I’m a lifelong independent centrist who leans clearly Republican in voting despite my nature. I actually mostly read Dem or Dem leaning sources for the majority of my political reading (though it isn’t super skewed and I do make sure to seek out both sides). I would definitely vote for a Democrat that seemed like a good candidate with good policies (and have at the state level). I believe it is my duty as an American citizen to know a lot more about politics than I would prefer. (I kind of hate politics.) I really wished there was a valid third option in 2016, but unfortunately I couldn’t even find a third party candidate that seemed better than Trump even then. Hilary was a truly abysmal candidate. That isn’t actually enough to get me to vote for someone, and I would rather do a protest vote than vote for someone that would be a bad choice. In the end, I only decided to vote for Trump two weeks before the election instead of a protest vote. Due to preexisting animus, I probably would have ignored Trump’s actual words and deeds on the 2016 campaign trail if the media hadn’t constantly lied about them, but the things he said were both much truer than claimed, and actually made a lot of sense. The media has never stopped lying about Trump since then, but they just shredded their credibility with me and many others. I don’t recall the sources, but unless I am remembering incorrectly (which is always a possibility), this lying campaign against Trump was directly suggested through op-eds in major newspapers, and then implemented. You can probably make good points against Trump, but no one seems to actually complain about things that are both true and actually bad? (I am very pedantic about truth, and find that I’m not interested in listening to people who twist things and then pretend they are true.) I deeply want to change and improve things, and chafe at the idea of being restricted to some old formula for life but I’ve been forced to realize that conservatism is necessary. I am very much a centrist in terms of ideology, but in the current state of America, that means being very open to conservative ways and values. Understanding why what you are changing is the way it is, and being careful with the changes are both very necessary; since most things are actually pretty well tuned, incautious changes usually make things much worse. The extremely obvious reason why people support Trump is because he was a good and effective president (in comparison to other presidents, which is a low bar, I know). President is a very difficult job where people mostly screw up, and much of it is ceremonial, but Trump had a large number of successes compared to what I expected going in. The state of the country was clearly improved by his actions, and would be again. The country and world situation got much worse under his successor, Joe Biden (in a way that also mirrored the failures of Trump’s predecessor). I’ve had a strong personal distaste for Trump for decades, but he was either the best president in my lifetime or very near. I’m loyal to the America, so I’ve been forced to upgrade my opinion of him dramatically. I still wouldn’t like to hang out with him, and wouldn’t encourage others to do so, but that isn’t the point of selecting a president. It’s for the good of the country. He’s actually a centrist; there is a reason he was comfortable as a democrat before, and as a Republican now. None of his personal positions are extreme, and though he’s willing to work with people more extreme than him, and it tends to be to the right, the only reason he worked primarily with Republicans is because the Democrats were busy trying to score political points instead of advancing their policies. Since Trump actually wants things, people can work with him if they choose to, and they don’t have to do anything extreme to do so. His opponents are pretty unimpressive at best. Kamala Harris was a terrible state politician (I’m Californian and saw what she did in my state); either corrupt as hell or incompetent as hell (likely both), though I don’t have particular evidence at hand of it. She was a completely ineffectual VP. Her VP choice is deeply unimpressive. She obviously helped cover up Biden’s decline into clearly being an unfit president. Her ideas are either stolen from Trump’s campaign or incredibly harmful. Almost no one actually expects her to be a good president? Just a few months ago even the Democrats thought she was completely incompetent, and she was only selected for contingent reasons that had nothing to do with her quality as a candidate. Additionally, the Democrats have gone too far, and the Republicans need to be given another turn. As an independent, I wouldn’t want a particular party to grow too powerful, and the democrats are in a much stronger overall position in terms of controlling the country outside of politics. If Trump wins, the Democrats will still be in a strong position and have a lot of control over the next four years, while the Democrats might get away with going completely overboard like they have been trying to. Some short points: He’s not the most accurate speaker, and really doesn’t care to be (which rubs me the wrong way), but he means what he says, and actually tries to follow through. I actually think he lies less than the standard politician, which is, I admit, mostly an inditement of his fellow politicians. He’s the only president I know of to reduce regulation. He appointed very capable judges whose legal reasoning seems pretty good (even when I disagree with them). He was willing to work with the opposition, but had genuine goals for the good of the country rather than just being political. I know what I’m getting with him at this point (Trump is who he is). Trump will be term limited, so the next election would be an even fight between the Dems and Reps. If you want to respond to my post, I’m open to pushback, though I don’t know how much I would say since I am a long term lurker who rarely comments (mostly in bursts). I would prefer responding to things much shorter than my post here I admit. I’m not happy with how long this is, but I tend to be long winded on each point in a discussion and have to consciously dial it back. Since each part of my reply would likely be long, it would be difficult to respond to something this length personally. I would prefer to talk in general, rather get bogged down in details that are not actually important to how people actually view the situation. That said, important details are obviously important to talk about.
Wow, this is the most interesting reply I’ve gotten yet, because of just how much I agree with! I’m also a centrist. I also don’t want one party to gain too much power. And “since most things are actually pretty well tuned, incautious changes usually make things much worse” is such an articulate way of expressing exactly what one of my biggest political concerns is. I may steal that line! Ok, so to respond, it seems like the main points are: Media lies Don’t want drastic changes Trump had a successful presidency Other candidates are unimpressive Don’t want one party to have too much power
Media lies: I get this one. There’s something about seeing someone make false claims or bad arguments that pushes me to the other side. Interestingly for me, it cut the other way. I didn’t see much reporting about Trump in 2016 as much as I just heard him say things that were just blatantly false. Even getting past his continual bragging, he set a record for “pants on fire” statements. I wonder if I would have felt differently if I was mostly hearing media lies instead of Trump himself talking.
Don’t want drastic changes: Yes! 100%. I look at human history and see so much suffering, and we get to enjoy a peaceful life where I walk past strangers every day with no fear. And we have a political system where bribery is not the norm, people choose their leaders and laws, and leaders are supposed to serve rather than be served. I definitely believe in making things better, but just screwing with stuff without understanding it seems dangerous. Interestingly, this is actually one of my strongest reasons I don’t support Trump. Trump objectively has less knowledge of the inner workings of the political system than any other main-party candidate in my lifetime. And he also is pushing for change as strongly as the most progressive candidates out there. He wants to “drain the swamp”. He also set a record for administrative turnover. He has pushed for government shutdowns multiple times. To me, he totally seems like he’s coming in with a sledge-hammer. Most importantly to me, during his 2020 campaign, he repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. This is a gimme question that should be the center bingo tile for any candidate, but for him it wasn’t. Somehow a simple “yes, I’ll step down peacefully if that’s how the votes come in” was something he couldn’t say. This was a huge red flag for me, and when he then lied about the election, it confirmed my fears—that Trump wasn’t prepared to let go of power. That seems incredibly dangerous to me, and honestly, with no malice toward Trump himself, I think the best thing for our country would be if him and his family were thrown in prison as a result. Now, secretly, they could get carted off to a life of luxury in the bahamas or something, I don’t have any reason to want them to suffer at all, but I really need anyone considering a coup to believe there will be dire consequences for them.
Trump had a successful presidency: This one is really interesting. I had the exact opposite impression. There was tax reform passed, that’s a win. Other than that though, he failed to deliver on his promise of a wall or repealing obamacare (sure, because he had opposition, but it at least means he wasn’t successful crossing the aisle, if that’s a thing anyone can do nowadays). He had record administrative turnover and a brief trade war with China. And then, the big one, under his presidency, America hit number 1 in worldwide covid deaths, despite not being number 1 in population. Now, maybe none of this is his fault, but I certainly wouldn’t call it “success”. I’m curious if we have different sources of information, different ideas about what constitutes success, or just different emotional associations coming into his presidency that led us to opposite conclusions.
Other candidates are unimpressive: Yeah. I feel this one. I wish we had better. It feels like we keep getting stuck with picking the least worst candidate instead of the best. I guess I just have different values or views than a lot of people if those are the candidates that become popular enough to run. That said, I’ve been impressed by Kamala’s rhetoric this campaign. She talks about being a candidate for all Americans. She talks about wanting unity and conversation. She has committed to a peaceful transfer of power, and talks about respecting the will of the people. Is it all just talk? Maybe, but talk matters. How has my life really changed since 2016? Mainly, I feel I’ve become disconnected from a lot of people, and people write eachother off more now and find less common ground. It feels like so many conversations are shiboleths for “are you with us or with them?”. That is the real impact Trump has had on my life, and it has primarily been from how he talks. He constantly uses “us vs them” framing in his speech, he broke all sorts of ettiquette norms for talking to and about other candidates. He is almost always airing a grievance or bragging about himself and his people. I feel that’s the thing that has actually impacted my day to day life, and I prefer a candidate who at least espouses positive values. And hey, maybe it’s not all talk! I’m willing to give her or anyone else willing to say they want to work with the other side in this political climate a chance.
Don’t want one party to have too much power: Completely agree. My voting strategy used to be to split my vote. I liked Obama as a candidate and voted for him twice, so I went into 2016 fully intending to vote Republican. And I would have happily voted for Jeb Bush, or Kasich. But, the Republican party put Trump up instead and started the transformation into what we see today. I think this was a mistake. I’m actually afraid that the left will get too much power because I think the Republican party has abandoned truth and goodness and will eventually collapse because a core of “us vs them” anger isn’t sustainable. I wish we had the old Republican party. I would happily vote for Bush, McCain, or Romney. But we now have an anti-vax, anti-fact checking, anti-higher education, anti-free press party that won’t admit when it lost an election, and as much as I fear how this is going to slingshot back too far left, I’m busy avoiding the current dumpster fire. I’m curious: what do you think about the current GOP vs the GOP 20 years ago?
In conclusion, I think we have a lot of the same beliefs/values, and it’s super interesting to me that we ended up on opposite sides of the “trump divider”. If you have any hypotheses on how that happened, definitely share them!
That got very long. (Over 19,100 characters.). Feel free to ignore parts of it. TL;DR: Trump has a lot of faults but I should reiterate that I really do think Trump was a good president by my standards and I think there is a very high chance the he would be again, though it is far from certain. My reason really is just that I think he was a dramatically better president than I expected he would be when I begrudgingly vote for him.
Sometimes I have to correct for my tendencies to go the opposite way as people are trying to push me, but overall it seems like a useful way to be if I want to come up with what my actual personal beliefs are. Does Trump say things that are blatantly untrue sometimes? Yeah, and I really wish there were candidates I could select that just didn’t do that. I actually hate lying and liars so much. Give me an honest person that goes against what I want and believe and I will at least grudgingly respect it (if I can determine that is true, of course.) I don’t think we’ve had an honest candidate since George W Bush (and maybe not even then since I wasn’t paying attention during his initial election), though in some cases I have only determined that I believe they were dishonest after the election.
My personal definition of lying might be relevant to the discussion. ‘Lying is attempting to trick people into believing things that are either known to be false to the speaker or to which there is no genuine effort to correspond to reality.’
It is the first part being missing that makes me think he isn’t as much a liar as many other politicians. Trump isn’t trying to trick people in general, while his opponents are, so I consider his opponents to be lying and him to simply be a poor source of truth. That said, I do despise his lack of care, and sometimes consider it egregious (he definitely has often fallen under the ‘there is no genuine effort to correspond to reality’ part, which I would count as ‘negligent lying’ if he is trying to trick people. This is obviously very bad even when it isn’t lying.).
I do believe he is dishonest, and wish that weren’t the case. I think that the reason the word ‘trick’ for lying is important is that I wouldn’t consider something like a fictional story or a song or whatever to be lying in and of itself even though it is obviously false. He believes what he says, it just often isn’t true because he didn’t bother to check.
I believe that one of the reasons people claim Trump is more dishonest is that he uses fewer qualifiers that make things arguable, while something similar to what he said is often enough actually true, but other politicians are more legalistic liars, carefully not actually saying anything that can be easily checked. In other words, Trump says more things that are false while his opponents say things that are (intentionally) far more misleading and pernicious. This is probably where people came up with the ‘seriously but not literally’ claim about how you should interpret Trump. (Though don’t count on me to know what is going on inside other people’s minds. Mind reading is rude and we aren’t good at it. Yes, this makes it harder to know when other people are lying.) Obviously saying false things is not a good qualification for president, but I have to grade on a curve to an extent.
“I look at human history and see so much suffering, and we get to enjoy a peaceful life where I walk past strangers every day with no fear.” is a good way of describing what society is for, though I would go further. We want the correct response to seeing said stranger to be ‘Yay! Another person!’ rather than ‘How do I protect myself?’ or even ‘ugh! How annoying.‘. Obviously we aren’t at ‘Yay!’ in general, but it is a nice goal, and we are so much closer than societies used to be to it. Early on, society focused more on just reducing the danger level, and now we are at a point when we can carefully try to improve beyond just safety. Some people, mostly Democrats but an increasing portion of dissatisfied Republicans (who are often Trump supporters) don’t seem to realize that it needs to be careful. Trump is not the most careful person in his personal life, but he isn’t trying to upend things politically due to his personal moderation on many political topics.
Lack of fear in general might be part of why people focus so much hostility on politics, which is one of the few places left where there are very large genuine conflicts that aren’t personal (to the average citizen). Politics is actually sort of a safe outlet for many people, which has many unfortunate effects, but at least means they feel like it is okay to do so and it won’t lead to them being harmed. In many times and places, having a discussion like this about a controversial political figure who was once the leader, and may be again, would be a very bad idea, but for most of us it is very safe.
His signature desires like immigration reduction seem largely aimed at patching the safeness of our society, though I would actually like to see immigration increased, just more carefully chosen for the good of people already present in our society.
His fandom of tariffs seems the same way. I don’t like them. but I get why they seem like a good idea to some people and find them less harmful than many other attempted patches.
If you look at the actual changes Trump has made, they have been very limited. Small reductions in immigration, small reductions in regulatory burden, a reduction in new wars, small increases in economic efficiency, small reductions in tax burden, and a new segment of society feeling heard, lowering the likelihood of going outside the system.
His judge appointments have made flashy changes, but these decisions mostly just revert things to letting the states decide and moving closer to following the actual laws and constitution of the country. Luckily, those aren’t actually big changes, and the fact that people think they are is just one of the signs that our society is currently functional.
Also, you seem to be coming at this from an angle of ‘How big are the changes to government?’ whereas I am thinking more ‘How big are the changes to society?’ The former is larger under Trump, and the latter is smaller.
He seems to see large portions of the government as intractably opposed to their duty in serving the country, and unfortunately I agree with that, so I am more okay with large changes involving the government if I think they are narrowly tailored against those elements and won’t have much spillover into society. (I do wish they were more carefully targeted.) If you want the internal workings of the government to stay as they are, I do agree that Trump is not the right selection for that.
That said, it seems pretty clear to me that Trump doesn’t actually want to reduce government as much as your average Republican, (or increase it to the same extent as your average Democrat,) which sort of paints him as moderate? Drain the swamp was ostensibly about removing corruption, and I actually believe that was the real meaning (though corruption claims are often used to consolidate power around the one claiming it in other countries, so we should be careful about that).
Also, to mention the judges again, I think the judges Trump has appointed are more than willing to rule against him on anything that is hard to support based on the way the system is supposed to work. Trump has not created a cadre of loyal flunkies that will just go along with his big changes. A large number of people think he will try harder on that this time, but he does only have one term if he wins and I’m not convinced that he will try to do so.
I can’t agree that Trump wanting the votes to be correctly counted (which is clearly how he conceives of it) should lead to him being jailed. I don’t think he actually did anything genuinely illegal (though a number of people are trying to claim he did). I think he did just let go of power, after going through all the genuinely legal approaches he had available. That doesn’t stop him from constantly complaining about it of course, but I believe that even obsessive interest in the issue isn’t criminal.
On January 6th, there was no attempted coup (just a riot which is bad, but not the same kind of thing), congress was not in real danger, and Trump did not support it. (I responded a bit more in depth to another comment about that issue as well.) It is highly unlikely anyone will be persuaded about those matters of course since everyone has heard a lot about it.
Trump’s successes (Keep in mind that I expect presidents to largely fail): Lower taxes (letting people spend their money on what they want, not what the government wants) Improved economy/improved buying power A measured approach to foreign policy that keeps in mind our actual goals A foreign policy that allows other countries to take responsibility for themselves No new wars for us and reduction in old ones Few new wars in the world A lessening of border issues (aside from the grandstanding by both sides) Minor increases in freedom (from reduced regulatory burdens) Minor counterfactual increases in freedom (from not increasing regulatory burdens like his opponents want) A reduction in the rate of large changes in the law (though this was not always his preferred outcome) Returning some authority to the states or people by legislative means Returning some authority to the states or people by judicial decisions involving his appointed judges
Not repealing Obamacare is a failure on one of his campaign goals. It was by the singular vote of a guy with a personal animosity toward Trump, and who had a brain tumor that killed him, and thus had nothing to lose. I personally believe that McCain’s act was malfeasance since he actually campaigned himself on eliminating it (unless I am conflating him with other Republicans), but McCain saw himself as a defender of the old order, a not uncommon thing among conservatives. Trump did eliminate the mandate to buy insurance (which is the truly offensive part to me).
Not getting political buy in for the wall is also a failure of one of Trump’s campaign goals, but he did notably improve border security during his presidency. (Which promptly got worse again after Biden won. The wall would have been helpful.)
I admit that I don’t think of Covid as being a significant determiner in how I should think of Trump’s presidency (nor Biden’s). I honestly stopped paying attention to it a long time ago and never was super worried about it. (Perhaps this is partially due to personal experience: When I got Covid it sucked, but not any more than many other illnesses I have gotten in my life. It was perhaps slightly above average discomfort, but far less than things like the flu were when I was younger. I actually got the flu early in 2020 too and that was much worse. The rest of the family seemed to think the flu was worse too.)
As I recall, death rates from Covid are highly dependent on things like age, demographics, and preexisting health issues which Trump could hardly have been expected to change on his own. The presidency is powerful, but not that powerful, and the US death rate would be expected due to preexisting conditions. The things he did like closing the border were reasonable, though a little too late to actually be helpful.
His ‘operation warp speed’ did genuinely help the world to get vaccines very quickly compared to normal by paring back regulatory burdens, though it should have gone further. (Things like human challenge trials to immediately know whether the vaccines worked when developed could have cut several more months off the time, since the actual development only took a small number of weeks and safety testing could have been rolled into initial deployments as the factories started producing them.). We could have had vaccines before there were many deaths at all.
Death rates were overreported while I was paying attention (the famous, ‘with covid or because of covid’ thing is a big difference in the reported death rates between not just countries, but even states and counties in the US).
Also, I don’t believe statistics from places like China (who were clearly faking) or India (who are pretty third world in a lot of places, according to Wikipedia, the 125th to 136th in GDP per capita, which leads me to thinking they barely have real statistics in the country, though that could just be my prejudice). Those are the only countries with more population than the US. Also, the other countries with large numbers of people are generally pretty young (and thus not susceptible to such death rates) even if I did believe them. If I am not wrong, you have to get down to Japan which is vastly less populous than the US to find the next country with enough of an elderly population.
I honestly think that most of the damage from Covid was overreaction (like shutting down ‘nonessential’ businesses and screwing up supply lines in a way that lasted for years). Covid just isn’t a super deadly disease, and we changed the way society worked for years to a massive degree because of it. I believe that hurting the economy both directly and indirectly increases death rate substantially, just not in ways we know how to count.
Covid overreaches were mostly state level, though the CDC behaved like clowns. Trump was clearly not an expert on infectious diseases, and didn’t pretend to be. Unfortunately, the experts were themselves to blame for much that went wrong. (Unfortunately, the elderly often die from other Coronaviruses too, and when I heard what the general death rate from Coronaviruses in the elderly was, it was kind of shocking, though I don’t really remember what it was now. Coronaviruses that you haven’t encountered before don’t get antibodies quickly enough in the very old, and covid was genuinely novel to immune systems.)
A bias I probably should have thought to mention in my initial take on his presidency is that my life and the life of most people directly around me got better during Trump’s presidency, while during Obama’s and Biden’s they got clearly worse. In late 2019 and 2020 (despite Covid stuff) my life was so dramatically better than it had been before. Note: I don’t think this had anything to do with Trump but subconsciously I obviously would think ‘how do the years when he was president compare to other years?’ And I actually think that is a good idea since people can hardly know the actual effects of the changes over the period. This is likely a strong effect.
I always disliked Hillary, but I think Kamala Harris is much worse for some reason it is hard to determine. Honestly, I wouldn’t trust a anything Harris would say after her stint as Attorney general of California and I thought she was dramatically worse and more corrupt as a candidate for Senator than the other Democrat (who I did vote for because I found that despite not agreeing on policy, she seemed like a decent person and fairly moderate Democrat). I honestly don’t remember the original cause of said antipathy against Kamala, but I trust it for some reason. Obviously that isn’t convincing for other people (and rightfully so). Most California attorney generals and senators are people I disapprove of policy wise, but I think about them vastly less negatively.
She’s not my least favorite Californian politician (“Hi, Newsome.”) but she is probably second or third. I can’t actually bring to mind much of what she did representing California. (I do tend to especially dislike San Francisco Democrats. In my part of California, which is purple, the Democrats are nothing like San Francisco ones, at least when they are campaigning, though statewide tends more towards San Francisco style.)
As for Walz, he seems to be an extreme liar, (though I can’t necessarily trust that judgment since I haven’t researched him much,) though that is sadly par for the course these days in candidates. While, he’s pretty par for the course, I still hate it. Also, and this is a very untrustworthy judgment based off very limited information, he seems like a deeply angry and sanctimonious person. I think that one of the other answers mentioning that Democrats are very sanctimonious is part of what I don’t like about high profile national Democrats. I should probably research Walz more, but I doubt I will? Hopefully he doesn’t stay nationally relevant and I don’t have to think about him again? I don’t honestly have an opinion on JD Vance aside from thinking that his wife speaks well so I can’t really compare the two.
I do think I should put more effort into determining whether or not JD Vance is a decent backup president (which is one of his main jobs and the only one where he isn’t mostly a figurehead), but I honestly tend to put off a lot of my research on things until late in the cycle, and I already know I won’t vote for Kamala under any reasonably foreseeable circumstances, so I am paying a bit less attention to that. If it were to turn out Vance was bad enough, that would be a good reason not to vote for Trump, but would not be a reason to vote for Kamala.
Remember that I think the Dems are much more powerful on the national scene in almost all parts of society other than politics, and I’ve seen what happens when they get too powerful (in my state). I wouldn’t be shocked if the Dems managed to nearly maintain their current level of power even if they are soundly defeated at the national political level. In part, that is a bit of why the Republicans need to win, because the Dems will crush them if they don’t. (That could be biased by the fact that I am Californian, which means I watch the Dems routinely crush the Republicans. Perhaps I am overestimating the strength of the Dems and underestimating their foes.) That the Dems are stronger than ever is both an indictment against Trump, and a reason the Republicans need to win; the Dems will crush them if the Republicans lose many more times and we might be in for 20 years of pure Dem victories.
Honestly, I prefer the old Republicans too. By a lot. They were much more my style. I miss that era of the GOP.
I get why it changed though. Twenty years ago (also 40), the Republicans were genuinely trying to improve the world in a usually conservative way (which I am very much up for in many cases), but a decade ago, Republicans were using a ‘death with dignity’ strategy rather than fighting like Trump does, and people got tired of electing Republicans who were too concerned with their dignity to act, ceding cultural victory to the Democrats.
Losing slowly is not a popular strategy with voters most of the time. Trump basically did a hostile takeover of the Republican party, and did improve its chances of succeeding at Republican goals, though it also tossed some Republican goals aside and increased the chance that the Democrats would win enduring major victories quickly. I do think that the changes to the party aren’t necessarily permanent whether or not the Republicans win, but that would be because it could always change again.
If Trump wins, I think that could lead to a lot of reforms in the Republican party that would marry parts of their old style with a willingness to fight, but that probably doesn’t happen if Trump loses and his faction of the party gets repudiated.
That isn’t entirely bad, I don’t like a lot of the ideological changes and want a careful approach, but I am more worried about the power of the other team (and some of the ideological changes are good). Once your opponents know you won’t fight, you are doomed. Even worse would be if his faction gets more extreme after losing and it is the rest of the Republicans that get booted.
Also, I very strongly think that every country should be led by leaders that want to make the country great. ‘Make Liechtenstein Great’ should be the slogan of the leaders of Liechtenstein. Whatever that means to the people of Liechtenstein. This holds even for countries like China that I think very poorly of.
I don’t think people believe that asking the legal system to rule on whether the laws were properly followed is somehow disqualifying, so unless I am mistaken about what they are claiming, it didn’t happen in any meaningful way.
The media has intentionally misrepresented this. He believed there was cheating from the other side, and said so. He used the normal methods to complain about that, and the normal lawsuits about it to get the court to rule on the matter. It’s all very normal. When the courts decided to not consider the matter (which was itself improper since they generally did that without considering the actual merits of the cases, generally claiming that it was somehow moot because the election was already over) he did nothing and just let his opponent become president (while continuing to vociferously complain).
Both Al Gore and Hilary Clinton made roughly the same level of complaining about the result as Trump. (Since I think both of them are terrible, that is a negative comparison, and I dislike that Trump matched them, but it isn’t disqualifying.) You could actually argue it was his job to make these lawsuits (to see that the federal election was properly executed). Coming up with who the electors would be if the lawsuit changed the results is normal (and not at all new). There was no attempt to go outside the legal system.
In all likelihood there was a nonzero amount of cheating (but we don’t actually know if it was favoring Biden, Republicans can cheat too) but I doubt there was any major conspiracy of it. I expect there is always some cheating by both sides, and we should try to reduce it, though I have no opinion on exactly how much or little there is. There were enough anomalies that investigating it would have made sense, if only to prevent them in the future.
The J6 riots were just normal riots, on a small scale, that Trump didn’t support at all and were nothing approaching a coup at all. Congress was not in any real danger, and there were no plans to take over the government. While I strongly disapprove of riots, this has been dramatically overplayed for purely partisan purposes by people who want to tar him with it. The people who support actual riots for political purposes are his opponents, not him.
I think you are missing something. The lawsuits were fine, though maybe a little silly as most of them were thrown out because of lack of standing. I’m thinking more of the “fake elector plot”, where Trump pressured Mike Pence to certify fake electors on Jan 6 (as Pence said: “choose between [Trump] and the constitution”). I think trying to execute that plan was wrong, because if they would have succeeded then Trump would have stolen the election.
And Trump may not have supported everything the J6 rioters did, but he was the reason that they were there. He said that the election was stolen. He said that it “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”. On Jan 6 he called on them to pressure Mike Pence and other lawmakers to go through with his plan: to steal the election.
I (and many other people) think a person who tried to steal an election shouldn’t be elected.
Obviously I won’t prove anything in this statement, but I just don’t think there is a genuine case to be made that the common interpretation Trump’s foes like to use is valid.
I completely disagree about the idea that Trump supported any sort of coup, and that the riot was anything more than a riot.
I agree that the statement linked from Trump sounds bad, but the interpretation seems like a misreading of Trump to me. It sounds like vociferously complaining that we don’t know the outcome of the election due to fraud in his trademark sloppy style, and that he believes he would win if counted fairly. (Could it mean what you think it means? Perhaps, but that isn’t the most likely reading to me.) Redoing elections that aren’t held would be required despite that not being in the constitution (because the electors must be selected), and you could make the argument that one where the result cannot be known would be the same. I assume (obviously mindreading is often faulty) that is what Trump would have been talking about if he was more of an analytical speaker rather than an emotive one.
Article II, Section 1, Clause 2:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
That is what the relevant part in the constitution for selecting electors (aside from a later clause about Congress setting the time of selection), so as far as selecting electors go, the state legislatures are in charge of that and asking them to intervene doesn’t seem like going out of bounds. Depending on the actual laws and constitution of the state, there may not be anything the legislature is allowed to do either, but it doesn’t seem like something the is obviously out of bounds. (I do not want this sort of behavior of course, the current election system does its best to ignore that the state legislature is in charge of who the electors are for a reason.) States are even free to directly control who the electors vote for (so called ‘faithless elector’ laws have been ruled constitutional by the supreme court). And as said before, this is hardly the first time after an election that someone has tried to determine who the electors would be and try to have the slate prepared in case it was overturned.
Also the term ‘fake electors’ is obviously crap, the correct term is what the Trump side called them ‘contingent electors’, as in, contingent on the results being ruled to have really been the way he believed they were. Historically, the courts require such things to be done on time, and then they sort it out later if it comes up.
I don’t find Mike Pence credible, nor do I find what is often referred to as ‘lawfare’ indictments to be of any significant probative value. To be straightforward, I think Pence is just lying in an attempt to not be associated with Trump. Pence thinks of himself as a respectable person, and Trump is not the kind of person Pence thinks is seen as respectable. He was also directly trying his hand at running for president at the time (and politicians like to denigrate their opponents while casting themselves as heroic). Of course, Pence could even believe what he is saying exactly and that wouldn’t make his interpretation correct (we can certainly convince ourselves that what we want to say is true, and I am sure some would say the same of me).
Every time I have looked into a specific claim relating to this, it hasn’t turned out to be anything truly abnormal or there has been no credible (to me) confirmation. (Assuming that Pence is not credible.) I have not looked into all the claims, and honestly I am highly unlikely to do so at this point.
Redoing elections that aren’t held would be required despite that not being in the constitution (because the electors must be selected), and you could make the argument that one where the result cannot be known would be the same. I assume (obviously mindreading is often faulty) that is what Trump would have been talking about if he was more of an analytical speaker rather than an emotive one.
Yes, redoing the election would probably be a good thing to do, if there was evidence of widespread fraud. But Trump doesn’t see that as the only option. The full “Truth” was:
So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!
So he says we should either “have a NEW ELECTION” or “throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER [Trump]”. He tried to do the second option: tried to get states to change the result, and when that didn’t work he tried to get Pence + Congress to change the result. He doesn’t care about laws or rules or the constitution. He just believes there’s fraud, so he should be chosen as the winner.
I completely disagree about the idea that Trump supported any sort of coup, and that the riot was anything more than a riot.
What do you think Trump’s goal was on Jan 6? Take for example part of Trump’s speech:
Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.
Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
Which electors were Trump referring to here? He is not saying they should do the process as normal, because then there would be no point of protesting. He is saying they should either throw some electors out or include some “contingent electors”, so that they have a “contingent election”, so that the house (voting by state) would declare Trump as the winner. And if they did that, then Trump would have succeeded in stealing the election.
And you’re completely correct that each state legislature has total control of their electors. And only electors from state legislatures should be counted. In the past, there have been situations where state legislatures sent multiple “alternative electors”, because of weird circumstances. But the reason Trump’s “contingent electors” are called “fake electors” is that they were not sent by a state legislature. They were by Trump associates and random Republicans. This is wrong, and in some states even illegal. Multiple people have already pleaded guilty to crimes related to this.
I skimmed the transcript at the link you provided, and it seems like a standard political speech (in Trump’s style).
Obviously Trump thought that there was easily enough proof to know that he won, or at least clearly enough prove election invalid if more was required. He would expect to genuinely win any real redo of the election. And the whole scheme was to send it back to the states, who have the authority to choose the electors. His claim is that the states wanted that (which I don’t know any evidence of, but this scheme only does anything if the states actually do want to).
The quote you provided literally sounds like normal political posturing about how important the people on your side are, and a claim that they should take political actions. This seems like a thing to say in regards to protests, rallies, or even just doing things like voicing support for him. I’ve heard countless politicians say this sort of thing before? It seems pretty anodyne?
Saying that they should cheer for the legislature but not all of the legislature will be getting many cheers seems like an obvious joke with no deeper meaning than disapproval of some members. It’s obvious what behaviors will get cheers and which won’t, but it isn’t threatening.
All talk of fighting involved metaphorical fighting by duly elected representatives (and replacing them through primary elections if they didn’t) and the people cheering them on. This is normal politics. And as far as it goes, he is literally saying that they should demand the law be followed as the point of this.
You say “send it back to the states” but what would that mean? Every state held their own election. No state found any proof of fraud (at least not enough to impact the outcome). So they all verified the results. Then they sent their electors to Washington. For Trump to then say “the states should decide” doesn’t make much sense, because they already did decide. They decided he lost. Now maybe he meant that every state should have a reelection, but that would go against a bunch of (federal and state) laws, rules and the constitution, so that would be bad. The states control their election, not Trump. It’s bad to change the process just because Trump doesn’t like that he lost.
But luckily, I don’t think Trump meant to have a reelection. I think he meant to follow the established procedure in the constitution for contingent elections. That’s what you’re supposed to do, if it’s confusing who won the election. And if Trump would want to follow laws, rules and the constitution, he would want Pence + Congress + House to do that. What basically happens then is that each state gets one vote to decide the president. So in a way, that would “send it back to the states”. Each state’s vote would be decided by the people in the House of Representatives, and if everyone voted according to their party affiliation then Trump would have won. Good for Trump!
But would it have been good for us, the people? Well, the problem is that the election wasn’t really a contingent election. Every state verified the results, every state sent their electors. To actually use the procedure, then one would have to follow the plan in the Eastmann memos. It says that Pence, while counting the elector votes, should pretend to be confused. He should act as if he has no idea which are the correct electors. And then it would be a contingent election. But Pence didn’t want to do that, so Trump didn’t win.
That’s what the plan to steal the election was, and that’s how Pence stopped it, and that’s why Trump and MAGA people dislike Pence now.
I did have to research a few things for this, but they don’t seem to change matters at first glance. The situation is murky, but it was always murky and both sides clearly are certain they are right.
I personally don’t know whether or not it was a fair election with a fair result and unimportant anomalies, or if the anomalies really were cheating. They certainly looked suspicious enough in some cases that they should have been investigated. I think that many of the actions by the Democrats were done in the way they were because they didn’t know whether or not there was rampant cheating causing these anomalies and didn’t want to know, and that Republicans were far too sure about what they think happened based off weird and unclear evidence.
You could argue for the contingent elections thing being relevant (and it is a scenario in the memos you mentioned), but it is far from settled when that would trigger in a sequence of events. It would not, in fact, be a change of procedure if it did. (As your link notes, it is in the constitution.) Uncommon parts of a procedure are still parts of it (though all the examples are so far back it would be quite strange to see it used, I agree on that).
Several recent presidential candidates have used legal tactics to dispute how elections are done and counted. There are already multiple this year (mostly about who is and is not on the ballot so far.) There is nothing inherently wrong with that since that is literally how the laws and constitutional matters are intended to be handled when there is a dispute with them.
I’m obviously not a constitutional scholar, but I think the contingent election stuff wouldn’t really have come up at that point, since it reads more like something you do based on the electors choosing in a way that doesn’t lead to a majority, not over the process of electors selection being disputed.
You could easily argue that the disputed electors might not count if that simply means electors were not fully selected, and you need a majority of the number of electors that should be, but I would assume otherwise. (In part because there appears to be no wiggle room on the Constitution saying that the states will select electors. It isn’t “up to the number specified”, but the specific number specified.)
I believe that if there is doubt as to who the states selected for the electors, you would simply have the legislatures of the states themselves to confirm who are the correct electors by their own rules (and that their decisions are controlling on the matter), and I believe this is what Trump would have intended (but I don’t like mindreading and don’t think it should be relied on when unnecessary).
It appears that you believe the states already selected their electors fully, and so do I, so this plan wouldn’t work if I am right about how to interpret how this works, but Trump obviously claimed/claims otherwise, and there is no indication of duplicity in that particular belief.
Everyone agrees that Pence did not think Trump’s interpretation of the matter is correct, but Pence’s own personal beliefs as to whether or not the electors were correctly selected does not, in fact, make people who believe otherwise some sort of enemy of the republic. Trump wasn’t asking Pence to fake anything in any reasonable source I’ve seen, but to ‘correctly’ (in Trump’s mind) indicate that the electors were not chosen because it was done in an invalid way. Pence interpreted this request negatively seemingly because he didn’t agree on the factual matters of elector selection and what his interpretation of the meaning of the constitution is, not because anything Trump wanted was a strike against how things are meant to be done.
I didn’t really remember the Eastman memos, but when I looked up the Eastman memos, reporting seems clear that Trump and company really were pushing to convince Pence to send it back to the states for confirmation of selection which is not an attempt at either a contingent election or just selecting Trump, and is not out of bounds. That those other scenarios existed as possibilities in a memo but were not selected obviously in no way implicates Trump in any wrongdoing.
I read the two page memo and it seems strange. To me it reads like a few scenarios rather than finished decision making process or recommendation. I am sympathetic to the argument that it makes about how the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional (and I think the change made afterward to it also seems at first blush clearly unconstitutional). If it is unconstitutional, then Pence ‘must not’ follow it where it conflicts with the constitution (so advising that it be ignored is not necessarily suspect). I also had a hard time interpreting said act, which seems poorly written. The memo itself does rub me the wrong way though.
The six page memo seems pretty normal to me (from reading how judges write their decisions in court cases the style seems similar), and lays out the reasoning better, though I definitely disagree with some of the scenarios as being within the vice president’s authority (which is itself somewhat murky because of ambiguity in the constitution and relevant amendments). The VP has no authority to decide to simply declare that the number of electors are fewer that were really appointed (though this is also not actually clear in the text), but some other scenarios are plausible readings of the laws at first glance depending on the actual facts at hand (which they have a clear opinion on the facts of).
An analysis I read included a lot of fearmongering about letting the states decide if their electors had been properly selected, but that is clearly something they are allowed to determine. (The fact that it is popular vote is a choice of the legislatures, and up to the laws and constitution of the individual states.)
This was not a plan to ‘steal’ an election, but to prevent it from being stolen. Obviously both sides like to claim there was an attempt at stealing it (the right’s motto was literally about preventing stolen elections), that they were just trying to prevent. Both sides are still very angry about it, but that doesn’t actually make Trump disqualified in any way.
They certainly looked suspicious enough in some cases that they should have been investigated.
Yes, I also think it’s important to investigate those things. And the US government agrees, which is why they investigated them. But they didn’t find much, because the election wasn’t stolen.
I think that many of the actions by the Democrats were done in the way they were because they didn’t know whether or not there was rampant cheating causing these anomalies and didn’t want to know, and that Republicans were far too sure about what they think happened based off weird and unclear evidence.
I don’t really agree with this framing, it’s not about Democrats vs Republicans. The ones who were claiming the election was stolen were Trump and his associates, not general Republicans. Mike Pence is a republican, and he didn’t say that the election was stolen. William Barr, the trump appointed republican attorney general, said the FBI and Justice Department investigations found no evidence of large scale voter fraud. It was investigated, but nothing was found, because the election wasn’t stolen. Just because some people lied about voter fraud, like Rudy Giuliani, doesn’t mean it’s okay to overturn the election.
But what did Trump do when the FBI and Justice Department didn’t find any evidence? He asked the DOJ to lie, say that the election was rigged, without evidence. And when they didn’t he threatened to fire them.
I think you’re getting a little lost in the weeds trying to interpret the legal schemes. If he managed to overturn the election in a way that is technically legal, would that be good? And if he attempted to overturn the election in an illegal way, would that be bad? It seems like you value the law, and that’s good to do. But Trump doesn’t value the law, and thinks it would be good if he overturned the election even if was done in an illegal way. He doesn’t care about the law. Does this not worry you?
I’m a centrist (and also agnostic in regards to religion religion) in part because I believe there are a lot of things I/we don’t/can’t know and shouldn’t be overconfident in, ideologically, factually, and interpretationally. I don’t know what Trump actually thinks, and neither do you, but we seem to disagree strongly on it anyway. I don’t want to try to read your mind, but that part is at least very obvious. (I do have some very confident ideological, factual, and interpretational beliefs, but believe they shouldn’t be overly relied upon in these matters.)
I also tend to keep in mind that I can be wrong (I am also keeping that in mind here), which is how I ended up believing Trump was worth voting for in the first place. (As stated originally, I actually had an extreme personal distaste for him for decades that sounds much like how people accusing him of being, but I paid attention and changed my mind later. Obviously, I could have been right originally and be wrong now, that definitely happens.)
To me, you seem overconfident about what happened in the election, and your sources seem highly partisan (not that I know of any sources on this matter that I think aren’t partisan). Neither of which actually mean you are wrong. I do think it is very important that there is genuine doubt, because then you can’t simply assume those on the other side are operating in an objectionable way because they are opposing you. (Of course I would think you overconfident since I am hedging so much of what I am saying here.) I generally find it hard to know how accurate specific political reporting is, but it seems generally very low. Politics bring out the worst in a lot of people, and heightened reactions in most of us (me included, though I try to damp it down).
There is always vote fraud and cheating, but what is the definition of ‘large scale’ such that you know for sure it didn’t happen? States have in fact found cheating in small but significant amounts (as well as large scale rule changes outside the regular order), but what percentage of it would be actually discoverable without extensive investigation, and how much even with? William Barr saying that he had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” hardly means they found everything, and crucially, is very different than saying that it wasn’t large scale by at least one reasonable definition.
Hypothetical: If someone was counted to have won a state that decided the election by 100,000 votes, and Barr could have proven that 40,000 were switched (meaning current count is winning by 20k), what would that mean for your statement? What would that mean for Barr’s? I think that would prove you wrong (about no large scale cheating), but Barr’s statement would still be true (I would still consider it lying though).
Additional hypothetical: Suppose that three states too small to change the election were given to Biden due to cheating, but it could be proven that Trump had won all of them? That would be large scale cheating that changed nothing about the result, and again, Barr’s words would not technically be untrue. Suppose then that there was a fourth small state that would tip it where there was enough cheating to actually change the overall result, but this can’t be proven?
Note that neither of those hypotheticals is meant to be close to accurate, they are meant to show the uncertainty. For clarity, I believe that there is not strong enough evidence to say there was sufficient cheating to change results, and we should default to assuming there wasn’t, but that is only because our elections usually aren’t fixed, and in certain other places and times the opposite should be assumed. I believe that Biden most likely won in an election close enough to fair, just that people coming to the opposite conclusion are usually operating in good faith including the subject of this matter. (I do not assume good faith in general, it just seems that way here.)
I can find places claiming that there is literally nothing, and others claiming to have found dozens of issues that could possibly count as ‘large scale’ cheating depending on the definition (not all involving the Democrats, and many not involving directly changing the votes). Neither side actually seems especially credible to me, but instead obvious partisanship is deciding things.
I probably should have clarified the split as establishment vs populist. I think that I can speak of Democrats without implying that it is an exact midline Republican / Democrat split when referencing something known to be a minority viewpoint, but I really should have been more clear that I was speaking of a portion of the Republicans rather than all of them (I do think it is a very large portion of the Republicans, but more so the base and more populist/Trump camp politicians rather than the established politicians). I was saying that I think the politicians among the Democrats (enough of them to control Dem policy, far from all of them) had specific motives (their being unsure whether or not their local members cheated) for their actions in and reactions to the issue that consisted largely of vehement denial of the possibility regardless of the evidence (and wanting to prosecute people for talking about it or taking legal steps that are required for disputing the election!), and that many Republicans overindex on very questionable evidence to say with equal certainty that it did happen.
People often would like to cover up things when they don’t know exactly what happened but it looks bad (or even if it just might cause a scandal, even if it could be proven to be fine), and I can’t possibly agree with anyone who thinks that Democrats in general didn’t at least consider that when deciding on how they would react to the evidence.
The split between establishment and populist Republicans is very large in recent years, starting noticeably before 2016 and largely leading to Trump’s faction even existing, which then movef the party further toward populist. The establishment and populists do not share the same reaction to the evidence in 2020, among other things, and I should have been more careful.
You assume that the US government didn’t find much, but a number of people would just as confidently state that much of the government just chose not to look, and others that things were in fact found. Many of the investigations would have been state and local governments if they’d happened, and in many of the places the local leaders were Democrats who had every incentive not to look (which is part of why people were suspicious of how things turned out there, and this is true even if the local Democrat leaders were perfectly upright and moral people who would never act badly as long as we don’t know that). Trump and company brought many court cases after the election but before inauguration that were thrown out due to things that had nothing to do with the merits of the evidence (things like standing, or timeliness); there may have been some decided on actual evidence, but I am unaware of them.
Many populists have seen the DOJ and FBI as enemies due to past discrimination against populist causes, and that is generalizing too much, but they also don’t seem very competent when performing duties they don’t care for (which is normal enough). It is hard for many people to know whether or not the FBI and DOJ can be relied on for such things. (See also the recent failures of previously considered competent federal agencies like the Secret Service).
You are interpreting things the way that most benefits your point, but without regard to other reasonable interpretations. The meaning of pretty much everything Trump camp did is debatable, and simply believing one side’s talking points is hardly fair. I genuinely think that both sides believe they were on the side of righteousness and standing up against the dastardly deeds of the other side.
Also, the cnbc article is largely bare assertions, by a known hyper partisan outfit (according to me, which is the only authority I have to go on). Why should I believe them? (Yes, this can make it difficult to know what happened, which was my claim.) The other side has just as many bare assertions in the opposite direction.
Hypothetical where no one thinks they are doing anything even the slightest bit questionable (which I think is reasonably likely): Trump camp viewpoint: This bastard repeatedly refuses to do his job* and protect the election from rampant cheating. I should force him to do his job. (This is a reasonable viewpoint.) People keep telling me to remove them for refusing to do their jobs. I don’t think I should (because this is not the only important thing). How about I ask them more about what’s going on and trying to get through to them?
Other viewpoint: Here I am doing my job, and someone keeps telling me to say <specific thing>. They’re obviously wrong, and I have said so many times*, so they must be telling me to lie. (And their statement that he was asking them to lie would not seem false to them, but in this scenario is completely false.)
*This is the same event.
In fact, the video testimony included with the article itself sounds exactly like my innocent hypotheticals rather than other parts, while the cnbc commentary in the video is obviously making up and extremely overconfident partisan interpretations (which makes their article’s bare assertions even less believable since they really are hyper partisan).
I don’t really care about Giuliani, but the Giuliani article is extremely bad form since the bbc’s summary of his ‘concession’ is not a good summary. It says only that he will not fight specific points in court ‘nolo contendre’, it is not an admission to lying.
You mention that I value Law and Order, which is true. It isn’t actually natural to me, but over the years I have come to believe it is very important to the proper functioning of society, and as bad as some parts of society look, our society actually works quite well overall so we do need to support our current law. This includes parts that aren’t used often, but I have much less confidence in them. The parts Trump wanted to use do seem irregular, but he did seem to be trying to use actual laws (sometimes incorrectly).
To bring up something I think you mentioned earlier, I would be pretty unhappy about an election decided by ‘contingent election’ for instance, but still think it appropriate to use one under the right circumstances (which I don’t think these are even under the Trumpian interpretation of cheating in the elections). I would also be unhappy about an election where the state legislatures changed who the electors are in a meaningful way, even though I believe they clearly have the right to. There would have to be vastly more evidence for me to think that the legislatures should act in such a manner, but I don’t think it is necessarily disqualifying as a candidate for Trump to think they should.
Would it be good if he stole the election legally? Obviously not. Would it be good if he protected the election legally? Obviously yes. Would it be good if he protected the election illegally? Eh, I don’t know? It depends?
Does Trump value law and order? I think he values law (with moderate confidence). Whenever I hear the words of people directly involved, it sounds to me like he told them to do everything in the legal way, and that the process he advocated was something he believed legal. He doesn’t seem interested in breaking laws, but in using them for his purposes. Does he believe in order? I’m not convinced either way. He certainly doesn’t believe in many parts of how things tend to be done (to an extent that it is odd he is the leader of the conservative party), but is his plan for the world following some sort of consistent internal logic worthy of being considered orderly? I don’t know.
Obviously if I had similar interpretations as you do about all of these things I would be much more concerned. I just don’t. Of course, I very much want you to be wrong, so that there is little to worry about.
I don’t know if it is confirmation bias or legitimate, but the more carefully I go through things, the more it seems like Team Trump really was just trying to do what they were supposed to do (and his opponents believe the same of themselves). Even the words of people that are very much against him usually seem to indicate Trump’s genuine belief in everything he said about the election being true.
I don’t know what Trump actually thinks, and neither do you, but we seem to disagree strongly on it anyway. I don’t want to try to read your mind, but that part is at least very obvious.
I don’t care that much about what’s in his mind. I care what he has done, what he has said and what he will do. The precise motivations don’t matter that much to me.
What if Trump said “God showed himself to me and he said the vote was rigged”? As an agnostic who trusts Trump, maybe you would think it was true. But should that matter? No, because godly revelations is not how we run our country. And neither is revelations from Trump. It doesn’t matter if the election was stolen if it can’t be shown to be true through our justice system (courts, FBI, DOJ, etc.). And it couldn’t be shown through the justice system, so unless we want to ignore all laws, rules and the constitution, then Trump just has to take the loss.
Trump and company brought many court cases after the election but before inauguration that were thrown out due to things that had nothing to do with the merits of the evidence (things like standing, or timeliness)
Yes, and they were able to say “Look, we have a bunch of active cases, there’s something fishy here” and then “They are throwing out our cases for no reason, look how rigged the system is”. If they bring a bunch of cases which gets thrown out, then you should trust them less.
I don’t really care about Giuliani, but the Giuliani article is extremely bad form since the bbc’s summary of his ‘concession’ is not a good summary. It says only that he will not fight specific points in court ‘nolo contendre’, it is not an admission to lying.
I don’t care what the BBC said. Giuliani said false statements. For the court he agreed they were false. If he had evidence that they were true, he would not have conceded in court that they were false. That he didn’t have evidence for his claims means that you should trust his allegations of voter fraud less. It should also make you trust Trump’s allegations of voter fraud less, as they were the same allegations.
Also, the cnbc article is largely bare assertions, by a known hyper partisan outfit (according to me, which is the only authority I have to go on). Why should I believe them? (Yes, this can make it difficult to know what happened, which was my claim.) The other side has just as many bare assertions in the opposite direction.
I linked cnbc to support the statement “Trump asked the DOJ to lie, say that the election was rigged, without evidence. And when they didn’t he threatened to fire them.”, and the article contains statements from “Jeffrey Rosen”, “Richard Donoghue” and “Steven Engel” to support that. I don’t care what cnbc said, I care what the DOJ said.
I think [Trump] values law (with moderate confidence).
But not when he believes there’s been fraud right? Remember, he said:
A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution
So he doesn’t care that much about rules, regulations or the constitution. He thinks the government should be allowed to terminate “all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”. This is not consistent with someone who values law. Maybe someone dislikes some laws, but all laws? All regulations? The whole constitution? That’s pretty extreme.
“It doesn’t matter if the election was stolen if it can’t be shown to be true through our justice system”. That is an absurd standard for whether or not someone should ‘try’ to use the legal system (which is what Trump did). You are trying to disqualify someone regardless of the truth of the matter based on what the legal system decided to do later. And Trump DID just take the loss (after exhausting the legal avenues), and is now going through the election system as normal in an attempt to win a new election.
I also find your claim that it somehow doesn’t matter why someone has done something is terrible claim when we are supposed to be deciding based on what will happen in the future, where motives matter a lot.
I read the legal reasons the cases were thrown out and there was literally nothing about merits in them, which means they simply didn’t want to decide. The courts refusing to do things on the merits of the claim is bad for the credibility of the courts.
I told you I don’t care about Giuliani, and that the article is very bad. Those are separate things. Whether or not he is guilty of lying (which was not what the stipulations actually mean), I already didn’t take his word for anything. The BBC on the other hand, has shown that it won’t report in a fair manner on these things and people shouldn’t trust them on it.
You linked to a cnbc article of bare assertions (not quotes) that were not supported by the statements of the witnesses in the video also included! I talked at length about the video and how the meaning of the testimonies appears to contradict the article.
We already discussed your claim about the meaning of Trump’s words. And you once again left out:
“Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
He was saying the election did not actually get held properly and that changes things.
He was saying the election did not actually get held properly and that changes things.
No, it does not. Laws, regulations and the constitution exists in a society in order to coordinate behavior among it’s citizens. Laws, regulations and the constitution does not assume that everyone follows the law. In fact, it does the opposite, it assumes that people will break laws, that people will break regulations and that people will go against the constitution. That’s why there are mechanisms to punish people who go against them. You cannot terminate the constitution just because you think people broke the law.
Edit: Also, if there is some court case you think shouldn’t have been thrown out, then you are free to link it.
Edit2: I don’t understand why this comment got so downvoted
Your interpretation of Trump’s words and actions imply he is in favor of circumventing the system of laws and constitution while another interpretation (that I and many others hold) is that his words and actions mean that he thinks the system was not followed, which should be/have been followed.
Separately a significant fraction of the American populace also believes it really was not properly followed. (I believe this, though not to the extent that I think it changed the outcome.) Many who believe that are Trump supporters of course, but it is not such a strange interpretation that someone must be a Trump supporter to believe the interpretation reasonable.
Many who interpret it this way, including myself, are in fact huge fans of the American Constitution (despite the fact that it does have many flaws), and if we actually believed the same interpretation as you would we condemn him just as much. The people on my side in this believe that he just doesn’t mean that.
The way I would put it at first thought to summarize how I interpret his words: “The election must be, but was not held properly. Our laws and constitution don’t really tell us what to do about a failed election, but the normal order already can’t be followed so we have to try to make things work. We could either try to fix the ways in which it is improper which would get me elected, or we can rehold the election so that everything is done properly.”
I think Trump was saying that in a very emotive and nonanalytical way meant to fire up his base and not as a plan to do anything against the constitution.
I obviously don’t know why you were downvoted (since I didn’t do it) but if you mouse over the symbols on your post, you only got two votes on overall Karma and one on agreement (I’d presume all three were negative). The system doesn’t actually go by ones, but it depends on how much Karma the people voting on you have I think (and how strongly they downvoted)? I would suspect that people that the comment not quite responsive to what they believed my points to be for the overall karma one?
My memory could be (is often) faulty, but I remember thinking the dismissals were highly questionable. Unfortunately, at this point I have forgotten what cases seemed to be adjudicated incorrectly in that manner, so I can’t really say one you should look at. Honestly, I tire of reading about the whole thing so I stopped doing so quite a while ago. (I have of course read your links to the best of my ability when you provide them.)
I don’t usually comment about politics (or much of anything else) here so I don’t really know how what I should write in these comments, but I think this is more about people wanting to know what Trump supporters are thinking than about determining what they are and aren’t right about. If I was trying to prove whether or not my interpretation is correct I supposed I would do this differently.
I don’t usually comment about politics (or much of anything else) here so I don’t really know how what I should write in these comments, but I think this is more about people wanting to know what Trump supporters are thinking than about determining what they are and aren’t right about. If I was trying to prove whether or not my interpretation is correct I supposed I would do this differently.
Sorry for badgering you so much, I’ve appreciated the discussion. Some of the other Trump supporters here seemed to have very weird beliefs and values, but your values don’t seem that far away from mine. I think I got a better understanding of why you think what you do (though of course I disagree on things). Thanks for answering a bunch of questions :)
I get it. I like to poke at things too. I think it did help me figure out a few things about why I think what I do about the subject, I just lose energy for this kind of thing easily. And I have, I honestly wasn’t going to answer more questions. I think understanding in politics is good, even though people rarely chang positions due to the arguments, so I’m glad it was helpful.
I do agree that many Trump supporters have weird beliefs (I think they’re endemic in politics, on all sides, which includes centrists). I don’t like what politics does to people’s thought processes (and often makes enemies of those who would otherwise get along). I’m sure I have some pretty weird beliefs too, they just don’t come up in discussion with other people all the time.
The fact that I am more of a centrist in politics is kind of strange actually since it doesn’t fit my personality in some ways and it doesn’t really feel natural, though I would feel less at home elsewhere. I think I’m not part of a party mostly to lessen (unfortunately not eliminate) the way politics twists my thoughts (I hate the feeling of my thoughts twisting, but it is good I can sometimes tell).
I’m a lifelong independent centrist who leans clearly Republican in voting despite my nature. I actually mostly read Dem or Dem leaning sources for the majority of my political reading (though it isn’t super skewed and I do make sure to seek out both sides). I would definitely vote for a Democrat that seemed like a good candidate with good policies (and have at the state level). I believe it is my duty as an American citizen to know a lot more about politics than I would prefer. (I kind of hate politics.)
I really wished there was a valid third option in 2016, but unfortunately I couldn’t even find a third party candidate that seemed better than Trump even then. Hilary was a truly abysmal candidate. That isn’t actually enough to get me to vote for someone, and I would rather do a protest vote than vote for someone that would be a bad choice. In the end, I only decided to vote for Trump two weeks before the election instead of a protest vote.
Due to preexisting animus, I probably would have ignored Trump’s actual words and deeds on the 2016 campaign trail if the media hadn’t constantly lied about them, but the things he said were both much truer than claimed, and actually made a lot of sense. The media has never stopped lying about Trump since then, but they just shredded their credibility with me and many others. I don’t recall the sources, but unless I am remembering incorrectly (which is always a possibility), this lying campaign against Trump was directly suggested through op-eds in major newspapers, and then implemented. You can probably make good points against Trump, but no one seems to actually complain about things that are both true and actually bad? (I am very pedantic about truth, and find that I’m not interested in listening to people who twist things and then pretend they are true.)
I deeply want to change and improve things, and chafe at the idea of being restricted to some old formula for life but I’ve been forced to realize that conservatism is necessary. I am very much a centrist in terms of ideology, but in the current state of America, that means being very open to conservative ways and values. Understanding why what you are changing is the way it is, and being careful with the changes are both very necessary; since most things are actually pretty well tuned, incautious changes usually make things much worse.
The extremely obvious reason why people support Trump is because he was a good and effective president (in comparison to other presidents, which is a low bar, I know). President is a very difficult job where people mostly screw up, and much of it is ceremonial, but Trump had a large number of successes compared to what I expected going in. The state of the country was clearly improved by his actions, and would be again. The country and world situation got much worse under his successor, Joe Biden (in a way that also mirrored the failures of Trump’s predecessor).
I’ve had a strong personal distaste for Trump for decades, but he was either the best president in my lifetime or very near. I’m loyal to the America, so I’ve been forced to upgrade my opinion of him dramatically. I still wouldn’t like to hang out with him, and wouldn’t encourage others to do so, but that isn’t the point of selecting a president. It’s for the good of the country.
He’s actually a centrist; there is a reason he was comfortable as a democrat before, and as a Republican now. None of his personal positions are extreme, and though he’s willing to work with people more extreme than him, and it tends to be to the right, the only reason he worked primarily with Republicans is because the Democrats were busy trying to score political points instead of advancing their policies. Since Trump actually wants things, people can work with him if they choose to, and they don’t have to do anything extreme to do so.
His opponents are pretty unimpressive at best. Kamala Harris was a terrible state politician (I’m Californian and saw what she did in my state); either corrupt as hell or incompetent as hell (likely both), though I don’t have particular evidence at hand of it. She was a completely ineffectual VP. Her VP choice is deeply unimpressive. She obviously helped cover up Biden’s decline into clearly being an unfit president. Her ideas are either stolen from Trump’s campaign or incredibly harmful. Almost no one actually expects her to be a good president? Just a few months ago even the Democrats thought she was completely incompetent, and she was only selected for contingent reasons that had nothing to do with her quality as a candidate.
Additionally, the Democrats have gone too far, and the Republicans need to be given another turn. As an independent, I wouldn’t want a particular party to grow too powerful, and the democrats are in a much stronger overall position in terms of controlling the country outside of politics. If Trump wins, the Democrats will still be in a strong position and have a lot of control over the next four years, while the Democrats might get away with going completely overboard like they have been trying to.
Some short points: He’s not the most accurate speaker, and really doesn’t care to be (which rubs me the wrong way), but he means what he says, and actually tries to follow through. I actually think he lies less than the standard politician, which is, I admit, mostly an inditement of his fellow politicians. He’s the only president I know of to reduce regulation. He appointed very capable judges whose legal reasoning seems pretty good (even when I disagree with them). He was willing to work with the opposition, but had genuine goals for the good of the country rather than just being political. I know what I’m getting with him at this point (Trump is who he is). Trump will be term limited, so the next election would be an even fight between the Dems and Reps.
If you want to respond to my post, I’m open to pushback, though I don’t know how much I would say since I am a long term lurker who rarely comments (mostly in bursts). I would prefer responding to things much shorter than my post here I admit. I’m not happy with how long this is, but I tend to be long winded on each point in a discussion and have to consciously dial it back. Since each part of my reply would likely be long, it would be difficult to respond to something this length personally. I would prefer to talk in general, rather get bogged down in details that are not actually important to how people actually view the situation. That said, important details are obviously important to talk about.
Wow, this is the most interesting reply I’ve gotten yet, because of just how much I agree with! I’m also a centrist. I also don’t want one party to gain too much power. And “since most things are actually pretty well tuned, incautious changes usually make things much worse” is such an articulate way of expressing exactly what one of my biggest political concerns is. I may steal that line!
Ok, so to respond, it seems like the main points are:
Media lies
Don’t want drastic changes
Trump had a successful presidency
Other candidates are unimpressive
Don’t want one party to have too much power
Media lies: I get this one. There’s something about seeing someone make false claims or bad arguments that pushes me to the other side. Interestingly for me, it cut the other way. I didn’t see much reporting about Trump in 2016 as much as I just heard him say things that were just blatantly false. Even getting past his continual bragging, he set a record for “pants on fire” statements. I wonder if I would have felt differently if I was mostly hearing media lies instead of Trump himself talking.
Don’t want drastic changes: Yes! 100%. I look at human history and see so much suffering, and we get to enjoy a peaceful life where I walk past strangers every day with no fear. And we have a political system where bribery is not the norm, people choose their leaders and laws, and leaders are supposed to serve rather than be served. I definitely believe in making things better, but just screwing with stuff without understanding it seems dangerous.
Interestingly, this is actually one of my strongest reasons I don’t support Trump. Trump objectively has less knowledge of the inner workings of the political system than any other main-party candidate in my lifetime. And he also is pushing for change as strongly as the most progressive candidates out there. He wants to “drain the swamp”. He also set a record for administrative turnover. He has pushed for government shutdowns multiple times. To me, he totally seems like he’s coming in with a sledge-hammer.
Most importantly to me, during his 2020 campaign, he repeatedly refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. This is a gimme question that should be the center bingo tile for any candidate, but for him it wasn’t. Somehow a simple “yes, I’ll step down peacefully if that’s how the votes come in” was something he couldn’t say. This was a huge red flag for me, and when he then lied about the election, it confirmed my fears—that Trump wasn’t prepared to let go of power. That seems incredibly dangerous to me, and honestly, with no malice toward Trump himself, I think the best thing for our country would be if him and his family were thrown in prison as a result. Now, secretly, they could get carted off to a life of luxury in the bahamas or something, I don’t have any reason to want them to suffer at all, but I really need anyone considering a coup to believe there will be dire consequences for them.
Trump had a successful presidency: This one is really interesting. I had the exact opposite impression. There was tax reform passed, that’s a win. Other than that though, he failed to deliver on his promise of a wall or repealing obamacare (sure, because he had opposition, but it at least means he wasn’t successful crossing the aisle, if that’s a thing anyone can do nowadays). He had record administrative turnover and a brief trade war with China. And then, the big one, under his presidency, America hit number 1 in worldwide covid deaths, despite not being number 1 in population. Now, maybe none of this is his fault, but I certainly wouldn’t call it “success”. I’m curious if we have different sources of information, different ideas about what constitutes success, or just different emotional associations coming into his presidency that led us to opposite conclusions.
Other candidates are unimpressive: Yeah. I feel this one. I wish we had better. It feels like we keep getting stuck with picking the least worst candidate instead of the best. I guess I just have different values or views than a lot of people if those are the candidates that become popular enough to run.
That said, I’ve been impressed by Kamala’s rhetoric this campaign. She talks about being a candidate for all Americans. She talks about wanting unity and conversation. She has committed to a peaceful transfer of power, and talks about respecting the will of the people. Is it all just talk? Maybe, but talk matters. How has my life really changed since 2016? Mainly, I feel I’ve become disconnected from a lot of people, and people write eachother off more now and find less common ground. It feels like so many conversations are shiboleths for “are you with us or with them?”. That is the real impact Trump has had on my life, and it has primarily been from how he talks. He constantly uses “us vs them” framing in his speech, he broke all sorts of ettiquette norms for talking to and about other candidates. He is almost always airing a grievance or bragging about himself and his people. I feel that’s the thing that has actually impacted my day to day life, and I prefer a candidate who at least espouses positive values. And hey, maybe it’s not all talk! I’m willing to give her or anyone else willing to say they want to work with the other side in this political climate a chance.
Don’t want one party to have too much power: Completely agree. My voting strategy used to be to split my vote. I liked Obama as a candidate and voted for him twice, so I went into 2016 fully intending to vote Republican. And I would have happily voted for Jeb Bush, or Kasich. But, the Republican party put Trump up instead and started the transformation into what we see today. I think this was a mistake. I’m actually afraid that the left will get too much power because I think the Republican party has abandoned truth and goodness and will eventually collapse because a core of “us vs them” anger isn’t sustainable. I wish we had the old Republican party. I would happily vote for Bush, McCain, or Romney. But we now have an anti-vax, anti-fact checking, anti-higher education, anti-free press party that won’t admit when it lost an election, and as much as I fear how this is going to slingshot back too far left, I’m busy avoiding the current dumpster fire. I’m curious: what do you think about the current GOP vs the GOP 20 years ago?
In conclusion, I think we have a lot of the same beliefs/values, and it’s super interesting to me that we ended up on opposite sides of the “trump divider”. If you have any hypotheses on how that happened, definitely share them!
That got very long. (Over 19,100 characters.). Feel free to ignore parts of it. TL;DR: Trump has a lot of faults but I should reiterate that I really do think Trump was a good president by my standards and I think there is a very high chance the he would be again, though it is far from certain. My reason really is just that I think he was a dramatically better president than I expected he would be when I begrudgingly vote for him.
Sometimes I have to correct for my tendencies to go the opposite way as people are trying to push me, but overall it seems like a useful way to be if I want to come up with what my actual personal beliefs are.
Does Trump say things that are blatantly untrue sometimes? Yeah, and I really wish there were candidates I could select that just didn’t do that. I actually hate lying and liars so much. Give me an honest person that goes against what I want and believe and I will at least grudgingly respect it (if I can determine that is true, of course.) I don’t think we’ve had an honest candidate since George W Bush (and maybe not even then since I wasn’t paying attention during his initial election), though in some cases I have only determined that I believe they were dishonest after the election.
My personal definition of lying might be relevant to the discussion. ‘Lying is attempting to trick people into believing things that are either known to be false to the speaker or to which there is no genuine effort to correspond to reality.’
It is the first part being missing that makes me think he isn’t as much a liar as many other politicians. Trump isn’t trying to trick people in general, while his opponents are, so I consider his opponents to be lying and him to simply be a poor source of truth. That said, I do despise his lack of care, and sometimes consider it egregious (he definitely has often fallen under the ‘there is no genuine effort to correspond to reality’ part, which I would count as ‘negligent lying’ if he is trying to trick people. This is obviously very bad even when it isn’t lying.).
I do believe he is dishonest, and wish that weren’t the case. I think that the reason the word ‘trick’ for lying is important is that I wouldn’t consider something like a fictional story or a song or whatever to be lying in and of itself even though it is obviously false. He believes what he says, it just often isn’t true because he didn’t bother to check.
I believe that one of the reasons people claim Trump is more dishonest is that he uses fewer qualifiers that make things arguable, while something similar to what he said is often enough actually true, but other politicians are more legalistic liars, carefully not actually saying anything that can be easily checked. In other words, Trump says more things that are false while his opponents say things that are (intentionally) far more misleading and pernicious. This is probably where people came up with the ‘seriously but not literally’ claim about how you should interpret Trump. (Though don’t count on me to know what is going on inside other people’s minds. Mind reading is rude and we aren’t good at it. Yes, this makes it harder to know when other people are lying.)
Obviously saying false things is not a good qualification for president, but I have to grade on a curve to an extent.
“I look at human history and see so much suffering, and we get to enjoy a peaceful life where I walk past strangers every day with no fear.” is a good way of describing what society is for, though I would go further. We want the correct response to seeing said stranger to be ‘Yay! Another person!’ rather than ‘How do I protect myself?’ or even ‘ugh! How annoying.‘. Obviously we aren’t at ‘Yay!’ in general, but it is a nice goal, and we are so much closer than societies used to be to it. Early on, society focused more on just reducing the danger level, and now we are at a point when we can carefully try to improve beyond just safety. Some people, mostly Democrats but an increasing portion of dissatisfied Republicans (who are often Trump supporters) don’t seem to realize that it needs to be careful. Trump is not the most careful person in his personal life, but he isn’t trying to upend things politically due to his personal moderation on many political topics.
Lack of fear in general might be part of why people focus so much hostility on politics, which is one of the few places left where there are very large genuine conflicts that aren’t personal (to the average citizen). Politics is actually sort of a safe outlet for many people, which has many unfortunate effects, but at least means they feel like it is okay to do so and it won’t lead to them being harmed. In many times and places, having a discussion like this about a controversial political figure who was once the leader, and may be again, would be a very bad idea, but for most of us it is very safe.
His signature desires like immigration reduction seem largely aimed at patching the safeness of our society, though I would actually like to see immigration increased, just more carefully chosen for the good of people already present in our society.
His fandom of tariffs seems the same way. I don’t like them. but I get why they seem like a good idea to some people and find them less harmful than many other attempted patches.
If you look at the actual changes Trump has made, they have been very limited. Small reductions in immigration, small reductions in regulatory burden, a reduction in new wars, small increases in economic efficiency, small reductions in tax burden, and a new segment of society feeling heard, lowering the likelihood of going outside the system.
His judge appointments have made flashy changes, but these decisions mostly just revert things to letting the states decide and moving closer to following the actual laws and constitution of the country. Luckily, those aren’t actually big changes, and the fact that people think they are is just one of the signs that our society is currently functional.
Also, you seem to be coming at this from an angle of ‘How big are the changes to government?’ whereas I am thinking more ‘How big are the changes to society?’ The former is larger under Trump, and the latter is smaller.
He seems to see large portions of the government as intractably opposed to their duty in serving the country, and unfortunately I agree with that, so I am more okay with large changes involving the government if I think they are narrowly tailored against those elements and won’t have much spillover into society. (I do wish they were more carefully targeted.) If you want the internal workings of the government to stay as they are, I do agree that Trump is not the right selection for that.
That said, it seems pretty clear to me that Trump doesn’t actually want to reduce government as much as your average Republican, (or increase it to the same extent as your average Democrat,) which sort of paints him as moderate? Drain the swamp was ostensibly about removing corruption, and I actually believe that was the real meaning (though corruption claims are often used to consolidate power around the one claiming it in other countries, so we should be careful about that).
Also, to mention the judges again, I think the judges Trump has appointed are more than willing to rule against him on anything that is hard to support based on the way the system is supposed to work. Trump has not created a cadre of loyal flunkies that will just go along with his big changes. A large number of people think he will try harder on that this time, but he does only have one term if he wins and I’m not convinced that he will try to do so.
I can’t agree that Trump wanting the votes to be correctly counted (which is clearly how he conceives of it) should lead to him being jailed. I don’t think he actually did anything genuinely illegal (though a number of people are trying to claim he did). I think he did just let go of power, after going through all the genuinely legal approaches he had available. That doesn’t stop him from constantly complaining about it of course, but I believe that even obsessive interest in the issue isn’t criminal.
On January 6th, there was no attempted coup (just a riot which is bad, but not the same kind of thing), congress was not in real danger, and Trump did not support it. (I responded a bit more in depth to another comment about that issue as well.) It is highly unlikely anyone will be persuaded about those matters of course since everyone has heard a lot about it.
Trump’s successes (Keep in mind that I expect presidents to largely fail):
Lower taxes (letting people spend their money on what they want, not what the government wants)
Improved economy/improved buying power
A measured approach to foreign policy that keeps in mind our actual goals
A foreign policy that allows other countries to take responsibility for themselves
No new wars for us and reduction in old ones
Few new wars in the world
A lessening of border issues (aside from the grandstanding by both sides)
Minor increases in freedom (from reduced regulatory burdens)
Minor counterfactual increases in freedom (from not increasing regulatory burdens like his opponents want)
A reduction in the rate of large changes in the law (though this was not always his preferred outcome)
Returning some authority to the states or people by legislative means
Returning some authority to the states or people by judicial decisions involving his appointed judges
Not repealing Obamacare is a failure on one of his campaign goals. It was by the singular vote of a guy with a personal animosity toward Trump, and who had a brain tumor that killed him, and thus had nothing to lose. I personally believe that McCain’s act was malfeasance since he actually campaigned himself on eliminating it (unless I am conflating him with other Republicans), but McCain saw himself as a defender of the old order, a not uncommon thing among conservatives. Trump did eliminate the mandate to buy insurance (which is the truly offensive part to me).
Not getting political buy in for the wall is also a failure of one of Trump’s campaign goals, but he did notably improve border security during his presidency. (Which promptly got worse again after Biden won. The wall would have been helpful.)
I admit that I don’t think of Covid as being a significant determiner in how I should think of Trump’s presidency (nor Biden’s). I honestly stopped paying attention to it a long time ago and never was super worried about it. (Perhaps this is partially due to personal experience: When I got Covid it sucked, but not any more than many other illnesses I have gotten in my life. It was perhaps slightly above average discomfort, but far less than things like the flu were when I was younger. I actually got the flu early in 2020 too and that was much worse. The rest of the family seemed to think the flu was worse too.)
As I recall, death rates from Covid are highly dependent on things like age, demographics, and preexisting health issues which Trump could hardly have been expected to change on his own. The presidency is powerful, but not that powerful, and the US death rate would be expected due to preexisting conditions. The things he did like closing the border were reasonable, though a little too late to actually be helpful.
His ‘operation warp speed’ did genuinely help the world to get vaccines very quickly compared to normal by paring back regulatory burdens, though it should have gone further. (Things like human challenge trials to immediately know whether the vaccines worked when developed could have cut several more months off the time, since the actual development only took a small number of weeks and safety testing could have been rolled into initial deployments as the factories started producing them.). We could have had vaccines before there were many deaths at all.
Death rates were overreported while I was paying attention (the famous, ‘with covid or because of covid’ thing is a big difference in the reported death rates between not just countries, but even states and counties in the US).
Also, I don’t believe statistics from places like China (who were clearly faking) or India (who are pretty third world in a lot of places, according to Wikipedia, the 125th to 136th in GDP per capita, which leads me to thinking they barely have real statistics in the country, though that could just be my prejudice). Those are the only countries with more population than the US. Also, the other countries with large numbers of people are generally pretty young (and thus not susceptible to such death rates) even if I did believe them. If I am not wrong, you have to get down to Japan which is vastly less populous than the US to find the next country with enough of an elderly population.
I honestly think that most of the damage from Covid was overreaction (like shutting down ‘nonessential’ businesses and screwing up supply lines in a way that lasted for years). Covid just isn’t a super deadly disease, and we changed the way society worked for years to a massive degree because of it. I believe that hurting the economy both directly and indirectly increases death rate substantially, just not in ways we know how to count.
Covid overreaches were mostly state level, though the CDC behaved like clowns. Trump was clearly not an expert on infectious diseases, and didn’t pretend to be. Unfortunately, the experts were themselves to blame for much that went wrong. (Unfortunately, the elderly often die from other Coronaviruses too, and when I heard what the general death rate from Coronaviruses in the elderly was, it was kind of shocking, though I don’t really remember what it was now. Coronaviruses that you haven’t encountered before don’t get antibodies quickly enough in the very old, and covid was genuinely novel to immune systems.)
A bias I probably should have thought to mention in my initial take on his presidency is that my life and the life of most people directly around me got better during Trump’s presidency, while during Obama’s and Biden’s they got clearly worse. In late 2019 and 2020 (despite Covid stuff) my life was so dramatically better than it had been before. Note: I don’t think this had anything to do with Trump but subconsciously I obviously would think ‘how do the years when he was president compare to other years?’ And I actually think that is a good idea since people can hardly know the actual effects of the changes over the period. This is likely a strong effect.
I always disliked Hillary, but I think Kamala Harris is much worse for some reason it is hard to determine. Honestly, I wouldn’t trust a anything Harris would say after her stint as Attorney general of California and I thought she was dramatically worse and more corrupt as a candidate for Senator than the other Democrat (who I did vote for because I found that despite not agreeing on policy, she seemed like a decent person and fairly moderate Democrat). I honestly don’t remember the original cause of said antipathy against Kamala, but I trust it for some reason. Obviously that isn’t convincing for other people (and rightfully so). Most California attorney generals and senators are people I disapprove of policy wise, but I think about them vastly less negatively.
She’s not my least favorite Californian politician (“Hi, Newsome.”) but she is probably second or third. I can’t actually bring to mind much of what she did representing California. (I do tend to especially dislike San Francisco Democrats. In my part of California, which is purple, the Democrats are nothing like San Francisco ones, at least when they are campaigning, though statewide tends more towards San Francisco style.)
As for Walz, he seems to be an extreme liar, (though I can’t necessarily trust that judgment since I haven’t researched him much,) though that is sadly par for the course these days in candidates. While, he’s pretty par for the course, I still hate it. Also, and this is a very untrustworthy judgment based off very limited information, he seems like a deeply angry and sanctimonious person. I think that one of the other answers mentioning that Democrats are very sanctimonious is part of what I don’t like about high profile national Democrats. I should probably research Walz more, but I doubt I will? Hopefully he doesn’t stay nationally relevant and I don’t have to think about him again? I don’t honestly have an opinion on JD Vance aside from thinking that his wife speaks well so I can’t really compare the two.
I do think I should put more effort into determining whether or not JD Vance is a decent backup president (which is one of his main jobs and the only one where he isn’t mostly a figurehead), but I honestly tend to put off a lot of my research on things until late in the cycle, and I already know I won’t vote for Kamala under any reasonably foreseeable circumstances, so I am paying a bit less attention to that. If it were to turn out Vance was bad enough, that would be a good reason not to vote for Trump, but would not be a reason to vote for Kamala.
Remember that I think the Dems are much more powerful on the national scene in almost all parts of society other than politics, and I’ve seen what happens when they get too powerful (in my state). I wouldn’t be shocked if the Dems managed to nearly maintain their current level of power even if they are soundly defeated at the national political level. In part, that is a bit of why the Republicans need to win, because the Dems will crush them if they don’t. (That could be biased by the fact that I am Californian, which means I watch the Dems routinely crush the Republicans. Perhaps I am overestimating the strength of the Dems and underestimating their foes.) That the Dems are stronger than ever is both an indictment against Trump, and a reason the Republicans need to win; the Dems will crush them if the Republicans lose many more times and we might be in for 20 years of pure Dem victories.
Honestly, I prefer the old Republicans too. By a lot. They were much more my style. I miss that era of the GOP.
I get why it changed though. Twenty years ago (also 40), the Republicans were genuinely trying to improve the world in a usually conservative way (which I am very much up for in many cases), but a decade ago, Republicans were using a ‘death with dignity’ strategy rather than fighting like Trump does, and people got tired of electing Republicans who were too concerned with their dignity to act, ceding cultural victory to the Democrats.
Losing slowly is not a popular strategy with voters most of the time. Trump basically did a hostile takeover of the Republican party, and did improve its chances of succeeding at Republican goals, though it also tossed some Republican goals aside and increased the chance that the Democrats would win enduring major victories quickly. I do think that the changes to the party aren’t necessarily permanent whether or not the Republicans win, but that would be because it could always change again.
If Trump wins, I think that could lead to a lot of reforms in the Republican party that would marry parts of their old style with a willingness to fight, but that probably doesn’t happen if Trump loses and his faction of the party gets repudiated.
That isn’t entirely bad, I don’t like a lot of the ideological changes and want a careful approach, but I am more worried about the power of the other team (and some of the ideological changes are good). Once your opponents know you won’t fight, you are doomed. Even worse would be if his faction gets more extreme after losing and it is the rest of the Republicans that get booted.
Also, I very strongly think that every country should be led by leaders that want to make the country great. ‘Make Liechtenstein Great’ should be the slogan of the leaders of Liechtenstein. Whatever that means to the people of Liechtenstein. This holds even for countries like China that I think very poorly of.
People often say one of the reasons they won’t vote for Trump is his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. What is your view on that?
I don’t think people believe that asking the legal system to rule on whether the laws were properly followed is somehow disqualifying, so unless I am mistaken about what they are claiming, it didn’t happen in any meaningful way.
The media has intentionally misrepresented this. He believed there was cheating from the other side, and said so. He used the normal methods to complain about that, and the normal lawsuits about it to get the court to rule on the matter. It’s all very normal. When the courts decided to not consider the matter (which was itself improper since they generally did that without considering the actual merits of the cases, generally claiming that it was somehow moot because the election was already over) he did nothing and just let his opponent become president (while continuing to vociferously complain).
Both Al Gore and Hilary Clinton made roughly the same level of complaining about the result as Trump. (Since I think both of them are terrible, that is a negative comparison, and I dislike that Trump matched them, but it isn’t disqualifying.) You could actually argue it was his job to make these lawsuits (to see that the federal election was properly executed). Coming up with who the electors would be if the lawsuit changed the results is normal (and not at all new). There was no attempt to go outside the legal system.
In all likelihood there was a nonzero amount of cheating (but we don’t actually know if it was favoring Biden, Republicans can cheat too) but I doubt there was any major conspiracy of it. I expect there is always some cheating by both sides, and we should try to reduce it, though I have no opinion on exactly how much or little there is. There were enough anomalies that investigating it would have made sense, if only to prevent them in the future.
The J6 riots were just normal riots, on a small scale, that Trump didn’t support at all and were nothing approaching a coup at all. Congress was not in any real danger, and there were no plans to take over the government. While I strongly disapprove of riots, this has been dramatically overplayed for purely partisan purposes by people who want to tar him with it. The people who support actual riots for political purposes are his opponents, not him.
I think you are missing something. The lawsuits were fine, though maybe a little silly as most of them were thrown out because of lack of standing. I’m thinking more of the “fake elector plot”, where Trump pressured Mike Pence to certify fake electors on Jan 6 (as Pence said: “choose between [Trump] and the constitution”). I think trying to execute that plan was wrong, because if they would have succeeded then Trump would have stolen the election.
And Trump may not have supported everything the J6 rioters did, but he was the reason that they were there. He said that the election was stolen. He said that it “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”. On Jan 6 he called on them to pressure Mike Pence and other lawmakers to go through with his plan: to steal the election.
I (and many other people) think a person who tried to steal an election shouldn’t be elected.
Obviously I won’t prove anything in this statement, but I just don’t think there is a genuine case to be made that the common interpretation Trump’s foes like to use is valid.
I completely disagree about the idea that Trump supported any sort of coup, and that the riot was anything more than a riot.
I agree that the statement linked from Trump sounds bad, but the interpretation seems like a misreading of Trump to me. It sounds like vociferously complaining that we don’t know the outcome of the election due to fraud in his trademark sloppy style, and that he believes he would win if counted fairly. (Could it mean what you think it means? Perhaps, but that isn’t the most likely reading to me.) Redoing elections that aren’t held would be required despite that not being in the constitution (because the electors must be selected), and you could make the argument that one where the result cannot be known would be the same. I assume (obviously mindreading is often faulty) that is what Trump would have been talking about if he was more of an analytical speaker rather than an emotive one.
Article II, Section 1, Clause 2:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
That is what the relevant part in the constitution for selecting electors (aside from a later clause about Congress setting the time of selection), so as far as selecting electors go, the state legislatures are in charge of that and asking them to intervene doesn’t seem like going out of bounds. Depending on the actual laws and constitution of the state, there may not be anything the legislature is allowed to do either, but it doesn’t seem like something the is obviously out of bounds. (I do not want this sort of behavior of course, the current election system does its best to ignore that the state legislature is in charge of who the electors are for a reason.) States are even free to directly control who the electors vote for (so called ‘faithless elector’ laws have been ruled constitutional by the supreme court). And as said before, this is hardly the first time after an election that someone has tried to determine who the electors would be and try to have the slate prepared in case it was overturned.
Also the term ‘fake electors’ is obviously crap, the correct term is what the Trump side called them ‘contingent electors’, as in, contingent on the results being ruled to have really been the way he believed they were. Historically, the courts require such things to be done on time, and then they sort it out later if it comes up.
I don’t find Mike Pence credible, nor do I find what is often referred to as ‘lawfare’ indictments to be of any significant probative value. To be straightforward, I think Pence is just lying in an attempt to not be associated with Trump. Pence thinks of himself as a respectable person, and Trump is not the kind of person Pence thinks is seen as respectable. He was also directly trying his hand at running for president at the time (and politicians like to denigrate their opponents while casting themselves as heroic). Of course, Pence could even believe what he is saying exactly and that wouldn’t make his interpretation correct (we can certainly convince ourselves that what we want to say is true, and I am sure some would say the same of me).
Every time I have looked into a specific claim relating to this, it hasn’t turned out to be anything truly abnormal or there has been no credible (to me) confirmation. (Assuming that Pence is not credible.) I have not looked into all the claims, and honestly I am highly unlikely to do so at this point.
Yes, redoing the election would probably be a good thing to do, if there was evidence of widespread fraud. But Trump doesn’t see that as the only option. The full “Truth” was:
So he says we should either “have a NEW ELECTION” or “throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER [Trump]”. He tried to do the second option: tried to get states to change the result, and when that didn’t work he tried to get Pence + Congress to change the result. He doesn’t care about laws or rules or the constitution. He just believes there’s fraud, so he should be chosen as the winner.
What do you think Trump’s goal was on Jan 6? Take for example part of Trump’s speech:
Which electors were Trump referring to here? He is not saying they should do the process as normal, because then there would be no point of protesting. He is saying they should either throw some electors out or include some “contingent electors”, so that they have a “contingent election”, so that the house (voting by state) would declare Trump as the winner. And if they did that, then Trump would have succeeded in stealing the election.
And you’re completely correct that each state legislature has total control of their electors. And only electors from state legislatures should be counted. In the past, there have been situations where state legislatures sent multiple “alternative electors”, because of weird circumstances. But the reason Trump’s “contingent electors” are called “fake electors” is that they were not sent by a state legislature. They were by Trump associates and random Republicans. This is wrong, and in some states even illegal. Multiple people have already pleaded guilty to crimes related to this.
I skimmed the transcript at the link you provided, and it seems like a standard political speech (in Trump’s style).
Obviously Trump thought that there was easily enough proof to know that he won, or at least clearly enough prove election invalid if more was required. He would expect to genuinely win any real redo of the election. And the whole scheme was to send it back to the states, who have the authority to choose the electors. His claim is that the states wanted that (which I don’t know any evidence of, but this scheme only does anything if the states actually do want to).
The quote you provided literally sounds like normal political posturing about how important the people on your side are, and a claim that they should take political actions. This seems like a thing to say in regards to protests, rallies, or even just doing things like voicing support for him. I’ve heard countless politicians say this sort of thing before? It seems pretty anodyne?
Saying that they should cheer for the legislature but not all of the legislature will be getting many cheers seems like an obvious joke with no deeper meaning than disapproval of some members. It’s obvious what behaviors will get cheers and which won’t, but it isn’t threatening.
All talk of fighting involved metaphorical fighting by duly elected representatives (and replacing them through primary elections if they didn’t) and the people cheering them on. This is normal politics. And as far as it goes, he is literally saying that they should demand the law be followed as the point of this.
You say “send it back to the states” but what would that mean? Every state held their own election. No state found any proof of fraud (at least not enough to impact the outcome). So they all verified the results. Then they sent their electors to Washington. For Trump to then say “the states should decide” doesn’t make much sense, because they already did decide. They decided he lost. Now maybe he meant that every state should have a reelection, but that would go against a bunch of (federal and state) laws, rules and the constitution, so that would be bad. The states control their election, not Trump. It’s bad to change the process just because Trump doesn’t like that he lost.
But luckily, I don’t think Trump meant to have a reelection. I think he meant to follow the established procedure in the constitution for contingent elections. That’s what you’re supposed to do, if it’s confusing who won the election. And if Trump would want to follow laws, rules and the constitution, he would want Pence + Congress + House to do that. What basically happens then is that each state gets one vote to decide the president. So in a way, that would “send it back to the states”. Each state’s vote would be decided by the people in the House of Representatives, and if everyone voted according to their party affiliation then Trump would have won. Good for Trump!
But would it have been good for us, the people? Well, the problem is that the election wasn’t really a contingent election. Every state verified the results, every state sent their electors. To actually use the procedure, then one would have to follow the plan in the Eastmann memos. It says that Pence, while counting the elector votes, should pretend to be confused. He should act as if he has no idea which are the correct electors. And then it would be a contingent election. But Pence didn’t want to do that, so Trump didn’t win.
That’s what the plan to steal the election was, and that’s how Pence stopped it, and that’s why Trump and MAGA people dislike Pence now.
I did have to research a few things for this, but they don’t seem to change matters at first glance. The situation is murky, but it was always murky and both sides clearly are certain they are right.
I personally don’t know whether or not it was a fair election with a fair result and unimportant anomalies, or if the anomalies really were cheating. They certainly looked suspicious enough in some cases that they should have been investigated. I think that many of the actions by the Democrats were done in the way they were because they didn’t know whether or not there was rampant cheating causing these anomalies and didn’t want to know, and that Republicans were far too sure about what they think happened based off weird and unclear evidence.
You could argue for the contingent elections thing being relevant (and it is a scenario in the memos you mentioned), but it is far from settled when that would trigger in a sequence of events. It would not, in fact, be a change of procedure if it did. (As your link notes, it is in the constitution.) Uncommon parts of a procedure are still parts of it (though all the examples are so far back it would be quite strange to see it used, I agree on that).
Several recent presidential candidates have used legal tactics to dispute how elections are done and counted. There are already multiple this year (mostly about who is and is not on the ballot so far.) There is nothing inherently wrong with that since that is literally how the laws and constitutional matters are intended to be handled when there is a dispute with them.
I’m obviously not a constitutional scholar, but I think the contingent election stuff wouldn’t really have come up at that point, since it reads more like something you do based on the electors choosing in a way that doesn’t lead to a majority, not over the process of electors selection being disputed.
You could easily argue that the disputed electors might not count if that simply means electors were not fully selected, and you need a majority of the number of electors that should be, but I would assume otherwise. (In part because there appears to be no wiggle room on the Constitution saying that the states will select electors. It isn’t “up to the number specified”, but the specific number specified.)
I believe that if there is doubt as to who the states selected for the electors, you would simply have the legislatures of the states themselves to confirm who are the correct electors by their own rules (and that their decisions are controlling on the matter), and I believe this is what Trump would have intended (but I don’t like mindreading and don’t think it should be relied on when unnecessary).
It appears that you believe the states already selected their electors fully, and so do I, so this plan wouldn’t work if I am right about how to interpret how this works, but Trump obviously claimed/claims otherwise, and there is no indication of duplicity in that particular belief.
Everyone agrees that Pence did not think Trump’s interpretation of the matter is correct, but Pence’s own personal beliefs as to whether or not the electors were correctly selected does not, in fact, make people who believe otherwise some sort of enemy of the republic. Trump wasn’t asking Pence to fake anything in any reasonable source I’ve seen, but to ‘correctly’ (in Trump’s mind) indicate that the electors were not chosen because it was done in an invalid way. Pence interpreted this request negatively seemingly because he didn’t agree on the factual matters of elector selection and what his interpretation of the meaning of the constitution is, not because anything Trump wanted was a strike against how things are meant to be done.
I didn’t really remember the Eastman memos, but when I looked up the Eastman memos, reporting seems clear that Trump and company really were pushing to convince Pence to send it back to the states for confirmation of selection which is not an attempt at either a contingent election or just selecting Trump, and is not out of bounds. That those other scenarios existed as possibilities in a memo but were not selected obviously in no way implicates Trump in any wrongdoing.
I read the two page memo and it seems strange. To me it reads like a few scenarios rather than finished decision making process or recommendation. I am sympathetic to the argument that it makes about how the Electoral Count Act is unconstitutional (and I think the change made afterward to it also seems at first blush clearly unconstitutional). If it is unconstitutional, then Pence ‘must not’ follow it where it conflicts with the constitution (so advising that it be ignored is not necessarily suspect). I also had a hard time interpreting said act, which seems poorly written. The memo itself does rub me the wrong way though.
The six page memo seems pretty normal to me (from reading how judges write their decisions in court cases the style seems similar), and lays out the reasoning better, though I definitely disagree with some of the scenarios as being within the vice president’s authority (which is itself somewhat murky because of ambiguity in the constitution and relevant amendments). The VP has no authority to decide to simply declare that the number of electors are fewer that were really appointed (though this is also not actually clear in the text), but some other scenarios are plausible readings of the laws at first glance depending on the actual facts at hand (which they have a clear opinion on the facts of).
An analysis I read included a lot of fearmongering about letting the states decide if their electors had been properly selected, but that is clearly something they are allowed to determine. (The fact that it is popular vote is a choice of the legislatures, and up to the laws and constitution of the individual states.)
This was not a plan to ‘steal’ an election, but to prevent it from being stolen. Obviously both sides like to claim there was an attempt at stealing it (the right’s motto was literally about preventing stolen elections), that they were just trying to prevent. Both sides are still very angry about it, but that doesn’t actually make Trump disqualified in any way.
Yes, I also think it’s important to investigate those things. And the US government agrees, which is why they investigated them. But they didn’t find much, because the election wasn’t stolen.
I don’t really agree with this framing, it’s not about Democrats vs Republicans. The ones who were claiming the election was stolen were Trump and his associates, not general Republicans. Mike Pence is a republican, and he didn’t say that the election was stolen. William Barr, the trump appointed republican attorney general, said the FBI and Justice Department investigations found no evidence of large scale voter fraud. It was investigated, but nothing was found, because the election wasn’t stolen. Just because some people lied about voter fraud, like Rudy Giuliani, doesn’t mean it’s okay to overturn the election.
But what did Trump do when the FBI and Justice Department didn’t find any evidence? He asked the DOJ to lie, say that the election was rigged, without evidence. And when they didn’t he threatened to fire them.
I think you’re getting a little lost in the weeds trying to interpret the legal schemes. If he managed to overturn the election in a way that is technically legal, would that be good? And if he attempted to overturn the election in an illegal way, would that be bad? It seems like you value the law, and that’s good to do. But Trump doesn’t value the law, and thinks it would be good if he overturned the election even if was done in an illegal way. He doesn’t care about the law. Does this not worry you?
I’m a centrist (and also agnostic in regards to religion religion) in part because I believe there are a lot of things I/we don’t/can’t know and shouldn’t be overconfident in, ideologically, factually, and interpretationally. I don’t know what Trump actually thinks, and neither do you, but we seem to disagree strongly on it anyway. I don’t want to try to read your mind, but that part is at least very obvious. (I do have some very confident ideological, factual, and interpretational beliefs, but believe they shouldn’t be overly relied upon in these matters.)
I also tend to keep in mind that I can be wrong (I am also keeping that in mind here), which is how I ended up believing Trump was worth voting for in the first place. (As stated originally, I actually had an extreme personal distaste for him for decades that sounds much like how people accusing him of being, but I paid attention and changed my mind later. Obviously, I could have been right originally and be wrong now, that definitely happens.)
To me, you seem overconfident about what happened in the election, and your sources seem highly partisan (not that I know of any sources on this matter that I think aren’t partisan). Neither of which actually mean you are wrong. I do think it is very important that there is genuine doubt, because then you can’t simply assume those on the other side are operating in an objectionable way because they are opposing you. (Of course I would think you overconfident since I am hedging so much of what I am saying here.) I generally find it hard to know how accurate specific political reporting is, but it seems generally very low. Politics bring out the worst in a lot of people, and heightened reactions in most of us (me included, though I try to damp it down).
There is always vote fraud and cheating, but what is the definition of ‘large scale’ such that you know for sure it didn’t happen? States have in fact found cheating in small but significant amounts (as well as large scale rule changes outside the regular order), but what percentage of it would be actually discoverable without extensive investigation, and how much even with? William Barr saying that he had “not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.” hardly means they found everything, and crucially, is very different than saying that it wasn’t large scale by at least one reasonable definition.
Hypothetical: If someone was counted to have won a state that decided the election by 100,000 votes, and Barr could have proven that 40,000 were switched (meaning current count is winning by 20k), what would that mean for your statement? What would that mean for Barr’s? I think that would prove you wrong (about no large scale cheating), but Barr’s statement would still be true (I would still consider it lying though).
Additional hypothetical: Suppose that three states too small to change the election were given to Biden due to cheating, but it could be proven that Trump had won all of them? That would be large scale cheating that changed nothing about the result, and again, Barr’s words would not technically be untrue. Suppose then that there was a fourth small state that would tip it where there was enough cheating to actually change the overall result, but this can’t be proven?
Note that neither of those hypotheticals is meant to be close to accurate, they are meant to show the uncertainty. For clarity, I believe that there is not strong enough evidence to say there was sufficient cheating to change results, and we should default to assuming there wasn’t, but that is only because our elections usually aren’t fixed, and in certain other places and times the opposite should be assumed. I believe that Biden most likely won in an election close enough to fair, just that people coming to the opposite conclusion are usually operating in good faith including the subject of this matter. (I do not assume good faith in general, it just seems that way here.)
I can find places claiming that there is literally nothing, and others claiming to have found dozens of issues that could possibly count as ‘large scale’ cheating depending on the definition (not all involving the Democrats, and many not involving directly changing the votes). Neither side actually seems especially credible to me, but instead obvious partisanship is deciding things.
I probably should have clarified the split as establishment vs populist. I think that I can speak of Democrats without implying that it is an exact midline Republican / Democrat split when referencing something known to be a minority viewpoint, but I really should have been more clear that I was speaking of a portion of the Republicans rather than all of them (I do think it is a very large portion of the Republicans, but more so the base and more populist/Trump camp politicians rather than the established politicians). I was saying that I think the politicians among the Democrats (enough of them to control Dem policy, far from all of them) had specific motives (their being unsure whether or not their local members cheated) for their actions in and reactions to the issue that consisted largely of vehement denial of the possibility regardless of the evidence (and wanting to prosecute people for talking about it or taking legal steps that are required for disputing the election!), and that many Republicans overindex on very questionable evidence to say with equal certainty that it did happen.
People often would like to cover up things when they don’t know exactly what happened but it looks bad (or even if it just might cause a scandal, even if it could be proven to be fine), and I can’t possibly agree with anyone who thinks that Democrats in general didn’t at least consider that when deciding on how they would react to the evidence.
The split between establishment and populist Republicans is very large in recent years, starting noticeably before 2016 and largely leading to Trump’s faction even existing, which then movef the party further toward populist. The establishment and populists do not share the same reaction to the evidence in 2020, among other things, and I should have been more careful.
You assume that the US government didn’t find much, but a number of people would just as confidently state that much of the government just chose not to look, and others that things were in fact found. Many of the investigations would have been state and local governments if they’d happened, and in many of the places the local leaders were Democrats who had every incentive not to look (which is part of why people were suspicious of how things turned out there, and this is true even if the local Democrat leaders were perfectly upright and moral people who would never act badly as long as we don’t know that). Trump and company brought many court cases after the election but before inauguration that were thrown out due to things that had nothing to do with the merits of the evidence (things like standing, or timeliness); there may have been some decided on actual evidence, but I am unaware of them.
Many populists have seen the DOJ and FBI as enemies due to past discrimination against populist causes, and that is generalizing too much, but they also don’t seem very competent when performing duties they don’t care for (which is normal enough). It is hard for many people to know whether or not the FBI and DOJ can be relied on for such things. (See also the recent failures of previously considered competent federal agencies like the Secret Service).
You are interpreting things the way that most benefits your point, but without regard to other reasonable interpretations. The meaning of pretty much everything Trump camp did is debatable, and simply believing one side’s talking points is hardly fair. I genuinely think that both sides believe they were on the side of righteousness and standing up against the dastardly deeds of the other side.
Also, the cnbc article is largely bare assertions, by a known hyper partisan outfit (according to me, which is the only authority I have to go on). Why should I believe them? (Yes, this can make it difficult to know what happened, which was my claim.) The other side has just as many bare assertions in the opposite direction.
Hypothetical where no one thinks they are doing anything even the slightest bit questionable (which I think is reasonably likely):
Trump camp viewpoint: This bastard repeatedly refuses to do his job* and protect the election from rampant cheating. I should force him to do his job. (This is a reasonable viewpoint.) People keep telling me to remove them for refusing to do their jobs. I don’t think I should (because this is not the only important thing). How about I ask them more about what’s going on and trying to get through to them?
Other viewpoint: Here I am doing my job, and someone keeps telling me to say <specific thing>. They’re obviously wrong, and I have said so many times*, so they must be telling me to lie. (And their statement that he was asking them to lie would not seem false to them, but in this scenario is completely false.)
*This is the same event.
In fact, the video testimony included with the article itself sounds exactly like my innocent hypotheticals rather than other parts, while the cnbc commentary in the video is obviously making up and extremely overconfident partisan interpretations (which makes their article’s bare assertions even less believable since they really are hyper partisan).
I don’t really care about Giuliani, but the Giuliani article is extremely bad form since the bbc’s summary of his ‘concession’ is not a good summary. It says only that he will not fight specific points in court ‘nolo contendre’, it is not an admission to lying.
You mention that I value Law and Order, which is true. It isn’t actually natural to me, but over the years I have come to believe it is very important to the proper functioning of society, and as bad as some parts of society look, our society actually works quite well overall so we do need to support our current law. This includes parts that aren’t used often, but I have much less confidence in them. The parts Trump wanted to use do seem irregular, but he did seem to be trying to use actual laws (sometimes incorrectly).
To bring up something I think you mentioned earlier, I would be pretty unhappy about an election decided by ‘contingent election’ for instance, but still think it appropriate to use one under the right circumstances (which I don’t think these are even under the Trumpian interpretation of cheating in the elections). I would also be unhappy about an election where the state legislatures changed who the electors are in a meaningful way, even though I believe they clearly have the right to. There would have to be vastly more evidence for me to think that the legislatures should act in such a manner, but I don’t think it is necessarily disqualifying as a candidate for Trump to think they should.
Would it be good if he stole the election legally? Obviously not. Would it be good if he protected the election legally? Obviously yes. Would it be good if he protected the election illegally? Eh, I don’t know? It depends?
Does Trump value law and order? I think he values law (with moderate confidence). Whenever I hear the words of people directly involved, it sounds to me like he told them to do everything in the legal way, and that the process he advocated was something he believed legal. He doesn’t seem interested in breaking laws, but in using them for his purposes. Does he believe in order? I’m not convinced either way. He certainly doesn’t believe in many parts of how things tend to be done (to an extent that it is odd he is the leader of the conservative party), but is his plan for the world following some sort of consistent internal logic worthy of being considered orderly? I don’t know.
Obviously if I had similar interpretations as you do about all of these things I would be much more concerned. I just don’t. Of course, I very much want you to be wrong, so that there is little to worry about.
I don’t know if it is confirmation bias or legitimate, but the more carefully I go through things, the more it seems like Team Trump really was just trying to do what they were supposed to do (and his opponents believe the same of themselves). Even the words of people that are very much against him usually seem to indicate Trump’s genuine belief in everything he said about the election being true.
I don’t care that much about what’s in his mind. I care what he has done, what he has said and what he will do. The precise motivations don’t matter that much to me.
What if Trump said “God showed himself to me and he said the vote was rigged”? As an agnostic who trusts Trump, maybe you would think it was true. But should that matter? No, because godly revelations is not how we run our country. And neither is revelations from Trump. It doesn’t matter if the election was stolen if it can’t be shown to be true through our justice system (courts, FBI, DOJ, etc.). And it couldn’t be shown through the justice system, so unless we want to ignore all laws, rules and the constitution, then Trump just has to take the loss.
Yes, and they were able to say “Look, we have a bunch of active cases, there’s something fishy here” and then “They are throwing out our cases for no reason, look how rigged the system is”. If they bring a bunch of cases which gets thrown out, then you should trust them less.
I don’t care what the BBC said. Giuliani said false statements. For the court he agreed they were false. If he had evidence that they were true, he would not have conceded in court that they were false. That he didn’t have evidence for his claims means that you should trust his allegations of voter fraud less. It should also make you trust Trump’s allegations of voter fraud less, as they were the same allegations.
I linked cnbc to support the statement “Trump asked the DOJ to lie, say that the election was rigged, without evidence. And when they didn’t he threatened to fire them.”, and the article contains statements from “Jeffrey Rosen”, “Richard Donoghue” and “Steven Engel” to support that. I don’t care what cnbc said, I care what the DOJ said.
But not when he believes there’s been fraud right? Remember, he said:
So he doesn’t care that much about rules, regulations or the constitution. He thinks the government should be allowed to terminate “all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution”. This is not consistent with someone who values law. Maybe someone dislikes some laws, but all laws? All regulations? The whole constitution? That’s pretty extreme.
We seem to be retreading ground.
“It doesn’t matter if the election was stolen if it can’t be shown to be true through our justice system”. That is an absurd standard for whether or not someone should ‘try’ to use the legal system (which is what Trump did). You are trying to disqualify someone regardless of the truth of the matter based on what the legal system decided to do later. And Trump DID just take the loss (after exhausting the legal avenues), and is now going through the election system as normal in an attempt to win a new election.
I also find your claim that it somehow doesn’t matter why someone has done something is terrible claim when we are supposed to be deciding based on what will happen in the future, where motives matter a lot.
I read the legal reasons the cases were thrown out and there was literally nothing about merits in them, which means they simply didn’t want to decide. The courts refusing to do things on the merits of the claim is bad for the credibility of the courts.
I told you I don’t care about Giuliani, and that the article is very bad. Those are separate things. Whether or not he is guilty of lying (which was not what the stipulations actually mean), I already didn’t take his word for anything. The BBC on the other hand, has shown that it won’t report in a fair manner on these things and people shouldn’t trust them on it.
You linked to a cnbc article of bare assertions (not quotes) that were not supported by the statements of the witnesses in the video also included! I talked at length about the video and how the meaning of the testimonies appears to contradict the article.
We already discussed your claim about the meaning of Trump’s words. And you once again left out:
“Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
He was saying the election did not actually get held properly and that changes things.
No, it does not. Laws, regulations and the constitution exists in a society in order to coordinate behavior among it’s citizens. Laws, regulations and the constitution does not assume that everyone follows the law. In fact, it does the opposite, it assumes that people will break laws, that people will break regulations and that people will go against the constitution. That’s why there are mechanisms to punish people who go against them. You cannot terminate the constitution just because you think people broke the law.
Edit: Also, if there is some court case you think shouldn’t have been thrown out, then you are free to link it.
Edit2: I don’t understand why this comment got so downvoted
Your interpretation of Trump’s words and actions imply he is in favor of circumventing the system of laws and constitution while another interpretation (that I and many others hold) is that his words and actions mean that he thinks the system was not followed, which should be/have been followed.
Separately a significant fraction of the American populace also believes it really was not properly followed. (I believe this, though not to the extent that I think it changed the outcome.) Many who believe that are Trump supporters of course, but it is not such a strange interpretation that someone must be a Trump supporter to believe the interpretation reasonable.
Many who interpret it this way, including myself, are in fact huge fans of the American Constitution (despite the fact that it does have many flaws), and if we actually believed the same interpretation as you would we condemn him just as much. The people on my side in this believe that he just doesn’t mean that.
The way I would put it at first thought to summarize how I interpret his words: “The election must be, but was not held properly. Our laws and constitution don’t really tell us what to do about a failed election, but the normal order already can’t be followed so we have to try to make things work. We could either try to fix the ways in which it is improper which would get me elected, or we can rehold the election so that everything is done properly.”
I think Trump was saying that in a very emotive and nonanalytical way meant to fire up his base and not as a plan to do anything against the constitution.
I obviously don’t know why you were downvoted (since I didn’t do it) but if you mouse over the symbols on your post, you only got two votes on overall Karma and one on agreement (I’d presume all three were negative). The system doesn’t actually go by ones, but it depends on how much Karma the people voting on you have I think (and how strongly they downvoted)? I would suspect that people that the comment not quite responsive to what they believed my points to be for the overall karma one?
My memory could be (is often) faulty, but I remember thinking the dismissals were highly questionable. Unfortunately, at this point I have forgotten what cases seemed to be adjudicated incorrectly in that manner, so I can’t really say one you should look at. Honestly, I tire of reading about the whole thing so I stopped doing so quite a while ago. (I have of course read your links to the best of my ability when you provide them.)
I don’t usually comment about politics (or much of anything else) here so I don’t really know how what I should write in these comments, but I think this is more about people wanting to know what Trump supporters are thinking than about determining what they are and aren’t right about. If I was trying to prove whether or not my interpretation is correct I supposed I would do this differently.
Sorry for badgering you so much, I’ve appreciated the discussion. Some of the other Trump supporters here seemed to have very weird beliefs and values, but your values don’t seem that far away from mine. I think I got a better understanding of why you think what you do (though of course I disagree on things). Thanks for answering a bunch of questions :)
I get it. I like to poke at things too. I think it did help me figure out a few things about why I think what I do about the subject, I just lose energy for this kind of thing easily. And I have, I honestly wasn’t going to answer more questions. I think understanding in politics is good, even though people rarely chang positions due to the arguments, so I’m glad it was helpful.
I do agree that many Trump supporters have weird beliefs (I think they’re endemic in politics, on all sides, which includes centrists). I don’t like what politics does to people’s thought processes (and often makes enemies of those who would otherwise get along). I’m sure I have some pretty weird beliefs too, they just don’t come up in discussion with other people all the time.
The fact that I am more of a centrist in politics is kind of strange actually since it doesn’t fit my personality in some ways and it doesn’t really feel natural, though I would feel less at home elsewhere. I think I’m not part of a party mostly to lessen (unfortunately not eliminate) the way politics twists my thoughts (I hate the feeling of my thoughts twisting, but it is good I can sometimes tell).