rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

i'm excerpting this from TPM "Prime", where i am co-founder and co-treasurer. but it hits on a lot of recent anxieties, for me at least.

after briefly recounting the recent (insane) stuff from Caputo, the HHS comms chief /trump stooges, he writes:

...Caputo comes to Trump’s world as a longtime associate of Roger Stone. Stone himself is on the air calling on Trump to defy electoral defeat, declare martial law and order the mass arrests of political opponents like the Clintons and Obamas. He justifies this with baseless claims of widespread voter fraud by Democrats. Mark Levin, onetime legal commentator and now full time reactionary, is pushing the President to “use the Insurrection Act” to put down ‘insurrections’ in the country’s big cities. Levin adds that Trump needs to be ready to fire the top brass and appointees at the Pentagon when they resist his order to unleash US military troops on US civilians.

A consistent theme in all these threats and predictions is how the mix of protests, occasional looting and general civil unrest of recent months and the purported need to restore order by force morphs into post election scenarios in which the election must be decided by a resort to arms.

Seeded through all of this are increasingly histrionic and nonsensical claims of murderous violence that Republicans are allegedly responding to. In Caputo’s rant he claims that a “resistance unit” of politicized CDC scientists was plotting to murder him. This is nonsense but nonsense with a concrete purpose – it makes murderous responses sound reasonable, justified, logical.

We should note that the President himself has gotten into this. Over the weekend in an interview with Fox’s Jeanine Pirro, Pirro falsely claimed that Democrats were threatening mass rioting if they lose the election (another bogus claim now repeatedly asserted in the Fox News universe). She asked what the President would do about it.

“We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that. We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that, if we want,” Trump said. “Look, it’s called insurrection. We just send in, and we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes.”

The comments are often treated by the mainstream press as bizarre digressions by the President or random comments. But you can see from these other statements that they’re not random at all. Pirro’s question and Trump’s answer both emerge out of this drumbeat from Trump’s most aggressive supporters that the election will need to be settled by force and particularly by the President calling out the US military and declaring something like martial law.

Let me be clear as a gut check on this. I don’t think any of this stuff is going to happen. I’m not predicting. I don’t think it’s likely for many different reasons. But when we are talking about looking back in six months, we should be very aware now that the President’s most aggressive and potentially violent supporters – in interplay with the President himself – are already laying the argumentative groundwork for such an outcome – a series of justifications, an argument that the opposition started it and made it necessary, a series of purportedly legal mechanisms for what amounts to a post-election putsch against the government itself.

i guess when your daily tv diet is tucker carlson and hannity, levin seems like just another pro-trump option. but that guy is fucking insane, and it is creepy as hell to hear Trump say “Look, it’s called insurrection. We just send in, and we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes", knowing that he's just echoing levin

the similarity of his voice to Master Shake makes it hard for me to parse how nakedly evil he actually is

Ngl, if Trump wins by any kind of shady means, I think mass rioting is entirely justified.

right, they've been laying the groundwork to refuse to accept an election they lose, while simultaneously warning that the other side's going to refuse to accept an election they win. it's like they're just dumping buckets of shit on their own heads while saying "it really would be un-American to hold your nose right now"

everyone cautioning against radical action under the guise of "we can't become the monsters they say we are" needs to take a long hard look at the massive amounts of mailers in which Joe Biden is positioned right next to scary pictures of Bernie Sanders and AOC

This pandemic related?

This Time Magazine report on Biden's lack of any ground operation in MICHIGAN is just insane.

Read --> https://t.co/JzgtDQcz8w pic.twitter.com/fRoqGAnDB8

— Andrew Clark (@AndrewHClark) September 16, 2020

not good, yes...
surprising or insane, not really

At a Zoom meeting for Cubans for Biden last week, I asked about door-to-door operations in Florida. The campaign guy said no with a finality I didn't expect. "We're not risking people's lives," he said.

I think a lot about 9/11 and what if something like that happened under Trump's watch

I'm sorry to say that in my head every single one of his attempts at solemnity in this scenario are extremely funny

“We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that. We have the right to do that. We have the power to do that, if we want,” Trump said. “Look, it’s called insurrection. We just send in, and we do it very easy. I mean, it’s very easy. I’d rather not do that because there’s no reason for it, but if we had to, we’d do that and put it down within minutes.”

Trump could be talking about curing covid, trade with China, war with Iran ... basically for him fixing any problem is "very easy," and can be done "very quickly." If you have a bunch of hammers, and those hammers are nuclear weapons, and you are a moron that doesn't know how things work, then everything is a nail that you can just nuke and be done with.

xp there are two 9/11s per week now, in terms of covid deaths, and we see how he responded

He invaded Covidistan?

At a Zoom meeting for Cubans for Biden last week, I asked about door-to-door operations in Florida. The campaign guy said no with a finality I didn't expect. "We're not risking people's lives," he said.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, September 17, 2020 7:47 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, the Biden campaign hasn't been doing any door-to-door operations, though I wouldn't think that would necessarily obviate the need for field offices. There's a lot of virtual campaigning going on, though--for instance, Pod Save America has an "Adopt a State" program, where you can sign up to make phone calls to voters in battleground states.

Cameron giving it the side-eye

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/17/david-cameron-signals-that-he-wants-joe-biden-to-beat-trump

idk if we should be reading too much into "insufficient field operations" when there's a literal pandemic raging. people won't even interact with the pizza delivery guy!!

Yeah, I mean, who knows, but handling the pandemic responsibly is one of the few things Biden has going for him, and also a trap. The second he appears without a mask, gotcha, see, he does it too! And so on.

If the pandemic is so dangerous, then why is he sending people door-to-door!? Is his campaign trying to spread the virus and kill people?

they are willing to fight, indeed, to die for comrade combover ~

https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/2020/09/17/does-donald-trump-own-the-ocean/

“For me, it’s more like Trump risked his entire life to stand up for the country,” said Feeley, a contractor. “He didn’t need money. ... He didn’t need fame.” He did not think the flags would have caught on like this for another Republican candidate. What if Trump loses? “I’m still flying it. And I’m heading to the White House with the militia.”

There it is.

Terry, lounging in his Pabst Blue Ribbon swim trunks, said repeatedly his flag is not so much about “loving Trump,” the man, specifically. He talked instead about wanting to signal the things he’s against, laying out grievances with Black Lives Matter, the media and liberal “movements.”

...

Nearby, another couple lazed in the warm, waist deep water and talked about only flying their Trump boat flag when certain family members are around — just to annoy them.

my Mom works as a contact tracer and she says one of the reasons why the death numbers are so wonky day to day is that a lot of families are fighting to take COVID off the death certificate. wonder why that might be...

it would have no legal standing whatsoever, but i highly support any effort to repeatedly sue trump for the negligent deaths of 200K people, after he's out of office. he should have to set aside about $50M a year in legal fees until he dies, to fight it. so keep covid on yr death certificates, future class-action suit losers

DURHAM REPORT!!!

https://threader.app/thread/1307075233703133184

caps are serious. the more caps you use the seriouser it is.

#TOTALEXONERATION!!!!

We found the one person paying attention to Eric Garland in 2020.

milo...are you ready for some game theory? buckle up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXGG-8aGXqo

he has the supreme court, the senate, the attorney general, and the russian intelligence service . . . but he doesn't have covid. after bannon was arrested, parscale was arrested, his taxes went public, and he melted down at the debate, recordings of melania saying "fuck christmas" was the final straw. he knows he has the election in the bag (because of all the aforesaid) so why bother going through the motions of campaigning anymore? hey guys, i have the covid, see you in november . . . when after a steady diet of hydroxy i emerge unscathed from covid . . . and order ya'll back to drink hydroxy ($1000 a bottle) and get back to work . . . and if you die, it is what it is -- you don't deserve to live! herd immunity!!

what

lol

qualms has been blootered since the tax paperwork leaked

I'll have what qualmsley is having

Adjusting my position:

Biden will win popular election, but malarkey means that DJT will remain in office past January.

Posting this now so that I can quote myself later.

you obviously haven't heard Biden's stance on malarkey

I don’t think Trump would win a fair election at this point but voter suppression and court fights fucking Biden in Pennsylvania is hauntingly plausible

Biden will win popular election, but malarkey means that DJT will remain in office past January.

Yes, until January 20th

60%: clear Biden win, enough exhausted/principled GOP vocal support (poss including Fox even) that chicanery & malarkey is contained, transition happens in January like normal. Fuckery is concerning but contained.

20%: chicanery & malarkey create enough instability to cause serious global heartburn, horrible domestic unrest & years of USAnian fuckery, lingering international conspiracy doubt lingers in the public brain, Biden gets “in” but is significantly constrained by weird meme effects. Probable GOP win in 2024.

20%: something worse, genuine crisis, possible coup, DJT retains grip, world ends etc

Have adjusted my position as well - now leaning towards a Biden win despite probable chicanery/malarkey. But I remain deeply pessimistic on the broader timescale. Assuming Biden wins and the Democrats take the Senate, then they have 2 years to get any majoe reform through. At least a year of that will be consumed with the covid crisis, and the other year will be consumed with Biden thinking he can work with the Republicans to achieve something bipartisan. Republicans win in 2022, leaving Biden completely ineffectual. He doesn't run again because he's too old. Harris is the candidate, she performs poorly as she did in the primaries, and some Trump-alike is elected in 2024.

Predicting even that far ahead seems nearly impossible, based on the pace at which events outpace any conformity to established patterns. Seems wiser to just go out and try to make the future you want, however you can and dispense with trying to see more than a month or two ahead.

true I mean think of how crazy the events of 2016-2020 would've sounded in like...2014

accurate prognosis is not the point of posts like that

which would be?

the thrill of hearing certain sounds colliding together, like "chicanery/malarkey"! *shiver down spine* woooooOOOOoo

which would be?

containment iirc

a contested election is certainly possible but afaik a clear Biden victory is the most likely outcome

LOOKIT!

*shiver*

asmr trigger softly reading ilx politics posts

...socialist nancy...

...hunter biden's emails...

....dot...org...

"Republicans win in 2022, leaving Biden completely ineffectual. He doesn't run again because he's too old. Harris is the candidate, she performs poorly as she did in the primaries, and some Trump-alike is elected in 2024."

that is a really depressing view of the future