First GOP Debate

[time4fun]

They're trying a former President for challenging an election... which they themselves have done numerous times...

This is VERY inaccurate, and you should know better.

No one is in trouble for using contesting the election through the allowable channels. In this country EVERY candidate has a right to contest election results. You can submit evidence of voter fraud to local and Federal authorities, you can request recounts under certain circumstances, and you can contest just about every part of the process through the Courts. The Trump campaign used (and abused) these channels, but it was their right to do so.

What you are NOT allowed to do is organize and incite a violent mob and send them to attack a co-equal branch of government as a ploy to disrupt Congress's official election certification. You are NOT allowed to convene groups of people and have them impersonate official elector slates, illegally submitting votes they claim are the official ones and holding them at the ready to submit more votes to cause confusion. You are NOT allowed to instruct the Vice President of the United States of America to illegally refuse to count the real votes of the electors and to instead count those of the fake slates of electors you organized.

And you are NOT allowed to call up state elections officials and demand that they change their vote counts in your favor.

THAT'S what people are being prosecuted for here. Because it's fucking illegal- and with good reason.

Nobody has EVER done any of that in our country. It used to be a source of pride for us as a nation- 250 uninterrupted years of peaceful transitions of power and reverence for our democracy. And now that record has been tarnished.

And if could put your blinders down for 30 seconds, maybe you could admit to yourself that it's not okay to normalize any of this. And that if we don't hold people accountable for this, we are going to turn this into the new normal, and it's going to get worse and worse from there.

[Suppressed Poet]

This is VERY inaccurate, and you should know better.

No one is in trouble for using contesting the election through the allowable channels. In this country EVERY candidate has a right to contest election results. You can submit evidence of voter fraud to local and Federal authorities, you can request recounts under certain circumstances, and you can contest just about every part of the process through the Courts. The Trump campaign used (and abused) these channels, but it was their right to do so.

What you are NOT allowed to do is organize and incite a violent mob and send them to attack a co-equal branch of government as a ploy to disrupt Congress's official election certification. You are NOT allowed to convene groups of people and have them impersonate official elector slates, illegally submitting votes they claim are the official ones and holding them at the ready to submit more votes to cause confusion. You are NOT allowed to instruct the Vice President of the United States of America to illegally refuse to count the real votes of the electors and to instead count those of the fake slates of electors you organized.

And you are NOT allowed to call up state elections officials and demand that they change their vote counts in your favor.

THAT'S what people are being prosecuted for here. Because it's fucking illegal- and with good reason.

Nobody has EVER done any of that in our country. It used to be a source of pride for us as a nation- 250 uninterrupted years of peaceful transitions of power and reverence for our democracy. And now that record has been tarnished.

And if could put your blinders down for 30 seconds, maybe you could admit to yourself that it's not okay to normalize any of this. And that if we don't hold people accountable for this, we are going to turn this into the new normal, and it's going to get worse and worse from there.

You know what also isn’t allowed but it happened anyways with no consequences? The FBI sitting on evidence for over a year about Biden’s corrupt family business dealings & simultaneously censoring that information with social media companies before the election as Russian disinformation.

You want to be taken seriously with J6 and the so-called insurrection? Admit that the prior election was indeed highly contested and there was shady shit at play. I’ve accepted Biden as our President & Trump lost, but let us not pretend & gaslight that this was the fairest election in the history of country.

Hell, I’ll even go first and say some shady shit went down in Florida with the 2000 election if that makes you feel better. Bush won and that is the world we live in.

[time4fun]

You know what also isn’t allowed but it happened anyways with no consequences? The FBI sitting on evidence for over a year about Biden’s corrupt family business dealings & simultaneously censoring that information with social media companies before the election as Russian disinformation.

You want to be taken seriously with J6 and the so-called insurrection? Admit that the prior election was indeed highly contested and there was shady shit at play. I’ve accepted Biden as our President & Trump lost, but let us not pretend & gaslight that this was the fairest election in the history of country.

Hell, I’ll even go first and say some shady shit went down in Florida with the 2000 election if that makes you feel better. Bush won and that is the world we live in.

One of the things I've noticed is that every time we start to talk about what Trump actually did and whether or not it was okay, responses tend to circumvent that discussion entirely and instead try to redirect the conversation elsewhere.

Hunter Biden isn't really relevant here. We can have whatever opinions we want on that topic, but it doesn't change what Trump did, nor does it affect the morality or legality of it in either direction.

To be honest, neither is the discussion of the election itself or the way people felt about it. Trump went through the legal channels and lost. The actions he took outside of those channels to try to stay in power are not less illegal because people felt the election wasn't fair (especially given how much work he did to ensure that fact).

Can we agree that what Trump did qualifies, at minimum, as "shady shit"?

I do want to dig in on one point though: Are there specific, verifiable things that you want to point out that were worse than him knowingly sending armed militia groups to the Capitol while the election certification process was happening and telling them to fight like hell or they won't have a country left? Or worse than organizing fake slates of electors, some of whom illegally submitted electoral votes on behalf of their state? Worse than ordering his Vice President to intentionally miscount the electoral votes and unilaterally declare him and his running mate as the Heads of the Executive Branch? Worse than calling up elections officials and demanding they change vote tallies? Or having your campaign break into state election facilities to illegally access, record, and share voting records with the public?

That's a very sincere question.

[Suppressed Poet]

One of the things I've noticed is that every time we start to talk about what Trump actually did and whether or not it was okay, responses tend to circumvent that discussion entirely and instead try to redirect the conversation elsewhere.

Hunter Biden isn't really relevant here. We can have whatever opinions we want on that topic, but it doesn't change what Trump did, nor does it affect the morality or legality of it in either direction.

To be honest, neither is the discussion of the election itself or the way people felt about it. Trump went through the legal channels and lost. The actions he took outside of those channels to try to stay in power are not less illegal because people felt the election wasn't fair (especially given how much work he did to ensure that fact).

Can we agree that what Trump did qualifies, at minimum, as "shady shit"?

I do want to dig in on one point though: Are there specific, verifiable things that you want to point out that were worse than him knowingly sending armed militia groups to the Capitol while the election certification process was happening and telling them to fight like hell or they won't have a country left? Or worse than organizing fake slates of electors, some of whom illegally submitted electoral votes on behalf of their state? Worse than ordering his Vice President to intentionally miscount the electoral votes and unilaterally declare him and his running mate as the Heads of the Executive Branch? Worse than calling up elections officials and demanding they change vote tallies? Or having your campaign break into state election facilities to illegally access, record, and share voting records with the public?

That's a very sincere question.

Whataboutism. I get it. It’s not meant to shift the conversation away from Trump as much as it is to point out the blatant hypocrisy & selective enforcement of laws. If the posted speed limit is 70 mph, almost everyone actually drives 100 mph, but only one black guy is pulled over and given a ticket…is that justice? There is no denying that the black guy broke the law driving 100 mph. You understand though why this would be an issue.

In regards to your question, I thought I was giving you one by our government censoring and suppressing the so-called October surprise. Another example that is equally bad/illegal as Trump’s actions is Steel-Dossier. You are very quick to dismiss those as yeah maybe they are bad and nothing happened, but move on.

We can agree that Trump’s behavior on January 6th was atrocious. We can agree he was a sore loser. There is a difference between bad behavior and illegal activity. I don’t think we can get much further than that since you continue to choose to say things like he knowingly sent armed militia groups to the Capitol, I read the article you sent last time about police accounts. All the video evidence we have (and there are tons of it) does not show armed militia breaking into the Capital. What we see is an unarmed riot. Additionally, I’ve still yet to see any tangible evidence that Trump himself said or gave approval to the mob to attack the Capitol. This being the case, I doubt there is much more we can agree on.

[Parkbandit]

We can agree that Trump’s behavior on January 6th was atrocious.

What, specifically, did Trump do that was "atrocious"? I want to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Be specific.

[Suppressed Poet]

What, specifically, did Trump do that was "atrocious"? I want to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Be specific.

Fair enough.

I was not a fan of his repetitive daily tweets that the election was stolen from him & that any day now the election would be overturned. I’m paraphrasing here because I’m being lazy on pulling up his old tweets, but you understand what I mean. He put a lot of people through grief for believing his false statements about the election being legally overturned.

Also I’m willing to concede that while his words to the crowd on January 6th of “that’s why we’re going to go down there and fight like hell” (again paraphrasing) while not illegal went right up to the line without crossing it. I recall working from home that day watching it live and immediately thought “oh shit, something might happen” before it did.

Compare Donald Trump’s behavior to say John McCain after losing in 2008 to Obama. I for one think McCain would have made a great President, but he was graceful in defeat. Some fights you win and some fights you lose. Trump lost. Might not be fair, but his ego gets in the way of admitting it.

[Parkbandit]

Fair enough.

I was not a fan of his repetitive daily tweets that the election was stolen from him & that any day now the election would be overturned. I’m paraphrasing here because I’m being lazy on pulling up his old tweets, but you understand what I mean. He put a lot of people through grief for believing his false statements about the election being legally overturned.

Also I’m willing to concede that while his words to the crowd on January 6th of “that’s why we’re going to go down there and fight like hell” (again paraphrasing) while not illegal went right up to the line without crossing it. I recall working from home that day watching it live and immediately thought “oh shit, something might happen” before it did.

Compare Donald Trump’s behavior to say John McCain after losing in 2008 to Obama. I for one think McCain would have made a great President, but he was graceful in defeat. Some fights you win and some fights you lose. Trump lost. Might not be fair, but his ego gets in the way of admitting it.

I don't disagree with anything you posted.. but you said his behavior "on Jan 6th" and I thought I missed something.

[time4fun]

Whataboutism. I get it. It’s not meant to shift the conversation away from Trump as much as it is to point out the blatant hypocrisy & selective enforcement of laws. If the posted speed limit is 70 mph, almost everyone actually drives 100 mph, but only one black guy is pulled over and given a ticket…is that justice? There is no denying that the black guy broke the law driving 100 mph. You understand though why this would be an issue.

In regards to your question, I thought I was giving you one by our government censoring and suppressing the so-called October surprise. Another example that is equally bad/illegal as Trump’s actions is Steel-Dossier. You are very quick to dismiss those as yeah maybe they are bad and nothing happened, but move on.

We can agree that Trump’s behavior on January 6th was atrocious. We can agree he was a sore loser. There is a difference between bad behavior and illegal activity. I don’t think we can get much further than that since you continue to choose to say things like he knowingly sent armed militia groups to the Capitol, I read the article you sent last time about police accounts. All the video evidence we have (and there are tons of it) does not show armed militia breaking into the Capital. What we see is an unarmed riot. Additionally, I’ve still yet to see any tangible evidence that Trump himself said or gave approval to the mob to attack the Capitol. This being the case, I doubt there is much more we can agree on.

Selective enforcement of the law is definitely an issue worth discussing, and I do understand that it's a very fundamental part of the pro-Trump view. But shifting from analyzing Trump's own behaviors and their legality to talking about the behaviors of other (unspecified) people every single time his behaviors are put under any microscope does come across as a concerted strategy (intentional or not).

At some point in time all of us do have to address the fundamental questions here: What exactly did he do? Are these things supposed to be okay? Did he break the law? What are the consequences of not prosecuting this kind of behavior? If we can't talk about that in a thread about his indictments, are we really having an honest conversation about the issue?


What did Trump do, by the way, that other people also did and were not indicted for? Specific actions taken. To my knowledge, we don't have a precedent for most of what he was indicted for, but if I'm wrong on that I do want to know.

I appreciate the examples of shady shit. The facts of the Hunter Biden laptop story are actually really banal to be honest. It was bad optics, but there's no evidence it was bad motives that I've found. Trump and a lot of Republicans decided to run with narratives about conspiracies to keep Biden in office and Democrats decided to run with narratives about it being Russian disinformation, but none of them had any evidence for that. And as far as I can tell, they still don't. That feels pretty shady to me personally. And the Dossier didn't have anything to do with the 2020 election.

There's a TON of evidence that the election itself was anything but shady. All 50 States certified their election results, multiple recounts happened in addition to the normal state election audits, Trump's own DoJ said they couldn't find any widespread voter fraud and that the election was the most secure we've ever had, 59 of the 60 court cases filed by Trump were either withdrawn or thrown out. The only successful one was just to get PA to separate out some contested ballots, which they were already doing. No state election officials ever came out with evidence of widespread voter fraud. And Trump was losing pretty badly to Biden in the polling leading up to the election. People forget that actually Trump and the GOP both outperformed polling expectations significantly.

After all of this time, I'm still not aware of any validated evidence of widespread voter fraud or shadiness aside from what Trump and his allies were doing. But, again, I'm open to being made aware.

I'll get to the point about Trump and January 6th in a separate post. I appreciate you taking time to read one of the sources I sent, but the information on him knowing they were armed and sending them anyway was in a different article. (I linked too many, I know)

[Suppressed Poet]

Selective enforcement of the law is definitely an issue worth discussing, and I do understand that it's a very fundamental part of the pro-Trump view. But shifting from analyzing Trump's own behaviors and their legality to talking about the behaviors of other (unspecified) people every single time his behaviors are put under any microscope does come across as a concerted strategy (intentional or not).

At some point in time all of us do have to address the fundamental questions here: What exactly did he do? Are these things supposed to be okay? Did he break the law? What are the consequences of not prosecuting this kind of behavior? If we can't talk about that in a thread about his indictments, are we really having an honest conversation about the issue?


What did Trump do, by the way, that other people also did and were not indicted for? Specific actions taken. To my knowledge, we don't have a precedent for most of what he was indicted for, but if I'm wrong on that I do want to know.

I appreciate the examples of shady shit. The facts of the Hunter Biden laptop story are actually really banal to be honest. It was bad optics, but there's no evidence it was bad motives that I've found. Trump and a lot of Republicans decided to run with narratives about conspiracies to keep Biden in office and Democrats decided to run with narratives about it being Russian disinformation, but none of them had any evidence for that. And as far as I can tell, they still don't. That feels pretty shady to me personally. And the Dossier didn't have anything to do with the 2020 election.

There's a TON of evidence that the election itself was anything but shady. All 50 States certified their election results, multiple recounts happened in addition to the normal state election audits, Trump's own DoJ said they couldn't find any widespread voter fraud and that the election was the most secure we've ever had, 59 of the 60 court cases filed by Trump were either withdrawn or thrown out. The only successful one was just to get PA to separate out some contested ballots, which they were already doing. No state election officials ever came out with evidence of widespread voter fraud. And Trump was losing pretty badly to Biden in the polling leading up to the election. People forget that actually Trump and the GOP both outperformed polling expectations significantly.

After all of this time, I'm still not aware of any validated evidence of widespread voter fraud or shadiness aside from what Trump and his allies were doing. But, again, I'm open to being made aware.

I'll get to the point about Trump and January 6th in a separate post. I appreciate you taking time to read one of the sources I sent, but the information on him knowing they were armed and sending them anyway was in a different article. (I linked too many, I know)

Quick reply as I’m about to go on a walk with my wife:

I may vigorously disagree with you but I do appreciate the discussion & especially respect your best attempt to see the other side of things. I’ll try to do the same and be respectful (when I am not obviously trolling in jest). We can absolutely talk honestly on these boards about the Trump indictments and anything else. The PC is a safe space for free speech.

I agree that I saw no evidence of widespread voter fraud. What I mean by shady shit with that election was the suppression of speech that led up to it, media manipulation, and let’s just say that the impacts of the pandemic as it relates to that election process heavily favored Democrats in many states. Biden won the election.

We’ll talk more. Don’t run off this time as soon as the latest sensational story about Trump is over.

[Methais]

One of the things I've noticed is that every time we start to talk about what Trump actually did and whether or not it was okay, responses tend to circumvent that discussion entirely and instead try to redirect the conversation elsewhere.

Hunter Biden isn't really relevant here. We can have whatever opinions we want on that topic, but it doesn't change what Trump did, nor does it affect the morality or legality of it in either direction.

To be honest, neither is the discussion of the election itself or the way people felt about it. Trump went through the legal channels and lost. The actions he took outside of those channels to try to stay in power are not less illegal because people felt the election wasn't fair (especially given how much work he did to ensure that fact).

Can we agree that what Trump did qualifies, at minimum, as "shady shit"?

I do want to dig in on one point though: Are there specific, verifiable things that you want to point out that were worse than him knowingly sending armed militia groups to the Capitol while the election certification process was happening and telling them to fight like hell or they won't have a country left? Or worse than organizing fake slates of electors, some of whom illegally submitted electoral votes on behalf of their state? Worse than ordering his Vice President to intentionally miscount the electoral votes and unilaterally declare him and his running mate as the Heads of the Executive Branch? Worse than calling up elections officials and demanding they change vote tallies? Or having your campaign break into state election facilities to illegally access, record, and share voting records with the public?

That's a very sincere question.

Selective enforcement of the law is definitely an issue worth discussing, and I do understand that it's a very fundamental part of the pro-Trump view. But shifting from analyzing Trump's own behaviors and their legality to talking about the behaviors of other (unspecified) people every single time his behaviors are put under any microscope does come across as a concerted strategy (intentional or not).

At some point in time all of us do have to address the fundamental questions here: What exactly did he do? Are these things supposed to be okay? Did he break the law? What are the consequences of not prosecuting this kind of behavior? If we can't talk about that in a thread about his indictments, are we really having an honest conversation about the issue?


What did Trump do, by the way, that other people also did and were not indicted for? Specific actions taken. To my knowledge, we don't have a precedent for most of what he was indicted for, but if I'm wrong on that I do want to know.

I appreciate the examples of shady shit. The facts of the Hunter Biden laptop story are actually really banal to be honest. It was bad optics, but there's no evidence it was bad motives that I've found. Trump and a lot of Republicans decided to run with narratives about conspiracies to keep Biden in office and Democrats decided to run with narratives about it being Russian disinformation, but none of them had any evidence for that. And as far as I can tell, they still don't. That feels pretty shady to me personally. And the Dossier didn't have anything to do with the 2020 election.

There's a TON of evidence that the election itself was anything but shady. All 50 States certified their election results, multiple recounts happened in addition to the normal state election audits, Trump's own DoJ said they couldn't find any widespread voter fraud and that the election was the most secure we've ever had, 59 of the 60 court cases filed by Trump were either withdrawn or thrown out. The only successful one was just to get PA to separate out some contested ballots, which they were already doing. No state election officials ever came out with evidence of widespread voter fraud. And Trump was losing pretty badly to Biden in the polling leading up to the election. People forget that actually Trump and the GOP both outperformed polling expectations significantly.

After all of this time, I'm still not aware of any validated evidence of widespread voter fraud or shadiness aside from what Trump and his allies were doing. But, again, I'm open to being made aware.

I'll get to the point about Trump and January 6th in a separate post. I appreciate you taking time to read one of the sources I sent, but the information on him knowing they were armed and sending them anyway was in a different article. (I linked too many, I know)