Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Cthulhu 2020]

I can somewhat attest to this; I had thought that surely Trump can't be as bad as frequent media portrayed him as, surely? We've got some scumtastic people wanting to lead the GQP and I am not a fan of the still centre-right push by the DNC. . . Maybe he'll shake it up?

Nah, dangerous rabbit hole. I regret advocating for giving drumpf a chance, big mistake and I get to regret such stupidity. Some people just haven't figured it out and cling to it, and they are going to extremely dangerous lengths now RE following Trump to cult-status.

Trump had a history in the 80's, 90's and 2000's. A history everyone was aware of. He has had three bankruptcies of some of his biggest businesses, and he's had over 100 smaller brands just fold (no declared bankruptcy, they just folded and closed because they were losing money).

Trump would often hire workers then not pay them for their work, and when taken to court he'd simply pay lawyers to get it locked up in legal limbo.

He borrowed so much money from American banks and never paid a single cent back, making it so that he could no longer get loans in the US and had to turn to Deutsch bank, where basically the price for a loan was being their personal stooge.

He had multiple instances of sexual harassment happen, and when those went to court he again got the cases into legal limbo.

There's numerous other instances of him losing court cases and being ordered to pay fines, fees, and compensation, and he never did.

The man should have been in jail long before 2016, but America handles white collar crime with kid gloves. And in Trump's case, didn't handle it at all.

Anyone who did even a cursory glance into Trump's past knew that he was a terrible business man and an awful human being. But Republicans, being some of the easiest people to manipulate in the country, said all of Trump's history was fake, didn't matter, or they didn't care because Trump was going to build a wall between the US and Mexico. An undertaking which pretty much every sane economist said would not create the intended effect of keeping migrants out, and cost the US an unimaginable amount of money.

Trump was literally the worst person to be president, but all because of one promise he became the messiah of a cult.

[Breccia]

So we're not done with FOX News shitting on Trump. In fact, let's quote them directly.

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Tom Dupree weighed in Tuesday with Neil Cavuto on "Your World" on the ongoing January 6 committee hearings. Tuesday's hearing focused on testimony condemning former President Trump for his alleged responsibility for the events of January 6.

BREAKING: FOX INTERRUPTS OWN STORY WITH ALL-CAPS HEADLINE

NEIL CAVUTO: This just seems to make Donald Trump look awful. Just awful. Your thoughts?

FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL TOM DUPREE: Neil, today I thought that the committee focused a lot on linking the former president to this scheme to create the fake electors. And it seems to be a real theme that the committee members are trying to bring out in their statements, in their questioning, to show that the former president wasn't just a bystander or that people who work for him were trying to do this, but that the President was a central player in all of this. That really seems to be one of the themes that these committee members have been pounding on the last few hearings.

FOX INTERRUPTS SAME GODDAM STORY SECOND GODDAM TIME IN TWO PARAGRAPHS

NEIL CAVUTO: Now, of course, the next leap some people make, well, that's criminal behavior. And of course, that's something this committee can't decide and might make recommendations to the Justice Department in that regard. But what is it, then, when a sitting president is challenging the validity of election results in key states, and even when he is presented time and again, especially in the case of Georgia, that count after count was on the up-and-up and that there was nothing to those arguments. And he kept pushing those arguments. What are we to make of that?

IS THREE FOR THREE TOO MUCH? FOX NEWS MUST OWE BIG CAPS SOME MONEY OR SOMETHING

DUPREE: Yeah, that and that last piece of it, Neil, is really the critical one here. And that's why the committee is so focused on trying to establish that the president knew that he had no ground to claim that he had won the election. He had no ground to claim fraud on the scope that he was claiming it, that he had no basis for doing that because his own lawyers were telling him that he didn't have a case. State officials were telling him that there simply weren't votes there. We heard today that in Georgia, the president was claiming there were thousands of dead people who voted and the Georgia officials were saying they found two. So it does get to the question of intent, Neil, as to what exactly did the president know? And if he knew he didn't have an election victory in hand, what was his basis for moving ahead with the plan?

OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE THEY DO IT A FOURTH TIME NO REALLY CHECK THE ORIGINAL PAGE

"So, ouch, that's what, three pundits and one guest?"

Oh, I'm not done, bitch. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andy McCarthy, commenting on the latest revelations from the Jan. 6 Committee hearings Tuesday, told fellow Fox News analysts Jonathan Turley, John Roberts and Anita Vogel that Donald Trump’s pressuring officials to reject the official ballots for the 2020 presidential election shows his “unfitness,” and that the former president may be “guilty of a crime.”

He added that there is “no defending what President Trump did” on Jan. 6, 2021. “If you were a defense lawyer, if you were someone with a different perspective than the anti-Trump perspective that’s carried by the committee, I don’t think there’s any defending what President Trump did,” he said. “The most you could do would be to try to put it in some kind of a mitigating context.”

McCarthy, who served as Chief Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, also wrote in his Tuesday column for the National Review that it is “unnecessary [for the committee] to demonstrate either that Trump is unfit for the presidency or that he may be guilty of a crime.” He states that the committee has successfully shown that Trump is “unfit for office” and that “it may even be showing that he obstructed Congress or … conspired to defraud the United States.”

That National Review was linked earlier. The fact that 3 FOX News hosts sat there smiling while he read it is new.

Not everyone on FOX News is jumping off the S.S. Fatass, which is sinking while on fire. Mark Levin for example has been defending Eastman's role.

On the June 19 edition of his Fox News TV show, Life, Liberty & Levin, he opined: “The vice president of the United States, what is his power as president of the Senate when it comes to counting electors? We really don't know.” Levin then spoke rhetorically as if it were to Pence, implying that the vice president really did have a duty to reject state election results based on procedural changes that were made during the pandemic. “Didn't you take an oath to this, the Constitution of the United States? Doesn't this supersede everything else?” (Levin also harangued the U.S. Supreme Court for not striking down all those state election decisions.)

But, while Levin has been publicly defending Team Trump as if they have blackmail material, he's increasingly in the minority. And we know how FOX News treats minorities.

And let's add Ivanka, too, why not.

"Wait, I saw the video. It wasn't that bad."

Yeah...you didn't see the other video. Remember those documentary filmmakers we were talking about? I think they had a tape of her Dec 10, which is a big deal.

"Why is Dec 10 such a big deal?"

Because Barr had publicly said "no election fraud" on Dec 1. Ivanka said in her Jan 6th video that, while she didn't outright say "the election was legal and fair" she did say she listened to Barr and respected his expert opinion. Either she took over a week to decide this, or she's a liar.

Since I already cited FOX News, I feel I've earned the right to cite CNN, even though they're hardly the only one with the story because it's objective facts.

Ivanka Trump, daughter and former senior White House adviser to then-President Donald Trump, said in an interview filmed in mid-December 2020 that her father should "continue to fight until every legal remedy is exhausted," according to a source familiar with the footage.

Ivanka Trump said in the interview clip, which was first reported by The New York Times

Link to NYTimes

that her father should do so because people were questioning "the sanctity of our elections," the source confirmed to CNN.

The video clip, which has not been viewed by CNN but its contents confirmed by a source familiar with it, was among the footage handed over to the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack by British filmmaker Alex Holder, who acknowledged Tuesday that he has complied with a subpoena from panel.

Ivanka Trump, told the committee during her closed door interview that she believed former Attorney General William Barr when he said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, according to a clip from the deposition with the panel played for the first time during a previous public hearing. Unlike her interview with the filmmaker, however, her interview with the committee was under oath.

Bolded for "that's CNN throwing a Trump family member a life raft". Yes, Ivanka could have lied to the American people without breaking the law. So this isn't proof she lied on the stand. Only that she's a liar at least one of those two times, and also, catastrophically terrified of Trump disowning her for having common sense and ability to follow facts and reason.

So, yeah, people are fleeing Trump, increasingly in trouble for all that stuff we did for which there's tons of evidence. Not "Trump weighs multiple tons" tons, but a lot. Oh, and he's probably going to have company.

The Jan. 6 committee revealed on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump was “directly” involved in the illegal campaign to fabricate phony slates of electors in key swing states. So too was Rudy Giuliani. So too was John Eastman, who wrote the “coup memo” instructing former Vice President Mike Pence to stop the certification of the Electoral College. So too, apparently, was Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) — so much so that he wanted to subvert the will of his state’s own voters and hand-deliver fraudulent Wisconsin electors to Pence on Jan. 6.

The committee displayed a text message from one of Johnson’s staffers, sent just minutes before Pence was set to certify the election, stating that the senator wanted to give Pence the fake electors from Wisconsin and Michigan. “Do not give that to him,” replied one of Pence’s staffers.

The committee also revealed on Tuesday that the Trump campaign was involved in the effort to transport the fake slates of electors from the states to Washington, D.C.; that Eastman asked the Republican National Committee to assist in the scheme; and that the White House counsel’s office informed key players like Giuliani and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that the scheme was not legally sound. They proceeded with it anyway.

The fake electors scheme involved Trump and his team working to get allies in swing states won by President Biden to fabricate slates of electors declaring Trump the winner, and for Pence to cite these slates of electors as justification for blocking the certification on Jan. 6. Rep. Adam Schiff noted at the top of the hearing on Thursday that federal district Judge David Carter has argued that Trump and others “violated multiple federal laws by engaging in this scheme, including conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

Sen. Johnson has already claimed he didn't know about it. Which, again, is fine -- he's not under oath.

Yet.

"It sure sounds like Team Trump is going to try the old I-Had-No-Idea defense, which runs parallel to I-Don't-Remember."

He can try, yes. But it's not a slam-dunk.

The Jan. 6 committee in its hearings has zeroed in on proving that Trump committed a crime in trying to overturn the election because he acted corruptly — specifically, that he knew better.

To do so, they’ve emphasized that he was told that many of his big voter-fraud claims were false and that the people spearheading his plot knew it was illegal. While ignorance often isn’t a valid legal defense, it could be when it comes to the law the Jan. 6 committee has spotlighted: obstruction of an official proceeding. That’s because the statute requires acting “corruptly.”

That said, there is another option on the table when it comes to proving corrupt intent — if not for the Jan. 6 committee, then for federal prosecutors who could bring a case against Trump. And it’s one that a couple of witnesses last week drove home: Even if you can’t prove Trump knew better, he did appear willfully blind to the facts.

As recently as 2011, the Supreme Court has reiterated that people who choose to remain willfully blind “are just as culpable as those who have actual knowledge.”

Link to case law.

I'll let @cubby take over the heavy lifting, but since we all know many crimes involve motive or knowledge and forethought aforethought or some such, someone who takes effort to avoid being told information, specifically because ignorance is a defense, is not innocent. Granted, a lot of us already suspected, that's just a specific SCOTUS result which therefore is the mandate.

And that, of course, is what Trump supporters have been doing to themselves. Hiding in places where the plain, obvious evidence can't find them. Their circle of friends in Alabama, for example. Even that's starting to crumble, as shown above with FOX News backing slowly away and refusing to make eye contact. So while they cling to CyberTrump 2077, the last mast of the Titanic still above water, they already know. They just don't want to admit it.

And it's dangerous. In the OP ED What Are Trump Supporters So Afraid Of? the author hits some frigheningly familiar notes to anyone who's been on these forums for more than seven seconds.

I think the Trump superfans are terrified of being wrong. I suspect they know that for many years they’ve made a terrible mistake—that Trump and his coterie took them to the cleaners and the cognitive dissonance is now rising to ear-splitting, chest-constricting levels. And so they will literally threaten to kill people like Kinzinger (among others) if that’s what it takes to silence the last feeble voice of reason inside themselves.

We know from studies (and from experience as human beings) that being wrong makes us feel uncomfortable. It’s an actual physiological sensation, and when compounded by humiliation, it becomes intolerable. The ego cries out for either silence or assent. In the modern media environment, this fear expresses itself as a demand for the comfort of massive doses of self-justifying rage delivered through the Fox or Newsmax or OAN electronic EpiPen that stills the allergic reaction to truth and reason.

This therapy works for as long as the patient is glued to the television or computer screen. The moment someone like Bowers or Kinzinger or Liz Cheney appears and attacks the lie, the anxiety and embarrassment rise like reflux in the throat, and it must be stopped, even if it means threatening to kill the messenger.

No one who truly believes they are right threatens to hurt anyone for expressing a contrary view. The snarling threat of violence never comes from people who calmly believe they are in the right. It is always the instant resort of the bully who feels the hot flush of shame rising in the cheeks and the cold rock of fear dropping in the pit of the stomach.

If the author's take on the situation is right, brace yourself. More information, more testimony, more facts are on the way. There are people who are willing to adapt their position when new information they legit didn't have access to before comes to light. And there are some people who would rather commit a murderous insurrection, directly under Trump's orders, than accept the person who got the most votes won.

Still not sure?

These aren't "leftists" harassing him. These are Republicans who are harassing him and his family.

[cubby]

The below referenced post was just fantastic. I know we're used to Breccia putting out good info with bad humor (I kid, I kid), so to see yet another one just isn't remarkable anymore - like, oh, another Picasso...what's for lunch again?

But this summary of a VERY pivotal shift by the GQP's propaganda machine is important. To run a broadcast like this, with experts lined up, and Faux News' flashy showmanship and general bullshit requires planning, and a policy change coming from the top.

It means the tide might actually be turning.

"It sure sounds like Team Trump is going to try the old I-Had-No-Idea defense, which runs parallel to I-Don't-Remember."

He can try, yes. But it's not a slam-dunk.

The Jan. 6 committee in its hearings has zeroed in on proving that Trump committed a crime in trying to overturn the election because he acted corruptly — specifically, that he knew better.

To do so, they’ve emphasized that he was told that many of his big voter-fraud claims were false and that the people spearheading his plot knew it was illegal. While ignorance often isn’t a valid legal defense, it could be when it comes to the law the Jan. 6 committee has spotlighted: obstruction of an official proceeding. That’s because the statute requires acting “corruptly.”

That said, there is another option on the table when it comes to proving corrupt intent — if not for the Jan. 6 committee, then for federal prosecutors who could bring a case against Trump. And it’s one that a couple of witnesses last week drove home: Even if you can’t prove Trump knew better, he did appear willfully blind to the facts.

As recently as 2011, the Supreme Court has reiterated that people who choose to remain willfully blind “are just as culpable as those who have actual knowledge.”

Link to case law.

I'll let @cubby take over the heavy lifting, but since we all know many crimes involve motive or knowledge and forethought aforethought or some such, someone who takes effort to avoid being told information, specifically because ignorance is a defense, is not innocent. Granted, a lot of us already suspected, that's just a specific SCOTUS result which therefore is the mandate.

And that, of course, is what Trump supporters have been doing to themselves. Hiding in places where the plain, obvious evidence can't find them. Their circle of friends in Alabama, for example. Even that's starting to crumble, as shown above with FOX News backing slowly away and refusing to make eye contact. So while they cling to CyberTrump 2077, the last mast of the Titanic still above water, they already know. They just don't want to admit it.

And it's dangerous. In the OP ED What Are Trump Supporters So Afraid Of? the author hits some frigheningly familiar notes to anyone who's been on these forums for more than seven seconds.

If the author's take on the situation is right, brace yourself. More information, more testimony, more facts are on the way. There are people who are willing to adapt their position when new information they legit didn't have access to before comes to light. And there are some people who would rather commit a murderous insurrection, directly under Trump's orders, than accept the person who got the most votes won.

Still not sure?

To the specific issue you mention me above, yes, generally speaking, trying to purposefully avail themselves of knowledge, because ignorance is a defense, removes that defense going forward. The issue is insanely complicated, and always "depends" on the circumstances, and your Cornell Law link is a good place to start for those that are interested in the details.

I want to go out on a limb here. I've mentioned RICO before, the statute that essentially allows criminal masterminds to be charged with the crimes committed by others, specifically their underlings, and I want to bring it up here, again. RICO is part law and part politics. Typically, when used in the past, against Mafioso families and such, it wasn't hard to get the political side lined up - most everyone wants the mob to go away.

However, with Trump and Associates, the RICO act/statute/charge would be difficult to bring without clear and convincing evidence. Not because the charge is hard to prove, but because jailing a former president based on the crimes of others on his behalf is hard for most people to swallow/understand/follow. But...BUT, if those crimes were brought up and out in a very public way, it would set the stage for a RICO charge to be brought up.

The Jan 6 Committee Hearings might just be that vehicle. We'll have to see.

[PrimiOne]

And it's dangerous. In the OP ED What Are Trump Supporters So Afraid Of? the author hits some frigheningly familiar notes to anyone who's been on these forums for more than seven seconds.

If the author's take on the situation is right, brace yourself. More information, more testimony, more facts are on the way. There are people who are willing to adapt their position when new information they legit didn't have access to before comes to light. And there are some people who would rather commit a murderous insurrection, directly under Trump's orders, than accept the person who got the most votes won.

The Op Ed is a good description of cognitive persistence and how it shapes Trumpism. Like a catholic priest that has lost his faith it's way easier to just deny incontrovertible facts that accept you have wasted your life in fairytales and lies, it's just easier to keep being moved by the moment of inertia simply because the evolutionary function of our mind , as opposed to what most people may think, is not processing data from our enviroment to adcquire truths: it's surviving. Whenever truth and survival clashes our minds chose survival.

But I think the editorial misses a key element that is essential for this persistence: peer pressure and pack syndrome.

From the very beggining , from the square one of Trump direct involvement in politics a defining factor of his message has been: it's us versus them. If you are not with me you are my enemy ( and therefore since I am the guardian of America's true values you are an enemy of America). This nauseating divide was the backbone of the campaign Bannon designed and persist to this day.

Designed like a cult , Trumpism behaves like a cult: every dissenting opinion needs to be shut. Any source of dissention needs to be automatically closed to preserve the purity of the faith or it creates the risk of poisoning the whole framework. If any personal relationship puts the purity in danger cut ties with that relationship.....if your relatives question the dogmas of the cult forget them,get away from them.

So we have Billy from Nebraska.

Billy is not specially educated ( he couldn't afford 40k $ /year for going to college) but it's interested in how the world works. Most of his beliefs has been shaped by his enviroment ( like any of us): by his parents, by his friends, by his coworkers, by the news he read....but have a personal concept of right and wrong. One day Billy wakes up and think: "Hey , if 60 courts stated there's no fraud and the multiple audits on mutiple states run by multiple republican officials found no shred of evidence......maybe.....there is no fraud?".

Billy express this idea in the family dinner on Sunday. His father astonished by the comment is absolutely outraged and starts questioning what kind of content has his son been consuming lately that has turned him in a traitor commie. His mother points at some liberal friend he has been hanging with and how that's a horrible influence. His brother tries to argue by pointing at 7000 affidavits and insisting he needs to see "2000 mules".

In the middle of the storm and being yelled at by the whole table Billy wonders: Why the fuck I opened my mouth?.

This is the nature of a cult: the minimal dissent and you are the enemy. So Billy bend over , accept he is wrong and apologize.

So I don't deny the importance of cognitive persistence in this hurricane of stupidity that is the trumpsphere but I suspect that a rather large portion of his supporters just do it as a way to express their belonging to the cult. "Election rigged!!!" is more a battlecry of "I'm one of you" than a true belief....it's more a "I belong to the pack don't ostracism me" and in the end it's more about peer presure and pack syndrome than congnitive persistence.

[Breccia]

Like a catholic priest that has lost his faith

See, three things.

One, you're right.

Two, a priest at least has faith in an all-knowing all-powerful God who works in mysterious ways. Nobody, literally nobody, who is rational believes Trump is magic.

And three, the fact that we're comparing the following of Trump to religion with zero sarcasm or irony, just goes to show how cult-like their fanatacal fervor is.

Name one movie, one book, one video game, or one aspect in real life where the cult was the good guys.

[Nurasu]

It's hardly surprising with DeSantis' rising star status that they would start to try to hamstring Trump. DeSantis is by far the better candidate to actually enact the policies they want. Trump proved to be too incompetent.

[Shadowferal]

Name one movie, one book, one video game, or one aspect in real life where the cult was the good guys.

Hmm...a challenge.
It's all about the word "cult." It's never used. Too negative.
The word "order" is one that does get used. Harry Potter "Order of the Phoenix"
"League" is another word used.
The League of the Scroll" in Tad Williams' trilogy "Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. ("He who remembers can make the world anew")

For the record I get your point. But words ..we love to play with words.

[Edge-]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2107916.html

The latest talking point?

Biden is trying to ban nicotine to make you easier to control, and also make men more effeminate.

I'm not joking.

“What happens when you get off nicotine? Well, your testosterone levels plummet, and you gain weight. Both of which the administration is for because you become more passive and easier to control,” the prime-time host alleged.

As someone who smoked, quit, and picked it back up...this is hilarious. You can gain weight, but that's the result of nicotine acting as a hunger suppressant. So when you quit, you can eat more overall and gain a few pounds. It doesn't make you easier to control, and I have no data available on testosterone levels.

Weirdly though, I'd imagine addicts are...easier to control? You know, since they're addicted to something that you can possibly control the supply of.

[beanman12345]

snip

Murdoch wants to dump Trump for DeathSentence, they talk every day apparently, and he's on the network more and more. Problem is the base doesn't want to dump trump, not yet at least, maybe never, but my guess is they'll continue to slowly add in anti-trump stuff over time to try to condition the audience for DeSantis 2024 run.

- - - Updated - - -

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2107916.html

The latest talking point?

Biden is trying to ban nicotine to make you easier to control, and also make men more effeminate.

I'm not joking.



As someone who smoked, quit, and picked it back up...this is hilarious. You can gain weight, but that's the result of nicotine acting as a hunger suppressant. So when you quit, you can eat more overall and gain a few pounds. It doesn't make you easier to control, and I have no data available on testosterone levels.

Weirdly though, I'd imagine addicts are...easier to control? You know, since they're addicted to something that you can possibly control the supply of.

OT but hope you can quit that shit again, bro. Quitting that was the best thing I've ever done, but I know the addiction ain't easy to kick, fuck I still get cravings and I quit 8 years ago.

[Canpinter]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2107916.html

The latest talking point?

Biden is trying to ban nicotine to make you easier to control, and also make men more effeminate.

I'm not joking.



As someone who smoked, quit, and picked it back up...this is hilarious. You can gain weight, but that's the result of nicotine acting as a hunger suppressant. So when you quit, you can eat more overall and gain a few pounds. It doesn't make you easier to control, and I have no data available on testosterone levels.

Weirdly though, I'd imagine addicts are...easier to control? You know, since they're addicted to something that you can possibly control the supply of.

Biden really just needs to come out in favor of not bathing with toasters.

[Spectral]

...I have no data available on testosterone levels.

Cigarette smoking and testosterone in men and women: A systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies

The initial search yielded 2881 studies; 28 met the selection criteria. In 22 studies of 13,317 men, mean age 18–61 years, smokers had higher mean testosterone than non-smokers (1.53 nmol/L, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.11 to 1.96) using a random effects model with inverse variance weighting.

There are no RCTs, for obvious reasons. The observational studies used for the review cannot rule out reverse causation or selection biases.

[Edge-]

Cigarette smoking and testosterone in men and women: A systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies

There are no RCTs, for obvious reasons. The observational studies used for the review cannot rule out reverse causation or selection biases.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3713576

Interestingly, it seems to have the opposite effect in mice.

But it would seem that, rather than making you more "effeminate" when you quit smoking, it returns you to the baseline levels. Not surprising that Tucker takes the most dishonest framing of this. Seriously, the dude is obsessed with the concept of "masculinity" to the point where it's hard to view it as anything more than pathetic compensating.

[Ornerybear]

See, three things.

One, you're right.

Two, a priest at least has faith in an all-knowing all-powerful God who works in mysterious ways. Nobody, literally nobody, who is rational believes Trump is magic.

And three, the fact that we're comparing the following of Trump to religion with zero sarcasm or irony, just goes to show how cult-like their fanatacal fervor is.

Name one movie, one book, one video game, or one aspect in real life where the cult was the good guys.

Normally I lurk this thread, but I'll bite.

I think there IS a "good book", that many of Trump's followers have "read" (I doubt most of them have) that indicates they themselves are the good guys for being in that "club".

I think most of us are smart enough to fill in the correct words here. I don't think it's surprising they found it so easy to worship Trump when so many have been unquestionably indoctrinated into another group.

[Shadowferal]

I think there IS a book, that many of Trump's followers have "read" (I doubt most of them have) that indicates they themselves are the good guys for being in that "club".

I have to wonder if some libertarians hold to such a belief. We have a guy here that believes that the more money you have, born into or no, is more...moral than others who have less.

[DarkTZeratul]

I have to wonder if some libertarians hold to such a belief. We have a guy here that believes that the more money you have, born into or no, is more...moral than others who have less.

It's the prosperity gospel. The idea is that God rewards faith, therefore wealth is direct proof of God's favor. If you have a lot of money, it means you're a good person and God has rewarded you. If you don't have a lot of money, it means your faith is lacking in some respect and you need to do better. Also, you can do better by giving your money to the church. Do that enough, and God will reward you with even more wealth, seriously, we totally swear, if it hasn't happened yet just keep giving us money until it does.

[Ornerybear]

It's the prosperity gospel. The idea is that God rewards faith, therefore wealth is direct proof of God's favor. If you have a lot of money, it means you're a good person and God has rewarded you. If you don't have a lot of money, it means your faith is lacking in some respect and you need to do better. Also, you can do better by giving your money to the church. Do that enough, and God will reward you with even more wealth, seriously, we totally swear, if it hasn't happened yet just keep giving us money until it does.

So therefore someone as wealthy as trump must be the most moral.

[Endus]

So therefore someone as wealthy as trump must be the most moral.

I get the impression you're trying to be sarcastic, but that's literally what they believe.

See also every obvious scam-artist fuckboy televangelist ever.

[Ornerybear]

I get the impression you're trying to be sarcastic, but that's literally what they believe.

See also every obvious scam-artist fuckboy televangelist ever.

Oh it very much is what they believe. My mother being one of them thinking he's a great kind man, but of course when I point how the glaringly obvious holes in this statement she "doesn't want to talk about politics." suddenly.

[Fugus]

Oh it very much is what they believe. My mother being one of them thinking he's a great kind man, but of course when I point how the glaringly obvious holes in this statement she "doesn't want to talk about politics." suddenly.

You got it better than what I have had to deal with, I get the response that all those things that are contradicting them are fake news and lies and that even the bad stuff he and the GOP have done they have only done it because the Democrats and liberals are a bunch of devil worshipers and they are doing what they have to to defeat that evil.

[Paranoid Android]

Supreme Court going buck-wild with conservative rulings. Only the beginning, brace yourselves.

Supreme Court strikes down New York gun law along ideological lines

From Politico: link.

The 6-3 decision, which divided the court along the usual ideological lines, is the latest in a series of moves by the increasingly conservative high court to adopt a muscular interpretation of the right to bear arms found in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

The ruling Thursday expanding gun rights came as the nation is reeling from a series of high-profile mass shootings, as Congress seems poised to enact the first major gun-safety legislation in more than three decades, and as the court’s own members appear to be increasingly under physical threat.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said New York’s requirement that gun owners show “proper cause” to carry a weapon outside the home for self-defense violates the Constitution’s guarantee of gun rights.

“We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need,” Thomas wrote. “That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense.”

So basic argument is of course expanded interpretation on 2nd Amendment of protected concealed weapon. The dissent is this of course violating NY right to make its own laws to protect it's citizens: State's Rights.

The Constitutional originalist, the conservative argument. Yet, while not mentioned at all, amazing that in 1787, 1788 if the original Founding Fathers were so great in making a document, didn't have their future goggles on to predict multi-round handguns. Also what they cry about State's Rights on most of their regressive laws is now: Eff State's Rights.