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There has been another attempted assassination of Donald Trump, this time at a rally at the Trump International golf course. The shooter, armed with an AK-74, fled after a brief exchange of gunfire with the Secret Service. Donald Trump is unharmed, and there appear to be no casualties.
Morbid question: If a presidential candidate is killed (or dies) prior to the election, who stands in his place?
Edit: or her place? (I write this only for grammatical balance)
I answered this a few months ago, so here's the copy/paste of that comment. Since that time the GOP has updated the rules on the link I provided, but the rule appears to be the same:
Per the rules of the Dems and the GOP it appears that the Democrats will have a meeting of the national committee, and the new nominee will be selected by a majority vote of the committee, one person, one vote. The Republicans will do the same, but members representing each state will receive the same amount of votes their state had during the convention. The replacement will be selected by a majority vote.
In neither case is it a rule that the Vice Presidential nominee will automatically assume the Presidential nomination.
The rules that govern balloting aren't at all uniform. I suppose you could have a gentleman's understanding that electors would just vote for the replacement even if the ballot could not be altered. But then the electors might expose themselves to liability under faithless elector laws. Some states don't merely punish faithless electors, they automatically cancel their votes and replace them with an alternate.
Yeah, this is a surprisingly complicated question because each state has different laws and it's never really been tested before. The parties can of course "nominate" whoever they want, but in most states the ballots have already been "locked in" and won't change. For example, RFK is going to stay on the ballot in some states, but not others, even though he dropped out and wants to be removed. Doubly complicated because, like you mentioned, you're not technically voting for the candidate themselves, but for electors pledge to them.
I think in practice it would just go to the vice president, because that's kind of their main job. But I would expect to see a lawsuit with some bickering over vague, archaic rules, and maybe get the Supreme Court involved like they did in Bush v Gore. Because, apparently, the Supreme Court is really the Supreme source of all authority in this ridiculous country.
To be fair, the entire point of the supreme court is to adjudicate edge cases like this. They are a lot closer to their intended purpose when they're making up rules to get a faithful procedural outcome than when they're the last word on popular moral debates that ought to be negotiated by Congress.
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JD Vance would be the presumptive insert, unless one of his kids wants the job, but I don't think there are firm rules should the GOP decide it wanted otherwise.
We saw the same thing with DNC for Joe's political death. They weren't required to pick Kamala, but they did, largely because doing otherwise would be inconvenient.
Consider that the GOP would have additional pressure towards a Trump legacy pick because they would face the risk of appearing to be involved in the assassination.
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It looks like this guy served in the Ukrainian military.
What should I, an American citizen, make of that? A presidential candidate is trying to end their war, and one of their soldiers shows up here to try and kill him?
What in the hell?
The establishment lied wildly about Vietnam. The lies about Iraq were next level inventing WMD in Iraq. They lied about Jessica Lynch, abu ghraib, the UN weapons inspectors and long list of other things.
In Afghanistan they claimed that the 120 000 000 000 dollars wasted on the Afghan national army created an army of 300 000. After a decade of claiming this they changed the narrative in a week admitting that they had basically fabricated this military. Unfortunately, they hadn't fabricated all the spent money.
The Ukraine war has to be the war in modern history with the least investigative journalism. There is basically only narrative and press releases from think tanks being published in the media. In 2003 Bagdhad Bob was interviewed on American TV. In this war, nobody would ever dream of bringing a Russian general on TV for an interview.
It is going to be interesting to see the reaction when the lies start falling apart and the true believers find out their war was roughly as fake all the previous ones.
Baghdad Bob was a meme, not a general or a person who would have been interviewed due to his particular importance.
Sergey Lavrov, for instance, has been interviewed by Western media countless times.
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Uhhh
(Oops, looks like I can't tell one Slav from another. Never mind)
Well tbf the distinction between Ukrainian and Russian ethnicity is also a media fabrication and Syrskyi was born in Russia and his family all lives in Russia.
It appears the Ukrainians would disagree strongly with you on that.
Besides, I don’t see how the morality of the war is any different even if they are the same ethnicity. Would Colombia be justified in invading Venezuela?
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Is a Ukrainian general
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This one is not Russian. What's your point?
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The biggest lie of all was that Ukraine could give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for protection by the West. They fell for the gun control argument. Keep your guns.
They didn't have nuclear weapons, the USSR had weapons that were stored there. It's like if Turkey left NATO and refused to give back the nukes the US keeps there. They wouldn't have the codes to actually use them and would have to reverse engineer new bombs.
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Anyone that gives up their WMD's gets punished (see Libya, Iraq etc). Think of the incentives that sends to states like Syria, Iran and North Korea.
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The most frustrating part of having a even a barely decent understanding of history is having to constantly deal with people claiming that this time it's different and we must upend all norms to deal with a novel evil which is always made up to be unprecedented.
Don't you worry, they'll sweep this under the rug like all the other ones and continue basking in incompetence like nothing happened.
Even if Putin annexed all of Ukraine you'd find some people to spin this as a win because it unites Europe or something. Western elites are immune from accountability.
Amusingly, having watched various sides discussing the Ukraine Conflict for so long, this applies to so many perspective and positions on it that I'd have no idea what position on the conflict this is supposed to be without checking someone's past posting history.
Is the 'this time it's different' mean to refer to the people who are aghast at a war which is the third continuation war of a decade? The credulity given to claims of nuclear thresholds at odds with decades of practice and saber-rattling? The multi-year sustainment of imminent collapse narratives? Are the novel threats justifying upending norms supposed to refer to the Russian imperalists, the Ukrainian nazis, the dreaded American/Western influence? And this is without the issues that come from barely decent understandings of history often also routinely carrying about deliberate misunderstandings that make it into pop history.
It almost certainly wasn't intended to be as omnidirectional as it was, but I thank you none the less.
It's intended at Western elites, but I'll stand by it omnidirectionaly.
I hate how unserious it all is.
What would a “serious” attitude look like to you? In other words, what would you expect of western elites instead?
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Which is why I thank you.
(Which was what I meant to write instead of 'think you', so embarrassment on me.)
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I mean things like that only work until they don’t. The sheer incompetence of the western elites is on display. The entire plan, as far as I can tell is “Ukraine is the good guy here. We arm them to the teeth, let them do whatever they want, and hope they win before something bad happens.” It’s not working, and worse, we’re putting ourselves in an extremely weak position by doing so, and for little strategic gain. Ukraine doesn’t have much beyond farmland. It’s not Taiwan with a big chip manufacturer base. And we’re depleting weapons and risking nuclear exchange to save Kansas.
How is it not working? They’re losing some land here and there, but otherwise appear to be attritioning the Russians pretty well.
Besides, I thought we were only sending over surplus reserve equipment. Is there any indication that US military readiness has been meaningfully reduced due to this aid?
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Calling it now, there will be a terror attack on US soil by Ukrainian aligned elements bitter about the US abandoning them by 2034 (40% chance). (Not counting this one)
Mostly justified, quite frankly, unless they pick civilian non-elite target.
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So far Ukrainian and Ukrainian inspired terrorism has: attempted to assassinate a US presidential nominee, attempted and nearly assassinated a European Prime Minister, blown up a major piece of German infrastructure causing serious damage to their economy.
From a strategic point of view they've been more successful than any recent anti western terrorist group other than al-qaeda via 9/11. Since ISIS never really got close to people in power or major infrastructure. They've also managed to get more free military gear from the west than al-qaeda.
The perverse incentives globalism and empire creates makes for some bizarre politics.
edit: oh they also keep a 180k person list of enemies of the state with personal info of Ukrainian enemies which includes westerners like Elon Musk, Viktor Orban, Roger Waters, Roy Jones Jr, and Berlusconi.
The man who's absolutely critical to their war effort through Starlink and could trivially sabotage all of it?
Quite an outrageous claim.
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Also: lied about Russia shooting a missile into a Poland in a very obvious attempt to grow their war into WW3 by dragging NATO into it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_missile_explosion_in_Poland?useskin=vector
(It was a Ukrainian missile)
Or, more likely, a very obvious attempt to avoid taking the blame themselves.
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I thought he was just a NAFO guy, a hanger-on looking to help Ukraine but not actually associated with it officially, (though he was in an ad for Azov at Mariupol?) Definitely a sketchy person with these seeming Afghanistan-Ukraine connections. And all the other stuff he's been doing, running around with machineguns and punching rapists: https://x.com/718Tv/status/1835491672857137620
Does he really have any connections ? That's the thing. He's very sketchy but those pictures of him in a cheap suit looking lost in Kiev don't inspire confidence in me. He had websites where he was soliticing passports numbers and saying he could get these people visas.
He appears he wants to have connections, and people on X are making a big deal out of him following some CIA girlboss on there, but people are generally stupid and confirmation bias is king.
Personally I'm leaning towards the guy being basically a fantasist and not very competent.
The only thing he did right was apparently camp out for 12 hours on the golf course, expecting that Trump will go there to relax. Had he used the time to properly camouflage himself, he might have succeeded.
It seems that he fought in Ukraine, he wrote a book about it: https://www.newsweek.com/ryan-routh-donald-trump-encouraged-assassination-book-1954433
Nobody is leaping out to debunk this: https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1835552460481478829
I don't think he's CIA either, surely the CIA has more sophisticated tools than this guy? But he could definitely be a useful idiot for somebody.
Stop reposting this everywhere
On this very thread, 2 days ago @bro linked: https://search.pullpush.io/?kind=submission&until=1726297200&q=%22ryan%20routh%22&size=100 which has the group he claims to have volunteered in disavowing his membership, 7 months ago...
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I can't believe I'm saying this, but if there was ever a would be assassin that could be a CIA asset it sure wouldn't be hard to convince me this guy is
Why do you say that? He seems awfully incompetent at… everything
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Bit late now but looks like I was wrong, Blumenthal says he fought in Ukraine and even wrote a schizo rant about it: https://x.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1835552460481478829
I hope the CIA hires people who can write out a full gramatical sentence though, the competence crisis is really severe if this is the kind of people they get.
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The obvious joke is that this is the CIA op whilst the previous one was the FBI one, and inter-service communication is as good as it usually is.
Does Trump have a dog for the ATF entry into this contest to shoot? Maybe we can work in the DHS somehow?
If ATF gets involved trying to kill Trump, they'll probably wing Harris. If she had a pet they'd get that, but they don't.
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2 months ago:
Though it does seems he was in Ukraine at some point
Wild claims on his twitter seem consistent with him being a high-agency crazy:
I mean no offense here but some random “they them” with 700 followers and a rainbow flag in their name doesn’t seem like an official spokesthem for the Ukrainian military[1]. Here’s another equally uncredible person saying the opposite: https://x.com/raheemkassam/status/1835440928074736007
Also your first link had like 10 different redirects and popups and stuff. Here is just a direct link: https://x.com/v8mile/status/1804097069876916506
[1]: what I mean is that this person seems focused on some sort of gender crusade. An equivalent would be linking me to a page dedicated to the San Francisco 49ers football team, but that wants to talk authoritatively on Iranian nuclear policy.
Here's a couple other people who had anything to say about him before today (you have to manually click "Search" unfortunately), all on the /r/volunteersforukraine subreddit. As a cautious heuristic I'd consider any random person who had anything at all to say about him before today to be more credible than any random person who has anything at all to say about him after today.
Bonus from that search: here's a reddit account of his that nobody else seems to have found yet.
He was also in a NYT article in March 2023
The thing about western volunteers in Ukraine, which is a scene I've looked into before, is that anybody can just show up and do and claim whatever, it's all incredibly ad-hoc, and it massively disproportionately attracts high-agency crazy people.
I linked xcancel because it's currently a functioning way to read twitter without an account, it's a straightforward mirror of twitter. I've never encountered popups on it, though it has a single layer of bot check redirect thing that kicks in on new visits or every few hours of use.
lmao, "TaiwanForiegnLegion?" So he wasn't just a (attempted) Ukraine volunteer, he also wanted to volunteer for Taiwan? And then he goes off on his own to shoot Trump?
Yeah. "attracts high-agency crazy people" indeed.
But hey, give him credit for "taking heroic responsibility" like a good rationalist. (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/R4f4RdGBdZsPzyJYk/a-discussion-of-heroic-responsibility)
edit: he has a website too! https://taiwanforeignlegion.com/. And it's really crazy, just a giant block of text with no paragraphs.
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If you had asked me beforehand which special interest would be most likely to produce radicals who try to kill Trump, I would not have guessed Ukraine. Trying to make sense of it in hindsight, maybe the fact that volunteers for Ukraine tend to be violence-oriented boosts their likelihood of committing violence.
Trump has been pretty vocal about ending the war. I’d go as far as saying it’s one of his main talking points.
Frankly I’m surprised there hasn’t been more of this.
If you ignore most of what he or his campaign says, I suppose. It certainly doesn't make his platform, or his campaign website, or most of his speeches, and when more distant campaign associates raise end-the-war proposals, they often come with caveats like 'and if Russia doesn't agree to what we think is reasonable, big increases in Ukraine aid.'
Trump has repeatedly said that, if elected, he will negotiate an end to the war before he even takes office.
Presumably what this means is telling Ukraine they get no more assistance until they agree to a truce.
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Jesus Christ. I hope they find the guy soon.
AK-47, though. As far as I know, -74s are a lot less common in the U.S.
Edit: I just clicked a WaPo link for “more information” and it expanded one sentence into two. Apparently the only substance on that website was some sort of livestream statement by the FBI. That kind of webpage should be a crime.
Gun nerds are saying SKS
The photos are not super clear, but it does appear to be a sporterized SKS with a scope and modified to take generic AK magazines. This kind of rifle is actually a sort of meme gun in the firearms enthusiast community, though not as much now as in the past.
Gun nerd time: there are actually very few AK-47s in the US and they tend to be collectors items that sell for obscene amounts of money for a few reasons. First, very few were actually made. The gun most people are referring to as an "AK-47" is usually an AKM or an AK-74, all of which belong to the AK family/pattern of rifle. Actual AK 47s were made in 3 generations in the early 50s, were expensive to make due to using block milling operations, and very few made it into the US before the '68 ban on imports. A trophy weapon brought back into the US before the '68 ban sold at auction last year for over $250k.
Before the fall of the USSR, there were very few imported AK pattern guns that had the legal modifications to make them semi-auto only and thus legal for import. Then after the USSR fell, we had the 90s assault weapon ban. You do see some monstrosities from this era around, but they are undesirable for collectors. Wide availability of US legal, semi auto only, AK pattern rifles only start after the expiration of the (absurd) 90s assault weapons ban. The ammo was also hard to find.
But the SKS has always been available as its only ever been a semi auto gun with an internal 10 round magazine, satisfying the legal requirements of even the most hostile states like California. They do look superficially similar to an AK pattern rifle (the mechanical action is different) though, so with some creativity and modifications you can dress one up in the costume of an AK well enough to continue to fool people who don't know much about fire arms right up to the present day.
edit - here's a photo of basic models of the two rifles, SKS on the left. https://i0.wp.com/coldboremiracle.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/JAW01066.jpg
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Republican congressional baseball team shooter also had an SKS. Also failed to kill anyone.
It's a fine rifle, SKS owners just aren't sending their best.
Rifle is fine?
Why you want rail for Kalashnikov? Is not good enough as procured from Izhevsk Mechanical Works? You think needs improvement? Then maybe you find job with army of Russia! You have drinks with Mikhail Kalashnikov, trade story of many weapons designed and details of school for engineering!
Or maybe you not do this. Probably is because you never design weapon in whole life. You look at fine Russian rifle, think it need crazy shit stick on all sides of weapon. You have disease of American capitalist, change thing that is fine for no reason except to look different from comrade. You put cheap flashlight of Chinese slave factory on one side, you put bad scope of American middle west on other side, you put front pistol grip on bottom so you are like American movie guy John Rambo. Maybe you put sex dildo on top to fuck yourself in asshole for making shameful travesty of rifle of Mikhail Kalashnikov, no?
Rifle is fine. You fuck it, it only get heavy and you still no hit largest side of barn. Go to firing range, practice with many magazine of cartridge. Then you not need dumb shit put on side of rifle.
(Mods plz no ban this isn't even the active thread anymore)
Thank you. This warms my heart.
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I'm just delighted to see the classics are still appreciated.
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I've shot an SKS a couple times. It is indeed a fine rifle. The stripper clips can be tricky if you are not used to them.
The SKS is the ultimate successor to the Winchester 94- all the same fundamental limitations, same form factor/overall size, same power of cartridge (.30-30 is far weaker than its case size would otherwise suggest).
The AK kind of fits that description too, but only in the sense that it technically has a Win 94 compatibility mode (the Saiga rifles being the best example) rather than having been designed solely with that mode in mind.
Yeah 7.62x39 is not at all a well designed round. They took the old 7.62x54R and shortened the case length until it was small enough. No design process or attempt to optimize for performance. You end up with a moderate sized round with low recoil and poor ballistic performance. They could have instead made a deadlier higher-velocity flatter-shooting round. But they didn't want to.
To leap to the defense of the SKS: it is light, not too long and low recoil. I have a Korean War M1 and that thing is heavy and the ammo is enormous in comparison. Keeping size and weight in mind, I'd want the SKS.
But strange these two would-be murderers didn't bring any modern magazine fed rifle.
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There are very fine rifles on both sides
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My initial reaction is: this is fucking insane.
Most people just shrugged as far as I can tell.
Not sure how I’m feeling about my country with the slide of the last decade and now this.
This just hits so hard to me. I want Trump to win (even though he's a terrible person) because I want these people to lose so much.
It doesn't surprise me so much after the 'Trump falls on stage at rally' headlines a couple of months ago.
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That was my initial reaction to the first attempt.
I was then horrified at the lack of interest and muted reactions on the left.
I then recognized the lack of interest as analogous to the lack of interest and muted reactions by republicans after a school shooting.
Both sides are disgusting.
Why are you making such a comparison?
Because both events involve guns being used in ways we don't want guns to be used?
School shootings aren't normally politically driven. Assassination attempts targeting politicians always are.
Which is precisely why assassinations are less horrifying?
The OP was discussing the reactions of Democrats (well, OK, technically not them specifically, but their side) and Republicans - that is, political parties. Why should their reactions be the same to politically motivated and not politically motivated events?
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Careful selection of "politically driven" rather than "politically motivated." July 13th doesn't seem to have an agenda aligned with either of the political sides.
Another reason for the comparison: they both have the same direct solution.
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what exactly am I supposed to do about either of those things? I'm not in the secret service and I'm not a cop. I'm just a regular guy. there's nothing I, personally, can do to stop these things.
Usually when people get worked up they mean "we as a society should change things to stop it." meaning, ban guns. Well, even if I agreed with that, I'm still just one voter, so I can't actually ban guns.
So what it really means is "I want you to spend all your time posting political memes on social media and being a nervous wreck." Well, been there and done that. It's a waste of time.
I think it's healthy that more people are starting to realize you can read about these things in the news and then just... move on with our lives. The news media wants us to obsess over these things, but there's no good reason we should.
There's a difference between a lack of reaction from someone who doesn't react to other things, and a lack of reaction from someone who does. You are in the former category. The leftists who are being criticized here are in the latter. When people obsess over a lot of anti-Trump political causes, it's not an answer to say "what can they do about the assassination, obsess over it?"
(Of course the school shooting is a false equivalence. The school shooting is not done for political reasons, and failure to support gun bans isn't to failure to react.)
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I mean, I think this is just par for the course. The entire system is starting to collapse and as such nearly catastrophic systems failures are normal. We’re used to crime, drugs, shitty roads school shooters, random spree shooters, and a dozen other things that would shock people if they visited from 1950 or before. I mean or swan song is so bad at this point that we had congressional hearings about UFOs and the reaction was fairly muted. At this point, Mr. Spock could land on the White House lawn and most people would have muted reactions. We’re used to things being completely messed up.
You've had assassination attempts on Presidents and much worse violence than this before back in the 60's and 70s and it did not lead to the system collapsing. And the economy was worse then as well. Maybe it is different now, but it's certainly something the US has been through before.
Yeah, we had assassination attempts, but we didn’t have two nearly successful attempts on the same political figure within two months of each other. That’s pretty unusual. And especially as by the second time, the SS had intelligence and knew that there was an Iranian plot to get Trump. They still can’t get their act together.
Actually... Ford had two almost successful attempts against him 17 days apart in 1975. One missed, the other forgot to chamber a round. Both women, which is doubly unusual. And in the former case it wasn't even the Secret Service who pushed the gun away so it missed, a bystander had to intervene!
Its unusual, but its not unheard of. And Ford was President then, not just a candidate. Unfortunately high profile attempts can spawn further attempts and perfectly securing spaces like golf courses and rallies is hard.
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I'd agree with this, but also note that two of the main things that has changed since the 60s and 70s is the nature of how we know of eachother in an information sense, and for Americans in particular a collapse in shared trust in systems.
On the information front, something that's changed for everyone is the rise of social media. For all the worries of disinformation or misinformation or foreign interference, one of the other negatives of it is that it truly does allow people to see and hear what others may think of them- and that it's often both vocal and vitriolic disapproval. In the 60s and 70s, when countries had only a handful of centralized media presenters at a national level of visibility, the centralized news would tend to be... maybe not consensus based, but rarely radicalized, and radical-fringe views would be more limited to local media that simply couldn't be conveyed across a country in real time. People who might have had heated political fights in person were functionally physically separated in the information sphere. With the rise of the internet and social media, people in political segment A can absolutely know the loathing/mockery/opposition/subversion of their fellow citizens in segment B, often aided by the highly public organized acts of meanness that comes with such partisanship. The toxicity or violent might have been worse in the 60's and 70's, but the information flow and prevalence was much 'better' (in the sense of being less immediate and pervasive). In the 70s, if you didn't want to be bothered by news and views from other parts of the country, you could change the channel- now you can't open up most social media platforms without an algorithmic push of some variation of a sneer club / outrage bait of how bad-stupid-evil your outgroup citizens are... or, if you dare to be heterodox and observe another tribe, how bad-stupid-evil your ingroup is.
Combine that with a collapse of trust in shared systems- from religious to governmental to even informational- and even if the individual behaviors are 'better' than in the 60's/70's, you're working from a worse position in terms of social coping mechanisms to deal with the issues that are there.
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I know this is a typical argument from dissident righties that world is a failing state and everything is collapsing, but conservatively, the world is a better place for approximately 70% of the world's population. Even using a purely American perspective, the median American city is still wealthier and for instance, has less crime than broad swathes of the 70's and 80's. Yes, if you truly think the fact there are more non-white people and that non-straight people of all sorts are open about it is truly a disastrous thing, OK, but this happened to Gerald Ford in '76.
I see what you did there . From the OP:
The unprecedented crime wave of 1967-94 (roughly) was the consequence of policies (the "Great Society" etc.) enacted by entrenched political forces that are still in a hegemonic position today.
Also, "70%"? Where does that figure come from? Who are the other 30%?
My I ask why you're spinning the whole issue like this? The OP didn't make any such references anywhere.
How did Great Society policies lead to high crime waves?
Mainly by enabling and normalizing single mother households i.e. fatherlessness, as far as I know. There was also a tendency of more lenient sentencing.
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When I told my wife (checking phone in between commercials) she said “you’ve got to be kidding.” It seems less shocking but more “this is sad”
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The loss of institutional prestige in the SS has some downstream effects. Most notably, every crackpot in the country now knows (whether true or not) that the service is not protecting Trump, or is wildly incompetent. I would expect political assassination attempts in general to rise for a while, as nobody is scared of the talent on display from that particular agency. The myth of the secret service terminators stopped more guns than the actual service ever did.
Now? The first marginally competent goon to rock up is gonna have a field day, but apparently today is not that day.
Cops at the press conference are saying the guy was spotted (or his gun barrel was spotted) by a secret service officer. Basically praising him.
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Will a second assassination attempt give Trump a bump in the polls? The first one didn't. I'm curious to see how this plays out.
The problem for Trump is neither of these been have been obvious Democrat's. From what I can tell, Ford didn't get any huge approval bump from his two attempts from weirdos like Squeaky Fromme and even for Hinckley, the reason Reagan got sympathy is he dealt with it with good humor and sympathy for people like Brady who got killed.
From what's been revealed, this guy is a weirdo swing voter who voted for Trump in 2016, went to Bernie & Tulsi in 2020, is pro-Ukraine, but anti-vax, and is was trying for a Haley/Vivek ticket. That's not a political ideology you can stick on Democrat's.
Plus, there is the small matter that the moment voters outside of the 40-45% Republican hard limit listen to Trump, they like him less.
He literally had a biden-harris bumper sticker. This is just playing that smug little "you can't prove he's a Democrat because we literally refuse to report the evidence" game.
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This guy is a huge Dem. He is all in on Ukraine and has lots of posts saying that Kamala should go visit the people who got shot at the Trump rally to one-up him.
It appears much more correct to say he was an anti-Trump republican.
A Republican who had a Biden/Harris bumper sticker. A Republican who is for infinity migration and into castration culture.
Nah. What made him a republican ?
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Huge Dem's aren't Vivek fanboys. He's only a 'huge Dem' by the standards that anybody who isn't 100% for Trump a 'huge Dem.' He's like many, many people, a weirdo with ping-pong political opinions and obvious mental issues.
It seems like his political donations were pretty heavy act blue
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If state media can memory hole that photo of Trump bleeding from his ear while fist pumping with an American flag in the background in only a week than this will be deleted from mainstream memory within 24 hours. Assuming it even makes it beyond local news coverage.
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There's no hella epic based video, so this one won't even energize the base. Maybe if there's a manifesto or something
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Press conference happening now: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2W1Yi_Np64U
some live thoughts:
They found the vehicle because an eyewitness got the plate of the shooter (how TF is there not a least 1 drone orbiting wherever Trump is literally at all times??)
Guy is in custody and alive
Witnessed ID'd the guy
In the bushes where the guy was was an AK with a scope, a gopro, and ceramic plates.
SS spotted the guy before Tump was actually near him and engaged him first.
I would go mad if I had to listen to a drone buzzing above me 24x7. Trump, presumably, would too.
No reason to have a SS agent run down to the store and buy a DJI to buzz around at 100'. Just get a domestic MIC prototype and fly it higher.
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Having any drones in the air makes it quite difficult to detect if a hostile drone is in the air I suppose.
...uhh..what?
You know where your drone is. Today you could even have its position updated live on their tracking devices.
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This was the stated reason on the podcast I listened to, perhaps Cleared Hot, that featured an ex Secret Service agent discussing the first Trump assassination attempt.
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Wow. Kudos to SS
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Are you guys keeping up with this "ABC Whistleblower" story? Earlier in the week there were "reports" that someone would be filing an affadavit regarding ABC News's conduct during the debate. Fast forward to today, and we have the alleged affadavit. The source seems to be "Black Insurrectionist--I FOLLOW BACK TRUE PATRIOTS @DocNetyoutube" on X.
This is obvious bullshit right? The names are conveniently redacted. To throw another monkey wrench into it, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted this morning that the whistleblower was killed in a car crash, before quickly backtracking (on the car crash, not on the whistleblower).
Is it going to be like this for the next two months until the election? Will it ever end? Do I just need to stop paying attention to internet bullshit? Will the inevitable defamation suits bring things back into equilibrium?
It's nonsense, anyway - if Kamala was told the questions in advance, she didn't do anything with that information, all she did was give weird scripted answers that barely engaged with the subject while Trump exploded.
While yes she gave weird scripted answers, that is better than her 2019 performance of being totally unprepared and rambling. Im sure she practiced (what else would she have been doing? not talking to press that is for sure), but its a plausible accusation. It happened before with Hillary. The moderators were clearly on Kamala's side. And its something fairly easily to do.
She prepared, but she prepared a bunch of talking points that were mostly unconnected to the questions. If she knew what the questions were, wouldn't her responses have been more relevant?
Because actual answers would inform the public that she is to the left of their loony neighbor that everyone laughs about when he starts waxing poetic about Chavez at the block party after his 2nd Mike's hard.
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I didn't watch the whole debate, were there any questions that weren't obviously coming? I didn't feel like there were any looks that Trump wouldn't have drilled.
The Obamacare question was fairly out of left field. The rest were mostly obvious. But order and framing are important.
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Smells like bullshit to me. Thinking of a way it could be real...
A real, Trump supporting ABC employee of 10+ years exists. Some or most of the things described actually happened the way they are described. Employee doesn't want to go public because he would like to keep his job? One way or another ABC employee meets Random Bullshit Twitter Guy. Random Bullshit Twitter Guy (RBTG) has no real experience in anything other than Random Bullshit Twittering, so he comes up with the affidavit + notarized letter to speaker idea without any attachment to Trump campaign. This is the best he can come up with, the debate happens, and he slow rolls the facts to maximize his good boy points.
Grammatical errors, capitalization, and formatting aside, stuff like this paragraph reads more like bad campaign messaging than it does a whistleblower that is reporting due to his/her integrity.
The exposition makes sure the audience (us, the public, not congressmen) knows who Tony West is. Perhaps he could have received input from some Trump campaign staff while crafting this testimony? He is an avid partisan and not just a concerned whistleblower?
But, uh, yeah. Fox News should be blasting the hell out of this story if it is even partially verifiable. The guy who got the scoop should be cashing in on the lucrative nature of this story beyond farming a few Twitter followers. He should be doing interviews right now. That Fox News is not doing so should suggest they fear another defamation suit. Which should suggest it's not a verifiable story, or at least has not yet been verified.
No.
Yes.
No.
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The fact that it's an affidavit is suspicious in and of itself, as the right has, in recent years, acted as though anything in an affidavit must be The Truth (see all of the Sidney Powell affidavits). The most common use of affidavits is in litigation. If I want to depose someone, standard practice is to execute an affidavit that gives an outline of their testimony and the points I want to make. I'll submit that to opposing counsel, and if they have no objections, the affidavit will be admitted in lieu of the deposition. In this case, they're simply a tool for greater efficiency. Even if opposing counsel always wants a deposition (so they don't waive their right to cross examine), they're still useful in at least we have a concise outline of the major points counsel is trying to make.
They have other uses, mostly in property law where someone will execute an affidavit as to the property's history or something like that to make it easier for title researchers to get a picture of the land in the absence of formal recorded documents. Again, they're a tool, but since they aren't deeds, etc., they aren't dispositive and can be challenged in court.
I don't know what purpose an affidavit like this serves. Is there pending litigation? Even still, affidavits only attest to facts, not opinions. ABC is allowed to be biased. It may be a political scandal but there's no legal cause of action here. Even if this is completely legitimate I don't see the purpose for it; it's not like Trump can sue ABC for being biased. And even if they could, and this guy was their star witness, I wouldn't execute the affidavit like this. It draws conclusions rather than simply state facts. I doubt this is real, because no lawyer would draft this.
Re: affidavits, it could be some sort of (ineffectual, agreed) attempt to counteract the 'claims with no evidence' tendency in the MSM? Eyewitness claims (of course) are evidence, but take a look at the coverage around Rufo's eyewitness who took a video of some people grilling cats, confirmed that cats were on the grill, etc -- yeah this would certainly be 'evidence' in any court of law, but not if you ask ABC or whatnot.
So maybe they think that putting the thing in writing and getting a notary to stamp it will somehow make their enemies treat it more seriously? One step away from sovereign citizen stuff, but what can you do?
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Whatever happened to MeToo? In 2017 it seemed unstoppable and like it was going to really change quite a bit of the social dynamics between the genders. It’s since gone very quiet, has there been any more major celebrities or persons getting MeToo’d? The last person i remember getting destroyed is Cuomo.
It feels like there’s been basically zilch since then, although I could be wrong. Is this because men are finally treating women like sexless persons deserving of respect or is it merely that it was a passing fad?
A combination of two factors i think, at least part of it comes down to what @Crowstep said about outrage being exhausting but i think the bigger factor is that it was intended to be a weapon to be weilded against Trump (see the whole "grab 'em by the pussy" thing) but once democrats and media execs realized that the people most vulnerable to metoo were democrats and media execs it was quietly shelved.
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It totally did this. Insane rape/sexual harassment scaremongering is one of the main features driving young women so far left. Pundits would prefer to either rant about the female nature or general wokeness instead of addressing the overactive fearmongering about sexual harassment.
Really? Young women have leaned further left since women’s lib, if not earlier.
Not like they do today, they haven’t. Polls show that young women started becoming dramatically more liberal around ten years ago, and only now are the numbers starting to show a return to normal (but who knows if this is a temporary blip or the start of a long-term trend). Googling “women becoming more liberal” will pull up plenty of articles and graphs discussing this phenomenon, though I’m pretty sure it’s been discussed here as well.
2013-14 was the heydey of whatever that wave of feminism was. It's when Scott wrote his most hard-hitting anti-feminist posts, the ones he's been coasting on ever since. Feminism was the first movement of the Great Awokening, followed shortly by Black Lives Matter, and the legalization of same-sex marriage and resulting ascendant LGBT movement.
If I were going to write a book about wokeness, and were a conservative grifter, I'd call it "The Second Term of Obama." This sounds vaguely ominous and gestures subtly at "The Second Coming," appealing to the "Obama is the antichrist" people who presaged the "Trump is Hitler" people. But I really do think something very bad happened in Obama's second term, progressives lost hope after they elected a Black Man to the White House and the color of the building didn't change.
(Well, not permanently.)
I can't escape also the possibility that the civil service under Obama just poked the bear. Things like the Dear Colleague letter did a lot to institutionally support major planks of grassroots feminism. Obergefell came down in 2015. And then when Trayvon Martin died and Obama cried on national TV...
It was just an era where the left got very angry, and the right got even angrier. And what do you know, we got a very angry, very unappealing-to-feminists president after that, and everything skyrocketed from there.
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It won…
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On thing going against it is that the victims just aren’t that sympathetic to normal Americans. Most of these people are elites with more money than most median Americans will ever have and they’re upset, basically about something that had been known long before these particular women decided to show up. The “casting couch” had been a known feature of Hollywood film and TV since long before most of us were born. It’s not like they were surprised it happens, it’s been a thing since the 1930s or earlier, maybe going all the way back to the early days of stage. It’s something that anyone considering a career in movies, TV, or music would absolutely be aware of going in and likely decided beforehand was a reasonable price to pay to be famous for acting and live in a mansion.
Other movements were a bit more sympathetic simply because they were the normal everyday people who worked normal jobs for normal pay and were expected to put up with bad male behavior. Sleeping with your secretary as a condition of her either getting promoted or keeping her job is worlds different because that person isn’t making a choice to follow a dream of fame and thinking “well if I want to be a secretary, I’ll have to sleep with the boss, but the deal is just too good to pass up.”
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It still exists, but I think there are fewer cases that go super viral, because there are less Toxoplasma of Rage ones. The ones that went super viral were the debatable ones- usually ones where the left were going "You should believe all women!" and the right was going "Hold on, the evidence of this is entirely he said, she said", then they'd argue back and forth for weeks about which position was better. It really came down to, what % likely someone committed rape is the minimum to cancel them, although few people thought about it in probabalistic terms. The right might feel you should be at least 90% confident, the left would feel you only need to be like 20% confident(which I sympathize with- if I was an employer, I'd fire anyone who isn't a rockstar employer if I thought had a 20% chance of being that toxic. But as a member of society, I wouldn't want to imprison anyone with a 20% chance of rape).
I think it ended when Joe Biden got MeTooed with one of those accusations that had a ~20% likelihood of being true, and then all the left suddenly went "oh hold on actually we probably do need stronger evidence and cannot just Believe All Women".
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We've likely reached the peak of unrest sometime in the last few years. The woke movements are still bubbling, but the first derivative of their energy has turned negative.
Man if Noah Smith says something I'm reflexively going to believe it is the actual inverse of the truth.
It'd be 'easy' to "call the top" after the intense violence that marked the summer of 2020, but I don't for a second buy that the factors that enabled that sort of violence have changed much, or that there's not sufficient energy simmering under the surface for it to happen again.
Typical sort linear thinking, draw the line on the graph, circle the high point, and assert that things couldn't possibly go higher than that!
You could make the same argument about inflation, actually, claiming that because it peaked under Covid conditions it is unlikely to ever get so high again because those conditions have passed.
This is uncharitable, bordering on a strawman of what he said. He didn't claim it with strong certainty, just that there was a good chance that unrest had peaked. Given the retreat of woke (e.g. Harris' campaign platform) this is seeming more and more prescient now. Quoting directly from the article:
On the other hand, there have now been two separate attempts on Trump's life. Clearly a sign of lowering temperatures!
Globally, unrest seems to be ticking up regularly!
We just had riots in Ireland and England over their migrant situation. Also in Venezuela over an election. And in the U.S. Pro-palestine protestors are still kicking around. There was an actual shooting involving one recently.. We've had multiple (three that I know of, as another one occurred this past weekend) individuals who have literally burned themselves to death as a political statement.
I'd wager the main reason things are holding a bit steady is the pending election, where both sides think they have a shot a victory. I will happily bet against anyone who thinks unrest won't immediately spike up inside of six months if Trump manages to win the election.
Like, the whole argument seems to hinge on the idea that people are becoming more satisfied with the status quo, less prone to lash out. Which seems blatantly untrue to me?