> The Democrats have 90% of the media power on their side— 90% of the cable news, of broadcast news, of internet platforms, of newspapers, of magazines, of webzines
Do you live under a rock? Elon owns twitter now and turned it into a more popular version of Truth Social since about a year from now. YouTube is filled to the brim with MAGA channels. Fox News still exists, but has been outflanked on the right by channels with even less journalistic integrity. Two world's two biggest Podcasts are the Joe Rogan Experience and the Tucker Carlson Show. In what world is 90% of media liberal? Even if it were, what do you expect the media to do? Let's say Trump does something dictatorial again. The New York Times runs a piece condemning it, Tucker Carlson does a show supporting, ???, Trump is stopped!
> They have the Bureaucracy, including the FBI, the Justice Dept., and the armed forces. They have most lawyers and lobbyists and nonprofit groups, and the most money.
The Trump Campaign and the Heritage Foundation plan to gut those very bureaucracies and to replace them with loyalist. Unlike last time he actually has a VP and probably a cabinet that is dedicated to the same goal (and actually has the conscientiousness to actually go through with it). Maybe you think the FBI etc. should be gutted. But if they are gutted they can't keep Trump at bay. You can't have your cake and eat it too (The cake is the deep state).
Accepting the fact that this post was made in a good-faith effort to communicate the truth is really depressing. Because it's all so stupid and so false and so obviously so. It's just a bunch of because-I-said-so don't-trust-the-media-trust-me BS with no basis in reality. This guy probably also legitimately believes that the current administration tanked the economy and that by slashing public welfare and giving it to the rich, Trump will make it better, and nothing anyone can say, no expert analysis or common sense, will change his mind. It would almost be better if he were lying through his teeth instead of sincerely that incorrect.
I am a big fan, but I think this piece is a miss. There is a deep and well-developed jurisprudence over sovereign immunity, and this brief overview doesn't engage with it. The result in Trump v. U.S. is not novel and shouldn't be a surprising result. Sovereign immunity is practically universal, and it is both ancient ("you cannot sue the king in his own court") and current: Barack Obama made use of the doctrine in blocking legal action over drone strikes. "No one should be above the law" is a far too simplistic take on this complicated issue, and it certainly doesn't authorize the president do assassinate political opponents. But I always appreciate your thoughtfulness and analytic detail even when I disagree."
I agree that the counterarguments section of Scott's post is the most interesting, however I'm not convinced you've fully engaged with Scott's arguments. For example Scott argued "The sovereign immunity ruling suggests [SCOTUS] are not willing to be a strong bulwark against right-wing authoritarianism."
You replied:
"The Supreme Court would also stop Trump from becoming a dictator. We have no evidence to the contrary."
The sovereign immunity ruling sure seems like some evidence.
The sovereign immunity ruling doesn't make dictatorship any easier, really. It says that the Justice Department can't prosecute a President for official acts. If the man is still President, this ruling doesn't matter. He's the boss of the Justice Dept. and he won't prosecute himself anyway. All the ruling does is prevent Justice from prosecuting a past President, and only if his supposed crime was in the course of his duties. So really all it stops is prosecutions of a past President by his political enemies.
It greatly reduces the cost of a failed attempt, making the prospect more attractive. And even if the rule weren't permissive of dictatorship in itself, it is evidence that the Court is not disposed to keep Trump at bay. This serves as evidence for how likely it is to stop any future attempt.
No it doesn’t, because an attempt to become dictator is clearly outside the boundaries of what could be considered an “official act” of the executive branch. This is why most of trumps cases related to Jan 6 were still moving forward after this ruling. If I recall correctly, there were cases related to firing of staff members that were thrown out, because as the president you have official authority to hire and fire whoever you want. The GA electors case (and some others I believe) were deemed legitimate and constitutional bc it was outside the scope of the presidents official authority. It’s really a fair and non-partisan ruling.
Tell that to the Supreme Court because Donald Trump did make an attempt to become dictator. And the majority decided that at least some and possibly all acts committed in the furtherance of the attempt are "official acts" and therefore immune.
I think this is a misreading of the ruling. From what I understand the ruling established clearer guidelines for what types of acts you can prosecute the president for. I forget the exact wording, but basically there are “official acts as President” for which the president is fully immune. Basically this covers any collateral damage if the president were to, for example, officially authorize sending a team of special forces to take out a cartel leader and their kid dies. The 2nd category is something like “unofficial presidential acts”, so when acting in their executive role they use that opportunity to do something illegal. An example would be a like inciting a riot during a speech. Many of Trumps actions on Jan 6 fall into this category, and the precedent established in this Supreme Court ruling allowed them to move forward with the cases. The 3rd category is just criminal acts outside the presidency, so if the president killed their spouse or something.
Ok? The reason I explained what it was is because saying “the ruling allows a president to become dictator” is a complete misunderstanding of the ruling.
I don't understand your attack on the NYT. Selecting specific people as sources of info just leads to confirmation bias and echo chambers. NYT has institutional incentives to get its facts right: the whole point of it is that it tells you about important things happening, so if what it tells you is false, people stop reading it.
I'm not talking about editorials or subjective judgments about what is newsworthy. I'm talking about deliberately making statements that are objectively false. Eric has not alleged that NYT does that.
It assumes the NYT is "reliable", because if it isn't, there would not be a NYT.
And getting the facts right are not what really matter. The selection of what right facts to publish, which parts of the effects to emphasize, etc. is much more significant for a newspaper to shape public perception than blatantly lying.
This is also true about every other information source. The only difference is that many of them have no institutional reputation and hence can post actual lies without consequences.
"This is also true about every other information source. The only difference is that blah blah blah" - This is called a Red Herring.
And your claim that an institution's reputation determines reliability is subjective and influenced by reader biases, since reputation can be maintained not just through truthfulness but through marketing and strategic public relations.
By the way, if we follow your logic, any "information source" - which includes your comment - could be questioned as potentially untruthful.
Actually, people have noted that the new incentive for both podcasts and newspapers is to pander to their readers' prejudices and give up on having a broad audience. The NYT was always a bit this way-- it did not try to sell its product to the average New Yorker. Thus, we get siloes.
Epistemic status: not in the US so no horse in that race, but noticing local (in)validity.
Counter-argument 1: Sounds like a disagreement in belief over empirical facts - how important the Jan 6 riot was, whether Trump's role in it was problematic, whether Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election's results, etc.
I think the evidence is starkly in favor of Scott's point here, but it sounds like he and me live mostly in the same epistemic space (which sources of information we are exposed to and trust) and you in a quite different one so I don't know how I could convince you.
Counter-argument 3: Scott's point is that Trump is more blatant in his criticism of his political opponents and thereby more willing to display contempt and erode the epistemic commons. The "rig an election" part is probably about Jan 6, the calls for interruption of ballot counting, and the election result denial.
Yes, you're right that counterargument 1 is mostly an empirical disagreement. It isn't entirely, because part of it is whether the J6 riot had any possible end-game that could overthrown the government, whether just not doing anything made Trump culpable, and whether the various things everyone agrees Trump did to fight the election result (say it was stolen, try to get Justice to investigate what happened, ask people if certification could be delayed, get alternate slates of electors ready) were illegitimate. Do look into these things.
I don’t know what epistemic bubble I live in, but I watch a tv show called “Slow Horses” because despite the usual ideological tropes and adherence to Narrative rules, it’s not so dumb as the stuff that captivates my compatriots, who I think of as enjoying Midwitflix on a cheerfully bipartisan basis.
The backdrops are interesting and moodily evocative, and though F*** stands in where actual dialogue used to be, as is now typical, sometimes there is a string of real words, and you have to keep track of two plots that will eventually intersect.
So that’s a declaration of my arrogant priors. I assume most of my fellow Slow Horses enjoyers (and yes, no matter how fun it is, we will forget we watched it) are probably voting for Harris, perhaps a few even for Scott-like pretzel reasons.
On the show, every bad thing that happens is because MI5 was bad (English) and rogue in the past, and secretive still in the present. This is kinda necessary for a plot to function and be filmed in contemporary Britain. It’s a safe subject to portray.
Of course, it’s luckily a familiar theme or device to those who enjoy the espionage genre.
And yet, the notion that there might be things we “aren’t to know” about Jan. 6 is a priori preposterous, to the same crowd, even after that governor who got herself fake kidnapped was in the running for vp.
> Counter-argument 1: Sounds like a disagreement in belief over empirical facts - how important the Jan 6 riot was, whether Trump's role in it was problematic, whether Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election's results, etc.
I take it the Dem's brazen fraud during the 2020 elections doesn't concern you.
I thought asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asking him to "find 11,780 votes" was pretty unambiguously an attempt to illegitimately change the outcome of the election (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_phone_call). Would you disagree? If so, I'd be interested to know how you interpret that call.
Interesting. I decided to go back and read the whole transcript. It doesn't sound anything like what you've represented here. Trump makes a bunch of claims about improper voting, then says that this is multiple times the margin of victory, so he doesn't need to be right on every point - or even most points - to secure a win.
The official responds to each complaint with, "we've investigated that and found nothing wrong." Then Trump's lawyer says, "sure, but you refuse to provide third party access to prove it", then Trump goes over the same territory again and again, hardly letting anybody get a word in edgewise.
I can't speak to the legitimacy of the claims made by Trump, but the assertion that he's asking them to commit fraud in this phone call is not credible. He repeatedly claims fraud has been committed by his opponents and he's demanding it be investigated, rejecting claims that investigations turned up no evidence of fraud. Check it out for yourself and let me know if you disagree, and if so what makes you think that?
"So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state. And flipping the state is a great testament to our country because, cause you know, this is — it's a testament that they can admit to a mistake or whatever you want to call it. If it was a mistake, I don't know. A lot of people think it wasn't a mistake. It was much more criminal than that. But it's a big problem in Georgia and it's not a problem that's going away. I mean, you know, it's not a problem that's going away."
Right, that's the thing everyone is pointing to, but it doesn't explicitly say, "make up a bunch of votes" or anything about asking them to commit fraud. That's something you have to interpret into the statement. And look, I get that the way Trump talks there's always some amount of 'reading intent into the statement' that you have to do with the man, but did you read the whole transcript? Or even a slightly less cherry-picked part of it than the statement you quoted before interpreting it to be an explicit call for fraud?
For example, from the very beginning:
Trump: "We have at least 2 or 3 — anywhere from 250-300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls. Much of that had to do with Fulton County, which hasn't been checked. We think that if you check the signatures — a real check of the signatures going back in Fulton County you'll find at least a couple of hundred thousand of forged signatures of people who have been forged. And we are quite sure that's going to happen. Another tremendous number. We're going to have an accurate number over the next two days with certified accountants. But an accurate number but its in the 50s of thousands— and that's people that went to vote and they were told they can't vote because they've already been voted for. And it's a very sad thing. They walked out complaining. But the number's large. We'll have it for you. But it's much more than the number of 11,779 that's — The current margin is only 11,779. Brad, I think you agree with that, right? That's something I think everyone — at least that's' a number that everyone agrees on. But that's the difference in the votes. But we've had hundreds of thousands of ballots that we're able to actually — we'll get you a pretty accurate number."
It goes on and on like that, and it doesn't get DIFFERENT from that, just more claims by Trump and his team that fraudulent votes have been counted and not properly investigated. The only place it gets different are things like this exchange:
"Mitchell: Mr. Secretary, Mr. President, one of the things that we have been, Alex can talk about this, we talked about it, and I don't know whether the information has been conveyed to your office, but I think what the president is saying, and what we've been trying to do is to say, look, the court is not acting on our petition. They haven't even assigned a judge. But the people of Georgia and the people of America have a right to know the answers. And you have data and records that we don't have access to. And you keep telling us and making public statements that you investigated this and nothing to see here. But we don't know about that. All we know is what you tell us. What I don't understand is why wouldn't it be in everyone's best interest to try to get to the bottom, compare the numbers, you know, if you say, because - to try to be able to get to the truth because we don't have any way of confirming what you're telling us. You tell us that you had an investigation at the State Farm Arena. I don't have any report. I've never seen a report of investigation. I don't know that is. I've been pretty involved in this and I don't know."
"Hilbert: Mr. President and Cleta, this is Kurt Hilbert, if I might interject for a moment. Um Ryan, I would like to suggest just four categories that have already been mentioned by the president that have actually hard numbers of 24,149 votes that were counted illegally. That in and of itself is sufficient to change the results or place the outcome in doubt. We would like to sit down with your office and we can do it through purposes of compromise and just like this phone call, just to deal with that limited category of votes. And if you are able to establish that our numbers are not accurate, then fine. However, we believe that they are accurate. We've had now three to four separate experts looking at these numbers.
Trump: Certified accountants looked at them.
Hilbert: Correct. And this is just based on USPS data and your own secretary of state's data. So that's what we would entreat and ask you to do, to sit down with us in a compromise and settlements proceeding and actually go through the registered voter IDs and registrations. And if you can convince us that that 24,149 is inaccurate, then fine. But we tend to believe that is, you know, obviously more than 11,779. That's sufficient to change the results entirely in of itself. So what would you say to that, Mr. Germany?
Germany: Kurt, um I'm happy to get with our lawyers and we'll set that up. That number is not accurate. And I think we can show you, for all the ones we've looked at, why it's not. And so if that would be helpful, I'm happy to get with our lawyers and set that up with you guys."
It sounds for a minute like Germany is going to acquiesce to their demand - not to "find the votes", but to go over the records Trump team has and demonstrate that the actual counts don't match for one reason or another. They seem excited that they're getting an actual accounting, not just claims of an 'investigation' with no reports or evidence one took place. Mark Meadows jumps in to confirm:
"Meadows: Mr. President. This is Mark. It sounds like we've got two different sides agreeing that we can look at these areas ands I assume that we can do that within the next 24 to 48 hours to go ahead and get that reconciled so that we can look at the two claims and making sure that we get the access to the secretary of state's data to either validate or invalidate the claims that have been made. Is that correct?
Germany: No, that's not what I said. I'm happy to have our lawyers sit down with Kurt and the lawyers on that side and explain to my him, here's, based on what we've looked at so far, here's how we know this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong."
He's not willing to prove that the counts are correct, just to have another meeting with the Trump team where they tell them they're wrong without bringing the receipts. Again, maybe they're right, and maybe there are good reasons to act this way other than fraud on the part of the Secretary of State's office. But none of this conversation is Trump asking the Secretary of State to falsify votes. They're asking the SoS to bring the receipts. That's what happened on this phone call, and we don't have to guess at the context of the quote you cited in this hour-long call - that's almost exclusively Trump rambling monologues - to tell us his state of mind.
Please point to the part of the transcript where Trump asks them to commit fraud, invent votes, or otherwise do something dishonest. The part you cited is unimpressive to me. If you want to claim that Trump rambles, that he makes a dozen points and doesn't really care if he gets the details right, or even that his team is flat-out wrong in the things they assert, I'm open to those argument. But you're claiming Trump is committing a crime here, without any evidence. Trump said over and over again in that call, "look, we won by a lot and they cast hundreds of thousands of illegitimate votes, and you're stonewalling me, unwilling to get the count right. It's disenfranchising GA voters and that's not right." He said it a dozen ways, and I can pull out exact quotes to prove those are the assertions he made.
You're saying he meant something entirely different. At least provide me some context for how you can possibly read his statement the way you're asserting. Where is it in that call?
Thanks, sclmlw, I appreciate hearing a different point of view on this. Some thoughts:
I'm not going to have time to go through the whole transcript anytime very soon, so I can't make claims about how the whole thing reads; take the rest of what I'm saying accordingly.
'it doesn't explicitly say, "make up a bunch of votes" or anything about asking them to commit fraud. That's something you have to interpret into the statement. And look, I get that the way Trump talks there's always some amount of 'reading intent into the statement' that you have to do with the man...'
I do very much agree that Trump's statements require a lot of interpretation, and I'm certainly not surprised that he doesn't explicitly say 'make up votes'. At the same time, where else is Raffensperger going to 'find' the number of votes that Trump wants? Raffensperger and his team seem to have been clear that there aren't substantial numbers of fraudulent or uncounted votes that would change the outcome.
And implicit pressure matters too; 'Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?' Without an explicit quid pro quo or threat, it may not cross the line into a crime, but that doesn't mean it's not pressure to make the result what Trump wants, whatever that takes.
I think that's especially true because Trump isn't just a candidate; he's the President of the United States. It's got to be awfully hard to get pressured repeatedly by the President to do something and just let that roll off your back. Obviously Trump can't help in that moment also being the President, but it still means his words carry a weight that they otherwise wouldn't. Consider as another example the Biden administration's pressure on social media companies to censor information about COVID-19 -- they never (that I've seen) explicitly said, 'Do what we want or we'll punish you', but it's still clearly an unsavory kind of pressure that isn't appropriate coming from officers of the federal government.
I've read the other quotes you posted, but the excerpt still reads to me as pressure to get the result Trump wants regardless of what it takes to do it. That also reads as very in-character for Trump; a big part of his personality as I see it is pushing hard for what he wants, without caring much about legalities or proprietaries. Which may be acceptable for a businessperson, but isn't necessarily acceptable when speaking as the President to an election official.
Again, grain of salt since I haven't had time yet to read the full transcript as you did. But at least from the excerpts you've posted, this still seems like pressure to overturn the outcome.
Jumping around and sampling the transcript, a couple of other small thoughts:
- If I imagine myself as Raffensperger in that call, I think I would feel *enormously* pressured, even browbeaten, by Trump.
- We have well-established paths for candidates to challenge election results (which Trump made considerable use of in the following months). Calling the election official in charge and intensely pressuring them to immediately 'find' more votes doesn't seem like one of them -- especially when it involves continuing to pressure them after they say, 'Yes, we've looked into the things you're saying and either are still investigating them or have found them baseless'.
Thanks for the reasoned response. Based solely on what I read from the transcript, here's what I see:
"where else is Raffensperger going to 'find' the number of votes that Trump wants? Raffensperger and his team seem to have been clear that there aren't substantial numbers of fraudulent or uncounted votes that would change the outcome."
The specific thing the Trump team repeatedly asks for in this call is an investigation that's externally accountable. They don't just want a statement from the SoS's office saying "we did an internal review and there was nothing wrong" without any report or attempt to reconcile that review ... in particular to reconcile with the numbers the Trump team culled from publicly available data. Trump repeatedly states that he believes he won by a large margin, and further that he believes reviewing things like the deceased voter rolls or the State Farm Arena ballots will demonstrate provably invalid ballots based on issues with missing or forged signatures, or deceased voters having turned in ballots.
Raffensburger's team repeatedly claims they investigated the Trump team's complaints, but then refuses all attempts by the Trump team to do any forensic accounting. For example, Trump and his team claim there are 5k deceased voters which Raffensburger tries to correct as two. The Trump team challenge them on this point, saying we have a list of deceased people, can we compare it to your voter rolls? They're told 'no'.
Look, I can understand the position Raffensburger is in here. He didn't personally go over those rolls, and it's been a quick few weeks for his team to execute some meticulous tasks. If it turns out his people were off by a hundred dead people his office will lose credibility, and it will just fuel more attempts by the Trump team to review the ballots looking for more errors. This is the same for every investigation, where if he does an investigation in private, but then allows anyone to double-check his work any discrepancy will only make his office look bad. He has everything to lose and nothing personally to gain by giving in to the Trump team's demands.
Meanwhile, the Trump team's back really is up against the wall here. They've faced extreme prejudice in the courts for months at this point (plus troublesome meddling from Trump himself after election day). Some courts dismissed their election lawsuits ahead of the election, because they didn't have standing to sue from a simple rule change alone, they needed to demonstrate that the rule change materially harmed them in the form of costing them electorally in order to demonstrate standing. Other courts issued the exact opposite ruling, saying they couldn't wait until after the election to file claims about unfair rules changes, take your rules-mongering somewhere else you needed to bring this to us before the election or else we think you're just trying to cherry pick which rules you want to toss. So if a rule was changed illegitimately, they were essentially barred from litigating it before the election or after, giving them no recourse.
Or there was the case here in Georgia. The 2000 SCOTUS decision (an opinion that tried to explicitly demand had no force of stare decisis behind it) set a precedent that presidential election cases have to be resolved before the election certification deadline. This meant a court could just slow-walk election cases by, for example, not issuing a court date at all. Trump's team figured they could go to the SoS's office and try to resolve the issue amicably, without going through the courts. If Raffensburger was willing to work with them on getting these issues resolved, they wouldn't have to get a court to order the review.
The problem is that means Raffensburger's office holds all the cards here - and he clearly knows it. This isn't a negotiation, and it never feels like one. Trump comes across as pleading, but as you said there was never an offered quid pro quo. Now, you can interpret the pleading as an attempt at bullying, but to me it was clear who held the power in this conversation and it wasn't POTUS.
"What about January 6? That was a riot, never truly investigated, probably instigated by the Left, possibly even with FBI help. "
It's been thoroughly investigated, case by case, each participant carefully tracked down and put on trial. Many confessed, some of whom expressed regret and others continued to be proud of their actions and brag about what they did.
I know one person personally, hadn't seen him in over 15 years, I also know the guy who got his job after he was fired for his role in Jan 6. He is a proud Trump supporter and is still proud of his actions. To say he was instigated by the FBI and all these people agreed on the same story even though they processed their emotions about it differently. That people who were proud and people who regret all agree that they did it because Trump actively encouraged them to... That Trump's own staff tried to get him to call them off because they also believed he had power to influence them, implying all those text messages between his staffers were somehow faked? This is one of the most thoroughly investigated events in recent history and there is no reasonable way this can be a conspiracy unless we're all in the matrix.
That's a crazy thing to believe and makes me doubt everything else you claim if you truly believe this. I do see many other problems with what you wrote but this one is such a major epistemological flaw that it closes the case.
It's not investigated thoroughly. Who was punished for the Capitol Police's security lapses? Why did some officers later commit suicide? Why did the Police let the rioters in? Why won't hte FBI say exactly how many agents they had in the crowd? Etc.
I can't respond on Scott's behalf, but I can for myself
> What about January 6? That was a riot, never truly investigated, probably instigated by the Left, possibly even with FBI help. Who benefited from it? Who *could* have benefited from it?
I agree it was a riot, but once you accept that it becomes far more simple than you're portraying it. Sports riots are a familiar phenomena, because they gather lots of people in one space and those people can become excitable and start breaking rules. Protests are also well known enough for turning into riots that riot police are often readied in advance for them. A riot is just a large enough group of people engaged in lawbreaking because their numbers overwhelm the ability of the police to prevent such lawbreaking. You don't need to ask "who benefited", people will just riot for their own reasons when they can.
> What about the hundreds of Jan 6 felonies misusing a false-records statute, which the Supreme Court threw out recently?
That was just prosecutorial overreach, which is very common. It's not illegal, it just doesn't pass muster and gets rejected when attempted (although defendants can be intimidated with such things if they don't have competent lawyers to call BS).
> The Democrats have seriously proposed packing the Supreme Court, and getting rid of the electoral college.
They've "proposed" it, but haven't actually done anything. Shouldn't you judge them by the same standard as Trump?
> They have overthrown a President— the Biden disappearance— and chosen a presidential candidate who had no popular support even in the Democratic Party.
They badgered him into withdrawing from the race (Kamala is still not acting president) once it became clear he had no chance of winning, and then because they hadn't had a competitive primary they were stuck with the person Biden picked specifically to make it difficult for him to be displaced.
> Pfizer delaying vaccine approval just so Trump wouldn’t get credit before the electoin
Is it really the Democratic Party that is to be blame for that? How will re-electing Trump do anything about that kind of problem?
> They have the Bureaucracy, including the FBI, the Justice Dept., and the armed forces.
I can grant the permanent bureaucracy, but I don't think you're actually familiar with the political affiliations of the FBI and armed forces.
I found the "left-wing, FBI" induced riot comment particularly egregious. I've heard of that conspiracy driven narrative before but to claim probability is bizzaro. And yes I agree Harris poses legitimate risks
You're out of date with respect to the FBI and the armed forces-- with respect to the leadership, the people in DC. The military leadership is completely woke.
> But we all know that he is constantly hyperbolic. His talk is poetry, not prose, in the sense that it conveys meaning well, but not the literal meaning
It's wild to me that it's seriously considered that we have to "translate" what President says. This smells a lot like Doublespeak, where the things are said and the things we "have" to hear are different.
But also, even if it's true – what about the one time where the words turn out to be true, and he goes ahead and does the thing he was harassing to? E.g. see Putin whom nobody believe to invade the Ukraine and start a mega-war, but he did anyways? More than half of Ukrainians learned to "translate" his threats as empty – myself included.
5.https://x.com/julie_kelly2/status/1853568107756871803 An example ofa grossly excessive sentencing switch and request for 4 years for altering a Facebook message for a Jan 6. defendant afte the Supreme COurt threw out the original charge of loitering with intent to insurrect.
J6 was terrible by itself (take Trump's speech on the rally that day and ask ChatGPT to analyze if it was an incitement to storm the Capitol. Why was he even holding a rally on the day of the certification a few blocks away from it?).
But calling the Georgia SOS to find the votes and trying to get his VP to certify an alternate slate of electors were also unmistakable crimes that should have had him in jail already.
Or do you have an innocent explanation for the synchronized stopping of the reported count across multiple states followed by statistically impossible jumps for Biden, the numerous instances of observers being kicked or tricked out of the counting room followed by the count resuming, in one instance the counters literally boarding up the windows so the observers can't see what the counters are doing, the surveillance video of counters feeding the same ballots multiple times through the machine, the sworn eyewitness affidavits, the miscellaneous statistical irregularities, etc?
How is it brazen if your only source is some conspiracy theorist substacker? Wouldn't your epistemology model tell you that something that is so obvious would have been picked up by more people? Not even Fox News can find the evidence for the action that you claim is so brazen?
> How is it brazen if your only source is some conspiracy theorist substacker?
My source is what I saw watching it happen live on election night.
That substack merely provides the evidence and argument in a compelling form all in one place.
> Wouldn't your epistemology model tell you that something that is so obvious wouldn't have been picked up by more people?
It was.
It would appear you have a completely closed epistemology where you dismiss anyone presenting arguments you don't want to hear as a "conspiracy theorist".
Sure, show me the court cases, the investigative pieces, evidence from any of the 50 states' data system. Not some speculative text that mixes coincidences with imagination.
>What about January 6? That was a riot, never truly investigated, probably instigated by the Left, possibly even with FBI help. Who benefited from it? Who *could* have benefited from it? The riot cut off the planned debate on whether the election was stolen, and gave the Democrats a cudgel to use for 4 years.
This actually surprised me and really makes me question your credibility. Do you have any evidence that Jan 6th was "probably instigated by the Left"? That's an incredibly bold claim.
The Jan 6th riot backfired politically against the Republicans but that does not make it a false flag attack.
Elsewhere in the piece you dismiss Donald Trump's rhetoric as hyperbolic but when people react to the hyperbolic rhetoric by getting whipped into a frenzy you call that a Democrat false flag attack.
Trump's past whispers of pardoning convicted Jan 6 particpants demonstrates his hypocrisy toward the police and courts. Pick up a fire extinguisher and assault police with it? No problem, you're forgiven. How much egging on would someone need to do that? I don't buy the argument that egging on is an extenuating circumstance. Someone brings bear mace to Washington, DC knowing it's illegal, but only uses it when they're egged on? If you blame the hypothetical FBI agents for egging on participants at the Capitol , then you'd logically have to impugn Trump for egging them on, as well.
And that's only one of Trump's blows to democracy... Never in history (to my knowledge and memory) has a presidential candidate so blatantly flouted democractic norms and ideals, like with statements of locking up and using the powers of the State against his political opponents.
It just feels like so many IQ 130+ people here on Substack are so busy playing 4D chess you're missing what's staring you in the face, the stability of the ground you stand on.
I do wish Kingsley would un-"memory hole" us a little about the "leftwing violence." I don't doubt there's stuff there but it deserves some reminders so we can compare it with what we've seen recently.
But the brazen election fraud that happened in 2020 isn't a "threat to democracy".
> I do wish Kingsley would un-"memory hole" us a little about the "leftwing violence." I don't doubt there's stuff there but it deserves some reminders so we can compare it with what we've seen recently.
Either you were in some cave for most of 2020 or you're not even pretending to care about reality.
A particularly damning thing about Jan 6's official story is Miller's testimony that Trump told him to bring in National Guard ahead of time to stymie riots and in direct contradiction Miller then made it more difficult to even request NG coming in by requiring direct authorizations from the top administrators to perform their normal duties.
Frankly Scott deserves a gold medal for mental gymnastics here.
> How many Democratic officeholders have condemned Joe Biden
Democratic officeholders condemned Joe Biden so hard that he had to drop his re-election campaign!
The reality Trump voters inhabit is fairly poorly correlated with external reality.
Yes, but for being senile, not over his policies
And only after denying he was senile until they literally couldn't anymore
Good analysis.
> Counterargument 2. The Supreme Court would also stop Trump from becoming a dictator. We have no evidence to the contrary.
We do:
https://fakenous.substack.com/p/trump-vs-united-states
> The Democrats have 90% of the media power on their side— 90% of the cable news, of broadcast news, of internet platforms, of newspapers, of magazines, of webzines
Do you live under a rock? Elon owns twitter now and turned it into a more popular version of Truth Social since about a year from now. YouTube is filled to the brim with MAGA channels. Fox News still exists, but has been outflanked on the right by channels with even less journalistic integrity. Two world's two biggest Podcasts are the Joe Rogan Experience and the Tucker Carlson Show. In what world is 90% of media liberal? Even if it were, what do you expect the media to do? Let's say Trump does something dictatorial again. The New York Times runs a piece condemning it, Tucker Carlson does a show supporting, ???, Trump is stopped!
> They have the Bureaucracy, including the FBI, the Justice Dept., and the armed forces. They have most lawyers and lobbyists and nonprofit groups, and the most money.
The Trump Campaign and the Heritage Foundation plan to gut those very bureaucracies and to replace them with loyalist. Unlike last time he actually has a VP and probably a cabinet that is dedicated to the same goal (and actually has the conscientiousness to actually go through with it). Maybe you think the FBI etc. should be gutted. But if they are gutted they can't keep Trump at bay. You can't have your cake and eat it too (The cake is the deep state).
Accepting the fact that this post was made in a good-faith effort to communicate the truth is really depressing. Because it's all so stupid and so false and so obviously so. It's just a bunch of because-I-said-so don't-trust-the-media-trust-me BS with no basis in reality. This guy probably also legitimately believes that the current administration tanked the economy and that by slashing public welfare and giving it to the rich, Trump will make it better, and nothing anyone can say, no expert analysis or common sense, will change his mind. It would almost be better if he were lying through his teeth instead of sincerely that incorrect.
Yes, Twitter and Fox. That's 10%. On the Web, more of course-- is that now called "the media"? Maybe it shoudl be . . .
From the comments at the Fake Nous:
"Jul 14
I am a big fan, but I think this piece is a miss. There is a deep and well-developed jurisprudence over sovereign immunity, and this brief overview doesn't engage with it. The result in Trump v. U.S. is not novel and shouldn't be a surprising result. Sovereign immunity is practically universal, and it is both ancient ("you cannot sue the king in his own court") and current: Barack Obama made use of the doctrine in blocking legal action over drone strikes. "No one should be above the law" is a far too simplistic take on this complicated issue, and it certainly doesn't authorize the president do assassinate political opponents. But I always appreciate your thoughtfulness and analytic detail even when I disagree."
I agree that the counterarguments section of Scott's post is the most interesting, however I'm not convinced you've fully engaged with Scott's arguments. For example Scott argued "The sovereign immunity ruling suggests [SCOTUS] are not willing to be a strong bulwark against right-wing authoritarianism."
You replied:
"The Supreme Court would also stop Trump from becoming a dictator. We have no evidence to the contrary."
The sovereign immunity ruling sure seems like some evidence.
The sovereign immunity ruling doesn't make dictatorship any easier, really. It says that the Justice Department can't prosecute a President for official acts. If the man is still President, this ruling doesn't matter. He's the boss of the Justice Dept. and he won't prosecute himself anyway. All the ruling does is prevent Justice from prosecuting a past President, and only if his supposed crime was in the course of his duties. So really all it stops is prosecutions of a past President by his political enemies.
It greatly reduces the cost of a failed attempt, making the prospect more attractive. And even if the rule weren't permissive of dictatorship in itself, it is evidence that the Court is not disposed to keep Trump at bay. This serves as evidence for how likely it is to stop any future attempt.
No it doesn’t, because an attempt to become dictator is clearly outside the boundaries of what could be considered an “official act” of the executive branch. This is why most of trumps cases related to Jan 6 were still moving forward after this ruling. If I recall correctly, there were cases related to firing of staff members that were thrown out, because as the president you have official authority to hire and fire whoever you want. The GA electors case (and some others I believe) were deemed legitimate and constitutional bc it was outside the scope of the presidents official authority. It’s really a fair and non-partisan ruling.
Tell that to the Supreme Court because Donald Trump did make an attempt to become dictator. And the majority decided that at least some and possibly all acts committed in the furtherance of the attempt are "official acts" and therefore immune.
Did you read what I said? He has multiple cases related to Jan 6 he’s likely to go to jail for if he doesn’t get reelected
I think this is a misreading of the ruling. From what I understand the ruling established clearer guidelines for what types of acts you can prosecute the president for. I forget the exact wording, but basically there are “official acts as President” for which the president is fully immune. Basically this covers any collateral damage if the president were to, for example, officially authorize sending a team of special forces to take out a cartel leader and their kid dies. The 2nd category is something like “unofficial presidential acts”, so when acting in their executive role they use that opportunity to do something illegal. An example would be a like inciting a riot during a speech. Many of Trumps actions on Jan 6 fall into this category, and the precedent established in this Supreme Court ruling allowed them to move forward with the cases. The 3rd category is just criminal acts outside the presidency, so if the president killed their spouse or something.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F91b9321a-1747-4014-b7cc-d92e62f58620_735x557.png
This but the immunity ruling
Ok? The reason I explained what it was is because saying “the ruling allows a president to become dictator” is a complete misunderstanding of the ruling.
I don't understand your attack on the NYT. Selecting specific people as sources of info just leads to confirmation bias and echo chambers. NYT has institutional incentives to get its facts right: the whole point of it is that it tells you about important things happening, so if what it tells you is false, people stop reading it.
Well, based on what you said, it makes sense for the author, who considers the NYT to say false things, to stop reading it.
I'm not talking about editorials or subjective judgments about what is newsworthy. I'm talking about deliberately making statements that are objectively false. Eric has not alleged that NYT does that.
Your argument is circular.
It assumes the NYT is "reliable", because if it isn't, there would not be a NYT.
And getting the facts right are not what really matter. The selection of what right facts to publish, which parts of the effects to emphasize, etc. is much more significant for a newspaper to shape public perception than blatantly lying.
This is also true about every other information source. The only difference is that many of them have no institutional reputation and hence can post actual lies without consequences.
"This is also true about every other information source. The only difference is that blah blah blah" - This is called a Red Herring.
And your claim that an institution's reputation determines reliability is subjective and influenced by reader biases, since reputation can be maintained not just through truthfulness but through marketing and strategic public relations.
By the way, if we follow your logic, any "information source" - which includes your comment - could be questioned as potentially untruthful.
Uh, yes? Every info source can be false. The question is probability.
Institutional reputation does not directly determine reliability; rather, the existence of institutional reputation incentivizes reliability.
"[I]f what it tells you is false, people stop reading it."
People have stopped reading it.
> NYT has institutional incentives to get its facts right:
Lol.
Actually, people have noted that the new incentive for both podcasts and newspapers is to pander to their readers' prejudices and give up on having a broad audience. The NYT was always a bit this way-- it did not try to sell its product to the average New Yorker. Thus, we get siloes.
Epistemic status: not in the US so no horse in that race, but noticing local (in)validity.
Counter-argument 1: Sounds like a disagreement in belief over empirical facts - how important the Jan 6 riot was, whether Trump's role in it was problematic, whether Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election's results, etc.
I think the evidence is starkly in favor of Scott's point here, but it sounds like he and me live mostly in the same epistemic space (which sources of information we are exposed to and trust) and you in a quite different one so I don't know how I could convince you.
Counter-argument 3: Scott's point is that Trump is more blatant in his criticism of his political opponents and thereby more willing to display contempt and erode the epistemic commons. The "rig an election" part is probably about Jan 6, the calls for interruption of ballot counting, and the election result denial.
Yes, you're right that counterargument 1 is mostly an empirical disagreement. It isn't entirely, because part of it is whether the J6 riot had any possible end-game that could overthrown the government, whether just not doing anything made Trump culpable, and whether the various things everyone agrees Trump did to fight the election result (say it was stolen, try to get Justice to investigate what happened, ask people if certification could be delayed, get alternate slates of electors ready) were illegitimate. Do look into these things.
I don’t know what epistemic bubble I live in, but I watch a tv show called “Slow Horses” because despite the usual ideological tropes and adherence to Narrative rules, it’s not so dumb as the stuff that captivates my compatriots, who I think of as enjoying Midwitflix on a cheerfully bipartisan basis.
The backdrops are interesting and moodily evocative, and though F*** stands in where actual dialogue used to be, as is now typical, sometimes there is a string of real words, and you have to keep track of two plots that will eventually intersect.
So that’s a declaration of my arrogant priors. I assume most of my fellow Slow Horses enjoyers (and yes, no matter how fun it is, we will forget we watched it) are probably voting for Harris, perhaps a few even for Scott-like pretzel reasons.
On the show, every bad thing that happens is because MI5 was bad (English) and rogue in the past, and secretive still in the present. This is kinda necessary for a plot to function and be filmed in contemporary Britain. It’s a safe subject to portray.
Of course, it’s luckily a familiar theme or device to those who enjoy the espionage genre.
And yet, the notion that there might be things we “aren’t to know” about Jan. 6 is a priori preposterous, to the same crowd, even after that governor who got herself fake kidnapped was in the running for vp.
> Counter-argument 1: Sounds like a disagreement in belief over empirical facts - how important the Jan 6 riot was, whether Trump's role in it was problematic, whether Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election's results, etc.
I take it the Dem's brazen fraud during the 2020 elections doesn't concern you.
https://shylockholmes.substack.com/p/repost-last-thoughts-on-voter-fraud
'And “rig an election”? How is Trump doing that?'
I thought asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asking him to "find 11,780 votes" was pretty unambiguously an attempt to illegitimately change the outcome of the election (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_phone_call). Would you disagree? If so, I'd be interested to know how you interpret that call.
(audio excerpts from the call at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/us/politics/trump-georgia-call-excerpts.html )
Interesting. I decided to go back and read the whole transcript. It doesn't sound anything like what you've represented here. Trump makes a bunch of claims about improper voting, then says that this is multiple times the margin of victory, so he doesn't need to be right on every point - or even most points - to secure a win.
The official responds to each complaint with, "we've investigated that and found nothing wrong." Then Trump's lawyer says, "sure, but you refuse to provide third party access to prove it", then Trump goes over the same territory again and again, hardly letting anybody get a word in edgewise.
I can't speak to the legitimacy of the claims made by Trump, but the assertion that he's asking them to commit fraud in this phone call is not credible. He repeatedly claims fraud has been committed by his opponents and he's demanding it be investigated, rejecting claims that investigations turned up no evidence of fraud. Check it out for yourself and let me know if you disagree, and if so what makes you think that?
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Trump-Raffensperger_Call_Transcript
"So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state. And flipping the state is a great testament to our country because, cause you know, this is — it's a testament that they can admit to a mistake or whatever you want to call it. If it was a mistake, I don't know. A lot of people think it wasn't a mistake. It was much more criminal than that. But it's a big problem in Georgia and it's not a problem that's going away. I mean, you know, it's not a problem that's going away."
Right, that's the thing everyone is pointing to, but it doesn't explicitly say, "make up a bunch of votes" or anything about asking them to commit fraud. That's something you have to interpret into the statement. And look, I get that the way Trump talks there's always some amount of 'reading intent into the statement' that you have to do with the man, but did you read the whole transcript? Or even a slightly less cherry-picked part of it than the statement you quoted before interpreting it to be an explicit call for fraud?
For example, from the very beginning:
Trump: "We have at least 2 or 3 — anywhere from 250-300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls. Much of that had to do with Fulton County, which hasn't been checked. We think that if you check the signatures — a real check of the signatures going back in Fulton County you'll find at least a couple of hundred thousand of forged signatures of people who have been forged. And we are quite sure that's going to happen. Another tremendous number. We're going to have an accurate number over the next two days with certified accountants. But an accurate number but its in the 50s of thousands— and that's people that went to vote and they were told they can't vote because they've already been voted for. And it's a very sad thing. They walked out complaining. But the number's large. We'll have it for you. But it's much more than the number of 11,779 that's — The current margin is only 11,779. Brad, I think you agree with that, right? That's something I think everyone — at least that's' a number that everyone agrees on. But that's the difference in the votes. But we've had hundreds of thousands of ballots that we're able to actually — we'll get you a pretty accurate number."
It goes on and on like that, and it doesn't get DIFFERENT from that, just more claims by Trump and his team that fraudulent votes have been counted and not properly investigated. The only place it gets different are things like this exchange:
"Mitchell: Mr. Secretary, Mr. President, one of the things that we have been, Alex can talk about this, we talked about it, and I don't know whether the information has been conveyed to your office, but I think what the president is saying, and what we've been trying to do is to say, look, the court is not acting on our petition. They haven't even assigned a judge. But the people of Georgia and the people of America have a right to know the answers. And you have data and records that we don't have access to. And you keep telling us and making public statements that you investigated this and nothing to see here. But we don't know about that. All we know is what you tell us. What I don't understand is why wouldn't it be in everyone's best interest to try to get to the bottom, compare the numbers, you know, if you say, because - to try to be able to get to the truth because we don't have any way of confirming what you're telling us. You tell us that you had an investigation at the State Farm Arena. I don't have any report. I've never seen a report of investigation. I don't know that is. I've been pretty involved in this and I don't know."
"Hilbert: Mr. President and Cleta, this is Kurt Hilbert, if I might interject for a moment. Um Ryan, I would like to suggest just four categories that have already been mentioned by the president that have actually hard numbers of 24,149 votes that were counted illegally. That in and of itself is sufficient to change the results or place the outcome in doubt. We would like to sit down with your office and we can do it through purposes of compromise and just like this phone call, just to deal with that limited category of votes. And if you are able to establish that our numbers are not accurate, then fine. However, we believe that they are accurate. We've had now three to four separate experts looking at these numbers.
Trump: Certified accountants looked at them.
Hilbert: Correct. And this is just based on USPS data and your own secretary of state's data. So that's what we would entreat and ask you to do, to sit down with us in a compromise and settlements proceeding and actually go through the registered voter IDs and registrations. And if you can convince us that that 24,149 is inaccurate, then fine. But we tend to believe that is, you know, obviously more than 11,779. That's sufficient to change the results entirely in of itself. So what would you say to that, Mr. Germany?
Germany: Kurt, um I'm happy to get with our lawyers and we'll set that up. That number is not accurate. And I think we can show you, for all the ones we've looked at, why it's not. And so if that would be helpful, I'm happy to get with our lawyers and set that up with you guys."
It sounds for a minute like Germany is going to acquiesce to their demand - not to "find the votes", but to go over the records Trump team has and demonstrate that the actual counts don't match for one reason or another. They seem excited that they're getting an actual accounting, not just claims of an 'investigation' with no reports or evidence one took place. Mark Meadows jumps in to confirm:
"Meadows: Mr. President. This is Mark. It sounds like we've got two different sides agreeing that we can look at these areas ands I assume that we can do that within the next 24 to 48 hours to go ahead and get that reconciled so that we can look at the two claims and making sure that we get the access to the secretary of state's data to either validate or invalidate the claims that have been made. Is that correct?
Germany: No, that's not what I said. I'm happy to have our lawyers sit down with Kurt and the lawyers on that side and explain to my him, here's, based on what we've looked at so far, here's how we know this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong."
He's not willing to prove that the counts are correct, just to have another meeting with the Trump team where they tell them they're wrong without bringing the receipts. Again, maybe they're right, and maybe there are good reasons to act this way other than fraud on the part of the Secretary of State's office. But none of this conversation is Trump asking the Secretary of State to falsify votes. They're asking the SoS to bring the receipts. That's what happened on this phone call, and we don't have to guess at the context of the quote you cited in this hour-long call - that's almost exclusively Trump rambling monologues - to tell us his state of mind.
That's why none of the other people in the call are being accused of a crime.
Only the person that said "I want you to get rid of the guy. I'm not telling you how, he's a problem, just get it done. Thanks"
Please point to the part of the transcript where Trump asks them to commit fraud, invent votes, or otherwise do something dishonest. The part you cited is unimpressive to me. If you want to claim that Trump rambles, that he makes a dozen points and doesn't really care if he gets the details right, or even that his team is flat-out wrong in the things they assert, I'm open to those argument. But you're claiming Trump is committing a crime here, without any evidence. Trump said over and over again in that call, "look, we won by a lot and they cast hundreds of thousands of illegitimate votes, and you're stonewalling me, unwilling to get the count right. It's disenfranchising GA voters and that's not right." He said it a dozen ways, and I can pull out exact quotes to prove those are the assertions he made.
You're saying he meant something entirely different. At least provide me some context for how you can possibly read his statement the way you're asserting. Where is it in that call?
See https://ericrasmusen.substack.com/publish/posts/detail/150769168?referrer=%2Fpublish%2Fposts
There are lots of forged signatures. It wouldn't hurt to check for more.
Thanks, sclmlw, I appreciate hearing a different point of view on this. Some thoughts:
I'm not going to have time to go through the whole transcript anytime very soon, so I can't make claims about how the whole thing reads; take the rest of what I'm saying accordingly.
'it doesn't explicitly say, "make up a bunch of votes" or anything about asking them to commit fraud. That's something you have to interpret into the statement. And look, I get that the way Trump talks there's always some amount of 'reading intent into the statement' that you have to do with the man...'
I do very much agree that Trump's statements require a lot of interpretation, and I'm certainly not surprised that he doesn't explicitly say 'make up votes'. At the same time, where else is Raffensperger going to 'find' the number of votes that Trump wants? Raffensperger and his team seem to have been clear that there aren't substantial numbers of fraudulent or uncounted votes that would change the outcome.
And implicit pressure matters too; 'Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?' Without an explicit quid pro quo or threat, it may not cross the line into a crime, but that doesn't mean it's not pressure to make the result what Trump wants, whatever that takes.
I think that's especially true because Trump isn't just a candidate; he's the President of the United States. It's got to be awfully hard to get pressured repeatedly by the President to do something and just let that roll off your back. Obviously Trump can't help in that moment also being the President, but it still means his words carry a weight that they otherwise wouldn't. Consider as another example the Biden administration's pressure on social media companies to censor information about COVID-19 -- they never (that I've seen) explicitly said, 'Do what we want or we'll punish you', but it's still clearly an unsavory kind of pressure that isn't appropriate coming from officers of the federal government.
I've read the other quotes you posted, but the excerpt still reads to me as pressure to get the result Trump wants regardless of what it takes to do it. That also reads as very in-character for Trump; a big part of his personality as I see it is pushing hard for what he wants, without caring much about legalities or proprietaries. Which may be acceptable for a businessperson, but isn't necessarily acceptable when speaking as the President to an election official.
Again, grain of salt since I haven't had time yet to read the full transcript as you did. But at least from the excerpts you've posted, this still seems like pressure to overturn the outcome.
Jumping around and sampling the transcript, a couple of other small thoughts:
- If I imagine myself as Raffensperger in that call, I think I would feel *enormously* pressured, even browbeaten, by Trump.
- We have well-established paths for candidates to challenge election results (which Trump made considerable use of in the following months). Calling the election official in charge and intensely pressuring them to immediately 'find' more votes doesn't seem like one of them -- especially when it involves continuing to pressure them after they say, 'Yes, we've looked into the things you're saying and either are still investigating them or have found them baseless'.
Thanks for the reasoned response. Based solely on what I read from the transcript, here's what I see:
"where else is Raffensperger going to 'find' the number of votes that Trump wants? Raffensperger and his team seem to have been clear that there aren't substantial numbers of fraudulent or uncounted votes that would change the outcome."
The specific thing the Trump team repeatedly asks for in this call is an investigation that's externally accountable. They don't just want a statement from the SoS's office saying "we did an internal review and there was nothing wrong" without any report or attempt to reconcile that review ... in particular to reconcile with the numbers the Trump team culled from publicly available data. Trump repeatedly states that he believes he won by a large margin, and further that he believes reviewing things like the deceased voter rolls or the State Farm Arena ballots will demonstrate provably invalid ballots based on issues with missing or forged signatures, or deceased voters having turned in ballots.
Raffensburger's team repeatedly claims they investigated the Trump team's complaints, but then refuses all attempts by the Trump team to do any forensic accounting. For example, Trump and his team claim there are 5k deceased voters which Raffensburger tries to correct as two. The Trump team challenge them on this point, saying we have a list of deceased people, can we compare it to your voter rolls? They're told 'no'.
Look, I can understand the position Raffensburger is in here. He didn't personally go over those rolls, and it's been a quick few weeks for his team to execute some meticulous tasks. If it turns out his people were off by a hundred dead people his office will lose credibility, and it will just fuel more attempts by the Trump team to review the ballots looking for more errors. This is the same for every investigation, where if he does an investigation in private, but then allows anyone to double-check his work any discrepancy will only make his office look bad. He has everything to lose and nothing personally to gain by giving in to the Trump team's demands.
Meanwhile, the Trump team's back really is up against the wall here. They've faced extreme prejudice in the courts for months at this point (plus troublesome meddling from Trump himself after election day). Some courts dismissed their election lawsuits ahead of the election, because they didn't have standing to sue from a simple rule change alone, they needed to demonstrate that the rule change materially harmed them in the form of costing them electorally in order to demonstrate standing. Other courts issued the exact opposite ruling, saying they couldn't wait until after the election to file claims about unfair rules changes, take your rules-mongering somewhere else you needed to bring this to us before the election or else we think you're just trying to cherry pick which rules you want to toss. So if a rule was changed illegitimately, they were essentially barred from litigating it before the election or after, giving them no recourse.
Or there was the case here in Georgia. The 2000 SCOTUS decision (an opinion that tried to explicitly demand had no force of stare decisis behind it) set a precedent that presidential election cases have to be resolved before the election certification deadline. This meant a court could just slow-walk election cases by, for example, not issuing a court date at all. Trump's team figured they could go to the SoS's office and try to resolve the issue amicably, without going through the courts. If Raffensburger was willing to work with them on getting these issues resolved, they wouldn't have to get a court to order the review.
The problem is that means Raffensburger's office holds all the cards here - and he clearly knows it. This isn't a negotiation, and it never feels like one. Trump comes across as pleading, but as you said there was never an offered quid pro quo. Now, you can interpret the pleading as an attempt at bullying, but to me it was clear who held the power in this conversation and it wasn't POTUS.
"What about January 6? That was a riot, never truly investigated, probably instigated by the Left, possibly even with FBI help. "
It's been thoroughly investigated, case by case, each participant carefully tracked down and put on trial. Many confessed, some of whom expressed regret and others continued to be proud of their actions and brag about what they did.
I know one person personally, hadn't seen him in over 15 years, I also know the guy who got his job after he was fired for his role in Jan 6. He is a proud Trump supporter and is still proud of his actions. To say he was instigated by the FBI and all these people agreed on the same story even though they processed their emotions about it differently. That people who were proud and people who regret all agree that they did it because Trump actively encouraged them to... That Trump's own staff tried to get him to call them off because they also believed he had power to influence them, implying all those text messages between his staffers were somehow faked? This is one of the most thoroughly investigated events in recent history and there is no reasonable way this can be a conspiracy unless we're all in the matrix.
That's a crazy thing to believe and makes me doubt everything else you claim if you truly believe this. I do see many other problems with what you wrote but this one is such a major epistemological flaw that it closes the case.
It's not investigated thoroughly. Who was punished for the Capitol Police's security lapses? Why did some officers later commit suicide? Why did the Police let the rioters in? Why won't hte FBI say exactly how many agents they had in the crowd? Etc.
THIS is your response? You're a fucking moron. Just really terrible thinking here. Be embarrassed. You sound like the biggest dumbass imaginable.
Why do retards have a tendency to use "dumbass"?
I can't respond on Scott's behalf, but I can for myself
> What about January 6? That was a riot, never truly investigated, probably instigated by the Left, possibly even with FBI help. Who benefited from it? Who *could* have benefited from it?
I agree it was a riot, but once you accept that it becomes far more simple than you're portraying it. Sports riots are a familiar phenomena, because they gather lots of people in one space and those people can become excitable and start breaking rules. Protests are also well known enough for turning into riots that riot police are often readied in advance for them. A riot is just a large enough group of people engaged in lawbreaking because their numbers overwhelm the ability of the police to prevent such lawbreaking. You don't need to ask "who benefited", people will just riot for their own reasons when they can.
> What about the hundreds of Jan 6 felonies misusing a false-records statute, which the Supreme Court threw out recently?
That was just prosecutorial overreach, which is very common. It's not illegal, it just doesn't pass muster and gets rejected when attempted (although defendants can be intimidated with such things if they don't have competent lawyers to call BS).
> The Democrats have seriously proposed packing the Supreme Court, and getting rid of the electoral college.
They've "proposed" it, but haven't actually done anything. Shouldn't you judge them by the same standard as Trump?
> They have overthrown a President— the Biden disappearance— and chosen a presidential candidate who had no popular support even in the Democratic Party.
They badgered him into withdrawing from the race (Kamala is still not acting president) once it became clear he had no chance of winning, and then because they hadn't had a competitive primary they were stuck with the person Biden picked specifically to make it difficult for him to be displaced.
> Pfizer delaying vaccine approval just so Trump wouldn’t get credit before the electoin
Is it really the Democratic Party that is to be blame for that? How will re-electing Trump do anything about that kind of problem?
> They have the Bureaucracy, including the FBI, the Justice Dept., and the armed forces.
I can grant the permanent bureaucracy, but I don't think you're actually familiar with the political affiliations of the FBI and armed forces.
I found the "left-wing, FBI" induced riot comment particularly egregious. I've heard of that conspiracy driven narrative before but to claim probability is bizzaro. And yes I agree Harris poses legitimate risks
You're out of date with respect to the FBI and the armed forces-- with respect to the leadership, the people in DC. The military leadership is completely woke.
> But we all know that he is constantly hyperbolic. His talk is poetry, not prose, in the sense that it conveys meaning well, but not the literal meaning
It's wild to me that it's seriously considered that we have to "translate" what President says. This smells a lot like Doublespeak, where the things are said and the things we "have" to hear are different.
But also, even if it's true – what about the one time where the words turn out to be true, and he goes ahead and does the thing he was harassing to? E.g. see Putin whom nobody believe to invade the Ukraine and start a mega-war, but he did anyways? More than half of Ukrainians learned to "translate" his threats as empty – myself included.
Revision notes:
1. Talk about the New York Times.
2. Read all the comments and reply to som eof them .
3. Talk about how good it is to see how pro-Kamala people think.
4. https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/is-this-how-to-save-democracy has a long and good list of anti-democratic Democratic actions, from a Left point of view.
5.https://x.com/julie_kelly2/status/1853568107756871803 An example ofa grossly excessive sentencing switch and request for 4 years for altering a Facebook message for a Jan 6. defendant afte the Supreme COurt threw out the original charge of loitering with intent to insurrect.
J6 was terrible by itself (take Trump's speech on the rally that day and ask ChatGPT to analyze if it was an incitement to storm the Capitol. Why was he even holding a rally on the day of the certification a few blocks away from it?).
But calling the Georgia SOS to find the votes and trying to get his VP to certify an alternate slate of electors were also unmistakable crimes that should have had him in jail already.
Funny how you seem to have no problem with the Democrats' brazen election fraud.
I only care about stuff happening in the real world.
Yes, and the fraud happened in the real world.
Or do you have an innocent explanation for the synchronized stopping of the reported count across multiple states followed by statistically impossible jumps for Biden, the numerous instances of observers being kicked or tricked out of the counting room followed by the count resuming, in one instance the counters literally boarding up the windows so the observers can't see what the counters are doing, the surveillance video of counters feeding the same ballots multiple times through the machine, the sworn eyewitness affidavits, the miscellaneous statistical irregularities, etc?
https://shylockholmes.substack.com/p/repost-last-thoughts-on-voter-fraud
How is it brazen if your only source is some conspiracy theorist substacker? Wouldn't your epistemology model tell you that something that is so obvious would have been picked up by more people? Not even Fox News can find the evidence for the action that you claim is so brazen?
> How is it brazen if your only source is some conspiracy theorist substacker?
My source is what I saw watching it happen live on election night.
That substack merely provides the evidence and argument in a compelling form all in one place.
> Wouldn't your epistemology model tell you that something that is so obvious wouldn't have been picked up by more people?
It was.
It would appear you have a completely closed epistemology where you dismiss anyone presenting arguments you don't want to hear as a "conspiracy theorist".
Sure, show me the court cases, the investigative pieces, evidence from any of the 50 states' data system. Not some speculative text that mixes coincidences with imagination.
>What about January 6? That was a riot, never truly investigated, probably instigated by the Left, possibly even with FBI help. Who benefited from it? Who *could* have benefited from it? The riot cut off the planned debate on whether the election was stolen, and gave the Democrats a cudgel to use for 4 years.
This actually surprised me and really makes me question your credibility. Do you have any evidence that Jan 6th was "probably instigated by the Left"? That's an incredibly bold claim.
The Jan 6th riot backfired politically against the Republicans but that does not make it a false flag attack.
Elsewhere in the piece you dismiss Donald Trump's rhetoric as hyperbolic but when people react to the hyperbolic rhetoric by getting whipped into a frenzy you call that a Democrat false flag attack.
Cui bono?
This is an insufficient argument.
I'm definitely not prepared with a battery of sources or debate-ready evidence, but here's the NY Post on how many FBI informants took part in the riot: https://nypost.com/2023/09/19/fbi-lost-count-of-number-of-informants-at-capitol-on-jan-6-ex-official/
The FBI also has a long AND recent history of entrapment that makes this look even more sus than just losing control of the situation.
"What about Jan 6 ..."
Trump's past whispers of pardoning convicted Jan 6 particpants demonstrates his hypocrisy toward the police and courts. Pick up a fire extinguisher and assault police with it? No problem, you're forgiven. How much egging on would someone need to do that? I don't buy the argument that egging on is an extenuating circumstance. Someone brings bear mace to Washington, DC knowing it's illegal, but only uses it when they're egged on? If you blame the hypothetical FBI agents for egging on participants at the Capitol , then you'd logically have to impugn Trump for egging them on, as well.
Stopped reading at
> What about January 6? That was a riot, never truly investigated, probably instigated by the Left, possibly even with FBI help.
Smells like conspiracy theory. You can't expect me to accept this and just keep on reading without some significant substantiation.
And this was after having to swallow:
> First, think about what Trump’s done to democracy. Nothing...
Gee, how about speaking for 70+ minutes before said riot, casting dispersion after dispersion on the electoral outcome? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBH7ql34Ex0
And that's only one of Trump's blows to democracy... Never in history (to my knowledge and memory) has a presidential candidate so blatantly flouted democractic norms and ideals, like with statements of locking up and using the powers of the State against his political opponents.
It just feels like so many IQ 130+ people here on Substack are so busy playing 4D chess you're missing what's staring you in the face, the stability of the ground you stand on.
I do wish Kingsley would un-"memory hole" us a little about the "leftwing violence." I don't doubt there's stuff there but it deserves some reminders so we can compare it with what we've seen recently.
But the brazen election fraud that happened in 2020 isn't a "threat to democracy".
> I do wish Kingsley would un-"memory hole" us a little about the "leftwing violence." I don't doubt there's stuff there but it deserves some reminders so we can compare it with what we've seen recently.
Either you were in some cave for most of 2020 or you're not even pretending to care about reality.
A particularly damning thing about Jan 6's official story is Miller's testimony that Trump told him to bring in National Guard ahead of time to stymie riots and in direct contradiction Miller then made it more difficult to even request NG coming in by requiring direct authorizations from the top administrators to perform their normal duties.