Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Breccia]

The only conclusion you can reach is that only ~2% of the electorate, who were going to vote kemp, trust trump's endorsement more than their own judgement.

Well, first of all, that's really not that far off from what I said at first.

Secondly, as I just said and @PhaelixWW would probably agree, there's a mix of people who
a) didn't know who Kemp/Purdue were and/or didn't know Trump endorsed Purdue, and
b) those who did

Considering how similar the results were, it either means
a) like you suggested, almost everyone already knew and made up their minds, or
b) whether they had or had not made up their minds didn't matter

Trump is either not trusted, or he is irrelevant. I'll let the Trump supporters decide. There is no result from that poll which is flattering for Trump.

[Edge-]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...90ca303b069aba



JD Vance, onetime liberal hero for helping them "understand" Appalachia, is promoting another batshit crazy, baseless conspiracy theory.

Just a reminder that Republicans live in a world of pure imagination. And their imaginations fuckin suck.

And apropos of nothing - https://archive.ph/7MuWF#selection-2559.0-2559.100

According to the White House, Customs and Border Protection has been seizing more than 800 pounds of fentanyl along the U.S.-Mexico border per month — double what it was stopping in 2020 as the Trump administration ended, and four times as much as it blocked in 2019.

Oh look, the feds, under Biden, are stopping two to four times as much fentanyl from entering the US through ports of entry from Mexico, compared to Trump.

Lying liars gonna lie lyingly.

[PhaelixWW]

Trump is either not trusted, or he is irrelevant. I'll let the Trump supporters decide. There is no result from that poll which is flattering for Trump.

The more salient point is that 61% of Republicans didn't automatically confirm Trump's pick, and 46% actually picked a different candidate over Trump's pick.

Since we don't know about the overlap (and ignoring the fact that these are different groups of people, and so a 2% difference could just entirely be in the margin of error), the results show 2% vote-switchers vs. 46% endorsement-ignorers.

I mean, here's the thing: even if every single person who said that they supported Perdue in the control group because they would support whomever Trump picked (and because they were such lemmings that they already knew that Trump supported him), then that still is a loss for Trump at 39% to 46%.

Yeah, that's not a good look for Trump, especially in a state that the GoP desperately wants to bring back into the fold.

[Breccia]

JD Vance

What did Vance say when the 2020 overdose death records was announced? Trump was in charge then. Did he blame the open border?

(checks)

Nothing, it seems. The 2020 overdose deaths recorded in Oct 2021 did not draw a response from JD Vance between June and December 2021. Or if he did respond, it didn't make a ripple at all.

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Yeah, that's not a good look for Trump, especially in a state that the GoP desperately wants to bring back into the fold.

I mean....do they, tho? Do they really? As I cited before, not even Trump thinks Trump is winning in Georgia.

[PhaelixWW]

I mean....do they, tho? Do they really? As I cited before, not even Trump thinks Trump is winning in Georgia.

And you don't think they're desperate to change that?

[Breccia]

And you don't think they're desperate to change that?

I think they're desperate to change that to "Trump is no longer a factor", honestly.

Oh, and big surprise, Trump has already responded to the GOP support of Kemp by calling everyone who did RINOs who hate election security.

EDIT: Shit! I misread that first post of yours. I thought you said "a state that the GoP desperately wants to bring HIM back into the fold." My bad.

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A judge today gave Trump a NY ultimatum:

a) pay the $110,000 fine for not turning over subpoena'd documents, or
b) the contempt charges go forward

Now the assumption is Trump will pay, but still not turn over the documents. The judge also required Trump's on-crack legal team explain why not. "We looked and didn't find anything" doesn't sound like something a high-ranking judge would take at face value.

[Edge-]

We probably need a thread just for his shit, but...


Guardian link.

What about the victims of capitalism? You know, like slaves? Who still exist? Can we have a mandatory course on Nestle to highlight the victims of capitalism, too? I mean, it's only fair given that lessons are apparently supposed to show "both sides" of issues.

[Breccia]

We probably need a thread just for his shit

You can see at a college campus students flying the hammer and sickle from the old Soviet Union flag

-- DeSantis

You can? Name one. Pics or it didn't happen.

[Edge-]

-- DeSantis

You can? Name one. Pics or it didn't happen.

Also...why is this a problem? That seems like free speech, to me. Same as college students with the confederate flag, which is arguably worse given that they were traitors to the country.

[Fugus]

A judge today gave Trump a NY ultimatum:

a) pay the $110,000 fine for not turning over subpoena'd documents, or
b) the contempt charges go forward

Now the assumption is Trump will pay, but still not turn over the documents. The judge also required Trump's on-crack legal team explain why not. "We looked and didn't find anything" doesn't sound like something a high-ranking judge would take at face value.

Until they are willing to actually start locking him up as well as his family, they aren’t doing much other than bluster.

If I was a lying broke ass who has gotten away with stuff that far and even now is getting away spending other peoples money, why would I comply?

I would just sit back and litigate it till I die of old age. I am not losing anything anyways. Not losing my own money, not losing my freedom and can continue to live in luxury till my dying day, as for those cases, I will be dead before they are done so not my problem.

If I comply, then I go to jail and I know it while potentially giving them access to my own money in the process.

So my best option is to keep riding it out and letting others pay my bills for me.

Until they actually start putting some real teeth behind this, there is no reason for it to be taken seriously.

If they wanted to go with the fines route, they needed to have that fine added double exponentially each day to the point he couldn’t just ignore it with other peoples money.

At 10k starting, it should have been at 80k by the forth day.

[Breccia]

why would I comply?

I legitimately, honestly hope that dozens, hundreds, thousands of lawyers cite the Trump case as prescedent. For exactly that reason.

Also, I'm hoping that NYState is working with another judge for a no-knock. Because if Team Trump isn't going to willingly comply and isn't going to unwillingly comply, it's time for those special document searchers @cubby has told us about to show up with 20 SWAT members. And the press.

[Fugus]

I legitimately, honestly hope that dozens, hundreds, thousands of lawyers cite the Trump case as prescedent. For exactly that reason.

Also, I'm hoping that NYState is working with another judge for a no-knock. Because if Team Trump isn't going to willingly comply and isn't going to unwillingly comply, it's time for those special document searchers @cubby has told us about to show up with 20 SWAT members. And the press.

I agree, the biggest problem will be we know DeSantis would make sure to give them a heads up should SWAT ever get close to Trump's resort and will then proudly brag about it to get the votes of his supporters.

I do hope to see them push this issue, but if they do, they will have to make sure to keep DeSantis and the majority of the current GOP out of the loop because they have already proven they will play mole for him like they did on the Mueller Investigation.

[Paranoid Android]

NEW: Trump was an even bigger conspiracy freak than we knew.


Yup. One of the most bizarre meetings we ever had with Trump was in preparation for a hurricane landing. He was far less concerned with saving American lives and more concerned with his burning question: “Do they always spin counterclockwise?” It got weirder after that.

As the hurricane barreled toward the Carolinas he saw a guy in a MAGA hat on TV say he was going to ride it out. Trump liked that. He wanted to tell people to “ride it out.”Only a staffer warning that his voters might die (and were needed in 2020) convinced him to urge evacuation

"The then-president had a pressing question for his aides: Does China have a secret weapon to create man-made hurricanes and then launch them at the U.S.? And if so, would this constitute an act of war, and could the U.S. retaliate militarily?"

Our next President folks!

So crazy I'm really doubting the story from Rollin Stones, but holy crap!

[Edge-]

NEW: Trump was an even bigger conspiracy freak than we knew.


Yup. One of the most bizarre meetings we ever had with Trump was in preparation for a hurricane landing. He was far less concerned with saving American lives and more concerned with his burning question: “Do they always spin counterclockwise?” It got weirder after that.



"The then-president had a pressing question for his aides: Does China have a secret weapon to create man-made hurricanes and then launch them at the U.S.? And if so, would this constitute an act of war, and could the U.S. retaliate militarily?"

Our next President folks!

So crazy I'm really doubting the story from Rollin Stones, but holy crap!

This is the same guy that reportedly inquired about nuking hurricanes to stop them from growing/reaching the US. So this is absolutely believable.

[Paranoid Android]

VA budget is $270 billion last year and they added $31 billion to this year. Oh btw this dumb shit is on the Veteran's Committee.

This guy is so dumb. I get if he is trying to do the we spend X amount funding a military and don't spend domestically, but he can't even do that. I shouldn't give him this much credit.

Oh and this...

A couple of weeks ago you voted against a bill expanding health care for veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxins.. Plus 12 other Veteran's Bill's.

[DingDongKing]

Republicans love using the military to appeal to the emotions of their voters. Their voter base is so blindly patriotic that they eat this shit up and put no thought into what’s being said. Doesn’t matter how he votes… they don’t watch that.

Well that and Madison Cawthorn is just a dumb fucking human being.

[PhaelixWW]

I'll go ahead and say the quiet part out loud, here, too:

By spending this money on aid for Ukraine fighting Russia, the idea is that we decrease the amount of a threat that Russia poses to the world in the immediate future, and therefore to the US military should Russia decide to bring about WW3 at some point.

In a sense, this is going indirectly towards making US soldiers safer.

The only thing better (at least for future US veterans) than developing superior weaponry for your soldiers to use while fighting a war is to be able to give the same weaponry to the other people fighting your somewhat likely inevitable foe. This might sound more callous if the US had pushed Ukraine to fight Russia, but as it was Russia that chose to invade Ukraine, and since Ukraine was going to fight back regardless...

[Flarelaine]

The only thing better (at least for future US veterans) than developing superior weaponry for your soldiers to use while fighting a war is to be able to give the same weaponry to the other people fighting your somewhat likely inevitable foe. This might sound more callous if the US had pushed Ukraine to fight Russia, but as it was Russia that chose to invade Ukraine, and since Ukraine was going to fight back regardless...

Russia fucked around and is finding out.

Callous, but still correct (even if not "right" in every sense).

[Breccia]

The Waldorf Astoria is already scraping Trump's name off their new DC hotel.

As a reminder, Trump lost $70 million on the hotel. In 2019 he tried to sell for $500 million and had to accept $375 million.

[Edge-]

https://www.pennlive.com/news/2022/0...und-in-pa.html

PHILADELPHIA — The fallout from the discovery of a potential GOP “ballot harvesting” operation in South Philadelphia continued Tuesday, as two state party staffers lost their jobs, the matter became fodder for attacks in the Republican primary for governor, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle jockeyed to define just what the situation said — or didn’t — about the security of voting by mail.

Republican Party officials fired Shamus O’Donnell, 27, and C.J. Parker, 24, both of whom had been affiliated with the Republican Registration Coalition, the political action committee behind the South Philadelphia mail ballot operation, according to four party sources familiar with the matter.

Prior to his termination, O’Donnell, the PAC’s former treasurer and a Republican ward leader in Northeast Philadelphia, had worked as a field organizer for the state party, most recently on the campaign of state Senate candidate Sam Oropeza. Parker, also a GOP ward leader in the Northeast, had worked as a personal aide to state party Chair Lawrence Tabas.

O’Donnell and Parker declined to comment Tuesday, and party officials, including Tabas, did not respond to requests for comment.

But the sources who described the terminations — and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter — said the party’s decision to cut ties with the two men stemmed from an Inquirer story last week that raised questions about the PAC’s work registering people in South Philadelphia to vote by mail.

The news organization found that dozens of Republican mail ballots for the May 17 primary were being diverted to a P.O. Box registered to the Republican Registration Coalition. The committee’s chairman — Billy Lanzilotti, a onetime Republican ward leader in Philadelphia and former campaign staffer for U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R., Bucks — said he’d helped the voters fill out their ballot applications, inserting his P.O. box on the form where voters would typically write their home addresses.

Though Lanzilotti maintained he was doing this as a “service to the voters” and intended to hand deliver the ballots once they arrived, many of the affected voters said they did not remember applying to vote by mail and had no idea why their ballots were going to Lanzilotti instead of directly to them. One said Lanzilotti had delivered his ballot back to the city once it had been filled out — which would violate state law.

Of the top 10 mailing addresses for Philadelphia ballots, Lanzilotti’s P.O. box was the only one that was not an elections office or a nursing home.

Philadelphia’s fellow GOP ward leaders voted Saturday to oust Lanzilotti from his position as the leader of South Philadelphia’s 39th Ward, calling the situation troubling at a time when Republican lawmakers and candidates have attacked mail voting and falsely characterized it as rife with abuse by their Democrat rivals.

In an interview Tuesday, Matt Wolfe, an attorney for O’Donnell, said his client had no involvement in Lanzilotti’s ballot operation and had merely agreed to sign on as treasurer for his PAC.

“Shamus had no knowledge of the mail ballot applications and what Billy Lanzilotti was doing,” said Wolfe, who also serves as a Republican ward leader in West Philadelphia.

He declined to say whether O’Donnell had lost his job with the state party but said the Republican City Committee had not considered voting to remove O’Donnell and Parker as ward leaders when they ousted Lanzilotti last week.

None of the affected voters interviewed by The Inquirer said Lanzilotti had attempted to influence or alter their votes.

State law forbids third-party ballot delivery — what Republicans call “ballot harvesting” — except when disabled voters specifically authorize someone else to turn in their ballot for them. But the Lanzilotti ballots, even if delivered in a way forbidden by state law, have not been found to be fraudulent.

Voter fraud — especially the kinds of complex, shadowy operations at the center of many baseless conspiracy theories — is rare.

But that didn’t stop Republicans from seeking to weaponize the situation Tuesday in their ongoing efforts to cast doubt on the security of voting by mail.

In the governor’s race, candidate Bill McSwain attempted to connect Lanzilotti’s operation to one primary opponent, former Delaware County Councilmember Dave White.

Lanzilotti’s Republican Registration Coalition PAC was formed earlier this year with $6,500 in donations from a fund controlled by GOP fund-raiser and former Republican National Committee member Bob Asher, who is supporting White in the primary. Lanzilotti had gathered signatures for White’s nominating petitions in Southeast Philadelphia.

“There is a clear connection between Dave White’s closest advisers and a scheme to manipulate … voters perpetrated by Dave White operative Billy Lanzilotti and the Republican Registration Coalition,” McSwain’s campaign manager, James Fitzpatrick, said in a statement Tuesday. “Any connection between a gubernatorial candidate and potential election misconduct is unacceptable.”

Bob Salera, campaign manager for White, shot back, denying any connection to Lanzilotti.

“These baseless allegations are what the last desperate gasps of Bill McSwain’s dying campaign look like,” he said. “It’s just sad.”

In Harrisburg, State Rep. Seth Grove, R., York, the House GOP’s elections point person and chair of the House Government Committee, cited the situation as he renewed his call for changes to how counties process and approve mail ballot applications — a measure that was part of a much larger bill vetoed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf last year.

“This is nothing more than ballot harvesting,” Grove said in a statement Tuesday.

It’s not clear the specific policies advocated by Grove would have prevented the South Philly ballots from going out.

Republican staffers fired after being found to run a possible "ballot harvesting" scheme in PA.

Continues to be weird that the Republican party keeps doing all the things they accuse Democrats of.

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https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/12/polit...ago/index.html

Investigators issued a subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration for access to classified documents that were taken to former President Donald Trump's home in Florida, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The move is the first overt indication of an ongoing investigation into the handling of classified White House documents that were taken to the former President's Mar-a-Lago residence after he left office.

The subpoena is part of the formal process that FBI investigators and Justice Department prosecutors use to take possession of the boxes of documents from the Archives, which retrieved the boxes from the Florida resort.

The New York Times, which first reported on the subpoena, also said that interviews have been requested with people who worked in the White House at the end of the Trump presidency.

The White House declined to comment.

Well, I guess this is finally moving ahead at a snails pace. Better than nothing.