Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Breccia]

Chris Hayes predicts Tucker Carlson will quit FOX News.

The theory, is that Tucker Carlson has been showing so many people that quit a job rather than get vaccinated as that job requires and hailing them as heroes, because he's trying to make it look like he's a hero when he leaves. FOX News has a vaccine mandate.

Of course, the obvious response is "Carlson is just a lying hypocrite", which of course he is. But this could be his back door if FOX News is worried about any lawsuits and threatens to fire him -- he could pretend he was being the bigger man and quit "in protest of the vaccine mandate". You know, months after it was applied.

[Kaleredar]

Chris Hayes predicts Tucker Carlson will quit FOX News.

The theory, is that Tucker Carlson has been showing so many people that quit a job rather than get vaccinated as that job requires and hailing them as heroes, because he's trying to make it look like he's a hero when he leaves. FOX News has a vaccine mandate.

Of course, the obvious response is "Carlson is just a lying hypocrite", which of course he is. But this could be his back door if FOX News is worried about any lawsuits and threatens to fire him -- he could pretend he was being the bigger man and quit "in protest of the vaccine mandate". You know, months after it was applied.

Most of these conservative blowhards who are just in it for the money seem to actually get themselves vaccinated. I'd have assumed that Carlson did as well, and just conveniently never told his viewers that he did so that he could keep tossing out scurrilous information about vaccines for easy content.

[Breccia]

I'd have assumed that Carlson did as well, and just conveniently never told his viewers

You appear to be correct. He continues to work at FOX News which has a vaccine mandate, or more realistically, you have to tell FOX News you're vaccinated and they'll take your word for it. Or, you get daily testing. So it's possible Carlson lied to his boss, claimed he had the vaccine when he didn't. If he is caught lying, he'll be fired and sued. He's not that stupid. I suspect he also knows that, if he tests positive, he'll never hear the end of it. Then be fired.

[beanman12345]

Eh, tbh, Tucker isn't really all that special. If he quits they'll just replace him and nothing much will change. I'm surprised they haven't already, they could make so much more ad revenue money by replacing his dumbass.

[Gorsameth]

The democrats have made themselves the party of masks, vaccines, and listening to doctors.

Clearly, the republicans have to adopt the opposite stance, no matter the cost. Can't be seen as agreeing with the democrats.

It sounds like your saying it sarcastically but that is basically what it comes down to.

[DingDongKing]

Eh, tbh, Tucker isn't really all that special. If he quits they'll just replace him and nothing much will change. I'm surprised they haven't already, they could make so much more ad revenue money by replacing his dumbass.

He's extremely influential. I know lots and lots of people who swear by every word of his.

[Gorsameth]

You appear to be correct. He continues to work at FOX News which has a vaccine mandate, or more realistically, you have to tell FOX News you're vaccinated and they'll take your word for it. Or, you get daily testing. So it's possible Carlson lied to his boss, claimed he had the vaccine when he didn't. If he is caught lying, he'll be fired and sued. He's not that stupid. I suspect he also knows that, if he tests positive, he'll never hear the end of it. Then be fired.

No doubt in my mind he is vaccinated. These people are generally not stupid, they know they are peddling lies and don't believe their own bullshit. He will have gotten vaccinated in the first wave.

[DingDongKing]

No doubt in my mind he is vaccinated. These people are generally not stupid, they know they are peddling lies and don't believe their own bullshit. He will have gotten vaccinated in the first wave.

He's 100% vaccinated. The only people who aren't vaccinated - other than for legitimate medical reasons - are just planks.

I mean, think about it. If the vaccine is giving you 5G rays in your blood stream, who wouldn't want network access underground?

[gondrin]

He's 100% vaccinated. The only people who aren't vaccinated - other than for legitimate medical reasons - are just planks.

I mean, think about it. If the vaccine is giving you 5G rays in your blood stream, who wouldn't want network access underground?

Hell, I'll take it over my current cell coverage. T-Mobile is really spotty at times where I live. However, I won't switch because they don't have a contract unless you do payments on a new phone.

[DingDongKing]

Hell, I'll take it over my current cell coverage. T-Mobile is really spotty at times where I live. However, I won't switch because they don't have a contract unless you do payments on a new phone.

I'm in the UK. My contract is £12 per month for 30GB of 5G data. I've taken out the phone with Apple directly.

Got the iPhone 13 Pro. Was due an upgrade this year, my phone was 4 years old. So in total I'm paying £52 for the phone and contract.

If I do the same deal with Vodafone, they charge me £67. Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

[Bodakane]

How do we know Tucker hasn't been vaccinated?

Honestly, what seems more likely:

- A whiney, entitled and pastey coward makes a stand so strong he risks losing millions of dollars at his cushy job?

or

- A whiney, entitled and pastey coward who is so known for lying that his own network says "don't believe him", is lying?

[Beefhammer]

It sounds like your saying it sarcastically but that is basically what it comes down to.

Key and Peele had a great Obama skits about this exactly.

[Levelfive]

It sounds like your saying it sarcastically but that is basically what it comes down to.

They're iron filings automatically polarizing against anything Democrats say or support.

ETA: Of course the vaccine stuff is particularly sinister and inhumane, even for Republicans, since the goal is political advantage through deliberate chaos and death, and then transferring blame for it to Biden.

[Levelfive]

It’s just getting sad seeing them meekly suggest vaccines to crowds that tell them covid isn’t real.

I think that's to feed their "Biden caused vaccine hesitancy so this is all Biden's fault" charade, so they say it once or twice, weather the inevitable boos, and then say, "look, we tried to tell people but Biden and Harris poisoned the well." I think McConnell, polio survivor, has been one of the few consistent voices on the right encouraging people to get vaccinated.

[Breccia]

I think that's to feed their "Biden caused vaccine hesitancy so this is all Biden's fault" charade

This was such a strange strategy to roll with. Nobody is saying "the Democrats tricked me personally, I was a dupe, I was foold and mislead" because, if they said that, they would then have to say "so naturally I got the vaccine, rather than to let the trick continue to work". This is what Republicans are saying, as an excuse for why the Party of Trump is killing themselves. "You tricked them" seems to be the claim, "you Democrats tricked them into not getting the vaccine by proving objectively it was safe and saved lives".

"But Breccia! Surely these same Republicans could just say 'hey get the vaccine, I got it and it's safe and saves lives'. Problem solved."

They...have been. It's possible part of the "you tricked them" that Republicans thought up when they needed a reason their attempts were failing. When they show up at speeches and say "get the vaccine" and get booed, they needed a reason to say "this is somehow not my fault". Or, maybe more reaslitically, "this is Trump's fault but I'll be killed if I say that out loud so I need someone else".

"But Breccia! Trump took great pride in making the vaccine! He made it himself out of Jesus tears and Doritos. This can't be Trump's fault, can it?"

It 100% can. Trump was an anti-vaxxer most of his life, changing his public tune only when there was a deadly outbreak on his tenure. Oh, and then COVID happend after that. However, bear in mind he's been harboring conspiracy theorists and spewing factual misinformation on purpose for some time. He attracted anti-vaxxers who think the government is completely evil, except for Trump, and Trump's not in charge.

Trump very rarely says "get the vaccine" and got booed when telling a crowd of his own followers that. Therefore, because Trump's ego is the most important thing to Trump, he'll stop saying it. He knows he's lost this one, and would rather have people say they love him, than have people be alive due to his own efforts.

He neutered what he could have claimed was his greatest achievement. The Wall? Fell over. Tax cut for the rich? Nobody saw anything. Murderous insurrection? People are going to jail and he's still off Twitter and FB. He took credit for the vaccine which he probably shouldn't have, but, he could have taken more credit. Remember earlier on, where Trump claimed he saved millions of lives? He didn't, he botched every single aspect of the situation and was comparing his numbers against "do nothing" plus 700,000 dead. But saving a few million lives is something he could have pushed on his own rabid fanbase. But...only if they were willing to believe it. They aren't.

The Pew Research Center conclusively demonstrated that those Americans who rely on Trump for news, are the least likely to get the vaccine. Even if it's not causation, that correlation is 100% because of Trump cultivating an audience of the insane.

And what's left of the Republican Party is too afraid to say this. Because even if they could survive the vote loss, they might get murdered. Their only option is to aim the rabid fanbase, proven advocates of violence in politics yes that's terrorism, at someone else.

[Benggaul]

Wednesday's report:

107,987 new cases; about 17k fewer than last Wednesday.

Top 10:

Fuck Florida.
Texas: 11,412 new cases; 364 deaths
Ohio: 6,296 new cases; deaths not reported
New York: 5,854 new cases; 34 deaths
California: 5,698 new cases; 192 deaths
Pennsylvania: 5,058 new cases; 112 deaths
Michigan: 4,835 new cases; 53 deaths
Virginia: 3,919 new cases; 44 deaths
Minnesota: 3,883 new cases; 40 deaths
Wisconsin: 3,613 new cases; 1 death

Texas remains the only state in the nation with over 10k cases, as expected (I keep Florida at the top for being pants-on-fire lying for so long; I'll remove them once they drop out of the top 10) and nationally cases continue declining. As mentioned earlier this week the Great Lakes and Northwest regions are still seeing increases but nothing on the level of Florida/Texas at this point, though the Northwest (Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming) is listed as "Severe" risk along with Alaska. Those are all states with the highest cases per 100k ranging from 76 from Idaho to 124 in Alaska. California, by comparison, remains one of the lowest at around 17 per 100k.

2,102 deaths is around 250 fewer than last Wednesday and brings the total to 727,710. Texas once again broke 300 while Georgia and California came in just shy of 200. Some of that is likely the normal correction from the weekend/early week that usually happens middle of the week, but not all. Things may be getting better but they're still pretty awful.

Related news:

The children left behind: 140,000 kids lost a caregiver to Covid--Likely an underestimation. We continue to see more and more problems arising from the pandemic and they aren't going to go away anytime soon. Get your jabs. Unless you're a member of the GOP and don't give a fuck about kids once they're out of the womb, I guess.

Fired for refusing a Covid vaccine? You likely can’t get unemployment benefits--Get your jabs.

Heart damage plagues COVID survivors a year after infection, study shows--Get your jabs.

Stay safe, folks.

[beanman12345]

He's extremely influential. I know lots and lots of people who swear by every word of his.

It's the timeslot on Fox that's influential, not the person giving the message, since the message is basically the same from whoever gives it. O'Reilly was extremely influential, till he lost that time slot.

[Edge-]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mypill...ncel-lou-dobbs

Fukin kek, Pillow Man slunk back to Fox to pay them to advertise his shitty pillows again, guess he does need them more than they need him after all.

But don't worry, now he's pushing a conspiracy that Fox partnered up with Dominion to have Dominion sue Fox as an excuse to fire Lou Dobbs. Seriously, if the the victim complexes of these nutters had a physical footprint I think the state of Texas would be one giant building at this point.

[PhaelixWW]

Not exactly new information, but it adds a lot of context...

CNN: Senate Judiciary Committee issues sweeping report detailing how Trump and a top DOJ lawyer attempted to overturn 2020 election

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday released a sweeping report about how former President Donald Trump and a top lawyer in the Justice Department attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Trump directly asked the Justice Department nine times to undermine the election result, and his chief of staff Mark Meadows broke administration policy by pressuring a Justice Department lawyer to investigate claims of election fraud, according to the report, which is based on witness interviews of top former Justice Department officials.

The Democratic-led committee also revealed that White House counsel Pat Cipollone threatened to quit in early January as Trump considered replacing then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, a DOJ lawyer who supported election fraud conspiracies.

After the eight-month investigation, the findings highlight the relentlessness of Trump and some of his top advisers as they fixated on using the Justice Department to prop up false conspiracies of election fraud. The committee report, the most comprehensive account so far of Trump's efforts to overturn the election, described his conduct as an abuse of presidential power.

Soon after the release of the report Thursday morning, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley's office issued a GOP version, which pushes back on the Democrats' findings and defends Trump, saying he "listened to his senior advisors and followed their advice and recommendations."

Appearing on CNN's "New Day" Thursday morning, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said the US was a "half a step away from a constitutional crisis, a full-blown constitutional crisis" and explained the events unfolded in three phases.

"First phase, Trump goes to court. Loses every lawsuit, which claims there was voter fraud in the election. Next, he decides he has to take over the Department of Justice and the attorney general, and have the attorney general push this narrative on to the states to tell them to stop from sending in their Electoral College vote totals. When that failed -- and our report goes into graphic detail of the efforts that were made -- the third step was to turn the mob loose on the Capitol the day we were counting the ballots," Durbin said, referring to the January 6 riot.

The 400-page report by Senate Democrats, entitled "Subverting Justice," slams the actions of Clark, who they say became a crucial player in Trump's attempt to use the Justice Department for his political gain.

The Senate Judiciary Committee announced on Thursday they were referring him to the DC Bar for a review of his professional conduct, citing rules that bar attorneys from assisting in fraud and interfering with the administration of justice.

The committee said it has not yet made findings of possible criminality, since their investigation is not complete. Clark has not been charged with any crime, and an attorney for Clark didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Clark was not interviewed by the committee. Instead, top Justice Department officials described in interviews his and Trump's plans to overturn the election.

Clark had pushed Rosen and Richard Donoghue, then the second-in-command at the Justice Department, to use the Justice Department to announce election fraud investigations and ask state leaders in Georgia to appoint electors, potentially disregarding the certified popular vote. Clark began making the pitch in late December after speaking with Trump directly, the committee found.

The Senate committee wrote he may have had assistance from "lower-level allies" within the Justice Department and even attempted to bargain with Rosen on his plan, saying he would turn down a chance at taking Rosen's place if Rosen would agree to support his Georgia elector initiative.

"Clark's proposal to wield DOJ's power to override the already-certified popular vote reflected a stunning distortion of DOJ's authority: DOJ protects ballot access and ballot integrity, but has no role in determining which candidate won a particular election," the committee wrote.

Donoghue and Rosen both testified to the committee.

The series of interactions between the President and Rosen and Donoghue began in mid-December with an Oval Office meeting, included several phone calls and continued through January 3.

In multiple calls, Trump claimed there was election fraud in Pennsylvania and Arizona -- both states he lost -- telling Rosen "people are saying" and asking the Justice Department to look into the rumors, according to the committee.

Trump also told the DOJ leadership, "You guys aren't following the internet the way I do," according to both Donoghue and Rosen.

Rosen told the President the department "can't and won't just flip a switch and change the election." That prompted Trump to simply ask for an official Justice announcement that the election was corrupt and then "leave the rest to me and the [Republican] Congressmen," the committee report noted.

The department hadn't found any widespread fraud in the election, and simultaneously Trump's campaign was filing lawsuits to throw out millions of votes in the swing states.

Trump had Rosen and Clark vie for the attorney general's job during the nearly three-hour meeting on January 3 before deciding not to replace Rosen with Clark, the report found. It also details how discussions about Clark's plan in Georgia became inextricably linked to talks about him replacing Rosen.

"According to Rosen, Trump opened the meeting by saying, 'One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren't going to do anything to overturn the election,'" the report says.

"Over the course of the next three hours, the group had what Donoghue called 'a wide-ranging conversation' focused on whether Trump should replace DOJ's leadership, install Clark in Rosen's place, and send Clark's proposed letter—and whether Clark was even qualified to assume the Acting Attorney General position. Rosen and Donoghue told us that by this point, Clark's proposed letter and his potential role as Acting Attorney General were intertwined," it adds.

The report goes on to note that at some point during the meeting, Donoghue and Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Steve Engel made clear that there would be mass resignations at DOJ if Trump moved forward with replacing Rosen with Clark -- something he told the committee was "important context" for the then-president as he weighed his decision.

Donoghue and Rosen also recalled White House lawyers Cipollone and Patrick Philbin pushing back on the plan to replace Rosen with Clark, with Cipollone calling Clark's letter a "murder-suicide pact" and the two White House lawyers indicating that they would also resign, according to the report.

Despite the threat of mass resignations, Trump "continued for some time to entertain the idea of installing Clark in Rosen's place," the report notes. It also says that Donoghue told the panel that Trump did not reject Clark's course of action until "'very deep into the conversation,' within the final 15 minutes of the two- to three-hour meeting."

CNN previously reported that Rosen, during his closed-door interview with the committee, spoke of numerous interactions with Clark, but much of the focus of his testimony was on five episodes where Clark went out of the chain of command to push the fraud claims -- including the January 3 White House meeting.

[Breccia]

Wednesday's report:

We have reached a grim milestone: more people died from COVID in 2021 so far, than 2020. We just passed the 50/50 split.

Now of course a lot of that is the big chunk happeneing at the holiday season getting 2021 off to a running death start while deaths in 2020 too four months to really take off.



As you can see, things were the worst they've ever been under Trump. I probably don't need to qualify that, but I meant with COVID.

So let's do what I said I would do, find out the before/after Jan 20th breakdown of COVID deaths by blue/red states.

Using the CDC tracker because that has cumulative deaths by date, I found
1) every state's deaths by Jan 20th
2) every state's deaths since
3) if that state voted for Trump (by simple majority)
4) if that state has a GOP-controlled state house
I had to do #4 because Trump was such a horrible WH resident that states that voted for their own red politicians, still didn't vote for Trump. He lost, because he was the worse option.

Because I changed the date to Jan 20th, it is no longer a 50/50 split. The US as a whole had passed the biggest peak it has ever had by then.

My findings:
Of states that voted for Trump, 42.30% of all deaths were since Jan 20th. In states that did not vote for Trump, it was 33.54% This is a clear, substantial significant difference. Trump states have an extra 25% of deaths compared to Biden states.

Of states that have Republican-controlled state governing houses, I didn't do just governor by the way, 41.5% of all COVID deaths were after Jan 6th. In others, 31.5%. So the gap is still there, it's even wider.

Some other findings:
A) More total deaths happened in blue states. Duh. Blue states tend to be larger, including early-hard-hit NY, NJ, and CA.
B) But since Jan 20th, that changed. 50.04% of all deaths, a slim majority, came from Trump-voting states. However, an alarming 66.37% of all COVID deaths since Jan 20th have come from states with GOP-led state governing houses. Yeah, that's two to one. Ouch. Fuck Florida.
C) If I ranked all states by %deaths since Jan 20th, we get some interesting results in the top ten. Hawaii is #1, they got screwed. But of the ten top states by that metric, four voted for Trump, and five have GOP houses, Georiga was #6 that's why.
D) But the bottom ten, those with the lowest percent of deaths since Jan 20th, are also odd. There are some big names there, such as Illinois and Massachusets. Man, Illinois and Massachusets have done really well handling COVID! Can you imagine if a disingenuous falsehood-posting troll tried to say they didn't? They'd have nothing to back that up except Some Guy On Twitter. Oh also New York and New Jersey, because fuck me if that first hit didn't get them worried. Of these bottom ten states, only two voted for Trump. They are both Dakotas. Yes, SD is low on the list, they had a pretty safe summer.
D2) Oddly enough, Texas is #22, despite their best efforts to kill themselves recently, they weren't doing it long enough. Florida is #8.
E) If I change "voted for Trump" to "voted for Trump or sued to vote for Trump" we...get nothing useful, because those were pretty much states with GOP houses and we already did that. So all it does is widen the gap a bit.

- - - Updated - - -

it adds a lot of context

It does, yes. Trump was so far gone, even the people he hired to throw the election, would not throw the election. I love the threat of mass resignations. I know it'll be painted as Deep State by the Derp State, but it just shows the checks and balances we have. Even people willing to work for Trump had lies they would not tell and lines they would not cross. Not all of them, but enough.