The cult loves what you are about to see. Of course they do. They’ve gone way beyond bread and circus and straight into fantasy, which is where I imagine this race will stay. Eight out of ten Trump supporters polled believe he’ll beat Kamala Harris handily. Right now Harris has tremendous momentum with a solidly consolidated Democratic base and energized Independents — not to mention Republicans who have had enough and want Trump gone so their party can rebuild. So what is Team Trump doing to combat this new set of circumstances. Evidently he thinks that he and Elon reprising Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor (albeit to 70’s music) is a great idea. Check out this masterpiece.
Donald lacks the self-awareness to realize that using AI only reminds people that the real things are lumpy and lethargic.
— Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) August 14, 2024
This AI is all fun and games, but Trump’s accusations about Kamala’s non-existent AI have a much darker purpose: to pave the way for *stollen* election claims. Again.
Trump’s claims were pathetically easy to debunk. As the Washington Post’s Philip Bump noted, the reflection on the plane didn’t show the crowd because it was angled away from the platform where Harris and other Democrats spoke. “No AI,” wrote Bump. “No whistleblowing maintenance worker, ginned up from the ether to make the claim of dishonesty seem more credible. And no ‘cheating’ by Harris.”
All of this was so weird that novelist Stephen King — himself a master of horror fiction — wondered whether Trump’s surreal fabulism could possibly be real. “If it is,” he wrote on X, “Trump has really lost it.”
But Trump’s rally-crowd-denialism was also a warning of a different sort:
The former president is openly laying the groundwork for challenging the legitimacy of the November election.
After claiming that Harris had “CHEATED at the airport,” Trump telegraphed his other message: “This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING – And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box.”
Trump has been workshopping his claims that Harris’s candidacy is illegitimate; he has already suggested that the replacement of Joe Biden with Harris was somehow “unconstitutional.” (It wasn’t, because the Constitution is silent on party nominations.) In his weekend rant, Trump suggested that Harris “should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”
In the 2020 race, Trump used the lie that the election had been stolen to incite a violent attack on the nation’s Capitol; now he and his allies have the added advantage of an infrastructure for sowing chaos the next time around.
One of Trump’s campaign managers, Chris LaCivita, has already made it clear that Trump may fight the outcome of the election long after November 5. “It’s not over until he puts his hand on the Bible and takes the oath,” LaCivita said in a recent interview with Politico at the Republican National Convention. “It’s not over on Election Day, it’s over on Inauguration Day.” An investigation by Rolling Stone last month found that nearly 70 pro-Trump election deniers serve as election officials in key battleground counties.
In Georgia, Trump supporters on the state election board have adopted rules requiring “reasonable inquiry” before election results are certified, a move that could give GOP county-election-board members the ability to reject the 2024 election’s outcome. And as The Guardian reports, the lawyer and Trump ally Cleta Mitchell “has spent the last few years building up a network of activists focused on local boards of elections.” At the national level, the Republican National Committee says that it hopes to mobilize 100,000 volunteers, including thousands of poll watchers, to focus on “Democrat attempts to circumvent the rules.” Meanwhile, one RNC senior counsel for election integrity, Christina Bobb, was criminally indicted earlier this year for her role in trying to overturn the 2020 election (she pleaded not guilty).
Then there is the mood of the MAGA base. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election have become a litmus test in the GOP, and a recent Pew Research Center poll found that although 77 percent of Democratic voters believe that the election will be conducted “fairly and accurately,” less than half of Republican voters have faith in the system. Despite Harris’s recent surge, the majority of Trump supporters are confident that he will be victorious. (A recent YouGov poll found that nearly eight in 10 Trump supporters think he would win if pitted against Harris.) Trump fully intends to stoke his supporters’ disbelief and anger at the possibility that he could lose.
As Wehner warned recently: “If you have friends who are Trump worshippers, a word of counsel: They’re heading to a very dark place psychologically … They felt this race was won; now it’s slipping away. Expect even greater self-delusion and more toxic rants.”
In other words: A Trump facing defeat could be even more dangerous this year than he was in 2020, because the personal stakes for him are higher than ever:
Trump is already a convicted felon, but if he wins, he can make many of the remaining criminal cases against him go away. If he loses, he faces not only personal humiliation but also a potential legal nightmare. This makes Trump a desperate man—and that desperation could drive his actions even after the final votes are cast.
It’s clear as glass what Trump is doing. Bernie Sanders joins a plethora of political analysts in saying the exact same thing. Trump cannot lose. He can’t handle it psychologically and he can’t handle the legal ramifications of losing. Meanwhile, he does nothing of substance to change his situation. Although I do believe he may well can his campaign managers. That would at least give him the feeling that he was doing something productive and placate MAGA, who is calling for their heads on a platter daily.
They could have picked a nicer background for that video. Just sayin’…:)
Trump suggested that Harris “should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”
Then he has this posted.
You can’t make this up.
Well, as long as those “election officials” hold up ALL results–not just the presidential race but congressional house races and US Senate races–then fine. By holding the latter races hostage as well, those individuals will not be allowed to take their House or Senate seats on January 3rd.
But, if a single one tries to hold up certifying the presidential race without also holding certification of other races (as well as amendments/other ballot issues), then the State’s top election official should order each and every last one of them to be arrested for dereliction of duty and have their jobs invalidated. They have ONE job and that is to report the results that they receive. Unless there is DEFINITE evidence of election fraud or tampering (which is why ALL races on the ballot would have to be held up), they have NO legal right to refuse the certification. And the sooner these “election officials” are held to task to DO THEIR JOBS based on the LAW (eff their “feelings”), including threat of arrest and prison time for their own fraud, the better.
Mirror accusations: a nazi tactic that accuses others of doing things they have never done or will do, but the accuser either HAS DONE OR WILL DO IN THE FUTURE. Phuck these magats. They are nazis.
Sir Barry is still with his, as are the Gibb copyrights. I wonder if these two bothered to obtain permission?