In a nutshell, they’re asserting that when Trump said “hoax”, he meant that they were “politicizing” the virus. To support this, they point to him referring to the “Impeachment hoax” earlier in the same statement, with the conclusion that he’s not calling the facts of the virus a hoax, just the Democrat’s use of the virus for political reasons.
Of course, the problem is that, when he called impeachment a hoax, he was also adamant that all the facts of the impeachment were also fake. He didn’t just claim that the Democrats were spinning the facts for political reasons, he claimed that the things they were saying were facts were incorrect. So their defense is somewhat threadbare to the eyes of anyone paying attention.
Just remember that he didn’t win by all that much last time. It doesn’t take much of a swing for him to lose that critical edge. A few percent in a few states, and he’s out on his ass.
No, it won’t. He will not loose
Will not loose the dogs of war? Well, let’s hope not.
All the things happening now…The S&P 500, The DOW, Trump’s approval rating, the stimulus, the bailouts, the faux benevolence…don’t matter for shit.
The dying has just begun, and more people will die from Covid-19 in America than anywhere else on this planet. If we could stop it, even if it meant a second term for Trump, we would. Right? We would. But we can’t, and Trump will never be forgiven once it’s all over. And he doesn’t deserve to be.
Trump is toast.
I’m glad I don’t have to make that decision. I would if it were to make Romney or McCain president instead of Obama, as much as that would hurt. But Trump is so uniquely awful, so dangerous to democracy and to humanity, I’m not sure if the risk of another four years of him as president wouldn’t be worse, particularly since it’s an unknown quantity. But of course we don’t have to make that choice. It’s going to be what it’s going to be.
The consistent theme that I seem to see on Boomer Facebook is that the media hates Trump, and the media deliberately created the hysteria, and the hysteria is to blame for the spread of the virus.
You guys have correctly identified the problem… people are dangerously delusional in their support of Trump… but the cause is that they believe The Media is out to destroy Real America. Everyone and everything else is just an agent of The Media. Trump is the shining knight who exposes The Media for the hypocrites they are.
This is what people believe. We know what’s going on. It’s hard to accept that our fellow Americans could be that mind-bogglingly gullible and parochial, but that’s an error of faith rather than an error of logic.
Right, and we’ve hit some kind of equilibrium here.
Half the country has some connection to objective reality and hates Trump because of the things he’s done and said. The other half only watch FOX, one america or other pro-trump “information” sources; where everything gets spun as something to give Trump credit for, or, far more often, something to blame others for. Even when that means contradicting what they said 5 minutes ago.
Actual events are insufficient to break this status quo. Only two things can:
- The false reality needs to come down. That means: right-wing media or GOP developing a conscience
- Actual reality has to change: Trump suddenly, inexplicably, becomes a good president
I’m not holding my breath.
There are 2.5 million fox viewers in an evening. Many 2016 trump voters were not in this demo. They can’t make up half the country.
The false reality will come down. But the media has been supine and played all kinds of prefascist games for ratings. It’s exciting being without the rule of law, and we haven’t got tired of it yet. It’s a slippery slope.
Spend some time reading The Donald reddit (as anyone who wants to stay informed of the political pulse should do from time to time, no matter how much you hate him) and you’ll see there’s actually a substantial amount of pushback against this narrative - FROM HIS SUPPORTERS.
Yes, Trump supporters - the hardcore ones, the ones who spend hours and hours creating memes and “shitposting” on that subreddit - are actually DOWNVOTING people who are making the above argument. They are human beings after all and now they’re starting to actually have people that they personally know, people in their own families, get the coronavirus. Don’t get me wrong, Trump is still their guy - BUT even these people are waking up to the fact that the shit is getting real and that it’s NOT a hoax.
In broader political terms, this means that if it continues to get worse and if Trump continues to project optics of making mistakes in the handling of it, he does indeed risk some of his hardcore base abandoning him, to say nothing of many swing voters. But this will only work in the Democrats’ favor if they step up their messaging.
I just spent about 5 minutes over there and I see precisely zero of what you’re talking about. Same circlejerking as always, plus some drama over some moderation rule tightening that I can’t be arsed to care about.
sorry, I think that official Reddit has actually been more or less shut down for the past month. They’ve moved most of the discussion to another forum, still with the same name, but not hosted by Reddit. That’s where I read what I read.
An unnamed splinter forum of /r/The_Donald. Hokay. Absent a link, I guess I have no choice but to take your word on that.
What I do see is that the MAGAts on Twitter are loonier than ever, and increasingly unhinged with each passing day.
Look, I think it’s frowned upon here to talk about other boards, so I’m not going too specific here. Let it suffice to say that the Trump subreddit and all of its posters have essentially migrated to another forum, with the same name, not hosted by Reddit. And on this forum there is - let’s just say - less of a consensus about the narrative than you might expect. I mention this only to make the point that if even THESE people are able to take their blinders off some of the time, surely more swing voters are up for grabs.
AFAIK, discussing other boards is fine. Encouraging Dopers to stir up trouble on those boards is not.
Someone correct me but I think the official rules are (1) don’t start board wars, and (2) don’t link to hate boards. It’s OK to mention that other boards exist. It seems we’re talking about a site called thedonald.win
Admittedly I only browsed there for a few brief moments, but I personally did not see whatever change of heart or mind that you witnessed. Nobody is claiming the virus is a hoax, which is good, but that narrative would be hard to sell when the entire globe is ankle-deep in bodies at this point.
Yeah, here we go:
IOW, what HMS said.
Scatter plot of counties by Covid-19 fatality rate and 2016 Presidential Election vote.
x axis: Percent of population that voted Republican
y axis: Log of fatality rate for the county
red line: Best fit line
Note: Counties with a fatality rate of 0 have been excluded.
Woodrow Wilson once observed “Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide.”
Trump’s going on the air every day and doing a better job of discrediting his presidency than Biden could do.