This is why Magas aren’t scared. They’re thirsting for a chance to murder their fellow citizens and fight for an unelected dictatorship.
The new anarchists pretend to support law enforcement. But when the law doesn’t go their way, they threaten violence. “Victory or death!” the crowd in Atlanta chanted. One speaker at the rally vowed to “fight for Donald Trump until our last dying breath.” Another warned, “If they seat an illegitimate government, we’ll remove them.” A third said Trump would stay in power because “the Deep State doesn’t have the military on their side.” When police asked the rally’s leaders to finish up and end the event—after letting them rant for two hours without a permit—a speaker shouted at the cops: “We backed the blue. Thank you for nothing!”
These insurrectionists—not Antifa or Black Lives Matter, which the right accuses of destroying the country—are the new threat to America. They’re talking about tearing down our democracy, with emphatic support from the president and his allies.
Let’s just hope they do (ineffectually but aggressively) attack the police in a few cities. Any sympathy the police officialdom or the police rank and file may have for nutso authoritarian rightist ideas will evaporate like snow in Miami.
If the Feds have not already been suborned by Trumpist plants, they’ll eat these anti-American terrorists alive. Once they realize they’re the terrorists’ target.
There’s plenty of fear out on the fringe, judging by the panic attacks on my favorite alt-loon sites.
In contemplation of “a radical-leftist boot stomping upon conservative faces forever”, I see warnings of entire families being rounded up, threats to the pets of people questioning the election outcome, hundreds of vaccines being mandated within a few minutes of Biden taking power and of course, bloody civil war which they piously hope will not ensue, but meanwhile buy our survivalist supplies.
I have a dozen jars of home-dried vegetables and am stocking up on ingredients to make Dr. Jackmannii’s Famous Spicy Coleslaw, especially useful for warding off injectable genetic mutations being prepared by Bill Gates and his Depopulation Minions.
Of course, those of us that don’t erase our memory every time our favorite alt-right media source tells us we have always been at war with Eastasia remember that jackbooted thugs, gun confiscation and re-education camps were also claimed to be imminent when Obama was elected. And somehow failed to happen.
I believe this just as much as I believed the predictions people were making here that MAGA’s were going to start shooting up polling stations on election day.
Then you’re choosing to ignore reality. The guy tried to overturn the results of the election. That’s a coup, by definition.
And, um, we did have people violently charge into the people counting the election. We can’t help it that those who said they’d be in the streets then chickened out. (My guess is that it taking a long time to count spread out the anger.)
The fact that people choose to ignore reality and substitute their own because “Trump couldn’t do something that bad” is why we had so much trouble to begin with. Half the country thinks it’s entitled to its own facts.
That’s ridiculous. By that definition, Al Gore attempted a coup, as did Jill Stein last election when she sued to have the source code of election machines released.
Trump has sought legal redress in the courts, as the constitution allows. So as long as he stays in that lane and courts continue to allow it, nothing he does can be called a ‘coup’, even if the courts agreed with him and overturned the election because his legal team produced compelling evidence.
The one area where he would be doing somethjng wrong is if he tried to convince Biden electors to abandon their oath and vote for him anyway. But then, that’s what Paul Krugman, Larry Tribe, and a number of other prominent Democrats advocated for in 2016. In fact, I recall an entire movement sprjnging up to attempt to get electors to flip to Hillary. Now THAT could be called a coup if they managed it.
Trump and his allies have asked governors, legislators, and other officials to stop counting votes, throw out legal votes, and even reject the will of the voters. By any reasonable definition, that’s an attempted coup. That it’s failing miserably doesn’t make it any less of a coup.
They are trying to stop counting votes that they think were illegally counted. They’re almost certainly wrong, but that’s for judges to decide. I believe they were trying to get governors to delay certification so they would have time for the court battle.
Do you really think that Trump is making that argument in good faith? Is there any reason, at all, to believe those votes are illegal or fraudulent, other than the check mark next to Biden’s name? If Trump has any evidence, let’s see it.
Sure, but at some point the lack of evidence has to cast doubt on Trump’s motives. Does he really believe that there were 80,000 fraudulent votes cast for Biden in Pennsylvania, or does he believe that the votes were collected and tabulated but that the people who cast them don’t count for some reason? It may be a bit hyperbolic, but what do you call it when a ruler tries to stay in power against the wishes of the electorate except a coup?
Or, if Trump really is so passionately concerned about the integrity of our elections, why didn’t he do more to protect it during his time in office, why did he send his own ballot in by mail, why isn’t he challenging mail-in ballots in states he won?
I’m not disputing any of that. Just pointing out that seeking redress through the courts is by no definition a ‘coup’, even if people think he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. That’s what courts are for. When they don’t think he has any new evidence to add, they’ll all just reject his attempts. That, or he’ll run into the deadline, the electoral college will vote, and that will be all she wrote.
There IS one potential way his gambit could work: If he can get Michigan or Pennsylvania to invalidate their election due to excessive irregularities, then neither he nor Biden get to 270. That calls for a contingent election in the House of Representatives, but with each state providing only one representative to vote for all in the state. Under those conditions, Trump would win. And half the country woild rightfully get very, very angry. This would be a bad outcome, but it’s still possible.
Trump probably believes the Dominion voting nonsense that Powell is spewing.
In my opinion, this isn’t about a ‘coup’, and Trump will either leave office legally or (extremely unlikely) remain in it legally. What this is really about is Trump’s ego, so he can tell himself and the world that he’s not a loser, and about a potential 2024 run. It’s one thing to run as a failed president who lost the support of the people and wants another try, vs running as a ‘great president who did a wonderful job’ but had his second term stolen from him.
It won’t work, and Trump will be gone in January and never return, in my opinion. But he’ll spend the rsst of his life telling everyone he was a great success who was robbed.
Sorry, real life interfered with my keeping up with the nutty news this week - can you point to a quick explanation of this “Dominion voting nonsense”? Preferably a non-toxic one. Thanks.
I’m not talking about the court cases. I’m talking about the direct appeals to state and local officials to bypass the courts and overturn the will of the voters. They did that (and failed). That’s an attempt at a coup.
And that’s not even getting into the widespread disenfranchisement efforts by the GOP, the fake ballot drop boxes in California and intimidating robocalls in Wisconsin, and particularly the deliberate misuse of the USPS to delay and mislay postal ballots.
Anyone claiming that what the GOP are doing now is comparable to what Gore did in 2000 is waaaaay off the mark.
Sam, it’s a matter of letter vs. spirit of the law. If I could find some loophole that allowed me to kill an innocent person on 5th Avenue and suffer no consequences, would I be a murderer? I’d say that from a moral and ethical standpoint I would be, even though the law would be forced to say no. What Trump is doing is the same. True, he hasn’t yet violated the letter of the law, but he has violated its spirit. Just like killing a person is a murder, attempting to override the will of the voters is a coup.
I was listening on the radio and the rightwing speaker/guest was telling people on the right to do everything the left has done.
What he was talking about is if say you were in Washington DC and you saw a member of Biden’s cabinet enjoying dinner with his family, that one should walk in and start trouble. He also suggested harassing the persons family and even vandalizing their homes because “they did it first”.
All things he said persons on the left have done to people in Trumps administration.
No, I dont endorse doing such things. However I am upset such activities seem to be accepted by the left.