Miscellaneous Trump (1 Viewer)

[Huntn]

Anxiety surges as Donald Trump may be indicted soon: Why 2024 is 'the final battle' and 'the big one'​

Anxiety surges as Donald Trump may be indicted soon: Why 2024 is 'the final battle' and 'the big one'

Donald Trump's many legal problems – and calls for protests – have generated new fears of political violence and anxiety about the 2024 election.

www.yahoo.com

WASHINGTON – It looks like American politics is entering a new age of anxiety, triggered by an unprecedented legal development: The potential indictment of a former president and current presidential candidate.

Donald Trump's many legal problems – and calls for protests by his followers – have generated new fears of political violence and anxiety about the unknowable impact all this will have on the already-tense 2024 presidential election

I’ll reframe this is a more accurate way, Are Presidents above the law? This new age was spurred into existence when home grown dummies elected a corrupt, mentally ill, anti-democratic, would be dictator as President and don’t bother to hold him responsible for his crimes, don’t want to because in the ensuing mayhem and destruction, they think they will be better off. The man is actually advocating violence (not the first time). And btw, screw democracy too. If this feeling spreads, we are In deep shirt.

This goes beyond one treasonous Peice of work and out to all his minions. This is on you or should we be sympathetic to the idea of they can’t help being selfish suckers to the Nation’s detriment? Donald Trump is the single largest individual threat to our democracy and it‘s all going to boil down to will the majority of the GOP return to his embrace and start slinging his excrement to support him?

 

[Optimus Prime]

Donald Trump wildly boasted that he is in better physical shape than Barack Obama as he returned to the Midwest on Wednesday evening for his latest campaign rally in Coralville, Iowa.

Speaking soon after House Republicans successully voted to formalise their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, Mr Trump sought to draw a further line between himself and his successor in the White House by stressing what he claims to be his superior fitness for office.

“I just took a physical, you’ll be happy to hear,” the 77-year-old told his supporters.

“I passed with flying colours. And I took a cognitive exam. I said, ‘Doctor, give me anything you want. I want to take it.’”

Not content with bragging about having “aced” those tests, he claimed to be in better shape than former president Mr Obama, aged 62, by invoking the opinion of his former White House doctor Ronny Jackson turned Texas congressman.

“He was Obama’s doctor, too, by the way,” the ex-real estate tycoon reminded the crowd at the Hyatt Hotel.

“I said, ‘Who’s healthier?’ He said, ‘Sir, there’s no contest.’ I won’t tell you the answer, but you know the answer, okay? It was me.”

He went even further, quoting his old physician as saying: “‘If he didn’t eat junk food, he’d live to 200 years old.’ That’s my kind of a doctor.”

On whether he believed his advanced years could become an issue – as he has repeatedly insisted is the case for 81-year-old Mr Biden – Mr Trump said: “I’ll be the first to know. But I feel that right now I’m sharper than I was 20 years ago, and I don’t know why.

“It’s a funny thing, and it’s a very minor thing, but I’m a much better golfer than I was 10 or 15 years ago. It means something, you know? It means something in a certain way.”..........

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-iowa-weight-obama-biden-b2463973.html

 

[MT15]

Oh, this is swell….

 

[Optimus Prime]

Oh, this is swell….

 

[Optimus Prime]

CORALVILLE, Iowa — Clyde Carson was in the audience of the Fox News town hall with Donald Trump last week when host Sean Hannity asked the former president to rule out abusing power as retribution. “Except for Day One,” Trump replied, volunteering that, “after that, I’m not a dictator.”

“A lot of us Trump people get it, but he was trying to fool with the media. He did that on purpose,” said Carson, a 53-year-old caucus captain from Davenport attending Trump’s speech here on Wednesday. “He just done that because he knew the news would go crazy with it.”

Many of Trump’s supporters here, in an area where the former president held a campaign event Wednesday evening, said they appreciated his comments and did not take them to be a literal declaration of an intent to govern as a dictator. Trump in recent days has returned to the “dictator” theme, on Saturday repeating his intent to “to be a dictator for one day,” to drill for oil and close down the border, while claiming two days later that he was joking.

This repetition and clarification amounts to a potential attempt to downplay or desensitize the public to what he is saying and showing he will do, some experts said. Trump has a track record of suggesting he is joking, including on matters where he was not.............

Trump often uses outrageous statements to grab attention and distract from other headlines, such as his decision to back out of testifying on Monday in a civil fraud trial against his companies in New York, according to Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton sociology professor. He also has a history of accusing his opponents of exactly what he does, as with his Dec. 2 speech accusing President Biden of being a threat to democracy, she said.

That tactic appeared to be finding some purchase with Leann Reed, who attended his speech from Washington, Iowa.

“I don’t think he meant what everybody is saying, being a dictatorship — and actually you know right now under Biden, that’s probably what we got because he does what he wants to do and he’s not really listening to the voters,” Reed, 66, said. “I think we need somebody that’s going to move forward fast to clean up everything, and I think that’s what he meant.”

Other attendees expressed a similar sentiment, with one repeatedly mentioning the word “dictator.”

“I love it,” said a woman in her 50s from northwest Iowa who spoke on the condition that she be identified only as Sue. “My kids call me a dictator, I thought my parents were dictators … He said he was only going to do it for a day. Like if you had a home that was in disrepair and your parents came in and they were firm and they wanted to get it done, and when you got done you had this beautiful home, how could you be mad?”.............

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2023/12/13/trump-dictator-comments-supporters/

 

[MT15]

 

[Optimus Prime]

As Donald Trump and his allies start plotting another presidency, an emerging priority is to find hard-right lawyers who display total fealty to Trump, as a way to enhance his power and seek “retribution” against political foes.

Stocking a future administration with more ideological lawyers loyal to Trump in key posts at the justice department, other agencies and the White House is alarming to former DoJ officials and analysts who say such plans endanger the rule of law.

Trump’s former senior adviser Stephen Miller, president of the Maga-allied legal group America First Legal, is playing a key role in seeking lawyers fully in sync with Trump’s radical agenda to expand his power and curb some major agencies. His search is for those with unswerving loyalty to Trump, who could back Trump’s increasingly authoritarian talk about plans to “weaponize” the DoJ against critics, including some he has labeled as “vermin”.

Miller is well known in Maga circles for his loyalty to Trump and the hard-line anti-immigration policies he helped craft for Trump’s presidency. Notably, Trump has vowed to make those policies even more draconian if he is the GOP nominee and wins again.…….

‘Grifters and sycophants’: the radicals who would fill key posts if Trump is re-elected

Controversial former Trump aide Stephen Miller’s legal group is seeking lawyers with total fealty to ex-president

www.theguardian.com

 

[MT15]

Trump is evidently repeating his line that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country at all his events now.

 

[Optimus Prime]

The 2024 election could well hinge on whether Donald Trump is convicted of a crime next year.

That’s if the polls are to be believed — and if people are being honest with pollsters and themselves.


A variety of polls have tested this question, and virtually every one of them indicates that a huge number of Trump backers would stick with him even if he is a felon. But they also show that a conviction could turn off a group of voters that is significant enough to effectively lose the race for Trump.


They also offer disparate findings about how much a conviction might matter, reinforcing how uncertain the actual impact would be.

A New York Times/Siena College poll last month got the ball rolling on this hypothetical. The swing-state poll showed Trump going from a four-point lead on Biden across those states to a 10-point deficit if he’s convicted — a massive 14-point swing on the margins. If the impact were even close to that, it would be likely to foreclose any real shot Trump had.


Other pollsters have now increasingly tested versions of this question, too, and the findings vary significantly:


• A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week showed an even bigger impact. While Trump led Biden within the margin of error in a field including independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., taking 38 percent, just 25 percent said they would vote for Trump if he were convicted of a felony by a jury. Fifty-nine percent of voters overall and 31 percent of Republicans said they wouldn’t back him — numbers that would in all likelihood be prohibitive for him.


• A Vanderbilt University poll of Tennessee voters this week showed Trump’s support dropping from 45 percent without a conviction to 37 percent with one. That wouldn’t be enough to put the red state in play — and it is notable that his supporters mostly went to candidates other than Biden — but such a shift would be likely to be decisive if reflected across other states.


• A Quinnipiac University poll last month showed a more muted impact. Trump took 38 percent in that poll and led Biden by three points, but only 84 percent of his supporters were committed to backing him if he were convicted. That would move his support down to 32 percent.


• A Wall Street Journal poll over the weekend featured the most muted impact of all. It showed Trump leading by four points without a conviction and trailing by one if convicted.

These polls asked the question in different ways, but we can more or less measure how the issue affects Trump’s margin in each.

The margin swing against Trump is 14 points in the Times/Siena swing-state poll, double-digits in the Reuters/Ipsos poll (which didn’t retest the overall ballot), at least six points in the Quinnipiac poll (which also didn’t retest the ballot), six points in the Vanderbilt Tennessee poll, and five points in the Wall Street Journal poll.


Even those smaller shifts could matter, though.

After all, only one presidential election in the 21st century has featured a popular-vote margin larger than 4.5 points. And although Trump leads nationally in most polls right now, each national poll indicates he would trail after a conviction……..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/15/heres-how-much-criminal-conviction-could-hurt-trump-2024/

 

[MT15]

 

[Maxp]

I find it very, very difficult to believe these polls. The republican party grows smaller by the week due to MAGA and I'm to believe king MAGA, who was stomped by two poor Democratic candidates, is polling ahead of Biden.

 

[Optimus Prime]

for what it's worth
============
Over the past few weeks, warnings about the threat posed by Donald Trump’s potential reelection have grown louder, including in a series of articles in The Atlantic. This alarm-raising is justified and appropriate, given the looming danger of authoritarianism in American politics. But amid all of the worrying, we might be losing sight of the most important fact: Trump’s chances of winning are slim.

Some look at Trump’s long list of flaws and understandably see reasons to worry about him winning. I see reasons to think he almost certainly won’t.

Yes, recent polls appear to favor him. Yes, Joe Biden is an imperfect opponent. And yes, much could change over the next 11 months, potentially in Trump’s favor. But if Biden’s health holds, he is very likely to be reelected next year. It’s hard to imagine any Republican candidate galvanizing Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans to vote for the current president in the way that Trump will.

I’m not arguing that anyone who wants President Biden to win—and, more important, anyone who wants Trump to lose—should relax. To the contrary, Democrats, and any other sensible voters who oppose Trump, need to forcefully remind the American people about how disastrous he was as president and inform them of how much worse a second term would be. Thankfully, that is not a hard case to make.

The former president enjoys some clear advantages. About a third of Republicans are fiercely loyal to him, meaning that he has the unwavering support of a small but potent segment of the broader electorate. Once he is presumably crowned the Republican nominee, which seems inevitable and will probably occur by Super Tuesday, the GOP’s electoral and fundraising machine will whir into motion on his behalf. In all likelihood, the leaders in his party will unite behind him. Large numbers of Americans will vote for anyone running as a Republican against a Democrat.

Trump’s media supporters, above all at Fox News, will offer support, propagating a set of myths about his record in office, particularly the supposedly great economy over which he presided. Trump will be able to run as both an incumbent, because he’s a former president, and an “outsider,” as in 2016, because he is out of office. That will make his attacks on the “deep state” and his own persecution narrative more convincing. Trump intends to use his various criminal and civil trials as proof that “they”—the Biden administration—are going after him because he represents “us”—his voters. A certain segment of the public will buy into these messages.

Trump might also enjoy a relative advantage in the Electoral College because of the counter-majoritarian aspects of the U.S. political system. He soundly lost the popular vote in both 2016 and 2020, and almost no one expects him to win a majority of votes in 2024 either. But if the race is close enough in the right places, the undue power of rural voters in smaller or less populated states could tilt the outcome in his favor.

Finally, Biden is not the candidate Trump ran against four years ago. He is older, his approval rating is suffering, and, during his four years in office, he has given certain segments of the public reasons to be dissatisfied with him. That’s reflected in the current polling, where he appears to be losing support among key groups, including Black and Latino voters.

All of that notwithstanding, when the general election gets under way, and presuming that Americans are faced with a binary choice between Trump and Biden, Trump’s chances will start to look much worse. Even if most Republicans unite behind him, a significant portion of both Republicans and independents will have a hard time pulling the lever for him. Some Republican voters might well stay home..............

MSN

Why Trump Won’t Win

His threats to democracy make him dangerous. They also make him a weak candidate.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

............The United States, the first country to claim the mantle of democracy in the modern era, has long had an exceptionally strong democratic culture. Belief in democratic ideals, liberal rights, and the basics of constitutional government are so fundamental to American identity that they’ve been collectively described as the country’s “civil religion.”

Yet today, America’s vaunted democratic culture is withering before our eyes. American democracy, once seemingly secure, is now in so much trouble that 75 percent of Americans believe that “the future of American democracy is at risk in the 2024 presidential election,” according to a study by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution.

This withering took off during Donald Trump’s rise to power and has continued apace in his post-presidency. The more he attacks the foundations of the democratic system, the less everyone — both his supporters and his opponents — believe American democracy is both healthy and likely to endure.

Moreover, he has birthed an anti-democratic movement inside the Republican Party dedicated to advancing his vision (or something like it). These Republicans vocally and loudly argue American democracy is a sham — and that dire measures are justified in response. This faction is already influential, and will likely become more so given its especial prominence among the ranks of young conservatives.

As worrying as the prospect of a second Trump term is, the damage he and his allied movement have already done to American democratic culture is not hypothetical: It’s already here, it’s getting worse, and it will likely persist — even if Trump loses in 2024.

Put differently, Trump has already robbed us of our sense of security and faith in our democracy. The consequences of that theft are not abstract, but rather ones we’ll all have to deal with for years to come.............

In the United States, democracy’s positive feedback loop turned negative. Republican attacks on the legitimacy of America’s democratic institutions caused Democrats to doubt their very survival — leading Democrats to take actions that Republicans (incorrectly) perceive as further undermining the system’s legitimacy.

The process was visible during Trump’s rise in 2016, when his partisans began casting the contest with Hillary Clinton in apocalyptic terms — “charge the cockpit or you die,” as one famous pro-Trump metaphor went. But it really accelerated after the 2020 election, when Trump argued that the election was stolen from him and attempted a kind of coup rather than accepting defeat.

Polling has consistently shown that large majorities of Republicans believe that Biden stole the election from Trump — that is, that America’s last presidential election was not decided democratically. Political scientists have confirmed that they’re not just saying this: Republicans sincerely believe that American democracy is not functioning in a legitimate fashion, that it’s rigged against them.

Trump’s attempt to overturn the election made it plain to his opponents that he posed a clear and present threat to American democracy. Democrats began talking, and acting, like the country was in the midst of an existential crisis — making the preservation of democracy a central issue in the 2022 midterms.

Today, it’s common among pro-Trump Republican partisans to jeer at the invocation of democratic values (“muh democracy” is a common sarcastic phrase on right-leaning social media). They see liberals and Democrats warnings about Trump as an insincere ploy to defend a corrupt system and scorn them accordingly..........

In a recent piece in the Unpopulist, the libertarian writer Radley Balko compiled a long list of other influential Republicans who have made their disdain for democracy plain. Some examples included:

• Kash Patel, a high-level Trump administration official rumored to be a top pick for CIA director, vowed to “go after” his enemies in government and the media “criminally or civilly” if returned to power.
• Mike Davis, a Republican lawyer on Trump’s attorney general shortlist, says he would use that power to engage in a “reign of terror” in which they “put kids in cages” and “detain a lot of people in the DC gulag.”
• Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) advised Trump to fire “every civil servant in the administrative state” and “replace them with our people.”
• Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy went on a conspiratorial rant during the December primary debate — calling the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot an “inside job,” defending the white nationalist “Great Replacement” theory, accusing “Big Tech” of stealing the 2020 election, and indulging in 9/11 trutherism.
• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has opened a criminal investigation into Media Matters, a liberal media watchdog, in retaliation for its criticism of Elon Musk’s content moderation on Twitter (also known as X).

The official veer into authoritarianism Balko documents is underpinned by an intellectual climate on the right that’s socializing the next generation of Republicans into extremism............

What Trump has already taken from us

Democracy is a culture — and Trump is destroying it.

www.vox.com

 

[MT15]

Just saying it right out there. He wants more than 4 years, if he wins.

 

[Optimus Prime]

It’s been evident for a long time that Republicans — and supporters of Donald Trump, especially — take a more no-holds-barred approach to politics than Democrats do.

They’re much more likely to say political violence can be justified, for instance. It’s also become clear that Trump being convicted of a felony isn’t a red line for the vast majority of them.


But for apparently the first time, we can affix a number to how many of them think that Trump breaking the law for political ends is okay.


About 3 in 10.

That’s the finding of a new Fox News poll this weekend. It phrased the question thusly:


“Some people say things in the U.S. are so far off track that we need a president willing to break some rules and laws to set things right, while others say the president should always follow the rules and laws. Which comes closest to your view?”


Voters who supported Trump in 2020 were about twice as likely to endorse the break-rules-and-laws view as 2020 Biden backers.

While 65 percent of Trump backers said a president should always follow the rules and the law, 30 percent said breaking rules and laws could be justified.


The split among Biden voters was 83-15 against breaking rules and laws.
The new poll builds on previous polling showing a greater appetite on the right for disregarding the usual guardrails……..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/18/3-10-trump-voters-want-president-willing-break-rules-laws/

 

[MT15]

 

[MT15]

This is perfectly said.

 

[MT15]

This is who @SFL should be following on Twitter. This guy is a very much down the middle, common sense poster. Threads by him are always worth the read.

 

[MT15]