Former President Donald Trump urged members of a crowd in Florida to vote and said that if he wins, they “won’t have to vote anymore.”
Speaking at a Turning Point Action event in West Palm Beach on Friday, Trump, who tried to overturn the 2020 election he lost, delivered a cryptic message.
“And again, Christians, get out and vote!” he said to a cheering audience. “Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine! You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians! I’m a Christian. I love you. Get out. You gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again.”
Your country is insane.
In any other democratic nation in the world, a politician saying this would be finished.
I hope for the sake of humanity that all the sane people in the US go out and tells everyone they know that cares about democracy and the rule of law what Trump is planning to do, especially in the swing states.
Our country is full of proudly ignorant bootlickers
Turns out all you need to do is make up some bullshit about “American dreams” and “bootstraps,” make them believe they too can (and probably already should!) be a billionaire, and the one thing stopping that are those goddamn Marxist Democrats and their “progressive taxation,” and “social safety nets for the blacks (please ignore the fact that I’m on disability, it’s different)”.
Republicans have been sabotaging our country’s own public education system for 25+ years at this point. Selling the future prosperity of our nation down the river for a voter-base with cult-like devotion, and a unique ability to ignore objective reality.
Unfortunately for the planet, it seems to have been wildly successful.
The next step is to do away with democracy altogether.
It’s been the Koch brothers and the John Birch Society’s dream (amongst others) to propagandize so many people of the “American Dream” and evils of anything other than capitalism. They were ecstatic when the Tea Party movement worked out for them, but they lost control of it with Trump. It’s a monster of their own making.
*other than WHAT THEY CALL capitalism
They look at monopolies where the market leader buys laws, lobbies for protection and muscles competition out of the game unhindered and then they decry anybody calling it out as communists or socialists or the devil or whatever other bad word is en vogue that day.
You’re almost there, comrade…
It’s not just what they call it, this is capitalism working as intended. This is the end game. Always has been. It’s just now they have the tools to essentially brainwash millions using modern tech, and a wealth disparity that has been growing constantly for what, 100 years now?
That’s why it seems different this time; they learned from past attempts. Not only can you just make them not revolt (or shit, why not just Orwell it up and make it so they don’t even think they want to), you can direct that hate, anger and vitriol at your “enemies” to sow more chaos and division.
I don’t think any of the people responsible for planning and carrying out this decades-long coup could have predicted it would be this wildly successful.
It’s like Putin tossing a million bucks to a state sponsored hacker group (because meh why not, what could it hurt?), and ending up with a fucking Manchurian candidate and an army of loyal GOP politicians terrified enough of what might leak from those hacked emails that they are literally willing to destroy their own country from the inside. Unreal.
Oh, this system is definitely doing what it’s designed to do, but “capitalism” nominally is this fair competition among equal players where the market decides which ideas and products rise to the top based on merit and whatnot. This would, however, require a level playing field which goes out of the window the moment the strongest player on the market uses their power not to provide the best products and services, but instead uses their power to solidify their top position by legal or illegal means or in ways they make legal by lobbying, bribing and otherwise convincing the legislative. The moment the biggest corporations secure themselves the cooperation of the political parties for one-sided tax cuts, bailouts, deregulation of limits and massive regulation in favour of the corporations’ goals, that is the moment where we’ve left this impossible ideal of capitalism far behind.
But yes, the monopolies reigning from the corpse of the capitalist idea while telling you that capitalism is alive and well have worked hard to shape the status quo to what it is and they are definitely pretending that this abomination perfectly encapsulates the unreachable purity of the perfectly fair notion of “capitalism” every chance they get.
Kochs lost control of Trump to the JBS types. The Kochs are more Mitch McConnell type power brokers, all about the money and corporations. JBS is more MAGA, with the heavy undercurrent of conspiracy.
Exactly - I started noticing prideful ignorance in the early 2010s. People around me made bad choices and would not be corrected. Their ignorance was just as valid as someone else’s actual knowledge. That’s when, strengthened by their own baseless pride, their shame disappeared. I’m not saying shame is good, but when it’s the only thing keeping the deplorables in check, maybe a little of it helps.
It used to be that I’m general, horrible people realised they were horrible and at least went through the motions of being decent. They were like removedroaches scurrying for the shadows when you turned on the light. Now they’re like a cat peeing on your bed - they pause long enough to lock eyes with you, then continue peeing.
Speaking optimistically, at least now we know exactly who they are.
Oh, I actually used this comparison once when such people still generally did that. They were pissed. I didn’t directly address them BTW, they decided which side they’re on for themselves.
It’s wild that all it took was one sick, deranged, racist, liar (who hasn’t been able to string together a coherent sentence since the early 90s) to lead by example…
Well, to generalize your statement a bit, I’ve had a conflict with people who thought that the only thing preventing them from living in socialist heaven were jerks like me talking about human rights, market economy, transparency, accountability, governments actually changing, putting thieves in jail and getting activists out of jail, legalization of various substances, any consensual sexual activity, privacy, freedom of speech, competitive judicial system, culture of protest, yadda-yadda once a few years …
They sincerely thought all this prevented life in my country from being good, while themselves being thieving ignorant intriguing insecure shits was normal. You know, the kind of people who contribute clearly negatively to the society, but think life is unjust to them, they should live better and somebody has stolen everything from them.
The GOP have been selling these people hope and magic since Reagan. It’s no longer about hard work for republicans, now all they have to do is destroy cities and kick out everyone they don’t like, and we will return to the magic that never existed in the 1950’s.
I hate to break it to you, but it’s not just our country.
It may be the most successful example of indoctrination of parts of the populace of a supposedly developed nation by the ruling class though.
It’s a smashing success for regulatory capture of the courts so that unlimited funds, foreign and domestic, can be legally spent on propaganda targeting fear-addicted racists.
This is lemmy, the goal is always to shit on America.
Probably because it’s one of the worst examples of many bad things. Source: am American. The only way you can avoid criticizing America as a thinking person is to focus on the ways it’s a little better than other countries. For example we mostly have clean drinking water while other countries don’t. But if you for a moment focus back on America itself it’s hard not to find things that just damned well ought to be better. Never be sick in America. Our healthcare is a pathetic piece of shit!
About the clean drinking water, the first world countries all have it though
I realize that. I should’ve said that some countries don’t have clean drinking water. For me it has been shocking when I’ve experienced that because I’m “spoiled” by safe water most places I’ve ever visited.
The thing is that for any single positive item many people thing of being exceptional for the US, the truth is that most other countries in the 1st world are on par or better. I mean I heard Americans wonder if Germans have access to running water, that was in 2023.
I’ve got no problem with reasonable criticism of America. In fact I have many of my own. My issue is that here, shitting on America is well received regardless almost completely regardless of how reasonable it is.
Hmm, I don’t see that. I can’t remember the last time I saw an undeserved criticism of America. But I would agree with you if I did see that
Nayib Bukele, a pretty blatant authoritarian, just won an election in El Salvador. And have you been paying attention to the rise in right wing authoritarians winning in Europe?
The idea that this is isolated to the us makes no sense.
At what point did I or anyone say right wing authoritarianism is exclusive to the US? …
Literally the top level post is complaining that any blatant authoritarian would be dead in the water in any other democracy.
Pointing out flaws instead of blindly shouting “murka numbuh wun!” is not a bad thing…
100% agreed. But that’s not what I’m talking about. People just mindlessly shit on America here all the time. Just because I recognize the unreasonable American hate does not mean I’m an unreasonable American supporter. Not every is simple and black and white how you would like it.
Is that how I would like it? I guess that is a thing I learned about myself today! Neat.
“I’m the normal one, everyone around me is crazy!!!”
Well, first, judging what’s right based on what’s popular is dumb on it’s own, but it’s even more dumb here because the up vote/down vote is current equal for my post, making it clearly not “everyone.”
Right, Russia is fucked too
Unfortunately not anymore, no. Bolsonaro (luckily voted out) and Orban and the Polish potato (also luckily voted out) have been spouting similar bullshit for 10+ years. Also, Erdoğan talks bullshit like that.
All of them a little less incoherent than the fat orange turd, but still, they say this kind of bullshit.
The craziest part is that, even with the absolute insanity this election has already been (and it will absolutely get worse), I’m seriously worried there’s going to be a worse turnout than 2020. 30% of voters are holding the country hostage, but another 30+% still can’t be bothered to get out and do the most basic thing they can do to fix it. It’s absurd. The nutjobs in the US are dragging the country to the gallows, but apathetic voters are tying the noose.
2020 had the highest voter turnout in any US election. Donald Trump got more votes in 2020 (more than 74 million) than any other Presidential candidate, winner or loser, in history… except for Joe Biden in 2020, who got 81 million.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election
I am aware (hence my point of 30%), and that was still abysmal. 60% turnout is not much of an achievement, and that only happened because of the pandemic (which is also still happening, though easier to ignore now). Existential threats to the country just aren’t going to motivate the chronically apathetic the same way, even if they are actually a bigger threat overall.
Don’t automatically assume the 30% who don’t bother voting are guaranteed to vote against Trump. Historically, it has been younger voters who don’t bother voting, and they do tend to be more liberal. But this time around, young voters are starting their adult lives in a world that is stacked against them, and they know it. They have felt the effects of post-pandemic inflation but have not had their pay raised to match. Those who were old enough to be adults pre-pandemic might very well conclude that they were better off personally when Trump was in office, and may be dismissing all the alarm at his re-election.
There have been several studies indicating that “disengaged” voters, if they show up, would break toward Republicans this time around. This article is from before Biden quit, but shows a clear preference for Trump among these voters:
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/49987-disengaged-voters-role-2024-election-biden-trump-poll
I’m not assuming anything. I know Trump got a hefty share of the extra voters in 2020. That doesn’t change anything I said.
It’s especially weird because he’s a Republican. Traditionally they’re the party more sensitive to controversies like that, and older conservative folks I used to know would squirm if they saw the tapes or statements.
But honestly Trump just drowns everything out. Most people don’t, and never will, know the controversies because there are simply too many to keep up with.
You don’t say! I simply hadn’t noticed! What’s so crazy about people voting for someone with no experience whatsoever except for being a rich asshole which he proved every second breath? I mean that’s just normal!!