Great Moments in Republican Gaslighting- Pay no attention to the liar and criminal from Mar-a-Lago
The hypocrisy and rhetorical contortions engaged in by Republicans to blame Donald Trump's problems on "Liberals" is stunning
Be kind
(of an asshole).
The funny thing about assholes
is they always end up covered in shit.
Nuclear Circus, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat
I’m constantly astonished at the depth, breadth, and volume of the lies told by Republicans in their never-ending effort to whitewash the sins of Donald Trump. It’s as if Orange Jesus is their patron saint and any effort to sully his golden showers footsteps is an affront to all good, decent, and holier-than-thou Americans.
South Dakota Kristi Noem is merely one of Mango Mussolini’s many ardent defenders (and a vice presidential hopeful should he offer it in 2024). Still, she’s able to paint Trump’s legal travails as a crusade against him by evil, America-hating Liberals.
It’s nothing the former President has done. Nuh-uh…it’s all of them dirty rotten Libruls who’ve been nipping at St. Donald’s heels like rats in a Siberian prison.
Gov. Noem has evidently not yet read her copy of the Constitution- the one every Republican comes out of the womb with. If she had, she might have done a double-take when she hit Section 3 of the 14th Amendment (emphasis is mine, for your listening and dancing pleasure):
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
There’s no ambiguity there. If a person has engaged in insurrection or rebellion, they cannot hold any elected office within the United States. Period. End of story. No questions allowed.
It’s not, “Nah, they’re good once they say 20 ‘Hail Marys,’ bugger a goat, and execute George Soros.” There are no qualifiers or ways to absolve oneself of the stain of insurrection; once you’ve engaged in an insurrection, you’re done, finished, out of order, kaput.
And yet, there’s Gov. Noem. blaming “Liberals” for “radical, unconstitutional actions?” Unless Gov. Noem is appealing to Fox News Channel’s uneducated, brain-dead base- which she is- she has no basis for making such a patently incorrect claim…although Fox News’ base IS largely uneducated and brain-dead.
Of course, when you’re running for dictator President and your drooling horde of knuckle-dragging Saxons core of supporters includes off-kilter jackasses like this…well, America might deserve you:
We shouldn’t be particularly shocked, I suppose. Not in a world where this is true:
Jake Tapper reacted to Iowa Republicans rolling with Donald Trump’s “Hitler language” after the former president’s anti-immigrant “poisoning the blood” remarks sparked condemnation that he was echoing the Nazi leader.
The CNN anchor on Wednesday cited a “shocking” Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll that shows 42% of the state’s likely Republican caucusgoers saying the GOP presidential front-runner’s comment makes them “more likely” to support him, whereas 28% said they were less likely, and 29% said it doesn’t matter.
“So, a plurality of Republican caucusgoers ... say, ‘More please, I like this Hitler language,’” he noted.
It’s been said that those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it (apologies to Georges Santayana, whom I’m truly growing tired of having to bring into the conversation…the guy deserves a break, knowhutimean??). In the case of Trump supporters- some of whom are merely misguided, but many of whom are genuinely bad/awful/wretched people- they not only don’t know history, but they also don’t give a damn about it.
What they know in their heart of hearts is that Trump is the strongman this country needs. All Orange Jesus has to do is keep ‘em scared and stupid.
IOWA CITY, Iowa — Anti-Donald Trump Republicans know they are in the middle of a critical moment to stop the former president’s political comeback. But for some, the steep cost of voicing resistance to Trump often renders them silent.
“If you go against Trump, like — you’re over,” said Kyle Clare, 20, a member of the University of Iowa’s College Republicans.
“I don’t talk about Donald Trump a lot because I’m afraid of the backlash,” said Jody Sears, 66, a registered Republican from Grimes, Iowa.
“If you would say something negative about Trump, we had one person that would just go bang for your throat,” said Barbra Spencer, 83, a former Trump voter describing her experience living in senior apartments in Spillville, Iowa.
Imagine living in a social milieu where you didn’t have the freedom to soberly consider which Presidential candidate is worthy of your vote. And imagine that who you vote for will determine whether your friends and family will talk to you…or potentially beat you to within an inch of your life.
Nothing resembling a thought process goes into this expectation, merely intense social pressure to vote for Orange Jesus because that’s the kneejerk expectation that comes with living in rural Middle America.
It’s like Fight Club; the first rule is that you vote for Donald Trump…and don’t talk about voting for Joe Biden…not if you want to remain intact.
Trump still enjoys broad popularity in the Republican Party, and that’s driving his polling leads among Republicans in Iowa, New Hampshire and every other state ahead of the 2024 primaries. But he has also used that popularity to enforce unity. And the same impulse that has led Republican officeholders to avoid criticizing Trump because of potential threats to their safety and their jobs is also holding back rank-and-file voters from opposing the former president in public with the full strength of their personal convictions.
NBC News spoke to more than a half-dozen Iowa voters turned off by Trump — but some were anxious about talking on the record out of fear of being shunned by friends or family. One Iowan said they plan on saying they caucused for Trump when asked by members of their community but will actually caucus for Vivek Ramaswamy.
These folks are so thoroughly propagandized and easily monopolized that while some might want to look beyond Trump, they can’t- and don’t- imagine voting for anyone else. To do so would risk reprisal from friends and family members. It could even cost them their livelihood in a place where jobs often aren’t easy to come by.
And so, they continue to back Donald Trump in the wake of his quoting Adolf Hitler. Some support him unreservedly and have no issue with him borrowing words and ideas from Hitler. Others may not be so sanguine about that, but what can they do? And who else will they vote for? They sure as Hell aren’t going to vote for Joe Biden (‘cuz he’s old, don’tchaknow?), and Trump wouldn’t really be a dictator…would he??
Nah….
Try that and see what it gets you. Independent thinking isn’t prized among Conservatives, where lockstep obedience is the Prime Directive and thinking for yourself can be dangerous.
“I’m just so scared of doing this right now,” [Kyle Clare, 20, a University of Iowa student] said, fighting back tears. “I want to be able to have my opinions on our politicians, and I want to be able to speak freely about them and people still understand I’m a conservative.”
Clare criticized Trump, particularly for his actions Jan. 6, 2021, saying, “The end of his administration was un-American.” He also said Trump’s supporters are in denial about losing the 2020 election.
“They don’t want to believe he lost the election. It’s hard to swallow. Losing is hard to swallow. But it’s important that when we lose, we recognize that we lost and we think, ‘What can we do better next time to win over Americans?’” Clare said.
Clare was right to expect backlash from speaking out on Trump. After NBC News published the interview with him on a “Meet the Press” social media account, hateful and homophobic comments poured in. Clare said later that a student came up to him at a university event, shoved a phone in his face with the video on it, and asked him why he’s “scared of Trump and not scared of getting AIDS from having gay sex.”
Whether it’s South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem or random Trumpers on a college campus, truth isn’t the Holy Grail they’re chasing. Facts and reality aren’t values they’re trying to uphold. No, they’re enforcing uniformity and obedience…because independent thought is for losers and Liberals.
Those who came after Kyle Clare questioned whether he was indeed a Republican because REAL Republicans do what’s expected of them. Only soy boys, queers, and Libruls even consider voting for someone other than Orange Jesus.
The expectation is that they’ll vote for Donald Trump because there might be consequences for those who attempt to think outside the box.
There’s still a significant portion of (White) America that believes the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and that Joe Biden’s victory was “illegitimate.”
Despite the absence of evidence to support this belief, 35% of Americans believed in April 2021 that Biden had won illegitimately. That’s one of three Americans, and while the numbers may be different now, that’s an alarming number who believe that the election was stolen from Donald Trump, who’s flogged that falsehood since Election Day 2020.
If Trump is the GOP nominee in 2024, which seems increasingly likely, he’ll do the same thing. He’ll lay the groundwork for a “rigged election” beforehand as he did in 2020, and he’ll claim a “stolen election” if he loses again.
STOP THE STEAL, eh? What could possibly go wrong??
About 35 percent of Americans believed in April that Biden’s victory was illegitimate, with another 6 percent saying they are not sure. What can we say about the Americans who do not think Biden’s victory was legitimate? Compared to the overall voting-age population, they are disproportionately white, Republican, older, less educated, more conservative and more religious (particularly more Protestant and more likely to describe themselves as born again).
This poll also cited, unsurprisingly, a profound educational divide that indicated Trump supporters tended to skew toward the bottom end of the educational scale.
The inescapable conclusion is that Trump supporters are, in the main, dumb and bad people. As arrogant and dismissive as that may sound, and as much as I hate to put it such stark and contemptuous terms, I’m not wrong.
Intelligent, thoughtful people don’t believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump DESPITE a complete absence of any evidence that might begin to lend the barest shred of credence to this “theory.”
There is no evidence- zero, zip, nada, bupkis- to even suggest, much less prove that the 2020 Presidential election was tainted by fraud to any degree. Worse, whatever small acts of fraud that were detected were committed by Republicans.
P.R.R.I. also tested agreement or disagreement with a view that drives replacement theory — “Immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background” — and found that 60 percent of Republicans agreed, as do 55 percent of conservatives.
The Reuters/Ipsos data showed that among white Republicans, those without college degrees were far more likely to agree “that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump,” at 69 percent, than white Republicans with college degrees, at a still astonishing 51 percent. The same survey data showed that the level of this belief remained consistently strong (over 60 percent) among Republicans of all ages living in rural, suburban or urban areas.
It’s a short distance from there to the “JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US!” chants from the Charlottesville rally.
Despite the claim from Gov. Noem that Liberals are the ones trying to “normalize” “radical, unconstitutional actions,” she’s engaging in some Josef Goebbels-level deflection. She accuses her adversaries of engaging in precisely the actions Republicans are using to deflect the focus onto Liberals and Democrats while Republicans and Donald Trump engage in their own “radical, unconstitutional actions.”
No matter how much Gov. Noem attempts to gaslight her fellow Republicans and the rest of America, Liberals and Democrats aren’t the problem. We aren’t the ones engaging in “radical, unconstitutional actions.” We aren’t the ones bullying our ideological fellow travelers into marching in lockstep. And we certainly aren’t the ones actively discouraging independent thinking by questioning someone’s sexuality.
We’re not threatened by people thinking for themselves. We know that when thinking people consider the choices before them, whatever option they choose will inevitably involve rejecting the horror show that is Donald Trump.
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