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… not even Donald Trump would have gone that far.
Mick, you have to be kidding. Or you are much more naive than I thought. This is peanuts compared to what Trump does — what he has always done. This kind of thing is literally his M.O. — except he does it much more egregiously and is personally involved.
Trump regularly tries to manipulate the media — and usually succeeds. I’ll lay out a number of examples below, but the list is almost endless, so these are just a few:
Do you remember his ‘man of the people’ Chick-fil-A appearance earlier this year? Trump was greeted by a Black woman who enthusiastically hugged him, creating a viral moment that was widely shared as evidence of his support among Black voters. It turned out that the ‘spontaneous’ encounter was orchestrated by Michaelah Montgomery, a conservative Republican operative who works with Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens.
The Fox headline of course dutifully parroted the talking point: “Trump meets everyday Americans at Chick-fil-A”
She actually goes around to different events and does photo-ops with Trump so that the Trump campaign can post “Truths” about their “grassroots” support by the black community because there’s a black lady in the photo. On almost every road trip to an event or rally, the Trump campaign sets up an excursion to a fast food restaurant either before or after his speech and plants a bunch of activists there.
In September 2020, Trump held what was advertised as a union worker event in Michigan. It turned out that the event was held at a non-union plant, and many of the attendees were paid actors rather than actual union workers. The event was intended to create the impression of strong union support for Trump, which was misleading.
He did the same thing earlier this year at a staged event in Michigan which was presented as a rally for union members, specifically targeting auto workers. The event took place at a non-union facility, and many attendees were not union members but employees of the company that hosted the event. The AFL-CIO released the following statement about it:
“Having to pay twenty grand to rent a non-union facility because nobody wanted to host your event is literally so embarrassing. Trump’s whole bit is that he supports blue-collar Americans and wants to protect auto jobs but he couldn’t even find a real auto worker to hold up a rally sign. Scabbing has truly never looked so desperate.”
He’s done these thing so many times, it’s becoming hard to keep track and not mix them up. He did the same thing in 2023, for example, which you can read about here: https://newrepublic.com/post/175834/trump-uaw-michigan-speech-autoworkers-fake.
Then there was the time a few months ago where Donald Trump visited a bodega in Harlem that was portrayed as a spontaneous engagement — intended to create the appearance of support from the local black community. He shows up and there are people chanting his name. Of course, it later emerged that (surprise!) this event was carefully staged. The crowd that greeted him was organized by the New York Young Republican Club — just another attempt to deceptively manipulate the media.
Trump did something similar recently at a black church in Detroit. The event, which included a staged “roundtable” discussion, was more of a performance than a genuine grassroots gathering. The questions were canned and the audience was filled with people who had no affiliation with the church and were probably Republican activists: https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-crowds-fill-the-pews-for-trumps-visit-to-black-church-in-detroit.
Did you hear about the time the Trump campaign essentially ambushed a black-owned barber-shop with a bait and switch? The owner agreed to host a “black businesses roundtable”, but was never told it was a Trump campaign political event. Sure enough, Trump called into the event, trying to give himself the veneer of black “grassroots” support. Needless to say, the owner was humiliated and livid.
NO MALARKEY
Hey Legend — please unshadow ban me, or whatever you need to do. I cannot respond to anything except this thread, it seems.
Can someone please tell Legend to clear his queue — like he did above in 2021 — or whatever he needs to do to get me reinstated?
Edit: Never mind. I figured it out. I had some swear words in my comment. Apparently you can’t type “bullsh!t”. After trying to post my comment about 10 times, I finally spelled it with the exclamation point and it went through.
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I keep trying to respond again to Mick, but nothing shows up. Hopefully the comment doesn’t suddenly show up five times.
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You’re really trying to stretch the definition of a coup.
A coup typically involves the illegal or forceful removal of a government or leader, often through military action or other coercive means. Political pressure, on the other hand, may lead a candidate to withdraw voluntarily, but it does not involve the illegitimate seizure of power that defines a coup. Political pressures happen all the time in democracies.
A more appropriate use of the term “coup” would be applied to Trump’s fake elector scheme, when he tried to fraudulently send fake electors from several swing states in for certification. Trump tried to replace Biden as the winner and seize power for another four years through illegal means. Mike Pence didn’t go along with it, fortunately, but that was the most recent attempted coup in modern U.S. history.
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Several more own goals by Trump:
- His campaign inexplicably is flying on Epstein’s jet, apparently.
- His rally in Bozeman the other day featured music (without permission or licensing, of course) from The Titanic. Is his campaign a sinking ship? It definitely seems like it hit an iceberg recently. Not the imagery you would want to evoke.
- Trump praising Musk for firing anyone who wants to unionize. Not the best strategy if you’re trying to win Michigan, regardless of what you think of unions.
- Trump threatening to sue the government for $100M for raiding Mar-a-Largo during the illegal documents case. Why would he want to bring more attention to that? It was the one case even Republicans thought had merit. His personal judges threw out the case and it was out of the public eye. Leave to Trump to say “hey let’s talk about those classified documents I stole.” Of course, he will never actually sue. The discovery phase would just draw even more scrutiny. So he’ll come to his senses soon enough.
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I don’t think it was a normal lisp. I think Trump’s dentures were loose. I’ve noticed it occasionally in some of his rallies (having spent more time than any sane man should listening to them over the last year or so).
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You buy into the conspiracy that Michelle Obama was going to replace Biden? The only person I heard touting that was Rosanne Barr.
The rumor was that Barack HUSSEIN Obama probably wanted another candidate or at least some Kind of quick open primary. But Michelle Obama famously hates politics. There was no way she would have entertained anything like that.
Harris would not have been my first choice. Quite low on my list, actually. But still far preferable to both Biden and the deranged Republican candidate.
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Hey cardcrimson. I really have no strong opinion about whether he should step down. I certainly don’t think he’ll last four more years and was thrilled when he announced he was not running again.
I think mostly he’s physically declining, but probably mentally a bit, as well. I think he’s probably well enough to serve out the next five months, but I wouldn’t be upset if he Harris needed to take over.
NO MALARKEY
Meh. It wasn’t a coup. Obviously it wasn’t really a very democratic process. There was no redo of the primary process or some version of that. But Biden had the delegates (and Harris was on the ticket when they won the delegates) and it was ultimately up to him. At most he was pressured, but was not forced to step away from the campaign.
Many Democrats, like myself, were terribly concerned he wouldn’t quit the race. Many others were hoping he would stay in the race and argued passionately with me when I said he needed to step aside.
Regardless, Biden knew he didn’t have to step away and apparently pushed back against the idea quite strongly for several weeks. I think he thought he wasn’t doing quite as badly as others did. And I think he was concerned Harris or any other candidate might have trouble beating Trump. And after the debate he wanted to try to bounce back and show the country it was just one bad night and that he still had what it took. But obviously he did not.
It took some time for the polls and poll averages to catch up, and Biden didn’t lose as much support as many, like myself, expected right away. So insiders (e.g., Pelosi) had to show him a lot of polling and other data to c0nvince him it was a hopeless case. They eventually convinced him, but it was never a sure thing and certainly not a coup.
I’m sure after the election is over Frontline or some other venue will do a documentary about it and I suspect it will show that Biden came very close to staying in.
NO MALARKEY
Trump’s latest insane bleat on his Pravda network:
Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she “A.I.’d” it, and showed a massive “crowd” of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane. She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the “crowd” looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake “crowds” at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING – And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!
I really wish more voters understood how unhinged this guy is becoming. I guess we can add conspiracy theorist to his résumé.
He is also now calling the VP “Kamabla”. When he first wrote it, I thought maybe it was a typo. But he’s been repeating it. Is this guy in 6th grade or something? I wouldn’t be surprised if he starts singing “neener neener neener” at Harris.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by his childish behavior. About a year ago, on a conservative forum on Reddit there was a thread marked as “satire” in which people were making political jokes — about Democrats, of course. I sarcastically asked if Trump (in his pending trials) would be tried as an adult. I was, of course, promptly banned from the forum. No jokes allowed about the Dear Leader in conservative forums, apparently. I should have known better, I suppose, but I thought conservatives didn’t believe in censorship.
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For the Minnesota cases, the reports didn’t give many details, but did say that the infants had severe fetal anomalies which would impact viability. The others were described as not viable due to extreme prematurity or otherwise non-viable.
From Factcheck.org:
in terms of a baby’s viability — the ability to survive outside the womb — one 2015 study in the New England Journal of Medicine on preterm births said: “Active [lifesaving] intervention for infants born before 22 weeks of gestation is generally not recommended, whereas the approach for infants born at or after 22 weeks of gestation varies.” The study noted the “extremely difficult” decision on whether to use treatment for infants “born near the limit of viability,” saying that while in some cases treatment is clearly indicated or not, “in many cases, it is unclear whether treatment is in the infant’s best interest.”
There are any number of reasons why some fetuses are non-viable. In many of these cases, the outcomes are quite horrific and can cause terrible suffering (e.g., anencephaly). I don’t know what happened in these specific cases — and the report doesn’t say — but most likely these were extremely tough outcomes for the families and the health workers. In situations where the condition is deemed nonviable, providing palliative or comfort care rather than aggressive life-saving measures may be the compassionate choice.
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For one thing, Biden only announced he was not going to run 18 days ago. Harris was the presumptive nominee only 2+ weeks ago. I would imagine she’s been focusing day and night on making a whirlwind number of important decisions regarding who should run the campaign, strategy, events, who the VP should be, doing the events, not to mention spending time shoring up support of delegates, other Democrats, etc.
I’m not Harris’ apologist, but now that she probably has many of the major strategic issues sorted out, I would imagine she’ll hold a press conference or interview(s) soon.
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Another update: Trump repeating his fiction about “Post birth abortion”, as he said at the debate: “The doctor takes the baby when it’s born, and they set it on the table and let the mother decide, and then if she decides she doesn’t want it THEN THEY KILL IT”.
Is he a moron or a liar? The answer is obvious: both.
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Update from today: his crowd was “bigger than Martin Luther King’s”. JFC this guy is so insufferable.
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