I suspect it’s a combination of those things. While going to a Donald Dead rally for giggles to relive all the greatest hits might have been worthwhile before, now that you add potential violence into the calculus, well… maybe it’s time to wash your hair instead.
Makes no sense to anyone with a functioning brain. C’mon, Mr. Rich Big Shot, pony up some clams to keep everyone safe at your big rallies like nobody’s ever seen! Or maybe you could pass the hat among your monied cronies: Where are Bros Elon or Peter Thiel when you need 'em?
To Trump, if someone else isn’t paying his freight, he’s getting ripped off. One way or another. I can’t believe how many people fall for this relentless moocher’s shtick.
Classic con man tactics that go way beyond the used car salesman’s “Trust me.” A con man goes farther; portraying himself as the friend of the mark, and is acting in the mark’s best interests. See, for example, the movie The Sting: very briefly, Hooker pretends to be acting in Lonnegan’s best interests in providing him with the winners on (past posted) horse races, and Lonnegan falls for it. Hey, Hooker is glad to do it, because while he nominally works for Shaw, he’s not happy that Shaw took Lonnegan for a pile in a poker game, and wants to make amends. He’s got Lonnegan’s confidence, hence the name of the game.
Trump does the same thing. He says that he’s acting in Americans’ best interests generally. But more specifically and importantly, Joe and Jane American, he’s your friend and he’s acting in your best interests. Just like any con man, Trump brings it down to the individual level. To keep teachers from turning your kids trans/gay, to keep the cost of your fillup at the gas station low, to keep the media you consume from being “woke,” to save your job from being taken by an illegal immigrant—the list goes on and on, but Trump always aims his message at the individuals in his audience, like it’s a one-on-one conversation, and just like a con man taking a mark into his confidence.
But to do all that he says he will do for you, he needs help. Your vote, yes, but just as importantly, your money, to get his message out there. With your money, we can afford bigger spaces and hired security so we don’t have to turn anybody away from hearing Trump’s amazing message. Joe and Jane American, if you fall for this line, you’re being suckered into a con man’s game, just like Lonnegan in The Sting.
Trump doesn’t really think that, though. He knows he has as much security as Biden, maybe more than Harris. In this case he had a normal sized crowd for a small town (that he chose because of some immigrant incident) but then that doesn’t really make him look good so he has to blame someone and lie that there were 50,000 people clamoring to get in. It’s patently ridiculous but his obsession with crowd size makes him say ridiculous things.
Everything that he doesn’t like, or doesn’t go the way he wants it to, is election interference. He’s constantly laying the groundwork to be able to scream and point and blame every single aspect of this race if he loses. Cause it sure won’t be his fault.
I know this one!
No cite because it was a video on YouTube I watched weeks ago and I ain’t hunting it down.
Private, customer only, parking lots! And when the owners of said lots have their non-customer cars towed complain at a local, NJ, town counsel meeting that property owners exercising their rights is election interference and a violation of the First Amendment!
In this case, isn’t he asking for the Secret Service to provide crowd security, above and beyond their protection duties? Why, that seems like Trump wants a free government handout to pay this cost. Sounds like socialism to me!
Yes, Peter Thiel was the senator’s benefactor. But they’re both inspired by an obscure software developer who has some truly frightening thoughts about reordering society.
Yarvin’s disturbing manifestos have earned him influential followers, chief among them: tech billionaire Peter Thiel and his onetime Silicon Valley protégé Senator J.D. Vance, whom the Republican Party just nominated to be Donald Trump’s vice president. If Trump wins the election, there is little doubt that Vance will bring Yarvin’s twisted techno-authoritarianism to the White House, and one can imagine—with horror—what a receptive would-be autocrat like Trump might do with those ideas.
Trump’s first campaign was undoubtedly a watershed moment for authoritarianism in American politics, but some thinkers on the right had been laying the groundwork for years, hoping for someone to mainstream their ideas. Yarvin was one of them. Way back in 2012, in a speech on “How to Reboot the US Government,” he said, “If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia.” He had also written favorably of slavery and white nationalists in the late 2000s (though he has stated that he is not a white nationalist himself).
Rachel Maddow shows JD Vance explaining his lack of faith that democracy can deliver on his conservative ideals, and shows the influences behind Vance’s preference that the United States government be gutted and instead run by a dictator.
There’s clips of a Vance interview from 2021 and Curtis Yarvin makes an appearance.
This is what I am always amazed by; Why are his MAGAt fans impressed by this whiny, crying titty baby? I mean, he cries and whines and pouts “Not Faaaairrr, Wahhh wahhh wahh!” He’s pathetic. And they actually think this makes him a strong man? He’s a little toddler who is up past his bedtime.
Clearly they define “strength” differently than we do.
For them, whining is Strong, making excuses is Strong, and punching down–attacking those weaker than yourself–is Strong.
Basically, our definition of ‘pathetic bully’ is their definition of ‘strong man.’
You have to wonder how many Trump fans, over the years, have watched the Back to the Future movies and wondered why the obvious hero, Biff Tannen, didn’t get top billing…
I saw where Trumplestiltskin visited the flood disaster down south. He really is clueless; the last thing these people need is some bloviating asshole disrupting rescue and relief attempts by staging a photo op. He then couldn’t resist getting in a few personal grievances, and accused Dems of only giving aid to other Dems. A reporter kept asking him what proof he had of those assertions, but Der Dumpster ran for cover.
If you sat down to watch “Back to the Future II” on Wednesday in celebration of Back to the Future Day, you may have noticed some eerie similarities between the alternate-1985 universe version of Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) and a certain Republican presidential candidate with a penchant for self-promoting and building giant hotels and casinos. And it turns out that that’s no accident: The writer of the flick has just confirmed that Tannen is, in fact, based on Donald Trump.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, “Back to the Future” series screenwriter Bob Gale was asked about some of the parallels of modern day Trump and the 1985 version of Biff in “BTTF2.” Gale revealed that not only did he and his fellow filmmakers agree with those parallels, but that Trump was actually inspiring them at the time they were working on the flicks in the '80s.
It’s because the liberal Hollywood elites are against Trump.
When I first saw that film in 1989, I knew enough of Donald Trump even back them to recognize that it was meant to resemble him. I don’t think they were trying to be subtle about it. It’s nice to have official acknowledgement of it though.
It sounds to me like he’s saying Harris won’t fund sufficient Secret Service to provide proper protection to him based on large crowd sizes. That’s why he has to meet in small, indoor venues.
I’m not sure what the normal breakdown for security of a Presidential candidate is with regards to crowd control, etc. I mean, I know it is a combined activity between federal and local personnel, but I’m sure the SS has a lot to say about what crowd control measures are needed.
But with two attempts in his life - one botched and one questioning if the agents were really doing enough for this specific target - how much of that security apparatus comes out of the SS versus Trump’s campaign is something I don’t know.
Holy fucking shit, that guy Yarvin is every bit the authoritarian crazy that you guys have been assigning to all conservatives.
According to that article:
He advocates authoritarianism over democracy for providing “freedom”. Whose freedom is less clear.
He proposes replacing the United States government (and most of the world) with micro-techno enclaves under the sovereign rule of the technocracy, without the input or opinions of its citizens taken into consideration.
His actual example is that one group could decide to cut off hands for theft. People would be free to leave that enclave, but not change the rule. And if a group promised not to cut off hands, and then did so anyway, there would be no one to appeal to our seek reddress, because it is a sovereign entity.
One of Yavin’s buddies is a Putin advocate. Yes, openly pro-Putin.
And this guy not only is Peter Theil’s mentor, he is Vance’s.
I tell you, it sounds as ridiculously extreme as the conspiracy theories that the right is showing about Harris. There’s no way I’d be able to convince any Trump supporters it’s true. It’s comic book villain level bad. Yet a lot of the groundwork is exactly what’s spelled out in Project 2025.
Yeah, I watched Maddow last night and posted about that yarvin guy. Puts a cold chill down your spine. Screw that guy; he needs to mind his computers and stay the hell out of our democracy.
In 2008, a software developer in San Francisco named Curtis Yarvin, writing under a pseudonym, proposed a horrific solution for people he deemed “not productive”: “convert them into biodiesel, which can help power the Muni buses.”
Yarvin, a self-described reactionary and extremist who was 35 years old at the time, clarified that he was “just kidding.” But then he continued, “The trouble with the biodiesel solution is that no one would want to live in a city whose public transportation was fueled, even just partly, by the distilled remains of its late underclass. However, it helps us describe the problem we are trying to solve. Our goal, in short, is a humane alternative to genocide. ”
I guess on the practical side, if you turn the undesirables into biofuel, you don’t have to feed them Soylent Green.
I’m quite sure that this is not accurate. Biden as the president has massive amounts more security than he does, and Harris as VP also probably has quite a bit more. He does have some security and its probably been beefed up since the assassination attempt, current candidates and former presidents is not as high a priority for the Secret Service as current office holders.
A reporter kept asking him what proof he had of those assertions, but Der Dumpster ran for cover.