence to certify me as the victor, or at least delay the certification so I have more time to coerce people" or something that explicit.

Maybe not every time has the worst interpretation of Trump's statements borne out (although you can't always attribute that to him never meaning it, as he has tried and been blocked or been talked out of it or reacted to a backlash in some cases), but you certainly can't look at his history and rule out the most negative interpretations.

Originally Posted by NY Times

Former President Donald J. Trump, in an interview broadcast Monday night, repeated his recent assertion that Christians will never have to vote again if they vote for him this November, and brushed aside multiple requests to walk back or clarify the statement.

Mr. Trump said last Friday to a gathering of Christian conservatives: “I love you. You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”

His interviewer on Monday, Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, noted that Democrats have highlighted that quote as evidence that Mr. Trump would end elections, and urged Mr. Trump to rebut what she called a “ridiculous” criticism.

But Mr. Trump declined to do so, repeating a pattern he frequently employs in which he makes a provocative statement that can be interpreted in varying ways, and makes no attempt to quiet the uproar. This comment was especially striking, given his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his shattering of other democratic norms.

The exchange began when Ms. Ingraham told the former president: “They’re saying that you said to a crowd of Christians that they won’t have to vote in the future.”

Mr. Trump started off his response, saying: “Let me say what I mean by that. I had a tremendous crowd, speaking to Christians all in all — I mean, this was a crowd that liked me a lot.”

He added that Catholics are “treated very badly by this administration” and that “they’re like persecuted,” then digressed, saying that Jewish people who voted for Democrats “should have your head examined,” a sentiment he has expressed many times before, drawing criticism of antisemitism. He then reiterated his statement from Friday.

“I said, vote for me, you’re not going to have to do it ever again. It’s true,” he said. “Because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group. They don’t vote. And I’m explaining that to them. You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country, you won’t have to vote anymore. I won’t need your vote.”

Ms. Ingraham offered him an off-ramp: “You mean you don’t have to vote for you, because you’ll have four years in office.”

Mr. Trump began talking about gun owners not voting, but Ms. Ingraham interrupted him.

“It’s being interpreted, as you are not surprised to hear, by the left as, well, they’re never going to have another election,” she said. “So can you even just respond —”

Mr. Trump cut her off, claiming again that Christians “vote in very small percentages,” and digressing into how he would change voting practices.

He then repeated his statement from Friday once more, saying his message had been: “Don’t worry about the future. You have to vote on Nov. 5. After that, you don’t have to worry about voting anymore. I don’t care, because we’re going to fix it. The country will be fixed and we won’t even need your vote anymore, because frankly we will have such love, if you don’t want to vote anymore, that’s OK.”

[-FX-]

Not reading your wall of text lol

[Sock Puppet]

Where does he even get the idea that Christians vote in lesser percentages than other groups? I know he just pulls "facts" out of his ass, but isn't it the opposite?

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

Have to admit I didn't think of this interpretation but it makes more sense than others.

I feel the need to clarify that I meant "makes more sense than other alternative explanations". Even if he didn't mean to say it, I am confident he would do anything in his power to make it reality.

[-FX-]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

Fuck this thrad in particular.

[Stephen Maturin]

A certain doughy, lily-white piece of shit has decided to cast his POTUS vote for long-time public teat suckler Ron Paul instead of a certain old, incontinent, morbidly obese serial rapist, and MAGAts be pissed!

[seebs]

it's okay he changed his mind after being "reasoned with" (pretty sure this was actually death threats)

[Stephen Maturin]

What a pussy!

[seebs]

Honestly, I think Walz coming out and calling the Trump people "weird" may have been a really good strategy.

Every Republican candidate since GHWB has been called a "fascist" and usually it's just empty rhetoric, there's no reason for people to take it seriously. All the messaging people have spent years polishing their rhetoric for responding to all the attacks they anticipate. They know the script. Any attack they expect, they've got a soundbite response to, and it doesn't matter whether it's true, what matters is that as long as you're on-script, you don't have to fully consciously engage with anything.

And then Walz calls them "weird", and that's the wrong side of the playbook. "Weird" is what Republicans say about queers and women and blacks and furries and so on. It isn't something people say about Republicans. And because it isn't part of the script, people who've been happily immersed in their script for 20 years wake up just enough to say "wait, weird? how is it weird?"

You say "fascist", they don't have to wonder why you're saying it, so they don't think about it or actually evaluate it. They just say "oh yeah well the Nazis were leftists too" and ignore it.

But you say weird, and they are just confused enough for the conscious side of the brain to wake up and say "hang on something unexpected happened". So they go look. Is there, in fact, something weird? Well, there's a bunch of news articles denying that Vance is a couchfucker. Here's vance on TV telling his kid to shut up. Here's Trump saying Harris only turned black recently. Here's project 2025 saying all sorts of crazy shit, and Trump saying he's never heard of it and they're great people. Here's Trump showing up at a black journalists group to be interviewed, being surprised that there's so many black people there, saying they lied and promised him Biden or maybe Harris would be there, and then getting yanked off stage barely halfway through his scheduled time because his handlers won't let him even finish hearing a question about Project 2025.

And you probably think (1) some of this is weird (2) some of this is really fucked up, and then the next time you see someone mention that he's a convicted felon, maybe instead of saying "oh yeah leftist prosecutors" you say "hang on that means that a jury of 12 people unanimously found that he was guilty of a felony, and his lawyers got to vet the jury and reject people they thought would be unfairly hostile to him". And the next time someone mentions a court found him to have committed sexual assault you might think "hey wait that's an actual conclusion by a court, that's not just some random person accusing him".

[seebs]

@wonkish.bsky.social on Bluesky

As one side from the training implored: "BE NORMAL. BE NORMAL. BE NORMAL."

[Miss Shelby]

Seebs you’re fucking weird.

[seebs]

true, but so what?

only one presidential candidate in the entire history of the US has ever praised the tienanmen square massacre as good governance. you voted for him. i didn't.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Originally Posted by Stephen Maturin

A certain doughy, lily-white piece of shit has decided to cast his POTUS vote for long-time public teat suckler Ron Paul instead of a certain old, incontinent, morbidly obese serial rapist, and MAGAts be pissed!

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡😂😂😂 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/WkanNvwNMx

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 2, 2024

[viscousmemories]

If Antifa were a fraction as radical and violent as the right pretends that piece of shit wouldn't be using up any more oxygen.

[BrotherMan]

Honestly, I think Walz coming out and calling the Trump people "weird" may have been a really good strategy.

On the one first hand, I like the idea of throwing something nebulous at the opposition. Let them rage against the clouds in the sky for all the good it will do them.

Invariably, they'll try to invent their own definition of it and throw it back at the libruls. Probably some old tired 'we're not the ones with blue hair and nose rings' bullshirt. Who knows what will be the thrust of their effort.

Thus the homeostasis is rebalanced and shrug.

My real (not-real) wish that it wasn't this specific word is: What about the people who delight in being weird. Offbeat. Out of step with the now.

Will Al Yankovik have to change his superlative now?

[BrotherMan]

Oh yes and also. En re: Klown Rittenhouse: I never thought the party of Face Eating Leopards would eat MY face!

[seebs]

Someone elsewhere pointed out that there's good weird and bad weird. Good weird are the people who don't get mad when you call them weird. Bad weird are the people who lose their shit over it.

[seebs]

Google, nobody called from Google. One of the things like doing a show like yours, your show, you know, you see it on Fox, but when you really see it is all over the place, they take clips of your show that you're doing right now with me and if I do a good job, they're gonna vote for me, they're gonna vote for me because it's not just on Fox, it's on Fox is a smaller part of it. You're on all over this, those little beautiful cell phones you're on, you're all over the place. You have a product, you have a great product. You have a great brand. So you have to get out, you have to get out, you have to do things like your show and other shows and Google has been very bad. They've been very irresponsible and I have a feeling that Google is gonna be close to shut down.

It's not surprising that "does one of the candidates have actual clinical dementia going on?" was a news topic, what's surprising is they picked the one who was clearly coherent, not the one who actually produces word salad and does in fact show signs of clinical dementia.

[Stephen Maturin]

lmao

[slimshady2357]

The first thing I noticed about that picture wasn't the funky hands or other signs it was an AI picture. It was that Trump is shorter than all those women and he would absolutely HATE that picture because of it

[slimshady2357]

WOW Harris picked Walz

I thought for sure it would be Shapiro.

I'm really happy and I hope it means we might be slowly leaving the darkest timeline.

[Stephen Maturin]

But has Gov. Walz ever dumped a dead bear in Central Park because he had to catch a plane and thus didn't have time to skin and eat it?

Yeah, didn't think so.

[specious_reasons]

I know I was initially interested in Mark Kelly because he is an astronaut and scientist, but I'm very OK with "geography nerd" as a VP pick:

Former geography teacher Tim Walz is really into maps • Minnesota Reformer

The former Mankato geography teacher, now a vice presidential candidate, identifies as a “GIS nerd” and proclaimed November 15, 2023 as Geographic Information Systems day, writing that an understanding of maps and data “helps community leaders and government officials make data-driven decisions” governing important policy issues like education, public safety and the environment.

Sound like he's both used to thinking about complex subjects and is able to express them to the greater public. I think I like him.