Blaming China now (no doubt posted on a phone made in China)
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1327720558193205255
Just watching one of Team Trump's key witnesses, Mellissa Carone's TV interviews. IT contractor for Dominion. She claims...
- ballots were rescanned (officials say that's standard process when there's a scanning error)
- vans she thinks were not big enough to deliver food to the workers delivered things (but she didn't see what)
- confronted her (IT) boss, who took no action
The Republican candidate is interviewed at 2:20 in this clip:
The food vans showed up, but there were too many, so they can't have had food in them, therefore the election was stolen. I'm convinced.
That interview is ridiculous, even if you believe she's telling the truth it proves absolutely nothing but the way she blinks constantly and just sounds super shifty all the way through makes even that doubtful.
It is worrying to see a mass collective delusion gaining traction across millions of people.
So they reckon they are going to be able to overturn the result by wheeling out randoms to aledge fraud, with absolutely no evidence to back up what they are saying?
Desperation doesn't even come close..
They are hoping to throw enough cases out there that one ends up with a nutter judge who will side with them and delay the process of electoral college voting.
It is worrying to see a mass collective delusion gaining traction across millions of people.
The Brexit thread is over there ===>
Fox News anchor:
‘Breaking news now’
^ these days I read that phrase in a very literal sense.
And they still say North Koreans are the brainwashed ones.
It is worrying to see a mass collective delusion gaining traction across millions of people.
Is that really what's happening though? Personally I think it's a last hope kind-of thing and will just ebb away over the coming months as reality takes hold.
On a related note - I think the media are generally doing a great job of minimising the amount of attention they are giving Trump's desperate and baseless claims - and of striking the right tone in what coverage they do give him now.
As with all news - if anyone's finding it's affecting their mood or wellbeing, I'd recommend rationing news intake and limiting to trusted sources.
Is that really what’s happening though? Personally I think it’s a last hope kind-of thing and will just ebb away over the coming months as reality takes hold.
I think it probably is but I think it's right to be concerned about the right wing media hate machine that is promoting all this stuff running rampant. We shouldn't be complacent because this is already starting in the UK too - Fox style channels are starting up very soon here.
On a related note – I think the media are generally doing a great job of minimising the amount of attention they are giving Trump’s desperate and baseless claims – and of striking the right tone in what coverage they do give him now.
Depends what media you look at. I've been mostly reading The Guardian and CNN but if you accidentally end up on right wing twitter rabbit hole it's a different world. They really are constructing their own version of reality where facts and real evidence are totally redundant.
They really are constructing their own version of reality where facts and real evidence are totally redundant.
Yep, they’ve all moved to Parler where they can wallow in bitter tears and come up with new and crazier conspiracy theories without those annoying libruls challenging them with inconvenient facts or reality.
It’s now a festering cyst that will linger on and on.
Depends what media you look at. I’ve been mostly reading The Guardian and CNN but if you accidentally end up on right wing twitter rabbit hole it’s a different world. They really are constructing their own version of reality where facts and real evidence are totally redundant.
Very noticeable when CNN etc. were interviewing MAGA march attendees yesterday that people just repeat verbatim what Trump tweets. Everyone's a voting machine security expert all of a sudden.
Will be interesting actually what Google's algorithms make of me watching right-wing news recently. Expecting some odd suggestions from YouTube.
Yep, they’ve all moved to Parler where they can wallow in bitter tears and come up with new and crazier conspiracy theories without those annoying libruls challenging them with inconvenient facts or reality.
It’s now a festering cyst that will linger on and on.
Perhaps. But if the crazies move en masse to another platform, they won’t be around the spew cynical nonsense on Facebook and Twitter.
Hopefully it just means they can stay in their self-inflicted salty box.
I think it probably is but I think it’s right to be concerned about the right wing media hate machine that is promoting all this stuff running rampant. We shouldn’t be complacent because this is already starting in the UK too – Fox style channels are starting up very soon here.
Andrew Neil?
https://www.ft.com/content/470cf7f4-59e6-47c1-9efa-ce634b7980d7
Andrew Neil is leaving the BBC to lead a rival news channel backed by the US group Discovery, which aims to bring the talk-radio spirit to UK television viewers “underserved and unheard by their media”.
GB News, a right-leaning station with Mr Neil as its chair and top presenter, plans to launch early in 2021 with a mission to rattle the BBC and upend the norms of British current-affairs broadcasting.
“GB News is the most exciting thing to happen in British television news for more than 20 years,” said Mr Neil, who has been one of the BBC’s leading political presenters and was the founding chairman of Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV in 1988.
In my estimation most Brits will increasingly take to US-style tribal politics and get their ‘news’ from the internet, the outrage-baiting brands and personalities who are entirely invested in reaping this whirlwind.
Brexit/Trumpism was surely just a taster of the swing towards Nationalist/populist rhetoric/conspiracy? I can’t see how the trend will slow as it’s only been increasing for decades.
The Orange One has gone mental on Twitter. Loads of tweets in the last hour. He must of got his phone back.
Andrew Neil
I'm not the intended audience by a long chalk, but if I was to pick anyone I'd want to be running a right-leaning news channel, he would be top of the list.
Probably the UK's best political interviewerand quite fair minded IMO.
Also, our broadcast regulations probably don't allow for anything as one-sided as Fox News is in the US.
I was looking at their site a lot during the election aftermath and it's real echo chamber stuff, but to be fair to them they stuck their neck out on the result way before many other Trump allies dared to.
His Tweets really are an insight into the diseased mind of a madman
Lionel Barbor was interviewed on Radio 4 earlier this week. He's met Trump a few times over the years and said he'd never met anyone like him. He described his narcissism as being 'off the scale' and said that he's doing this because in his own mind he simply cannot even entertain the idea that he could possibly have lost. In his mind, there has to be some other explanation for it.
Basically, he's ****ing unhinged
Struggling to understand the concept of a news channel that advertises itself as leaning one way or the other.
Struggling to understand the concept of a news channel that advertises itself as leaning one way or the other.
Look up Fox News.
The website and videos posted therein should illuminate you.
Struggling to understand the concept of a news channel that advertises itself as leaning one way or the other.
All media outlets have an editorial policy that sets the direction of the types of stories they report. The New York Times, for example, focuses on stories of national and international importance, whereas a local newspaper focuses on stories of interest in the local community. No media outlet can report on everything that happens, they have select what is relevant to their audience.
Thing to keep in mind with Fox is that there is a serious news side that has some solid journalists, plus an opinion side that hires nutty right-wingers. The journalists do report on news that is not flattering to Trump, but their editorial policy means that they are probably not as aggressive in chasing that as the Washington Post or New York Times because that's not what their audience is looking for. The reverse holds for the WP and NYT. The Fox opinion side is not constrained by facts, that's where the really unhinged stuff comes from.
quite fair minded IMO.
Not when he's using twitter.
The thing to keep in mind with fox news is that it doesn't have a serious news side so to speak, the handful of 'solid' journalists are there to supply a veneer of legitimacy to what is and always has been a conspiracy theory channel whose sole purpose is to aggitate and sow discord.
As chappers says, Andrew Neil is a highly competent interviewer but the thought occurs that he might have been put in place to provide a veneer of legitimacy that hides some pretty rotten wood beneath it. Who's to say that the new news channel starts off respectable but gradually degenerates. All fur coat and no knickers.
My guess though is that the channel will be a screen version of the Spectator, a platform for Douglas Murray and the like to spew their pseudo intellectualism. The problem with that is that it provides a pretty shallow pool of discourse,
Voice of the oppressed:
"This policeman is kicking me to death."
Voice of the Spectatorists:
"But Marxism."
Expect a lot of this sort of thing.
Look up Fox News.
When you've lost Fox News, You've lost.
And I really like Andrew Neil too and I am left-leaning. Good journalism from any side is still good.
Not when he’s using twitter
I don't use Twitter, for the sake of my own wellbeing.
I don’t have a problem at all with the idea of a right wing news channel. But Fox has simply been a GOP mouthpiece for years, and their output became increasingly fake news / alternative facts bollocks because that suited the Trump agenda. Who is funding GB News?
Who is funding GB News?
Quick Google. Maybe not as anti-mainstream as they are making out.
'GB News appears to be owned by a company called ‘All Perspectives Limited’, which is in turn equally owned by media moguls Mark Schneider and Andrew Cole.
Cole is a director and board member at Liberty Global – a multinational telecommunications company with roughly 47,000 employees. According to the trading website Wallmine, Cole is also a shareholder at Liberty, reportedly owning stock worth more than $1 million.
Liberty Global has an interest in mainstream broadcasting in the UK, owning 9.9% of ITV Plc, the company that effectively owns and operates the ITV network. There has even been speculation that Liberty could launch a full takeover of ITV, with this rumour circulating via City AM as recently as May.
Although GB News is thought to be competing more directly with Sky and the BBC – both of which boast rolling news channels – Neil’s anti-mainstream rhetoric does seem somewhat jarring, given Cole’s ties to a leading news broadcaster.'
The first county in Georgia has just completed its recount - EXACTLY the same count as the first time.
Fulton County (Atlanta) is just about to finish too.
Is there a point at which Trump's proclamations become criminal? I.e. is it a criminal activity to repeatedly claim a vote is rigged when there is irrefutable evidence it is not? Or is it a slander thing either the slander of Biden or the officials running the election votes in the different states?
The first county in Georgia has just completed its recount – EXACTLY the same count as the first time.
Well that just proves the fraud theory. How could it be exact? Well that's what the next court case will say.
As a matter of interest where did you see this? There's nothing on CNN yet.
It was on CNN news a few hours ago.
Classic Trump playbook in that "Interview" in that they don't actually have any plan, or answers, so they simply resort to shouting loudly. They might as well put their fingers in their ears and run about shouting "nah nah i can't hear you" like a 5 year old......
What is suprising is the number of people who seem to fall for that rubbish trick?
Is there a point at which Trump’s proclamations become criminal? I.e. is it a criminal activity to repeatedly claim a vote is rigged when there is irrefutable evidence it is not? Or is it a slander thing either the slander of Biden or the officials running the election votes in the different states?
I’ve been wondering this too. Surely there must come a point where he is forced to quit and admit defeat? It’s an absolute travesty.
Surely there must come a point where he is forced to quit and admit defeat?
He stops being El Presidente the second Biden is sworn in, whether he quits/admits it or not.
I hope that keep wheeling Giuliani out, he's priceless.
It’s probably been done in the Trump thread or elsewhere - but wtf happened to Giuliani? He was one of the post 9-11 heroes right? Was he actually a massive scumbag at the time but everything was overlooked in the desperate search for leadership after such a tragedy? I known it’s been getting on twenty years but jeez...it’s not ending well for him.
https://twitter.com/DevinCow/status/1328145819820703745
https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1328160949056974848
but wtf happened to Giuliani? He was one of the post 9-11 heroes right? Was he actually a massive scumbag at the time but everything was overlooked in the desperate search for leadership after such a tragedy?
I initially thought the same, felt like two different people. His daughter has been fairly outspoken about his political views and disowned him politically, I suspect that you are right and that his flaws were overlooked after 9/11
From the NYT
Timothy Naftali, a history professor at New York University, said that one way to view Mr. Trump would be as a version of Miss Havisham, the jilted bride from “Great Expectations” who lives forever in the past, never taking off her tattered wedding gown even as her house decays around her.
“He’s wearing the cloak of the presidency and he’s stuck in his room, getting dusty, while everyone else has moved on,” Mr. Naftali said.
🙂
but wtf happened to Giuliani?
His daughter thinks he's a desperate man who ran for President himself but failed (was blocked) has been married 4 times, and is trying to keep himself relevant.
Didn't Giuliani introduce greater stop n frisk powers in NY disproportionately aimed at black and hispanic people.
He's an interesting guy for sure. In the 70s and 80s he made a name for himself as a prosecutor, leading investigations that took down loads of big name NY mafia figures. First person to use the RICO laws to prosecute a major federal case. He also made a name going after corruption on Wall St (Ivan Boesky and Michael Milkin) and within politics. He was originally a registered Democrat, but switched after Reagan was elected. In 8 yrs as mayor of NY he oversaw a massive fall in crime, famously crediting his zero tolerance initiatives - however, similar falls in crime levels in other US cities at the time have led people to conclude that it was more to do with demographic changes and would probably have happened regardless of Giuliani. 9/11 happened just before he was due to leave office and he certainly came out of that well.
So up until the early 2000s he was seen as a very good thing, a crusader for justice and the rule of law. What happened to turn him into the slavering conspiracy theorist (and probable traitor) that he is today is anybody's guess.
However..
There is a theory that he allegedly colluded with Russian mobsters in the 80s and 90s to take down the mafia. There is no doubt that he had (has?) close connections with Semyon Kislin, an immigrant from the Ukraine, who is a commodities trader who donated significant sums to his campaigns and led numerous fund raising efforts. Kislin has established connections to various Russian/Eastern European gangsters. The idea is that they were well placed to be able to tip him off about various 'illegal activities' and then fill the vacuum once the Italians were removed from the scene. Whether this is true or not I don't know, but it's reasonably safe to say that he wasn't squeaky clean (then again who was, Chuck Schumer received money from this guy too).
The fact that Semyon is Ukrainian though is definitely of interest, given everything that has happened since..
I forget where I read it but Giuliani apparently ran for president and didn't do very well, his wife at the time said he never recovered from that and sited it as part of their divorce.
Members of the 11,500 for MAGA march need to work on their pop culture references.
https://twitter.com/therealKripke/status/1328006661408055296
but wtf happened to Giuliani?
Jon Oliver asked this very question 2 years ago and the answer was, "he's always been this way". Worth a watch only for some 2 year old jaw dropping interviews
In 8 yrs as mayor of NY he oversaw a massive fall in crime, famously crediting his zero tolerance initiatives – however, similar falls in crime levels in other US cities at the time have led people to conclude that it was more to do with demographic changes and would probably have happened regardless of Giuliani. 9/11 happened just before he was due to leave office and he certainly came out of that well.
So up until the early 2000s he was seen as a very good thing, a crusader for justice and the rule of law. What happened to turn him into the slavering conspiracy theorist (and probable traitor) that he is today is anybody’s guess.
My guess is that he started believing his own bullshit. I think it's pretty likely that he got lucky with the crime rate thing - he made a big show about being tough, but probably other factors were more responsible (and to be fair, this applies to most successful politicians, they take credit for stuff that was really just fortunate timing). Then the WTC attacks happened and playing up the tough guy who won't back down to terrorism was a political no-brainer. Any mayor would have done the same, even though a city mayor has absolutely no power to do anything about it. Then he seems to have just gone off the deep end with nutty stuff - he probably believed all the nonsense that people wrote about how awesome he was. Once you get that famous, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to tell you that you are on the wrong track, so he would have been surrounded by sycophants. Then he fell into Trumps reality distortion gravity well and doesn't realize that he's utterly out of touch with reality.
Then he fell into Trumps reality distortion gravity well and doesn’t realize that he’s utterly out of touch with reality.
He is now so heavily mired in foreign scandal - look at his contacts in Ukraine as just one example - that this kind of reflexive thrashing about is his only option. Perhaps he was always corrupt, but when he went all-in with Trump's particular influence-scams, he was doomed.
It's out of control over there 🙄 Not sure if this goes here, COVID or Trump threads but you have Trump's COVID advisor telling people to rise up and resist a Governor's COVID measures. Meanwhile, the President golfs and spreads conspiracy theories.
https://twitter.com/SWAtlasHoover/status/1328120887128842240
He seems like the kind of radiologist who would be disappointed if his treatment machine gets upgraded and only zaps the tumour from now on rather than your whole head.
To use those words against a state governor who has already been the subject of a kidnap/murder plot over covid restrictions...it makes you wonder how much damage this administration still has to do. Completely disgusting.
Trump's attitude to difficult policy making and governance from now on* will be like Homer's time as Sanitation Commissioner.
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* It was always thus
He switched last night. Claims many of these lawsuits are not his. Strange that all the lawsuits had 'Donald J Trump For President, Inc' written on the top 🤔
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1328100945570500608?s=21
In 8 yrs as mayor of NY he oversaw a massive fall in crime, famously crediting his zero tolerance initiatives – however, similar falls in crime levels in other US cities at the time have led people to conclude that it was more to do with demographic changes and would probably have happened regardless of Giuliani.
Agreed, he, alone with his Chief of Police pushed the 'Broken Windows' theory. It's a sort of zero-tolerance with a plan theory.
If anyone is old enough to have watched films in the 70s and 80s depicting New York (or any large US city for that matter) they were portrayed as lawless, violent places. This was pretty accurate for large parts of New York, the Bronx especially. The Broken Windows policy meant locking up people for even minor offences so the population is reassured of Law and Order, the problem being that it doesn't take long before the Police are arresting anyone for any thing and rather than feeling reassured, the majority of the population start to resent the Police and it has the opposite effect.
What really happened was in the 70s New York missed bankruptcy by the skin of it's teeth, it was the same problem being faced the world over, a massive reduction in manufacturing jobs in the west had left millions of people out of work, but worst still rendered them unskilled, or at least without marketable skills. As jobs fell, crime went up and everyone who had a job, left which only made the situation worse, by the 80s it was bad, when crack arrived it became very bad and the 'war on drugs' only made the relationship between the Police and Public worse.
What saved New York is the same thing we've seen played out in cities all over the US and here in the UK too, especially London. As traditional Blue Collar work dried up, that section of society left, it was eventually replaced by White Collar jobs.
Thanks to the 70s bail-out, Financial Control of New York was effectively handed over to it's Creditor and their developer who bought up huge amount of cheap former industrial land and low-value homes and redeveloped it. Gentrification.
'Broken Windows' didn't really reduce crime by locking more people up, or even making the existing population feel safer, it pushed the existing population out.
I thought the removal of lead from petrol also coincided with crime falls around the world...
Thanks to the 70s bail-out, Financial Control of New York was effectively handed over to it’s Creditor and their developer who bought up huge amount of cheap former industrial land and low-value homes and redeveloped it. Gentrification.
One Donald J Trump also made a load of money buying up property from a near bankrupt city.
I thought the removal of lead from petrol also coincided with crime falls around the world…
"Coincide" is closely related to "coincidence". Things can be correlated without being directly causally linked. Icecream sales are a good predictor of drownings, for example.
Scott W. Atlas though. Wow. What a name.
And he's off again on Twitter...
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1328334945148952576
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1328338241284616193
And my personal favourite - claiming reponsibility for not 1 but 2 Covid-19 vaccines...
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1328341927641681922
all took place on my watch!
Yup, true, he was watching... while a large number of his citizens died, meanwhile others were doing something about it.
"all took place on my watch" is almost the perfect example of Trump. Take responsibility for vaccines which happened "on his watch" but which he had nothing at all to do with. Refuses to take any responsibility for the quarter of a million Americans who died "on his watch", which a huge proportion can be directly laid at his door.
The Fake recount going on in Georgia means nothing because they are not allowing signatures to be looked at and verified. Break the unconstitutional Consent Decree!
The thing is there's no point, pointing out how nonsensical it would be to verify 5m signatures. It's not really why he's spouting off is it?
Yup, true, he was watching
Err.....I think you’ll find he was playing golf and/or fantasising about his own daughter.
Wants all the credit but none of the responsibility, classic
“I don't take responsibility at all,”
From the Guardian:
Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, told the Washington Post that senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina was among several members of his party who pressured him to toss out legally cast ballots so that Trump could win the state.
Was ever a narcissist so well supplied? Here’s some more. Didn’t we all know a kid at school like that? Good grief.
deleted
Re Giuliani and the NY crime rate decline
He was Mayor while it happened but several other factors may have caused it. I first read it in Freakonomics (Levitt and Dubner) but while googling for that reference instead found this
Big PA case today challenging 700k mail-in ballots. Seems to be scattergun now
https://twitter.com/MarshallCohen/status/1328557110418935809?s=19
Yes, Facebook does influence elections. Significantly, Trump's win in 2016.
#Kraken ???