And Sleepy Joe Will Get The Credit: US Politics January 2021

"I think everyone needs to calm down ... It's like a tinder box and throwing lit matches into it." —Sen. Ted Cruz, who has been throwing lit matches into a tinder box pic.twitter.com/xozAujekdk

— The Recount (@therecount) January 3, 2021

Only a true master debater knows the power of telling someone to calm down.

We're all trying to find the guy who did this

Donnie's searching for the real fraudsters...

Good afternoon!

Cruz said challenging the results of the election was not an ideal thing for Congress to be doing, but it seemed better to him than merely accepting the results. “Frankly, two pretty lousy choices,” he said.

Good point, Ted.

If the Washington Post had any balls, they'd post the full recording.

President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that election experts said raised legal questions.

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected his assertions, explaining that Trump is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 12,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

Trump dismissed their arguments.

“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

Raffensperger responded: “Well, Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

At another point, Trump said: “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.”

The rambling, at times incoherent conversation, offered a remarkable glimpse of how consumed and desperate the president remains about his loss, unwilling or unable to let the matter go and still believing he can reverse the results in enough battleground states to remain in office.

“There’s no way I lost Georgia,” Trump said, a phrase he repeated again and again on the call. “There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”

democracy or undermining democracy, really kind of the same if you think about it

xpost Two to one says they will soon.

xpost

there's a 5 minute clip up, now, with the highlights.

honestly, i've read transcripts like this before from him, i know how he sounds, i know what a bald-faced criminal he is, but i found hearing his voice unsettling and raw, just terrible and pathetic, in a new way.

raised legal questions

I finally learned to stop rubbing my hands together and saying “now we’ve got ‘em!” when seeing phrases like this.

WashPost described this as "vague" threatening, but there's nothing vague about this when the POTUS is saying it to you:

“That’s a criminal offense,” he said. “And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”

yes, i get that trump's legal team is a complete fucking joke and that he has not standing and the case would be thrown out and all that, but he still has the power to make it SEEM like it's a criminal offense to his millions and millions and millions of dumbass followers

I wonder if it would raise legal questions if I went on a decades-long crime bender.

how much money do you have? that's what matters, in the U.S.

There’s too many “nothing matters” examples to have kept track of. I think his gelling the world that injecting bleach might kill the virus at a press conference is the biggest I can immediately recall.

if you have no money, you can't pay your bail and you sit in jail until your case comes up, whenever that might be

if you have enough money, you do whatever you want for the rest of your life and millions of people will construct a 4th-rate propaganda operation in your honor and throw money at it all day

xp trump was definitely joking about that bleach, definitely joking. we could all tell by the tone of his voice as he told the joke over a series of 60-90 seconds and kept asking deadpan follow-up questions. he is REALLY funny!!!!!!!

“Let’s see Donald Trump wiggle his way out of -“

https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/wiggle-wiggle/

also, this call took place YESTERDAY!

i don't know why i'm so surprised by that, but holy shit, he really is delusional

It was probably a really bad sign that he couldn’t admit that he lost the popular vote in 2016

that's the fourth state (at least) in which he has criminally, directly, obviously, evidently tried to reverse the election results.

???? wtf????

are non-republicans supposed to just think "well, i guess we can give that a shot when we lose, too, and republicans will be sure to give us a 2-month hissy fit stretch after the election to try to do it, with no real consequences"?

if democrats/obama were doing this in 2012, or if clinton tried this in 2016, there would be open fucking warfare in red counties (non-cities) across the entire fucking country, instigated by the same people who make up Trump's base at this very moment

for the (large, probably supermajority opinion) people who don't really care too much about any of the criminal/downfall of the US stuff, there's also signs that trump is going to tell georgia republicans to stay home for the special election, during his Rally-for-Himself on monday, unless he gets what he wants:

“You have a big election coming up and because of what you’ve done to the president — you know, the people of Georgia know that this was a scam,” Trump said. “Because of what you’ve done to the president, a lot of people aren’t going out to vote, and a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative, because they hate what you did to the president. Okay? They hate it. And they’re going to vote. And you would be respected, really respected, if this can be straightened out before the election.”

Something I’ve been thinking about is the extent they actually *mean* it but how little that actually matters in the end.

I think the number of people who deep down believe it is very small. But millions of them are smirking and saying all the lines anyway. I mean it might as well be true, it’s *practically* true, what difference does it make anyway the Dems *would’ve* cheated if they had the chance

— brittany wilson 🇺🇸 (@sameoldstory) January 3, 2021

Trump: "But have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?"

(long pause)

Ryan Germany (general counsel for the state): "No."

Wish just one of these cowards would say "you lost, get over it" and hang up on him.

Elsewhere he says they're moving the machinery, and sometimes he says they're removing it. Of the three scenarios, I've got to go with the inner-for-outer-parts swap as the most thought-provoking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOiY2WcU9HQ

on the "do republican voters actually BELIEVE this?" front, i agree, it doesn't matter. the whole "projection" thing is very important. they're doing this right now because they BELIEVE that democrats would do it to them, if they had a chance. now republicans have a chance to do it, so they're pre-emptively retaliating against what they believe democrats would have done to them by openly trying to sabotage the election

honestly i think the only thing that could fix this country right now is mandatory talk therapy. a bunch of republicans need to talk about their dads

they are injecting new parts, you can just just inject new parts and boom

Trump: "But have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?"

(long pause)

Ryan Germany (general counsel for the state): "No."

"Impossible"--Germany

later in the call (excerpts), trump attempts to belittle the counsel (Ryan Germany), saying that there's no way the counsel could possibly know that the "inner machines" weren't tampered with without looking himself

I’m now being told they left the inner parts and removed the outer parts

nothing is surprising now, including the fact that nothing will be done about this

If you google "replace inner parts with outer parts," you get a lot of results for "inner and outer parts," but in the entire history of the internet, "with" returns zero results.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfniG-AdSC4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4I2T8vZwmA

Who’s to say Trump’s inner parts haven’t been removed and replaced with, say, a deranged Teddy Ruxpin doll?

nothing is surprising now, including the fact that nothing will be done about this

Yep, this is the most dispiriting part of the whole thing.

nothing is surprising now, including the fact that nothing will be done about this

― k3vin k.

at this point, sadly otm.

it's amazing how much of american history we could have skipped - hundreds of years! - just because we all assumed that "something" would be done about "this", if it happened

you can't be a president and blatantly commit crimes every day of your term! even your own party would be forced to impeach, there is a limit to shame!!

RONG

The GOP had been working so hard for decades to get to this point, and, they are happy to announce that, at long last, they have left no sense of decency.

Sounds like just another perfect phone call to me

that [decency] was the last remaining obstacle, it's true. throw that out the window, make a beeline toward that tacky-as-fuck mansion in a gated community

Very legal, and very cool!

If you google "replace inner parts with outer parts," you get a lot of results for "inner and outer parts," but in the entire history of the internet, "with" returns zero results.

parts is parts

If you google "replace inner parts with outer parts," you get a lot of results for "inner and outer parts," but in the entire history of the internet, "with" returns zero results.

this is entirely speculative and borderline conspiratorial (sorry), but i don't believe that google represents an accurate record of what's on the internet, based upon what they've done to Google Image Search results

maybe there a few dozen uses of "replace inner parts WITH outer parts", but it wasn't lucrative enough to put advertisements on it, so it was wiped

"They are shredding ballots, in my opinion, based on what I heard" is some claim.

GUILDENSTERN: On Fortune’s cap we are not the very button.

HAMLET: Nor the soles of her shoes?

ROSENCRANTZ: Neither, my lord.

HAMLET: Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favors?

GUILDENSTERN: Faith, her privates we.

HAMLET: In the secret parts of Fortune?