Trump 2024 Campaign - The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly.

[Hyena]

Some media outlets are FINALLY reporting on DonOld's mental decline. Too little, too late? Perhaps, but nice to see just weeks before the election. (October) suprise!

I have found meidas touch to be heavily, heavily anti-trump, and more than willing to take a splotch on his tie to announce his pending involuntary admittance to a psychiatric hospital.

My point is meidas seems to get the facts right, but their opinion on what those facts mean are incredibly biased and goal oriented.

Agreed. And the titles for all their videos are TRUMP MELTDOWN! DOWNWARD SPIRAL OVER INTERVIEW! Unfortunately, it's mostly THEM in meltdown over his latest stupidity.

[Unagi]

But he's saying he's not a pro-life conservative. I assume he's intentionally using their framing to emphasize the group (that self-identifies as pro-life) that he's disclaiming.

I think I get that, I'm saying that it's important*, when you are not "Pro-Life" to start saying that you are "Pro-Choice", because if you just keep using their phrase, then you are doing what they wanted. They wanted people to have to say "I am not pro-life", and feel horrible with that phrase.



"I am a conservative, but I'm not pro-life." is not identically equal to "I am a conservative, but I'm pro-choice." I get that it means the same exact thing when parsed and disected - but there are some important* differences.



*by important, I don't mean that it deserves heavy scorn or that any of this will unravel anything - but simply that there is a meaningful difference in the words.


But I get it, again. I do. But what I'm saying is that phrasing is how I would describe a friend of mine who is Conservative, but "don't worry - he's not 'Pro-life'"... but, and here is my point, if it were me talking about myself - I would tell people I was "Conservative, but Pro-Choice".

But perhaps that's a bridge too far for some conservatives.

[ImLawBoy]

Seems like argument for argument's sake at this point.

[Jaymann]

Seems like argument for argument's sake at this point.

No, he is just not pro-agreement.

[Skinypupy]

Seems like argument for argument's sake at this point.

No it isn’t!

[hepcat]

Would be so much easier to just frame the GOP as "forced birth", imho.

I prefer "Potential Baby Canon".

[pr0ner]

Some media outlets are FINALLY reporting on DonOld's mental decline. Too little, too late? Perhaps, but nice to see just weeks before the election. (October) suprise!

I have found meidas touch to be heavily, heavily anti-trump, and more than willing to take a splotch on his tie to announce his pending involuntary admittance to a psychiatric hospital.

My point is meidas seems to get the facts right, but their opinion on what those facts mean are incredibly biased and goal oriented.

Meidas is a left-wing equivalent to a site like Daily Wire. Wildly biased and plays fast and loose with facts.

I tend to agree with their opinions (because it usually falls along the same lines as my own) but I don't put much stock in any "reporting" they do.

The people they have working for them who clip Trump rallies and put them online without any real editorializing are fine. The leader of Meidas is going all in on some of the Trump crapped his pants on stage nonsense and it's a line I would rather them not go down (yet here we are).

[Blackhawk]

He's putting his vote in the right place. Nit-picking his phrasing for purity isn't helpful.

[pr0ner]

Trump gives enough ammo with his constant tangents and lies. There's no need for Ben Meiselas to dive into conspiracy theory land.

[waitingtoconnect]

He saying he’s pro choice. Pro life is what the people who want abortion outlawed call themselves.

no kidding. I said as much.

I misunderstood the intent of your reply then.

Yeah, I was trying to imply that he may be free of the virus - but he's still a carrier - if he frames it as "I'm not pro-life."

It was a moment.

Conservatives are often immediately identified as a pro life lunatic on other forums. This my clarification I didn’t believe in that.

I did state clearly that abortion is a matter for a woman and her doctor.

I don’t think such things can be fairly legislated. Do we really want a country where a woman can and will be investigated for every miscarriage and a religious panel deciding if it was her “negligence” or “malfeasance “ that resulted in the foetues death? Because that’s where we are headed.

I don’t think we can focus on semantics at a time like this. The orange one is likely to be in White House again in less than 3 months.

[Skinypupy]

Of course she is.

Judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed Donald Trump's classified documents case, appears on list of proposed candidates for Attorney General in second Trump administration, per ABC News.

[Zarathud]

When do we reach quid pro quo?

[Blackhawk]

Isn't there an ethics board of some sort?

[Kurth]

It's ridiculous. She's not qualified to be a federal district court judge. Now she's going to be Attorney General? Terrible.

[Zaxxon]

It's ridiculous. She's not qualified to be a federal district court judge. Now she's going to be Attorney General? Terrible.

The worst timeline.

[Blackhawk]

Just wait until Trump wins and Sotomayor has major medical issues.

[YellowKing]

The orange one is likely to be in White House again in less than 3 months.

Likely? He's not going to win, and I don't think it's even going to be all that close.

[hepcat]

I wish I shared your optimism.

[Kraken]

The orange one is likely to be in White House again in less than 3 months.

Likely? He's not going to win, and I don't think it's even going to be all that close.

Im clinging to the same gut feeling.

[Grifman]

“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... er/680327/

[Kurth]

Seems like argument for argument's sake at this point.

No, he is just not pro-agreement.

I’m in the middle of a hotel restaurant, and this made me snarf my drink. Nice work!

[Grifman]

But of course she is. Her incompetency needs to hit a higher level.

[Kurth]

“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... er/680327/

I just finished this article. I expect so much more from The Atlantic.

The first half of the article was pretty much an assault on Trump for all the horrible, terrible things he’s said about the military. All of it unsourced, standing against sourced denials from people who were in the very meetings the statements were taken from.

“It doesn’t cost $60K bucks to bury a Mexican.” How can you publish that without a named source?

To be clear, I don’t doubt that Trump said or did what was being reported, but WTF is it with these unnamed sources? Part of the problem is the difficulty I have with the idea that Trump could say something like that and not have multiple people lose their shit on him.

The back half of the article was better, but it was just regurgitating old statements from Milley and Kelly.

Also, none of it matters. I think the author is living in a bygone time. Just like the MAGAt movement has been convinced that there are no real “experts” and the opinions of those “experts” are as valid as your Uncle Bob, I think much of the military gives a rat’s ass what flag officers like Milley or Kelly think about things. They don’t condemn Trump for intervening in military conduct cases like Gallagher: They lionize him.

The fact that half this country, give or take, supports Trump is all you need to know. We are fucked, no matter what happens in this election.

[LordMortis]

It's ridiculous. She's not qualified to be a federal district court judge. Now she's going to be Attorney General? Terrible.

He's just waiting to put her on the Supreme Court.

[Carpet_pissr]

The orange one is likely to be in White House again in less than 3 months.

Likely? He's not going to win, and I don't think it's even going to be all that close.

“Republicans seem to be responding. In North Carolina, where Democrats had an edge of more than 30 percentage points in early voting at this point in 2022, they are ahead by just 1 percentage point this year.”

[YellowKing]

Trump actively suppressed early voting by Republicans in 2020, and now he's actively encouraging it. I'm not surprised to see a surge in early voting across the board. I'm not sure we can take one battleground state and extrapolate that Harris is in trouble, when every other sign shows she's in a better position.

[hepcat]

“I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... er/680327/

I just finished this article. I expect so much more from The Atlantic.

The first half of the article was pretty much an assault on Trump for all the horrible, terrible things he’s said about the military. All of it unsourced, standing against sourced denials from people who were in the very meetings the statements were taken from.

“It doesn’t cost $60K bucks to bury a Mexican.” How can you publish that without a named source?

Yeah, there’s a lot of that that seems a stretch. Why would they hand Trump the bill for a funeral during a meeting is one.

[Smoove_B]

The fact that half this country, give or take, supports Trump is all you need to know. We are fucked, no matter what happens in this election.

This remains the single most important takeaway from the last 8+ years. By all measures, we are a failed nation.

[YellowKing]

I still think Trump is an anomaly in his power to influence like a cult leader. We are seeing non-extremist people abandon all common sense for him in a way I'm not sure a "normal" politician would be able to invoke.

[Skinypupy]

Yeah, there’s a lot of that that seems a stretch. Why would they hand Trump the bill for a funeral during a meeting is one.

That was my takeaway as well. I don't doubt Trump would say any those things, but to publish them all unsourced - especially when everyone who they claim said or heard the things vehemently denies it - feels pretty sketchy. The family of the soldier in question came out yesterday and blasted the article as complete BS and said they were treated very well by Trump. Granted, the family is publicly ultra-MAGA so that should taken with a grain of salt as well.

"Republicans seem to be responding. In North Carolina, where Democrats had an edge of more than 30 percentage points in early voting at this point in 2022, they are ahead by just 1 percentage point this year.”

I don't know if you can really take any comparative measures from 2020. We were in the middle of pandemic with 3,000 dying every day, people afraid to leave their houses, and the GOP actively telling their voters NOT to vote early. Doesn't feel like there are any meaningful parallels to draw between that and today, as it's a completely different circumstance.

A comparison to 2016 would feel far more apt, but I haven't seen any of that data.

[Skinypupy]

The fact that half this country, give or take, supports Trump is all you need to know. We are fucked, no matter what happens in this election.

Half this country isn't MAGA.

GOP gets about 1/3 of the total possible voting population. I suspect that 2/3 of that GOP-voting group actively supports Trump. with the other third voting for him because they simply can't/won't vote for a Democrat.

The bigger problem is the 1/3 who simply don't bother to show up at all...which I do think is also a pretty good indicator that we're fucked.

[ImLawBoy]

It might be difficult to get people to talk on the record, particularly if they fear retaliation. That leaves the reporter with four options. One, try to get confirmation from other sources. Don't know if that was attempted. Two, sit on the information, even if the reporter believes the sources are solid and the information is newsworthy. Three, violate journalistic ethics and burn the sources and print their names. Four, print the information as coming from sources who requested anonymity, and also print responses from others that might refute that information, letting the reader decide.

[YellowKing]

A comparison to 2016 would feel far more apt, but I haven't seen any of that data.

I'm wondering if that would even be particularly useful, as I know that before 2020, I didn't even truly understand absentee ballots were a "thing" unless you had a really good excuse. The pandemic really opened my eyes to the idea that mail-in and early voting was a possibility - before then, I just assumed if you didn't have a valid reason for missing in-person voting on Election Day, that wasn't an option.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel like early voting/absentee voting may have broken into wider awareness because of the pandemic, and we're now seeing the natural results of more Americans becoming comfortable with it.

[hepcat]

It might be difficult to get people to talk on the record, particularly if they fear retaliation. That leaves the reporter with four options. One, try to get confirmation from other sources. Don't know if that was attempted.

It seems like he did not, considering the amount of pushback from others he's getting. And not all of them are Trumpers.

[Zarathud]

I still think Trump is an anomaly in his power to influence like a cult leader. We are seeing non-extremist people abandon all common sense for him in a way I'm not sure a "normal" politician would be able to invoke.

Trump has a brand he’s built since the 80s to appeal to the crassness in America. He’s a fake but a well marketed to be a poor man’s idea of a rich man.

[Smoove_B]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel like early voting/absentee voting may have broken into wider awareness because of the pandemic, and we're now seeing the natural results of more Americans becoming comfortable with it.

I legitimately don't understand why more people aren't doing it. The idea of getting in my car to drive somewhere that might have a long line or that there could be crazy weather or I could have car problems the actual day of the election? What if I get sick? What if a family member gets sick and I need to help them? So many potential variables to juggle on a single day. It just feels like it's so much easier to color in some dots with a pen and drop it off in a ballot box or (gasp) in the mail.

[Blackhawk]

We keep looking at past years as a predictor for this year.

There are too many quiet voters and too many potential unfaithful voters for polls to be meaningful.
There are too many pollsters on both sides who are cherry picking data for polls to be meaningful.
Politics and society in 2024 aren't the same as in 2022, 2020, or even 2016. Not after a full Trump Presidency, COVID, BLM, Jan 6th, a plethora of trials, Roe, and multiple batshit insane campaigns.

There are no precedents from previous elections that remain valid.

Net result? We have no idea what is going to happen in two weeks. It could be close, it could be a landslide in either direction. Right now, it's like trying to predict the weather with a rock on a string.

[Skinypupy]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel like early voting/absentee voting may have broken into wider awareness because of the pandemic, and we're now seeing the natural results of more Americans becoming comfortable with it.

I legitimately don't understand why more people aren't doing it. The idea of getting in my car to drive somewhere that might have a long line or that there could be crazy weather or I could have car problems the actual day of the election? What if I get sick? What if a family member gets sick and I need to help them? So many potential variables to juggle on a single day. It just feels like it's so much easier to color in some dots with a pen and drop it off in a ballot box or (gasp) in the mail.

I love mail in voting. Took me 5 minutes to mark every Dem on the ballot and drop it off in a ballot box. Easy peasy.

I've never understood the conservative view that voting needs to be difficult or require a sacrifice in order to be valid. Had a co-worker tell me he thinks everyone should be forced to stand in line on Election Day so they can "prove" their commitment to voting. That's just stupid. We should make it as easy as possible so everyone - every liberal, every MAGA, everyone - is able to cast their vote.

[Blackhawk]

It's easy to understand.

The more difficult it is to vote, the fewer the people that vote. And fewer people voting usually works in favor of the Republicans.

So much better if you can target the difficulty more toward demographics that are more likely to vote Democrat.

[YellowKing]

It also plays into the conservative mindset that if something came to you easily, then you didn't earn it and don't deserve it. The irony being most of them grew up in a society of privilege that enabled them to coast to success, yet they are under the illusion they clawed their way up tooth and nail.