Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Odinfrost]

He can't pardon himself from that but I can bet you that the US isn't going to imprison the current President while in office.

And he would absolutely have another go at naming himself President for life.

I mean, he deserves an extra four years for free. Haven't you seen the state Obama left the US in when Trump took over? /s

[Breccia]

I can bet you that the US isn't going to imprison the current President while in office.

I agree. Biden probably won't even be charged.

Just kidding, I know what you meant. Trump will have to thread a very narrow needle to both be convicted of a crime worth putting anyone else in prison, but also, winning the election somehow anyway. I don't think he can fit.

Speaking of unfit:

Now, after I read through this latest indictment of Trump, I found myself asking, how can we now really say that we're any better than what we're seeing in the old former Soviet Union?

That's our old friend Laura Ingraham, and I find this offensive. If anyone's In Graham, it's me. Wait, it's spelled Ingrham? Nevermind, crisis averted.

FOX News has the whole thing, but you already know what it says. Trump is innocent and the charges are purely political, by the way, arrest Clinton and Biden. Oh, and it is all a big conspiracy.

Ingrham's entitled to her opinion, of course she can't back up a word of it. Meanwhile, I can back up calls of a conspiracy, on account there's a document which spells it out and I've linked it twice, cited it more, and even detailed some of the charges as best I could.

But FOX News apparently hasn't learned their lesson, and not just about backing baseless election conspiracies (which this is), but about backing Donald Trump. So, I hope nobody minds that I'm giving myself 10 CNN points for this. If FOX News is going to continue to stick their dick in this level of crazy, they're going to need extra doses of penniCNNillin to clear up the rash.

[Egomaniac]

In fact, since my legal degree is just as good as his -- I got it from University of North Doesn't Exist, let's go fighting Acting Heads!

You went to UNDE? No Way, Me too! I wonder if we knew each other!

[Endus]

That's our old friend Laura Ingraham, and I find this offensive. If anyone's In Graham, it's me. Wait, it's spelled Ingrham? Nevermind, crisis averted.

If she meant "how can we say we're better than the USSR when we elect con men and criminals like Trump and let them have the reins practically without consequence or concern of law, because our system is apparently so deeply corrupt that it only serves the interests of the rich and powerful", she'd have a point.

I'm betting that's not what she meant, though.

[Shadowferal]

BREAKING: Trump to Surrender at Fulton County Jail, Confirms Sheriff

Former President Donald Trump is expected to turn himself in at Fulton County jail, along with the 18 other co-defendants charged in the Georgia 2020 election subversion case, according to a statement by the local sheriff on Tuesday.

[Edge-]

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/n...a-755150d10ea7

A Texas woman faces federal charges for allegedly threatening to kill the judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s election fraud case and a Democratic member of Congress earlier this month.

In a criminal complaint filed Friday, federal investigators say Abigail Jo Shry, of Alvin, Texas, left a voicemail on Aug. 5 threatening to kill U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX).

According to the complaint, Shry admitted to Department of Homeland Security investigators she left the voicemail, which began, “Hey you stupid slave" followed by a racial epithet and then proceeded to threaten to kill anyone who went after Trump. That list included Chutkan, Lee, “all Democrats in Washington D.C. and all people in the LGBTQ community,” investigators wrote.

“You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” Shry allegedly said at one point, later adding, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, b****.”

Trump supporters seem to be taking all this news well, remaining calm and level headed and not calling politicians to leave super racist voicemails that include both specific and generalized threats of violence and genocide.

[Breccia]

Most of you don't need to read this:

Republicans rewrite history on Trump targeting Clinton after 2016

but some of y'all do. If anyone here tries the defense "Trump never went after a political opponent he beat while in office" they are objective liars, that makes them trolls, choosing not to read this isn't an excuse because it's all public information anyhow, and you know what to do.

[postman1782]

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/n...a-755150d10ea7



Trump supporters seem to be taking all this news well, remaining calm and level headed and not calling politicians to leave super racist voicemails that include both specific and generalized threats of violence and genocide.

This isn't the only thing either, someone leaked the names and pictures of the Grand Jury Members from the Georgia case on an extreme right wing website, I wouldn't be surprised if all of them aren't getting death threats as well.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...ine-rcna100239

[Edge-]

This isn't the only thing either, someone leaked the names and pictures of the Grand Jury Members from the Georgia case on an extreme right wing website, I wouldn't be surprised if all of them aren't getting death threats as well.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/don...ine-rcna100239

So apparently in Georgia, grand jury members names aren't kept secret, they're part of public record. So that's not actually a "leak" or anything, that's just the way GA does things and their names simply being public isn't a big deal.

The Trump supporters taking those names and tracking the individuals down to harass and threaten? Yeah, that's no bueno and painfully predictable. I do wonder if the folks on the receiving end of the harassment can sue Trump like the Sandy Hook families sued Jones. Because those families won.

[Kathranis]

So apparently in Georgia, grand jury members names aren't kept secret, they're part of public record. So that's not actually a "leak" or anything, that's just the way GA does things and their names simply being public isn't a big deal.

The Trump supporters taking those names and tracking the individuals down to harass and threaten? Yeah, that's no bueno and painfully predictable. I do wonder if the folks on the receiving end of the harassment can sue Trump like the Sandy Hook families sued Jones. Because those families won.

Certainly isn't going to help Trump's defense if it looks like his supporters are being weaponized to obstruct justice.

[Cthulhu 2020]

The best part of the Georgia indictments is the mug shot. We'll finally get a height and weight for lardo.

[Breccia]

Graham announces his upcoming arrest.

"What???"

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Wednesday railed against the recent indictments of Trump for his efforts to remain in power following the 2020 election, and accused prosecutors of being motivated by political bias.

“He’s being prosecuted in a way to make challenging an election a crime just for him,” Graham said in an interview on Fox News’s “Hannity.” “You can claim you were cheated if you’re a Democrat. If you claim you were cheated as a Republican, they’re going to try to put you in jail.”

Graham also repeated an argument Trump and his team have been making, claiming Trump cannot not get a fair trial in a district that did not support him in the 2020 election. He downplayed the significance of the charges and claimed Trump was being charged for “telling people to watch a network show about the election.

All "I'm fucking his wife" jokes aside here? I think Graham is setting the stage for his upcoming arrest. I mean, some of you were wondering why he wasn't arrested yet. And there's no evidence at all he's helping any prosecution. Obviously what he said about being cheated is objectively false, obviously the filing of false government documents is the crime and not saying stuff on TV. And he was on Hannity.

But he said, "If you're a Republican, and say you were cheated, they will arrest you". Again, objectively false...but I really think he's doing the burst of Trump defense in the last 48-ish, because he knows he helped, and he thinks he's next, and he wants to make the narrative "it's because I'm a Republican" and not "it's because they found evidence I was helping commit a crime".

Thoughts?

[Kaleredar]

Graham announces his upcoming arrest.

"What???"



All "I'm fucking his wife" jokes aside here? I think Graham is setting the stage for his upcoming arrest. I mean, some of you were wondering why he wasn't arrested yet. And there's no evidence at all he's helping any prosecution. Obviously what he said about being cheated is objectively false, obviously the filing of false government documents is the crime and not saying stuff on TV. And he was on Hannity.

But he said, "If you're a Republican, and say you were cheated, they will arrest you". Again, objectively false...but I really think he's doing the burst of Trump defense in the last 48-ish, because he knows he helped, and he thinks he's next, and he wants to make the narrative "it's because I'm a Republican" and not "it's because they found evidence I was helping commit a crime".

Thoughts?

If he were at risk of being arrested, I've no doubt he'd turn on Trump in an instant to save his own hide, and would publicly be keeping his mouth shut. I doubt he'd be going to bat for Trump and not-so-subtly be paraphrasing support of Trump's big lie narrative.

[Shadowferal]

Graham announces his upcoming arrest.
All "I'm fucking his wife" jokes aside here? I think Graham is setting the stage for his upcoming arrest.

Yea...he knows he fucked up. His phone calls are going to come out.

[s_bushido]

Thoughts?

Has he actually done anything besides the pathetic boot-licking? I haven't been paying much attention to him.

But the "this isn't about Trump, it could happen to all of YOU too!!!" bullshit is basically the only narrative they have left. So you don't have to be a GOP official with personal legal trouble looming on the horizon to cling to it.

[Breccia]

Ladies and gentlemen, Roger Stone.

A video obtained by MSNBC shows Donald Trump’s former political advisor Roger Stone dictating the rationale behind a plan to undermine the certification of Electoral College votes days before the outcome of the 2020 election was announced.

In the video, Stone, speaking slowly to an associate who is transcribing his words, states that “the final decision as to who the state legislatures authorize the send to the electoral college is a decision made solely by the legislature.”

“Any legislative body may decide on the basis of overwhelming evidence of fraud to send electors to the electoral college who accurately reflect Trump’s legitimate victory in their state, which was illegally denied him through fraud,” Stone adds.

Stone concludes by asserting that “we must prepare to lobby our Republican legislatures, by personal contact, and by demonstrating the overwhelming will of the people in their states — in each state — that this may need to happen.”

Okay, so, a few things.

One, I believe this came from the documentary crew Stone had following him around.

Two, Roger Stone has not been charged. From this and previous articles featuring him, it looks like he was more focused on DC than GA. Even "we must prepare to demonstrate" doesn't sound beyond the reasonable doubt of conspiring to commit a crime, and I'm not protecting the human slimeball that ruined a perfectly cool name. Dude proposed Trump declare martial law, but Trump's response was "nah, I never liked the Brady Bunch" and that never happened.

Three, the key words here are "overwhelming evidence" and to a lesser extent "fraud". I'm moderately sure what Stone is saying is true, that a state that finds there was an actual problem may deal with it.

But as we all know now, there was no fraud, and therefore, there was no evidence of fraud, overwhelming or not. And the will of the people wasn't the issue, considering they'd voted fairly and legally and won.

NOTE: Trump, Stone, and others keep saying "a lot of people wanted me to win" in an attempt to deflect from "but more people wanted Biden to win". And people who choose not to vote, crying in their bunker into their single scoop of ice cream, have every right to their opinion, but if they chose not to vote that's not Biden's problem.

Stone might have been a lower-level stooge in this regard, but it seems he got the memo. Actually, it sounds like he may have written the memo. The acts Stone suggested Trump is a dictator, fuck, the acts Stone dictated to Trump sound a lot like solicitation of a public officer.

A crime we now know he is charged with conspiring to do.

The most recent indictments involve loads of evidence and what I think might be 30 people testifying against Team Trump. I don't think Stone is intentionally one of them. But just like the Twitter direct message drafts Smith has, I think prosecutors are going out of their way to show jurors that this wasn't a mistake, that Trump didn't just slip on a banana peel and end up in a phone call with Kemp and Raffensperger.

And I think Stone literally spelled it out for them.

- - - Updated - - -

Has he actually done anything besides the pathetic boot-licking?

Yes. @Shadowferal is right, Graham called Georgia election officials Nov 13, 2020. It appears he did so alone (not part of the group call with Trump) and might have been reserved enough to color just barely inside the lines, on the grounds that that article was written Feb 21, 2021 and it calls out Willis specifically.

I don't think it's whether or not what Graham did was okay, it clearly wasn't, he doesn't represent Georgia. I think it's whether or not it can be proven he was trying to overthrow democracy in coordination with the others. If such proof exists, I don't think Smith or Willis have it.

That tracks. There are...rumors...that Graham is really good at keeping certain secrets that would otherwise ruin his political career. True or not, Graham doesn't seem 100% cultist (the last week is not the best evidence, the last two years are) and I don't believe he puts Trump's self-interest above his own.

Speaking of Trump's self-interest, sources tell ABC News that Trump's lawyers are telling Trump "we think it is in your self-interest to postpone the press conference" which is lawyer speak for "this is a stupid fucking idea, you fat bloated carcass whose PAC signs our paychecks".

Donald Trump's promised press conference to refute the allegations in the indictment handed up by the Fulton County District Attorney's Office is now very much in doubt, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Sources tell ABC News that Trump's legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it.

I mean, good on them? But you can't hold back a hurricane with a single levy. Trump has been telling every carbon-based life form he meets that the election was stolen, including rallies, recently.

The FBI Twitter files, the DOJ/Facebook, and all of the rest. Look at "2000 Mules," look at what they did with that, thousands and thousands and thousands of votes, on tape, on camera. All of this will come up during this trial. All of this will come up because we won the election by a lot.

Then they have this crap going on, I never even thought of this one, "Trump didn't really believe he won the election."

Let me tell you, people that know me say that is one thing, I'll tell you -- that there was never a second of any day that I didn’t believe that that election was rigged. It was a rigged election and it was a stolen, disgusting election, and this country should be ashamed.

-- Trump, in public, August 8th of this year

At this point, by holding him back, they're just going to get fired and thrown off a case they're surely going to lose and...not get paid for...huh...wow, that's actually clever.

[The Stormbringer]

Georgia indictment, not this time.

I mean, there's some concerns that, if elected, he'd be able to weaponize the DOJ and use it to transfer the case to federal court, and then pardon himself that way, or just have DOJ drop the case. Whether or not that would be possible without that Georgia county agreeing to it? I'm not sure, I'm not a lawyer.

[Kathranis]

Graham announces his upcoming arrest.

"What???"



All "I'm fucking his wife" jokes aside here? I think Graham is setting the stage for his upcoming arrest. I mean, some of you were wondering why he wasn't arrested yet. And there's no evidence at all he's helping any prosecution. Obviously what he said about being cheated is objectively false, obviously the filing of false government documents is the crime and not saying stuff on TV. And he was on Hannity.

But he said, "If you're a Republican, and say you were cheated, they will arrest you". Again, objectively false...but I really think he's doing the burst of Trump defense in the last 48-ish, because he knows he helped, and he thinks he's next, and he wants to make the narrative "it's because I'm a Republican" and not "it's because they found evidence I was helping commit a crime".

Thoughts?

This is just more "free speech" reframing, which might convince MAGA dipshits but has no place as an actual legal defense since the crimes they're being charged with are conspiracy, racketeering, fraud, etc., not some vague "lying about election results" nonsense.

You can challenge election results. Trump did, there were several recounts and investigations, mostly on the taxpayers' dime, all legal. He can even brazenly lie about the results.

Conspiring to overturn those election results is an entirely different thing.

All it takes is to read the indictments to know that these are bogus deflections. Luckily for the GOP, their constituents have an aversion to reading.

[Breccia]

Whether or not that would be possible without that Georgia county agreeing to it? I'm not sure, I'm not a lawyer.

Valid, but it'd be a massive uphill struggle I'm guessing. Mike Pence was US VP, but Kemp and Raffensperger were GA officials and US laws about election management seems to be mostly "it's the states' job."

Ladies and gentlemen, the NYTimes.

Fact-Checking the Breadth of Trump’s Election Lies

Yeah, I'm going full "quote the whole thing" on this. Trump was caught criminally lying and is defending it with more lies. It's our duty as reasonable people to see to it this fraud is exposed, and that the only people pushing them are known lying liars who know Trump is guilty. If you're not interested in a wall of text, just assume everything Trump says is a lie and wait for my next post, which will probably be back to calling Trump a dickless fatass.

If you do choose to read, I have chosen to format to make it easier. Don't all thank me at once.

Before the 2020 election had even concluded, President Donald J. Trump laid the groundwork for an alternate reality in which he was declared the victor, falsely assailing the integrity of the race at nearly every turn.

Those lies are now central to two criminal indictments brought against him by the Justice Department and in Georgia, and formed what prosecutors have described as the bedrock of his attempts to overturn the election.

In public, he made more than 800 inaccurate claims about the election from the time the polls began closing on Nov. 3, 2020, to the end of his presidency, according to a database compiled by The Washington Post. Dozens of times, he simply characterized the election as “rigged,” “stolen” or “a hoax,” and flatly and falsely declared he had won — even as a mountain of evidence proved otherwise. Other falsehoods were more specific about the voting and ballot-counting process, contained unproven allegations and promoted conspiracy theories.

Here are five common ways in which Mr. Trump has lied about the 2020 election.

How Mr. Trump sought to undermine the election:

• Mischaracterizations of the voting and counting process
• False claims about barred observers and lack of verification
• Baseless examples of supposed fraud
• Conspiracy theories about voting machines
• Non sequiturs that do not prove fraud

Mischaracterizations of the voting and counting process
WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the ‘pollsters’ got it completely & historically wrong!”
— On Twitter on Nov. 4

False. Dozens of times before and after the 2020 election, Mr. Trump described the legitimate vote-counting process as suspicious. For months, officials across the country had warned that tallying ballots may take days or even weeks to complete, given the prevalence of absentee voting that year. Studies and experts predicted that on election night, Mr. Trump could lead in key states, but that lead could slowly erode as officials continued to count mail-in ballots.

That’s precisely what happened. Mr. Trump’s early leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia narrowed and then reversed. But the same thing also happened to Joseph R. Biden Jr., who initially led early vote tallies in North Carolina and Ohio only to eventually lose the final count. And in Florida, the candidate in the lead changed four times as more ballots were counted and before Mr. Trump ultimately prevailed.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“I’ve been talking about mail-in ballots for a long time. It’s really destroyed our system. It’s a corrupt system.”
— In a news conference on Nov. 5, two days after the election.

False. Numerous independent studies and government reviews have found voter fraud to be extremely rare in all forms, including mail-in voting.

Mr. Trump himself has voted by mail in Florida, which he has claimed is more secure because they use “absentee ballots” rather than mail-in ballots. (The state itself refers to them as “vote-by-mail ballots.”)

But there is no meaningful difference between “absentee ballots” and “vote-by-mail ballots.” The terms are often used interchangeably. Moreover, they are both secure forms of voting. Both mail-in and absentee ballots are paper ballots marked by hand by the voter, which the National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan group of public officials, considers the “gold standard of election security.” Twenty-seven states conduct signature verification for mail ballots, 12 require the signature of a witness or notary, and a handful of others ask voters to provide identification.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“It’s amazing how those mail-in ballots are so one-sided, too. I know that it’s supposed to be to the advantage of the Democrats, but in all cases, they’re so one-sided.”
— Nov. 5 news conference

This lacks evidence. Many studies have found little evidence that mail-in ballots help one party over another. Of the nine states where more than half of voters cast their ballots by mail in the 2016 presidential election, Mr. Trump won four. Several Republican states like Iowa, Missouri and Alabama expanded mail-in ballots in the 2020 election.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“We used to have what was called Election Day. Now we have election days, weeks and months, and lots of bad things happened during this ridiculous period of time.”
— In a Dec. 2 speech at the White House

False. The 2020 election was certainly not the first presidential election where results were not immediately ascertained. The first federal elections were held in 1788, but there was no single day until Congress passed a law in 1845 that set aside the Tuesday after the first Monday of November for elections. Slow vote counting and limits in communication then meant that days, weeks or even months passed before voters learned who had won in several elections in the 19th century. In the modern day, close elections dragged out to the next morning in 1960 and 1976. And famously, it took more than a month for the 2000 election to be resolved, when the Supreme Court ended a recount in Florida that December and effectively handed the presidency to George W. Bush.

False claims about barred observers and lack of verification

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“The OBSERVERS were not allowed, in any way, shape, or form, to do their job and therefore, votes accepted during this period must be determined to be ILLEGAL VOTES.”
— On Twitter on Nov. 6

False. Mr. Trump has complained about poll observers being denied access to watch ballot counting in key states. His own legal filings acknowledged the presence of Republican observers in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona, and there were at least 134 Republican poll challengers present inside TCF Center in Detroit, a convention center where votes were counted.

A lawyer for Mr. Trump acknowledged that there were “a nonzero number” of campaign observers allowed in the counting room in Philadelphia. In Michigan, the campaign relied on affidavits from election observers who claimed they witnessed fraud.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“The Fake recount going on in Georgia means nothing because they are not allowing signatures to be looked at and verified. Break the unconstitutional Consent Decree!”
— On Twitter on Nov. 16

False. This was an inaccurate reference to a legal settlement between Georgia and the Democratic Party. Under the settlement signed in March 2020, officials in the state must notify voters whose signatures were rejected within three business days and give them the chance to correct issues. It did not bar officials from verifying signatures.

Georgia’s secretary of state, a Republican, noted that the state trained election officials on signature matching, required a confirmed match and created a portal that checked and confirmed driver’s licenses of voters. Moreover, signatures are not verified again during the recount process, as ballots are separated from the signed envelopes during the initial counting process.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“In Pennsylvania, the secretary of state and the State Supreme Court in essence abolished signature verification requirements just weeks prior to the election, in violation of state law. You’re not allowed to do that.”
— In the Dec. 2 news conference

This is misleading. Federal courts have ruled against Mr. Trump’s assertion.

In August 2020, the League of Women Voters and other groups sued Pennsylvania over a lack of clarity in state policy over mail-in ballots that had been rejected because of issues with the signatures, noting the absence of official guidance or uniform standards. A month later, Pennsylvania’s top election official told county election officials that they could not reject ballots because of a perceived mismatch in signatures. In response, the Trump campaign added a challenge to this guidance to an existing lawsuit.

In October, a federal judge appointed by Mr. Trump ruled against the campaign, writing that the state election code “does not impose a signature comparison requirement.” About two weeks later, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which included two Republicans, ruled unanimously that the election code does not require signature verification.

Baseless examples of supposed fraud

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“In Fulton County, Republican poll watchers were ejected, in some cases, physically from the room under the false pretense of a pipe burst. Water main burst, everybody leave, which we now know was a total lie. Then election officials pull boxes, Democrats, and suitcases of ballots out from under a table.”
— In a speech on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before a mob of loyalists stormed the Capitol

False. Election officials have said and surveillance videos show that this did not happen.

A water leak caused a delay for about two hours in vote counting at the State Farm Arena, but no ballots or equipment were damaged. Georgia’s chief election investigator, Frances Watson, testified that a “review of the entire security footage revealed that there were no mystery ballots that were brought in from an unknown location and hidden under tables.”

Election observers and journalists were present at State Farm Arena when the water leak occurred. They were not asked to leave, Ms. Watson said, but simply “left on their own” when they saw one group of workers, who had completed their task, exit.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“Everybody knows that dead people, below age people, illegal immigrants, fake signatures, prisoners, and many others voted illegally.”
— In a series of tweets on Dec. 13

This lacks evidence. Mr. Trump has claimed that tens of thousands of dead people voted in key states: 20,000 in Pennsylvania, 17,000 in Michigan and 5,000 in Georgia.

The Pennsylvania figure most likely referred to a lawsuit filed by a conservative group accusing the state of including 21,206 supposedly deceased people on voter rolls. But a federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush took issue with the group’s methodology and declined to remove the names from the rolls. This does not support the notion that 20,000 dead people cast ballots.

The Michigan figure might refer to a list of supposedly deceased voters who submitted absentee ballots posted by a right-wing personality to social media. That list included people who were alive or who shared a name with a deceased person. A state audit later found that of 2,775 absentee ballots cast by voters from May 2019 to November 2020 who had died by Election Day, 2,734 had died within 40 days of the elections.

And while it is unclear where Mr. Trump got his 5,000 deceased voters figure for Georgia, officials have found only four cases of dead people voting.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“In Detroit, turnout was 139 percent of registered voters. Think of that. So you had 139 percent of the people in Detroit voting.”
— In the Jan. 6 speech

“A group of Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania say 200,000 more votes were counted in the 2020 Election than voters (100% went to Biden).”
— On Twitter on Dec. 29

False. About 51 percent of registered voters and 38 percent of the entire population cast a ballot in Detroit.

The figure for Pennsylvania was a reference to faulty analysis conducted by state Republican lawmakers. The analysis relied on a voter registration database that Pennsylvania’s Department of State said was incomplete as a few counties — including Philadelphia and Allegheny, the two largest in the state — had yet to fully upload their data. The department called the analysis “obvious misinformation.”

Conspiracy theories about voting machines

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“All of the mechanical ‘glitches’ that took place on Election Night were really THEM getting caught trying to steal votes. They succeeded plenty, however, without getting caught. Mail-in elections are a sick joke!”
— On Twitter on Nov. 15

This lacks evidence. Issues with unofficial vote counts in a few counties in Michigan and Georgia on election night were caused by human error, not nefarious software, and were quickly rectified. In Michigan, election workers erroneously double-counted votes in one county and improperly configured the software in another, before realizing the mistakes and correcting them. In Georgia, the software delayed the reporting of results.

In April, Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems for knowingly spreading falsehoods about the company’s election technology switching votes during the 2020 election. While the network did not apologize or make an admission of guilt in its settlement, Dominion obtained and released a trove of internal communications in which personalities and executives at Fox expressed skepticism about the claims. No credible evidence has ever emerged that issues with voting machines affected vote tallies.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“When you look at who’s running the company, who’s in charge, who owns it, which we don’t know, where are the votes counted, which we think are counted in foreign countries, not in the United States.”
— In the Dec. 2 news conference

This lacks evidence. This was an oblique reference to conspiracy theories about Dominion’s supposedly nefarious ties to the financier George Soros and Venezuela advanced by members of his legal team, who also face charges in Georgia.

Dominion does not have any ties to Venezuela or Mr. Soros. The company’s chief executive said in an April 2020 letter to Congress that he owned a 12 percent stake in the company, while a private equity firm, Staple Street Capital Group in New York, owned about 75 percent, The Associated Press reported. No other investor held more than 5 percent of Dominion. A 2018 news release also announced Dominion’s acquisition by Staple Street.

Mr. Trump also could have been referring to another popular baseless claim, which was that the U.S. military had seized computer servers that had evidence of voter fraud from a company in Germany. The company in question and the Army both denied the claims.

Non sequiturs that do not prove fraud

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“With over 74 million votes, over, think of that, more than, I got more votes than any sitting president in history, 11 million more votes than we got in 2016.”
— In a campaign rally in Georgia on Dec. 5

This is misleading. One of Mr. Trump’s most repeated complaints assumes that it is improbable that he lost the 2020 election because the vote count that year was higher than his vote count in 2016. Mr. Trump received 74 million votes in the 2020 presidential election, 12 million more than he received in the 2016 election. President Biden, of course, received even more votes in 2020, 81 million.

A large number of votes received by the losing candidate is not evidence of fraud. To wit, Hillary Clinton also received two million more votes in 2016 than President Barack Obama did in 2012.

WHAT MR. TRUMP SAID
“In Georgia, 0.5 percent of the mail-in ballots were rejected in 2020 compared to 5.77 percent. That’s a difference of 11 times more. It’s hundreds of thousands of votes. In Pennsylvania, .03 percent were rejected in 2020 compared to a much, much higher percentage in 2016.”
— In the Dec. 5 campaign rally

This is misleading.

In 2020, about 0.4 percent of absentee ballots in Georgia were rejected, compared with about 5.8 percent in 2016, according to reports from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. But in Pennsylvania, the rejection rate actually increased from 0.9 percent in 2016 to 1.3 percent in 2020. (Mr. Trump’s 0.03 percent rejection rate came from a partial tally from Nov. 5, before Pennsylvania had completed counting its ballots.)

In its 2020 report, the election commission noted that although the total number of mail-in ballots tallied in 2020 was more than double the amount in 2016, the rejection rate did not change significantly nationally: 0.8 percent in 2020 and 1 percent in 2016.

The decline in Georgia’s rejection rate of mail-in ballots is also not evidence of fraud. The rate had also decreased to 3.1 percent in the 2018 midterm elections. A 2021 analysis of absentee ballot rejections from the Election Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology noted that Georgia enacted a ballot-curing process — in which voters are notified about errors with their ballots and are given the chance to fix them — after the 2016 election. The 18 states with such processes all had lower rejection rates, according to the analysis.

I will continue to say it as long as it is true: what Trump says in public means nothing. What Trump says under oath matters. In fact, what Trump said under oath mattered so much, he might go to jail for it.

All the information above is public -- I didn't copy the NYTimes' citations, but there's nothing up there we haven't covered and there's nothing up there that's a secret. Having me on ignore changes nothing. Anyone who pushes the above Trump lines is therefore either posting about something in which they are uninformed on purpose, or lying on purpose. Either way, that's trolling, and they will be reported as such.

[Odinfrost]

I'm not gonna deal with the quoting system today, so just saying, responses to Breccia's things.

One, I believe this came from the documentary crew Stone had following him around.

As a dane, I can confirm this, because the head of the documentary was a danish person and our news LOVE when a dane does something big internationally.

Giant fact check post from the NYT goes brrrrrrrrr

I have... completely forgotten about some of these.
Like the absurd claim that just because Trump got more votes this time than last election, that he should win, irregardless of how many votes the other side got.

Surprise ballot speak
Ah yes. Ignoring it also happened the other way around. Because it's only wrong and illegal when red turns blue, obviously.

Illigitimate people voting
Oh, right. I forgot about the dead people voting thing. Especially the part where some of his goons said that someone was dead because they had the same name as an actual dead person. Fun times.

More people voting than registered voters
I am pretty sure that they would have noticed errors that big. God those days were silly.


Only thing I feel like this article is missing is confirming Trump's claim of wide spread voter fraud, due to all those republicans that were caught cheating.