The fraudulent Jan 6 committee ends with a whimper----a subpoena for Trump that will never be complied with and the committee is now defunct. ---(it always was)
'He's drowning in himself: Bob Woodward releases full Trump tapes — and it's even worse than you might think Woodward told Dickerson, "When you hear this voice and the way he assesses situations and himself, he's drowning in himself." Yes, he is — and he's taking the country down with him. Trump: Want to know something? Everything is mine.
Newsweek Magazine Sweet Revenge: What Trump Would Do in a Second Term By David H. Freedman On 10/26/22 https://www.newsweek.com/2022/11/04/sweet-revenge-what-trump-would-do-second-term-1754654.html The events of recent months have quashed any remaining notion that Donald Trump might abandon his quest for political power after being turned out of office by voters two years ago. He is still holding his trademark rallies, sometimes complete with QAnon call-outs, in principle to support Republican candidates but in practice holding on to center stage to hawk his own accomplishments and grievances. The former president has had plenty of help in staying in the public eye. The House's January 6 Committee recently voted to subpoena him to testify. The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, his home in Palm Beach, Florida, in search of classified documents he kept after leaving office. And multiple other legal woes have ensured that some news of each day features Trump. President Donald Trump's second term. Photo-illustration by Newsweek; Source photo by David Hume Kennerly/Getty A Trump bid for the White House in 2024 is looking increasingly likely. Despite his legal troubles, he remains a strong favorite among Republicans, of whom only a quarter prefer that he sit the next one out, according to a September poll. A criminal charge against Trump would barely shake the devotion of his political base, the same poll says; judging by the reaction to the Mar-a-Lago raid, it might even fire up his supporters all the more. Not even a conviction, complete with a prison sentence, need prevent him from running: Eugene V. Debs, a labor activist, ran for president in 1920 while serving a six-month sentence for his role in a railroad strike. If Trump does run and his opponent is Joe Biden, he'd win, according to at least one recent poll. As the possibility of a potential Trump second term presents itself, more Americans will wonder—or worry, given that 61 percent, mostly Democrats and independents, don't want him to run—what the 45th President of the United States might do as the 47th president. In recent speeches, Trump has conjured a dark vision, reminiscent of the American carnage speech he gave at his inauguration in 2017: an America going up in flames with the blessings of a cabal of progressive Democrats and their puppet masters. "There is no higher priority than cleaning up our streets, controlling our borders, stopping the drugs from pouring in and quickly restoring law and order in America," Trump said in a speech this summer. "Despite great outside dangers, our biggest threat in this country remains the sick, sinister and evil people from within." The specifics of Trump 47's policies—to the extent that Trump bothers with policies—are a matter of speculation. But some broader actions seem certain, according to current and former Trump insiders interviewed by Newsweek: avoiding his first-term approach of appointing people who might protect him from his worst instincts and instead packing the administration with loyalists; trying to get a firmer grip on the military with an eye to consolidating power; drastically shrinking the civil service and throwing a steady diet of red-meat culture-war goodies at his base. These policies would open the door even wider than it already is to the disenfranchisement of voters, including Blacks, LGBTQ people and Native Americans. The FBI, Internal Revenue Service and the military could be harnessed to harass or imprison his political enemies. Foreign policy would be turned on its head, as Trump resumes his antagonism toward allies in Europe and renews his friendship with Vladimir Putin. And basic democratic norms, such as the constitutional prohibition of a third presidential term, could give way. In other words, it would be classic Trump—but more so, and with fewer obstacles standing in his way. "If you thought it was insane during his first term, you haven't seen anything yet," says Reed Galen, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a Republican-run political action committee that opposes Trump and Trumpism. Donald Trump makes the keynote speech on the last day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in 2016. David Hume Kennerly/Getty Advisors Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump on the south lawn of the White House in November 2020. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Mar-a-Lago. Joe Raedle/Getty Pages from the FBI’s search warrant affidavit for the raid on Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago. Mario Tama/Getty A Cabinet of Cronies Mired as he may still be in criminal investigations, and possibly having been charged with crimes and conceivably even convicted, Trump's very first move at regaining the presidency may well be to pardon himself, along with family members and key friends and supporters, from all crimes. He has already stated he would pardon the January 6 insurrectionists, and he might use pardons throughout a second term to thrill his base with impunity from disruptive or even violent acts of protest, or a rebellion that might otherwise be prosecutable. While pardoning himself would make most of his criminal problems evaporate, state charges—such as those brewing in Georgia over his pressure to overturn the 2020 election results—are immune to presidential pardons. But the Supreme Court is likely to ensure that state charges, as well as any civil complaints pending against him, would be put on hold during his second term. "As long as he's president, he's got pretty complete protection from legal problems," says Russ Tremayne, an associate professor emeritus of history at the College of Southern Idaho. Once the immediate threat of legal action is gone, Trump would be free to focus on filling the executive branch with supporters, from the 15 cabinet heads on down. One lesson Trump drew from his first term is to prize loyalty over all else, including political views, experience and competence, says Todd Belt, director of the George Washington University Political Management program. "He'll try to hollow out the executive branch so he can put in people who pass some sort of loyalty test," he says. "In the first term you saw people around him who were trying to save him from his own worst tendencies, but you won't see many of those next time around." Some of the likely contenders for key roles are already identifiable, says the Lincoln Project's Galen. "The people in Trump's orbit at the end of his first term were all singularly unqualified for the job," he says, "but now they'd come back with a better understanding of how to get things done." These Trump ultra-loyalists would be given key posts at the State Department, the Department of Justice, the CIA, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies. There's no shortage of people and organizations that are reportedly developing lists of Trump loyalists suitable as second-term political appointees. They include the America First Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation, both dedicated to empowering Trump, and Ginni Thomas, spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, among others. "I spent basically the final year of his first term mapping out a second-term agenda," says Brooke Rollins, director of the Domestic Policy Council during the Trump administration. She is now president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, which has close ties to Trump. "I'm hoping that on day one of his second term we'll be ready with an even more productive and compelling way to serve the American people." She offers former oil lobbyist David Bernhardt, who served as Trump's Interior Secretary, as an example of the sort of people who are likely to be reinstalled and who now better know their way around government. Bernhardt opened more public land to oil and gas drilling, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, relaxed energy-industry regulation and weakened endangered species protections. Trump must have liked his work: He was designated to take over the government in the event of a catastrophe during Trump's 2020 State of the Union Address. Among those likely candidates for top White House and cabinet positions: Stephen Miller, who served in Trump's White House as a speechwriter and policy advisor and was the architect of many anti-immigrant stances and policies; former general and Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, a QAnon supporter who pled guilty to lying to the FBI before being pardoned by Trump; Jeffrey Clark, a former assistant attorney general for the DOJ who actively plotted to override Biden's election win and whom Trump tried to name attorney general until the threat of mass DOJ resignations intervened and Kash Patel, former Trump acting United States secretary of defense, who has been dedicated to raising support for various Trump causes, such as building a fund to sue journalists and writing a children's book that portrays the Russian election interference investigations as a nefarious plot to undermine Trump. The U.S. Constitution requires that top cabinet officials be confirmed by the Senate, but Trump is unlikely to have the strong Republican majority he'd need to make that process go smoothly. He will likely follow his first-term playbook in leaving many of his appointees in acting capacities rather than seeing them blocked in the Senate, says John Bolton, who was Trump's national security advisor until he resigned in 2019 after 18 months. "He'll fill his administration with flunkies who will never get confirmed," says Bolton. "In the national security field, I couldn't name three people who would even be willing to consider being part of a Trump second term." Even if Trump does manage to get some nominees confirmed, he adds, they aren't likely to last long given the high rate of turnover in Trump's first administration. As acting officials, Trump's appointees will be able to carry out a deep purge of government. His acting cabinet officials would install loyalists in the top level of the civil service who would in turn appoint other loyalists under them, comprising as many as 4,000 political appointees across the federal government. Trump has already tipped his hand about how he plans to dismantle the "deep state," an imagined army of liberals permeating government down through the civil service that's prepared to undermine conservative values at every turn. In late October 2020, during the closing days of the term, the Trump administration issued a new job classification for civil service employees: the Schedule F appointment, which allows the reclassifying of tens of thousands of civil-service jobs as positions that can help shape federal policy. Although it almost sounds like a promotion, it's anything but. Being reclassified under Schedule F would remove all civil-service protections against being fired, leaving employees vulnerable to the political whims of their superiors, just as any political appointee might be. Upon gaining the presidency, Biden immediately got rid of Schedule F, but Trump could simply bring it back. One result, says Rollins, would be to disempower the federal government in some areas and shrink it. "There'll be a return to across-the-board deregulation," she says. The plan would have a devastating impact on broad swaths of federal employees, claims Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union. "The non-political civil service will be destroyed, and government will be filled with administration flunkies," he says. "You can expect overt discrimination against Blacks, Jews, Latinos, and gays and lesbians. It's going backwards decades." Kelley adds that the attack on the civil service will be the leading edge of a broader dismantling of government programs that will see the privatization of Medicare, Social Security and other services. Rollins, though, sees it differently. "Toward the end of the first term, we figured out how to root out decades of federal agency growth that happened under both parties and how to deconstruct it in a productive way," she says. "The bureaucracy morphed into having a goal of protecting the bureaucracy, instead of serving the American people. Schedule F is a small part of giving the CEO of the federal government a way to ensure that his team of 2-million-plus people is aligned with his mission." Another former senior administration official, who asked not to be named, dismisses complaints about Schedule F as the product of entitlement. "Civil service bureaucrats lose their minds over many things," the former official says. "If you take their parking space they act like their pet's head fell off." Stephen Miller. Anna Moneymaker/Bloomberg/Getty A stretch of the U.S. border near San Luis Rio Colorado, in Mexico. Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Presidents Trump and Putin. Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP/Getty The attack on the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021. Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Consolidating Power Once surrounded by loyalists, Trump would likely embark on a spree of executive orders intended to undo as many of the Biden administration's accomplishments as possible. "When you get a second bite at the apple, you have to move fast before the other side has a chance to build up resistance," says the Lincoln Project's Galen. Executive orders allow the president to alter the shape of everything from economic policy to trade to social welfare without having to persuade Congress to pass laws. Trump issued 220 executive orders as president, compared to the 147 Barack Obama issued in his first term. Executive orders often end up in a gray area of the Constitution that puts them in conflict with the rights of Congress to govern the country through lawmaking—for instance, one of Trump's first executive orders was a failed attempt to undo Obamacare. Trump's orders in a second term will likewise be challenged in a stream of lawsuits. But given that Trump himself appointed about one quarter of the federal judges currently serving, including half of the Supreme Court's six-justice conservative majority, those orders might fare reasonably well. Next up in Trump's efforts to consolidate power would probably be to exert more control over the military. The Constitution forbids U.S. presidents from using the military domestically and, by longstanding tradition, from deploying federal law enforcement agencies to further political agendas. But in 2020, during his first term, Trump used Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, as well as Customs and Border Protection agents, to monitor—and in some cases confront and detain—Black Lives Matter protesters. As many as 700 agents were deployed in Washington, D.C., alone. After the bizarre photo op alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, after police violently cleared protesters from Lafayette Square near the White House, Milley later reportedly said he feared Trump would try to stage a military coup to stay in office after losing the election. Milley apologized for participating in the photo op. In a second term, Trump might do much more to try to bend the military to his will, and to mobilize federal law-enforcement agencies to harass those he perceives as enemies. He would start by trying to fire and replace as many military leaders likely to resist him as possible, insists Tremayne. "He would absolutely be able to put in people who are loyal to him in the military," he says. To help bring the military under his influence, Trump would probably throw a lot of money at the Pentagon's budget, notes Aaron Friedberg, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University and a former Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs. "I suspect defense spending would be a high priority," he says. Trump would also quickly clean house at the DOJ, including purging the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies, and installing leaders bent on investigating Democratic opponents and putting on shows of force against liberal protests. "More than anything else, Trump wants revenge," says Bolton. The election loss in 2020 and various investigations into his actions have left Trump highly motivated to combat any perception of his being a loser, says Bolton. The results would turn various arms of government into instruments of Trump's ire and insecurity. "He'll direct the Justice Department and the IRS to control and harass his political opponents," says Galen. "Who will tell him that he can't?" Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has said as much out loud. John Bolton. Mark Wilson/Getty The Supreme Court on October 7, 2022. Eric Lee/Bloomberg/Getty America Abroad Once he's remade the government, Trump will look overseas for opportunities to exercise his power and influence. In a second term, he might well follow through on his threats to pull out of NATO, as well as ending commitments to various allies around the world, including Japan and South Korea. "I think he might try to get the U.S. out of these alliances," says Princeton's Friedberg. "He never expressed any interest in or understanding of them." A spokesperson for the Center for Renewing America, another organization with close ties to Trump, puts it this way: "He wants to end overseas entanglements, like the idea that we need to jump in on the Ukraine conflict and shovel money at them." Trump 47 would take an even tougher line on China than 45, says Friedberg, and for that reason might even strengthen commitments to protect Taiwan. He would also likely continue to treat Putin as a potential ally. "Trump seemed eager to cultivate his favor," Friedberg says. "He claims he'd do a lot to help Ukraine, but I'm skeptical. I think he'd be sympathetic to Putin's arguments." But Trump's impulsiveness, he adds, makes it impossible to predict what he would do in a given scenario. Bolton attributes Trump's unpredictability in foreign affairs to his limited ability to grasp them. "When I was his national security advisor, he didn't seem to understand what I was saying in many areas," says Bolton, invoking Rex Tillerson, Trump's first secretary of state, who reportedly called Trump a "moron" after a Pentagon meeting. (Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly claimed the phrase was "fucking moron.") Says Bolton: "I'd point to Rex Tillerson's iconic two-word description of Trump, and I don't know that that's changed." Bolton argues that Trump's weak mastery of international relations could be disastrous for America and the world if a nuclear crisis emerges during his second term—an increasingly likely prospect, given Putin's ongoing threats to use nukes against Ukraine. "Trump would be dangerous because he doesn't understand what nuclear weapons mean in national security strategy," he says. "There would be a meltdown in the Oval Office." Nor would Trump bring much nuance to foreign trade, Bolton adds. "His approach would be to try to make deals that are bigger and better than anyone else's," he says. "He wanted the publicity from making the deal of the century with China, but it didn't work. He couldn't define the deal of the century." Most likely, says Friedberg, Trump would just resume heading down the protectionist path of his first term by trying to extract concessions, mostly from U.S. allies, wielding the threat of tariffs. President Trump in the Oval office with Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon in January 2017. Pete Marovich/Bloomberg/Getty Trump holds a rally in Arizona in January 2022. Mario Tama/Getty The Agenda Egged on by his base and by ideologues and trusted advisers like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, who served briefly as a Trump White House strategist, Trump would double down on his culture-war, hot-button agenda. He's as much as said he intends to continue the controversial policies of his first term. "We would continue what we're doing, we'd solidify what we've done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done," Trump told The New York Times' Peter Baker in August, 2020. Among the likely agenda items: ▸ The Economy: The America First Policy Institute's Rollins describes the core of Trump's planned second-term economic policy in one phrase: "More tax cuts." She adds: "But it won't be complete austerity. He'll be looking at infrastructure investments, and ways to restore the flow of capital into America's forgotten communities." She says Black and Hispanic communities would benefit from these programs, which would encourage investment in local businesses. ▸ Immigration: Trump might finally get to build his wall. "He'd definitely try," says George Washington's Belt. "Authoritarians love monuments to themselves." Rollins agrees it's a sure thing: "It's 100 percent he'll build it," she says. More troublingly to those outside his base, Trump would enact ever harsher policies aimed at keeping would-be immigrants out and deporting undocumented immigrants. "He'd go out of his way to detain people, to separate families, and to ship people back across the border," says Galen. "It would be a big increase in scale and speed compared to his first term, with Trump exerting government authority wherever he could." These efforts would take a big toll on farmers, many of whom are heavily dependent on undocumented workers—but farmers tend to be Trump supporters, so they won't pressure him much to ease up. ▸ Environment: Trump's policy here would be simple enough, says Belt. "He'll cancel all U.S obligations on slowing climate change," he says, "and open natural gas and oil exploration, along with clean coal." Subsidies and tax breaks for electric cars and other green-energy initiatives would go out the window. ▸ Religion: "We'll see prayer in schools, and the Supreme Court will say it's OK," says Galen. "Trump doesn't care one way or another about religion, to him it's just about power. If his evangelical base wants it, then sure, they can have it as a reward for their support." Religious groups would also receive support from the Trump administration in their efforts to ban birth control and discriminate against gay and trans people, including giving states the right to ban gay marriage. The Supreme Court may be ready to let it happen. In addition, Rollins says a second Trump administration will push to support charter schools, many of which are religious. "Especially after the COVID years, we see a lot more interest in that from parents," she says. ▸ Healthcare: Trump will take another run at Obamacare, says Rollins. That's in spite of previous attempts that failed for lack of any clear alternative. "We're building out a healthcare plan that, unlike Medicare-for-all or socialized medicine, will begin to focus on cost and putting the patient and doctor back in charge of the system." ▸ Election rights: There's little doubt that a second Trump administration would push hard to make voting as restrictive and inconvenient as possible, fighting to eliminate all forms of voting other than filling out a paper ballot at a polling place on election day. The stated reason would be to prevent the sort of massive fraud that Trump contends cost him the 2020 election, though the claims of election fraud, made without evidence, have been thoroughly debunked. The real goal of the push for restrictions would be to favor Trump-supporting candidates, because historically raising barriers to voting tends to cost Democrats more votes than Republicans. And, of course, Trump will fight any effort to restore abortion rights or restrict gun rights, says Rollins. "These differing-values issues will take center stage," she says. Trump in the White House in July 22, 2020. Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg/Getty A demonstrator in front of Trump Tower in New York City in August. Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Beyond A Second Term One fact might haunt Trump during a second term: the U.S. Constitution specifies that it would be his last. But could he find a way to stay in power? A Constitutional amendment removing the limitation of two presidential terms is virtually out of the question, given that it requires a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress or a constitutional convention requested by two-thirds of the states. That means any scenario in which Trump stays in power would have to involve some sort of extraordinary disruption to the democratic process of choosing and transferring power to a new president. That could take the form of a mass insurrection: a Trump-declared, military-backed national emergency in which new elections are suspended or the results thrown out because of alleged fraud. That America might in six years be going down one of these paths almost beggars belief. But it's possible Trump might do his best to engineer it and in some ways he has been laying the groundwork, says Belt. "If we have a second Trump presidency, he will have ridden in on a tide of distrust in our electoral institutions," he says. "America will have already gotten to a point where that sort of authoritarianism is a possibility." Tremayne draws parallels between Trump and Juan Perón, the president of Argentina who managed to serve four terms between 1946 and 1974, maintaining power intermittently not only through elections but through a military coup that first helped him come to prominence and later, when he was in jail, by bringing masses of working-class supporters into the streets. At times he effectively retained power even when he was not president. Trump may be well on his way to amassing a similar type of fanatical support, which might allow him to defy the norms of democracy and retain power, notes Tremayne. "Whoever controls the mobs in the street has the biggest military," he says. "Trumpism is like Peronism. Seventy percent of Republicans in Idaho don't think Biden is the legitimate President. Democracy may already be toast." Bolton, too, can envision Trump trying to hang on past a second term. But he also suggests an alternative, far more benign vision of how Trump might cope with the hard stop that in principle awaits him at the end of that term. "In a second term, Trump will start thinking about his legacy," he says. "He doesn't want to go down in history as a loser. And because his supporters can't vote for him anymore, he won't care what they think." Liberated from having to play to his base, says Bolton, Trump may attempt to establish himself as someone who can restore balance to a deeply polarized America, putting behind him the fact that he himself is responsible for much of that polarization. "People think Trump is a conservative, but he's not," says Bolton. "Jared [Kushner, his son-in-law and former advisor] and Ivanka [Trump, his daughter and former advisor] are basically Manhattan liberals. If they said to him his next Supreme Court nomination should be a liberal, he might listen." The notion that Trump has been playing at being an arch-conservative to fire up his base isn't that fantastic; he was a registered Democrat for eight years until 2009. A Trump 47 who dropped his flamethrower to pick up a fire extinguisher might be a possibility. He showed hints of being a bridge-builder early in his first term. Bolton is quick to hedge that bet. "In the Trump universe," he says, "you can't rule anything out." President Donald Trump's second term. Photo-illustration by Newsweek; Source photo by David Hume Kennerly/Getty
'I Ran Twice, I Won Twice': Trump Rallies Iowans Ahead of Midterms Warped by His Election Lies Former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a rally in Sioux City, Iowa, Nov. 3, 2022. Charlie Neibergall—AP By Brian Bennett November 3, 2022 https://time.com/6228686/trump-rally-iowa-election-lies/ SIOUX CITY, Iowa—Two years after declaring victory in an election he had lost, former President Donald Trump made clear in Iowa Thursday night that he would never accept the result and that none of his supporters should either. “Your favorite President got screwed,” Trump said to the crowd, apologizing to the children in the audience for his language. Trump took the stage in Sioux City, his first in a final sweep of rallies before the Nov. 8 midterms, on the two-year anniversary of the 2020 election. His refusal to admit defeat has since been fully embraced by the Republican Party, and has set the stage for Trump-aligned candidates in communities across the country potentially refusing to concede next week. Trump became visibly irritated as he described a recent court decision in Pennsylvania about undated mail-in ballots. Trump claimed that if that same decision had been applied to ballots in 2020, he would have won instead of Joe Biden. “This is a very unfair thing to your favorite President but what the hell, I’ve been treated so unfairly,” Trump said. That sense of grievance over the last election was palpable at the rally. Charles Hibbs, 67, who traveled to Iowa from White River, South Dakota, described Nov. 3, 2020, as “the night it was stolen from him and robbed from us.” The retired middle school football coach said Republican secretaries of states and governors in key states should have done more to reverse the election results. If Trump was still President, Hibbs said, “we would be a nation free of enslavement from the federal government.” Trump spoke for over an hour donned in a red “Make American Great Again” hat, as a brisk wind blew off the Iowa plains into the Sioux City Gateway Airport, whipping flags, wafting the smell of nearby Porta Pottys over the crowd, and wobbling Trump’s teleprompters. “I’m getting seasick,” Trump joked. He advocated for widespread overhauls of how elections are conducted around the country, calling for replacing electronic voting machines with paper ballots and only allowing voting on Election Day except for people who are “legitimately sick.” “If you vote on Election Day, that’s better, it’s much harder for them to cheat,” Trump said. “We’re just five days away from the most important midterm election in American history.” He urged the crowd, to “volunteer as an election worker, poll watcher or poll challenger.” Trump’s comments come at a moment of heightened tension around the elections, as local officials around the country brace for candidates and their supporters potentially questioning the legitimacy of the outcome, and for a possible surge in political violence. In Arizona, a federal judge set limits for how citizens can act around ballot drop-boxes after people with weapons were found to be intimidating voters. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was released from the hospital on Thursday after undergoing surgery for a head injury, the result of a home intruder who had hoped to question and torture the Speaker of the House attacked him with a hammer. Trump’s lies about elections began well before 2020. Four years earlier, after he won the presidency by securing the most electoral college votes, he quickly began spreading a lie that millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally had voted for Clinton, as a way to explain why her popular vote tally was higher than his. In the run up to the 2020 election, he falsely said that mail-in ballots were more vulnerable to fraud, sowing unwarranted distrust in ballots that were counted after those cast on Election Day in some states. After losing his reelection bid, Trump broadcast a string of falsehoods about voting machines being tampered with, ballot boxes being stuffed, and legions of dead people voting for Biden. None of his claims held up to scrutiny in court or from Bill Barr, his own attorney general during the election. Years of Trump’s election lies have helped distort the American political system to his advantage, while leaving millions of his supporters distrustful of provable facts. The election denials have seeped into American politics at every level over the past two years. Six out of 10 American voters will see the name of at least one Republican who denies the 2020 election result on their ballot on Nov. 8, according to a tally by FiveThirtyEight. Republican Senator Ron Johnson embodied that party-wide shift while speaking with reporters in Wisconsin this week. Johnson not only refused to say he would accept the results on Tuesday no matter the outcome, his response took a conspiratorial turn. “Is something going to happen on Election Day?” he mused, according to the Washington Post. “Do Democrats have something up their sleeves?” Significant damage to American democracy has already been done, argues Jessica Levinson, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School. “In a lot of ways, our democracy is not what it was a decade ago. This is not your grandfather’s democracy,” Levinson says. She describes the argument Trump and some current Republican candidates have been making as “if I win, trust the vote. If I lose, there’s massive fraud.” That, Levinson says, “is not an argument you can make in a truly democratic system.” Jamie Deeds, who brought her son, 11, and her daughter, 13, to the rally, knows something about how elections are conducted. She was a poll worker in Iowa during the 2020 election and is confident the count she helped oversee was accurate. “We can’t leave that polling place until all of the numbers are correct. If there’s one number off, you have to recount everything,” she says. She is less trusting of the 2020 vote in “bigger cities.” The way the vote totals swung late toward Biden on election night, as was widely predicted once mail-in ballots were counted, made her question the result. She said she saw reports about fake votes and dead people voting and thought it was “sketchy.” Even after those allegations were adjudicated in court and largely dismissed for lack of evidence, she still wasn’t convinced. She says she will vote this year and will trust the local results, but that trust doesn’t extend to the national level. “I don’t think we can ever trust another presidential election,” Deeds said. The next presidential election was on Trump’s mind Thursday night. Along with encouraging the crowd to “vote Republican in a giant red wave” and endorsing Republicans on the ballot including Senator Chuck Grassley and Gov. Kim Reynolds, he also teased his plans to announce a third run for President, as he has done in previous rallies. But even in that moment, Trump felt compelled to again remind those in attendance of his view on what happened the last time he was on the ballot. “I ran twice, I won twice,” Trump said. “And now in order to make our country more prosperous, I will very very very very very probably do it again.”
‘We got cheated’: Pro-Trump online communities in disbelief over lack of a ‘red tsunami’ ‘These results are farcical. There’s no rhyme or reason’ Io Dodds San Francisco 2 hours ago https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...term-elections-trump-supporters-b2221065.html 'Definitely not a Republican wave': Lindsey Graham on midterm elections Pro-Trump online communities have reacted with dismay and disbelief to early results in Tuesday's US midterm elections, blaming voter fraud for the lack of a red wave. Before many races had even been called, users in far-right Telegram channels and bulletin boards had begun accusing Democrats and establishment Republicans of fixing the race. "These results are farcical," said one poster on The Donald, a successor to Reddit's banned TheDonald forum. "There’s no rhyme or reason. You don’t get a blowout from counties in Florida and then magically cross state lines into 'highly competitive' territory in Georgia." Another wrote: " If this doesn't turn out to be a horrible nightmare, it's going to be a real horrible nightmare. It's bothering more than 2020 ... can't help but think of it as the death bell for the empire, locked into its decline." Meanwhile, Telegram users declared themselves "beyond disgusted", "done with voting", and ready for "civil war", with one concluding: "We got cheated and rolled and there's nothing we can do about it." There is no evidence of widespread fraud in this week's elections, and claims spread by Donald Trump of suspicious activity in Arizona and Michigan remain unsubstantiated. Most states have not yet finished counting their votes, and some races remain in the balance or too close to call. 'Definitely not a Republican wave': Lindsey Graham on midterm elections Before polls closed, the mood among online Trump die-hards was jubilant. "The odds for the Republicans taking the House are 4999 to 100!!!" wrote a Telegram channel called The Patriot Voice, predicting a "red tsunami". Jack Posobiec, a pro-Trump social media influencer who played a key role in spreading false election fraud claims in 2020, told his Telegram followers: "PAINT IT RED. LEAVE EVERYTHING ON THE FIELD TODAY. NO STEP BACK. GIVE THEM MORE DEMOCRACY THAN THEY CAN HANDLE TODAY." Many people on The Donald and Mr Trump's social network Truth Social adopted Tuesday's "blood moon", in which a lunar eclipse appears to turn the moon blood-red, as a totem of Republican victory. "I think we won," said one The Donald poster, attaching a screenshot of a New York Times article about how readers could "soothe election stress". Another posted a meme referencing The Washington Post's slogan "democracy dies in darkness", adding: "LIGHTS OUT B****ES!" As Republicans romped to landslide results in Florida, conservative influencer Charlie Kirk declared: "The transformation is complete. RED STATE! Absolute collapse of the Democratic Party. Just the beginning." Mr Posobiec said: "We are looking at the possibility of a generational realignment." The Pro-Trump analyst Election Wizard shared a video of "audible gasps" from pundits on MSNBC when they saw early returns from Miami-Dade county, which swung strongly towards the GOP. "We are witnessing the real time collapse of the Democrats in Florida," said a user on The Donald. MSNBC host gasps as he reads out early results from Miami-Dade Donald Trump Jr joined in the celebrations, tweeting: "Bloodbath!!!" Yet as other states' numbers began to flag, the tone turned sour. "They keep finding votes for Fetterf*** in rigged Pennsylvania," said one The Donald user, referring to Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman. "They are 100% about to steal Georgia for [Raphael] Warnock," said another. One user was surprised by New York state governor Kathy Hochul's apparent victory, saying: "There is absolutely no fucking way in God's green earth [Kathy] Hochul has won.... the entire f***king map is red except like three counties." County by county, most of New York's districts do indeed lean Republican, but nearly 43 per cent of the state's population live in deep blue New York City. Similarly, followers of the Patriot Voice Telegram channel were aghast at the re-election of Gavin Newsom as governor of California, one of the most left-wing states in the union. His victory was called just two minutes after polls closed. "The fraud in California is so bad. No one here in California likes him. We all hate him," said one. "Everyone I know didn’t vote for that fricken loser! He stole the election just like he stole the re-call!" agreed another. Many users blamed establishment Republicans for squandering the radical energy unleashed by Mr Trump. "RNC/GOP, McConnell, McCarthy got the results they wanted," said one. "Tonight was all about splitting the party and strangling populism out of the party. And they accomplished it. Trump will run, but perhaps he should not after tonight." Another said: "Trump gave the GOP a winning message since 2015. Instead of working with him, they have worked against him every step of the way. This election just further proved that with how they did more to stop the America First candidates than they did the radical Dems."
Briefing The 2022 midterms were devastating for Trump. Here's why. What was expected to be a red wave seems more like a splash. So what happened? Jeff Swensen/Getty Images Rafi Schwartz November 9, 2022 https://theweek.com/2022-election/1018252/the-2022-midterms-were-devastating-for-trump-heres-why Election Day was supposed to be a bloodbath for Democrats. The polls said it. History said it. Republicans said it over and over again. Even the White House seemed to be setting expectations for a likely GOP blowout. And yet, as polls closed across the country, the presumptive red wave did not come crashing down with the force and electoral fury many predicted it would. Instead, in crucial race after race, Democrats appeared to largely hold their line, mitigating a round of early — and decisive — Republican wins in Florida with a series of unexpectedly strong showings in key races that would, in a true red wave, have been lost causes for the party in power. "The mood among House Republicans has quickly soured as they watch their chances for winning back the majority with large margins deteriorate," The Washington Post's congressional reporter Marianna Sotomayor shared early Wednesday. Indeed, while several crucial contests remain too close to call as of Wednesday morning,the very fact that they haven't yet been settled is a sign of just how surprisingly overconfident the predictions of a sweeping conservative majority in at least one, if not both chambers of Congress, ultimately seem to be. With some races still undecided, and likely headed for runoff elections in the coming weeks, here's what you need to know about why the red wave failed to fully form — and what that might mean for former President Donald Trump on the cusp of his presidential campaign announcement: Trump's gamble didn't pay off Though Trump remains the central animating force within the GOP, the former president's down-ticket potency is decidedly less ironclad after Tuesday night. His handpicked candidates for Senate races — who, like Trump, were "inexperienced" politically and relied heavily on their personal celebrity — have underperformed compared to other Republicans in their state, as well as against Trump's own electoral standards from two years ago. Indeed, Trump "has now presided over two disastrous midterm elections," David Plouffe, former President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign manager, told the MSNBC anchors on election night. In Georgia,former NFL star Herschel Walker appears headed for a runoff against incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, even as his fellow Republican, Gov. Brian Kemp, easily defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams shortly after polls closed. So, too, in Pennsylvania, where Dr. Mehmet Oz trailed Democrat John Fetterman despite a rancorous frontal attack from the Trump camp over Fetterman's health and ability to serve. In both those races, the GOP candidates' relative weakness within a macro-environment ostensibly in their favor is as much a statement of Republicans "flawed" candidates as it is a sign that Trump's clout in pushing his preferred candidates through a grueling primary may be a broader liability in the general election, The Washington Post reports: "It's abundantly clear Republicans would've had a better shot with a better candidate." Even in Ohio, where Trump-backed Senate candidate J.D. Vance edged out a victory over Democrat Tim Ryan, congressional races featuring more flamboyant MAGA candidates ended with crucial Democrat wins that will help blunt any possible GOP House majority. Notably, the one unambiguous Republican victory on election night came in a state where Trump had personally targeted the engineer of the sizable conservative gains: Florida. There, the groundwork laid by incumbent Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) helped GOP candidates in both Senate and congressional races sail easily to decisive wins. DeSantis himself dramatically outperformed Trump's own voting margins as he cruised to another term in office, definitively moving Florida out of the "swing state" category it had occupied over the past several decades. To the extent that Trump has remolded the GOP in his own image, party insiders will surely be looking to DeSantis as a model for how to win elections as attention shifts from toward 2024. Or more. As Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman mused in a tweet, "I never really took seriously the idea that DeSantis could beat Trump … until tonight." GOP messaging was off In the final stretch of midterm campaigning, Republicans increasingly turned to a reliable conservative narrative with which to attack their opponents: rampant crime, and the Democrats' enabling thereof. And while some Democratic candidates — notably, Ohio Senate hopeful Tim Ryan — tacked to the center in an effort to appease the premise of these attacks, the broader voting public may not have been quite as receptive as Republicans had hoped. Instead, inflation and abortion reportedly topped voters' lists of concerns, "edging out crime despite Republicans' hammering the issue," NBC reports. While momentum had swung toward Democrats in the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision that nullified Roe v Wade, it remained an open question whether that boost would continue through the summer and into Election Day itself. That was resolved when polls closed on Tuesday, as voters — including, crucially, independents — listed abortion access as a significant factor in their choice of candidates. "Abortion mattered so, so much more in this election than pundits and pollsters understood," Democratic communications strategist Sawyer Hackett tweeted. It's not just who you vote for — it's how you vote for them For the past two years, Republicans have focused on voting methodology, fueled in no small part by former President Donald Trump's conspiratorial insistence of a "stolen election" in 2020. As such, one frequent subject of attack from Republicans has been mail-in voting, which has been characterized as insecure and vulnerable to manipulation by Trump and his allies. Democrats, meanwhile, have embraced mail-in voting as the valid, secure form of casting ballots that election officials across the country confirm it is. As the overall share of voters using mail-in ballots has increased over time, Republican efforts to vilify the practice have created a dynamic in which Democrats can run up enormous margins before Election Day itself, leaving those Republicans conditioned to distrust all non-in-person methods with fewer opportunities and avenues to vote, thereby potentially depressing the GOP's overall turnout. In Arizona, where the vast majority of voters cast their ballot by mail, Republican efforts to discredit the practice collided with the realities of Election Day, when a mechanical glitch in the state's crucial Maricopa County voting machines prompted some Republicans to demand polls remain open for hours after their scheduled closing time — a request denied by a County Superior Court judge. With the contest between Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and Republican Blake Masters a virtual toss-up in the days leading up to election day, the GOP's focus on limiting their own voting capacity could very well play a decisive role in determining who ultimately comes out on top.
reps - your red wave can be found here: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...nt-realize-it-yet.352398/page-38#post-5712028
The experts have spoken — Trump is mentally Unfit By Dan Jensen | 11 November 2022, 3:00pm Donald Trump's malignant narcissism has given medical experts great cause for concern. Digital editor Dan Jensen takes a look at a fascinating glimpse into the psyche of the former President. IT’S EASY ENOUGH to simply label former U.S. President and reality TV star Donald Trump as insane. The man has demonstrated enough traits to make it seem like a fair assessment. But when a group of medical experts give their professional opinions on the man’s mental state, things start to sound scary. Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump gives several mental health professionals, along with a handful of former staffers, an opportunity to provide deep analyses of Trump’s personality and the various disorders from which they believe he suffers. But rather than just giving the viewer 83 minutes of Trump-bashing, the film serves as a stern warning of the immense dangers of putting the wrong people in positions of power. The film begins with a reminder of the lies and disinformation that spewed from the Trump Administration from day one of his presidency. The first interviewee to go on camera is former U.S. Navy senior officer, counter-terrorism expert and author Malcolm Nance, who describes the intense evaluation process undertaken by military personnel with positions of great responsibility. He then reminds us that President Trump wasn’t given any such evaluation, the election process giving him a free pass and nuclear capability being put into his hands based purely on faith. Attorney George Conway is the first on camera to discuss Trump’s malignant narcissism, a condition backed up by several psychological experts. We’re introduced to a series of experts including John Gartner, Lance Dodes and Ramani Durvasula, each delving into the mind of Donald Trump and providing professional opinions that bounce between deeply fascinating and sometimes terrifying. Straight off the bat, the Goldwater Rule is brought up — a principle of medical ethics that states ‘psychiatrists have a responsibility to participate in activities contributing to the improvement of the community and the betterment of public health, but they should not give a professional opinion about public figures whom they have not examined in person’. However, it is discussed that by putting himself into the spotlight as a complete narcissist and by his constant use of social media to share his (often controversial) thoughts, Trump has revealed more of his personality than many of the patients seen by some of the medical experts interviewed. And it’s quite interesting seeing how psychologists pick apart Trump’s mind. We know he’s a narcissist and a sadist, but here we find out the real reasons why we think that. Unfit does a fine job of backing up everything being said about Trump with archival footage from rallies and interviews showing what the experts are talking about. We also go deep into Trump’s life history and upbringing to shed a little light on why he became hungry for power and willing to do anything to attain his goals. Everything comes together well to display a psychological profile of a madman in power. But more importantly, the film serves as a dire warning about the state of our world. Another principle discussed is the Tarasoff Rule, which imposes a duty on a therapist to warn appropriate people when a patient may present a risk of harm to anyone. The documentary explores dictators throughout history and compares the behaviour of Trump to tyrants such as Hitler and Mussolini, giving valid psychoanalytical reasons why the man was such a danger as President. It also shows how easy it was for Trump to win over the public using various tricks. Learning that he studied the speeches of Hitler and mimicked some of the dictator’s methods isn’t surprising, yet still alarming. And we’re reminded that several other countries around the globe are still electing fascist madmen to ultimate positions of power, giving the viewer plenty to consider about the state of our world. As a psychological profile, Unfit is an absorbing look into the mind of a man who should never have been placed into the top job at the White House and handed nuclear launch codes. As a documentary, however, it lacks any willingness to be neutral. A good documentary should forgo bias and give both sides a chance to provide opinions, whereas Unfit doesn’t give Republicans or Trump supporters a chance to try and defend the man, which might have made for some interesting debate. A couple of the interviews could feel a tad lengthy for some viewers but they’re always followed by something to grab one’s interest back again. Those nitpicks aside, Unfit makes for some compelling viewing, especially for anyone with an interest in psychology.