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The US 2020 Presidential Election & Attempts To Overturn It

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  • Rupert Murdoch said he believed Trump was going 'increasingly mad' after he refused to concede defeat in the 2020 election
    • Rupert Murdoch said he thought Trump was going "increasingly mad" after his 2020 defeat.
    • The candid assessment is included in new legal filings by Dominion in its Fox News lawsuit.
    • The filings reveal Fox News executives were critical of Trump, while promoting his fraud claims.
    Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch told an associate he believed Donald Trump was going "increasingly mad" after the then president refused to concede defeat in the 2020 election.

    Murdoch sent an email on November 19, 2020 in which he wrote that Trump and his then attorney Rudy Giuliani appeared "increasingly mad" - a British and Australian expression for declining mental health.

    He added that Giuliani was "encouraging … and misleading him."

    "The real danger is what he might do as president," Murdoch wrote of Trump, according to legal documents. "Apparently not sleeping and bouncing off walls!"

    "Don't know about Melania, but kids no help," Murdoch added.


    The frank assessment is included in a new trove of legal filings released by election machines company Dominion as part of its $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox News.

    Dominion alleges that Fox News promoted bogus claims by Trump and his allies that its machines were used as part of a plot to deprive him of victory in 2020.

    Private messages by Murdoch, his top lieutenants, and Fox News star hosts released by Dominion reveal their uncertainty over how to deal with Trump's refusal to concede after his November, 2020, defeat to Joe Biden.

    Murdoch, in the new messages, said he doesn't believe Trump's election fraud claims, and predicts that Trump will eventually concede and the news agenda will shift.

    "In another month Trump will be becoming irrelevant and we'll have lots to say about Biden, Dems, and appointments," he wrote to former Fox executive Preston Padden on Nov. 23, 2020.

    But Trump continued to deny the election results, and Fox News' guests and hosts continued pushing his stolen election claims to their audience. Executives in some messages expressed concern that viewers would abandon the network unless it echoed Trump's stolen election claims.

    "Nobody wants Trump as an enemy," Murdoch said in a January 19, 2023 deposition.

    When asked why, Murdoch said "because he had a great following, big."

    "Seventy-five million people voted for him," Murdoch said.

    Fox News has claimed that its right to broadcast the stolen election claims was protected under the First Amendment, and it was reporting them but not endorsing them.

    In a statement in response to the new filings, Fox News said Dominion is pushing "distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press."
    ____
    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

    Comment


    • Trump attorney admits misrepresenting evidence of election fraud



      Jenna Ellis, a lawyer who represented former President Trump, admitted in court that she made various misrepresentations on social media and major television appearances about the 2020 presidential election, leading a judge to issue a public censure on Wednesday.

      Ellis, who was part of the former president’s efforts to challenge the legitimacy of his election loss, admitted to 10 misrepresentations about the election results, including statements made on Twitter and television programs on Fox News, Fox Business, MSNBC and Newsmax.

      “The parties agree that Respondent, through her conduct, undermined the American public’s confidence in the presidential election, violating her duty of candor to the public,” Bryon Large, Colorado’s presiding disciplinary judge, wrote in his opinion.

      Ellis and the state’s judicial discipline office last month stipulated to the misconduct and concurred that it warranted the censure, court documents show. Ellis agreed to pay $224 in connection with the censure, and Large signed off on the filing on Wednesday.

      The misrepresentations include a number of false claims, including Ellis suggesting the election was “stolen” during multiple television appearances and that Trump “actually won in a landslide.”

      All of the stipulated statements took place between Nov. 13 and Dec. 22, 2020. The list includes misrepresentations promoted during appearances on Fox News’s “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” MSNBC’s “The Ari Melber Show,” Newsmax’s “Spicer & Co” and “Greg Kelly Reports” as well as Fox Business’s “Mornings with Maria.”

      Ellis agreed that her statements violated Colorado’s Rules of Professional Conduct, which prohibits lawyers from engaging in dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation, but on Twitter Thursday she said the case “was politically motivated from the start from Democrats and Never Trumpers.”

      “They ultimately failed to destroy me and failed in their attempt to deprive me of my bar license. I’m glad to have this behind me and remain in good standing in the State of Colorado,” she said.

      The 65 Project, a nonprofit group that targets lawyers who bring lawsuits to overturn legitimate election results, first filed the bar complaint against Ellis last March.

      “[T]he year it took to reach this outcome highlights the need for revamped and revitalized disciplinary process,” The 65 Project Managing Director Michael Teter said in a statement.

      “It should not take 366 days to hold accountable a lawyer who, in a few short weeks of constant lies and misrepresentations, placed American democracy in such jeopardy,” Teter added. “Nor is a public censure a particularly satisfying outcome when one considers the direct line between Ms. Ellis’s deliberate actions and the attack on our nation’s Capitol on January 6th.”

      She was not counsel of record for any of the dozens of lawsuits the Trump campaign brought following the election, but Ellis is the latest prominent member of the then-president’s legal team to face disciplinary action.

      Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani already had his law license suspended, and Jeffrey Clark, an attorney at the Justice Department who Trump weighed installing as attorney general to investigate the fraud claims Giuliani is now being reprimanded over, also faces disciplinary action before the board.
      ____________

      What an incredible surprise....

      Oh and nice slap on the wrist for someone who "through her conduct, undermined the American public’s confidence in the presidential election”
      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

      Comment


      • Originally posted by Albany Rifles View Post
        Discovery is going to be fun....
        Was looking at some past posts as they related to recent news and found this. Buck, you sure weren't kidding
        “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

        Comment


        • Originally posted by TopHatter View Post



          Was looking at some past posts as they related to recent news and found this. Buck, you sure weren't kidding
          Yeah...this entire shit show has been soooo entertaining!!!
          “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
          Mark Twain

          Comment


          • Tucker Carlson producer describes his audience as ‘dumb’ and ‘terrorists’

            More than a million pages of internal Fox messages have revealed that a producer for Fox News host Tucker Carlson described the show’s audience as “especially dumb” and “terrorists” who sleep with their cousins.

            The files released in connection to the $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against the company by Dominion Voting Systems also revealed that Fox Corporation executive Raj Shah, who had served as a spokesman in the Trump White House before making the jump, blasted the then-president’s personal lawyer and ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani as he spoke at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee on 19 November 2020.

            Mr Giuliani seemingly had black hair dye running down the side of his face as he made increasingly ludicrous claims of election fraud.

            “This sounds SO F****** CRAZY btw,” Mr Shah wrote during the diatribe, a few weeks after the 2020 election.

            “Rudy looks awful,” one person responded to Mr Shah.

            “He objectively looks like he was a dead person voting 2 weeks ago,” Mr Shah said. One of the false claims made about the election was that dead voters had helped President Joe Biden win.

            But when a Fox reporter soon after went on air and said some of what Mr Giuliani had said was “simply not true,” Mr Shah said, “this is the kinda s*** that will kill us”.

            “We cover it wall to wall and then we burn that down with all the skepticism,” he added.


            Fox News hosts, including Carlson, said in private that they believed the claims of fraud were false even as they amplified them on the air, the messages show.

            Mr Shah was far from the only Trump staffer to move back and forth between Mr Trump’s circle and Fox, The Washington Post noted.

            After Carlson had publically rebuked some of the outlandish claims pushed by lawyer Sydney Powell, which prompted pushback from her and other rightwing figures, Mr Shah texted a producer for Carlson about finding a middle ground and possibly taking time on the show to address her baseless claim that she had an affidavit linking Dominion and Venezuela.

            “Might wanna address this, but this stuff is so f****** insane. Vote rigging to the tune of millions? C’mon,” he wrote.

            Alex Pfeiffer, a producer working for Mr Carlson, wrote back that “it is so insane but our viewers believe it so addressing again how her stupid Venezuela affidavit isn’t proof might insult them”.


            Mr Shah suggested that Carlson mention the affidavit, saying it was “not new info, not proof” and then “pivot to being deferential”.

            Mr Pfeiffer, who has now left Fox, said the highwire act was “surreal”.

            “Like negotiating with terrorists,” he said, adding “but especially dumb ones. Cousin f****** types not saudi royalty.”

            Three days before the Capitol riot, Mr Shah texted fellow ex-White House spokesman Josh Raffel.

            Mr Raffel noted to Mr Shah that the White House public schedule was vague, simply saying that Mr Trump would be making “many calls and have many meetings” and “work from early in the morning until late in the evening”.

            “I think what they meant is The President will wake up early and commit many, many crimes including but not limited to obstruction of justice, attempted fraud, and treason in an effort to conduct a coup. Then he’ll fly to a rally in furtherance of the same,” Mr Raffel wrote.

            “It’s really disheartening,” Mr Shah said. “The only clear cut evidence for voter fraud is the failed attempts from Trump.”

            The Independent has attempted to reach Mr Shah, Mr Pfeiffer, Mr Raffel, and Fox News for comment.
            ___________

            Hey remember when 2000 Mules was the great hope for the election deniers?
            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

            Comment


            • Trump’s own research showed that voter fraud did not cost him election – report
              Report commissioned by Trump campaign debunked former president’s claims that ballots came from dead voters

              The Donald Trump election campaign’s efforts to show that thousands of ballots were cast in the name of dead people in the pivotal state of Georgia during the 2020 election resulted in a research report that in fact contradicted Trump’s claims that widespread election fraud cost him the presidency, according to a report on Friday.

              Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia in 2020 was key and the Trump team’s own information went against Trump’s subsequent denial of the legitimate win by his opponent, according to the Washington Post.

              Prosecutors investigating Trump’s role in the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 by his supporters attempting to overturn the certification by Congress of Biden’s victory obtained the campaign research, the Washington Post reported.

              Trump’s insistence that thousands of ballots came from dead people became especially infamous following revelations that he had urged the Georgia secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes so he would win, during a 2 January 2021 call. The Trump-commissioned study refuting this very claim “was dated one day prior” to this call, per the Post.

              “Dead people”, Trump nevertheless remarked during the call. “So dead people voted, and I think the number is close to 5,000 people. And they went to obituaries. They went to all sorts of methods to come up with an accurate number, and a minimum is close to about 5,000 voters.”

              Raffensperger pushed back, saying: “The actual number were two. Two. Two people that were dead that voted. So that’s wrong.” Trump reportedly insisted: “In one state, we have a tremendous amount of dead people. So I don’t know – I’m sure we do in Georgia, too. I’m sure we do in Georgia, too.”

              Raffensperger’s comments were bolstered by an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report in December 2021 that Georgia authorities confirmed a mere four cases of ballots cast in the name of dead people, with every instance involving a ballot cast by the relative of a deceased person. Georgia prosecutors are investigating whether Trump and his allies broke the law in their efforts to reverse election results.

              Trump also made the unsubstantiated claim that “a tremendous number of dead people” cast ballots in Michigan. “I think it was … 18,000. Some unbelievably high number, much higher than yours, you were in the 4-5,000 category.”

              The Trump campaign-commissioned report said analysts had “high confidence” there were only nine deceased voters in Fulton county, Georgia. The researchers also said they believed the “potential statewide exposure” of dead voters was 23, the newspaper said.

              The research also contradicted Trump’s claims that some 1,500 ballots came from dead voters and that over 42,000 voted twice in Nevada. The analysis expressed “high confidence” that just 12 deceased-voter ballots were submitted in Clark county, Nevada; they said the number of possible double voters ranged from 45 to just over 9,000.

              While the report does not outright state that Biden won the election, the analysis also said they did not have evidence to substantiate fraud claims about five decisive states’ results. “This result was not unexpected,” the analysis reportedly said. “Our analysis of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada concluded that in each state the final tabulated result was mathematically possible given absentee request rates.”
              ________
              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

              Comment


              • Don't forget the 'cyber ninja's'.
                If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Monash View Post
                  Don't forget the 'cyber ninja's'.
                  I always get them confused with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles....same amount of credibility I'd say
                  “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by TopHatter View Post

                    I always get them confused with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles....same amount of credibility I'd say
                    Hey the Teen Turtles kicked ass! The Cyber Ninja's on the other hand couldn't find their own asses let alone kick someone else's.
                    If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

                    Comment


                    • Fox News CEO said correspondent’s fact-check of Trump’s election lies was ‘bad for business,’ new emails show



                      Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott sounded the alarm inside the company about the financial fallout that the right-wing network would suffer if it continued fact-checking then-President Donald Trump’s lies after the 2020 election, according to messages that became public Wednesday.

                      In one instance, Scott emailed Meade Cooper, executive vice president of prime time programming, and laced into correspondent Eric Shawn for fact-checking Trump.

                      “This has to stop now,” Scott said in a December 2, 2020, message.

                      “This is bad for business and there is a lack of understanding what is happening in these shows,” Scott added. “The audience is furious and we are just feeding them material. Bad for business.”

                      The email to Cooper was revealed as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Like several documents made public Wednesday, the email had previously been redacted in earlier court filings. The new emails were included in a presentation that Dominion showed at a hearing last week in Wilmington, Delaware. The voting technology company publicly released the full slideshow Wednesday, per a court order. Fox News, which denies any wrongdoing, has accused Dominion of cherry-picking emails to present a self-serving narrative about what the right-wing network did after the 2020 election.

                      “These documents once again demonstrate Dominion’s continued reliance on cherry-picked quotes without context to generate headlines in order to distract from the facts of this case,” a Fox spokesperson said in a statement. “The foundational right to a free press is at stake and we will continue to fiercely advocate for the First Amendment in protecting the role of news organizations to cover the news.”

                      In another email written by Scott, zinging host Dana Perino for her “dismissive tone” in November 2020 after the presidential contest, the Fox News chief disclosed that the company had “lost 25k subs from FOX NATION,” its streaming service.



                      In earlier court filings, the data about the Fox Nation subscriptions had been redacted.

                      The messages underscore the panic that gripped Fox News in the wake of the 2020 election when its viewers rebelled against the channel for accurately calling the election for President Joe Biden.

                      Other newly released emails showed network producers discussing how putting Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell on the air inflated ratings. At the time, Powell, Giuliani and host Lou Dobbs were promoting debunked conspiracy theories that Dominion had rigged the 2020 election by flipping millions of votes.





                      “Any day with Rudy and Sidney is guaranteed gold!” the Dobbs producer wrote. In another email, another Dobbs producer wrote, “to keep this alive, we really need Rudy or Sidney.”

                      The full email chains are not publicly available.
                      _________

                      Someone remind me again...Who doesn't trust fact-checkers, and why?
                      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                      Comment


                      • Not a good look for Fox News. The whole 'we were only reporting the story, not suggesting that the narrative being presented was true' defense. Suddenly that narrative turns out to be profit driven and any 'facts' that impede making that profit are to be deliberately excluded.
                        If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Monash View Post
                          Not a good look for Fox News. The whole 'we were only reporting the story, not suggesting that the narrative being presented was true' defense. Suddenly that narrative turns out to be profit driven and any 'facts' that impede making that profit are to be deliberately excluded.
                          Oh don't worry, these were just cherry-picked quotes without context. Certainly there aren't plenty more instances of Fox holding their audience in utter contempt. No sir, not at all.
                          “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                          Comment


                          • Hear Trump Officials Tell Fox Their Election Fraud Claims Were Bogus



                            The Kraken has been released.

                            On Wednesday night, MSNBC aired explosive audio recordings of former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and Trump campaign officials telling Fox News after the 2020 election that there was no evidence Dominion voting machines flipped votes for President Joe Biden.

                            The existence of the tapes, recorded by former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, was first revealed in an amended legal complaint by Grossberg earlier this week. Grossberg is suing Fox News for harassment and discrimination, accusing the network’s lawyers of coercing her to falsely testify in the Dominion defamation case.

                            In her Tuesday filing, Grossberg claimed that Fox News failed to disclose evidence to Dominion of multiple recordings she made of Giuliani, former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, and “high-ranking” Trump campaign officials admitting they had no proof to back their election fraud claims. She recorded the conversations in November and December 2020 during her time as the senior booking producer of Fox host Maria Bartiromo, who helped promote Team Trump’s voting machine conspiracies.

                            During a pre-trial hearing on Wednesday, the judge in the Dominion case reprimanded Fox News for withholding key evidence in discovery after Dominion lawyers aired some of the recordings in court. Besides sanctioning the network, the judge said he was likely to appoint a “special master” to investigate the matter and whether Fox made “untrue or negligent” claims about Rupert Murdoch’s role at the network.

                            During Wednesday night’s broadcast of MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Tonight, host Alex Wagner revealed that her program had obtained copies of Grossberg’s recordings from the ex-Fox producer’s legal team.

                            In the first tape aired by Wagner, Giuliani was fairly upfront that he had no actual proof that there was anything wrong with Dominion’s voting machines or software. Preparing for an interview with Bartiromo just days after the presidential election, the ex-New York City mayor said off-air that he could tell the pro-Trump anchor “exactly” what the Trump team had in terms of evidence.

                            Asked about the “Dominion software,” however, Giuliani stated that was a “little harder” before asserting that there were some races in Michigan “being analyzed right now” over claims they had double-counted votes. “Now, whether that applies for the whole state or not, I can’t tell you yet,” he added.

                            Bartiromo then wondered about a conspiracy theory that Nancy Pelosi had any ownership interest in the voting software firm, prompting Giuliani to reply: “I’ve read that. I can’t prove that.”

                            In another conversation between a Fox News producer, Bartiromo and Trump campaign officials weeks later, an official asked to go off the record before admitting that there didn’t appear to be anything awry with voting software in Georgia.

                            “I think they have looked at the machines. When the secretary of state did its audit, there was a lot, I think a fair bit of looking at the machines,” the campaign official said. “The audit came in pretty darn close to what the machine count was with the receipts. So, I don’t know the outcome of those, but our understanding—again, this is from the secretary of state’s office—was that there weren’t any physical issues with machines on those inspections.”

                            Later in that same conversation, which took place on Dec. 5, 2020, the Trump adviser also raised the date of January 6 as the “backstop” for potentially overturning the election. This was also two weeks before former President Donald Trump first publicly urged his supporters to protest in Washington, saying “it will be wild.”

                            “We have seen so much reporting, whether it be December 8 or December 14, and we’ve seen virtually zero pickup of the January 6 date,” the official said, adding that people with “normal lives” probably weren’t aware of the importance of that date in certifying presidential elections.

                            “That’s the whole reason why I wanted to chat with you two just to understand where the real backstops are here,” he continued. “And if both sets of electors are set up, that would be the moment when the vice president—who’s the president of the Senate—would have to decide which slate of electors to go with.”

                            The back-and-forth between Bartiromo and the Trump adviser on the relevance of January 6 weeks ahead of the Capitol riots will probably not be admitted into the Dominion case. The judge ruled on Tuesday that lawyers for the voting software company may not mention the Jan. 6 attacks during the trial.

                            In its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit, Dominion accuses Fox News of knowingly peddling election fraud lies about the company in an effort to boost sagging ratings after MAGA viewers bolted following the network’s early Arizona call for Biden, a charge the conservative cable giant vehemently denies.

                            Additionally, Fox has pushed back on allegations that it withheld evidence from Dominion or mischaracterized Murdoch’s current relationship with the network.

                            “As counsel explained to the Court, FOX produced the supplemental information from Ms. Grossberg when we first learned it,” a network spokesperson said, adding in a separate statement: “Rupert Murdoch has been listed as executive chairman of FOX News in our SEC filings for several years and this filing was referenced by Dominion’s own attorney during his deposition.”
                            ________
                            “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                            Comment


                            • Remember, it's not news; it's entertainment !
                              Trust me?
                              I'm an economist!

                              Comment


                              • Trump Is Forever
                                Republicans have talked themselves into believing that 2024 is absolutely, positively, the last time they’ll have to deal with Donald Trump. Yesterday Benjy Sarlin brought the room down by arguing that even if Trump loses in 2024, he might run again in 2028, actuarial tables be damned.

                                Is that possible? Absolutely. If Trump loses in 2024, he could easily mount another campaign—though this is as much an indictment of Don Jr. as a plausible heir as anything else.

                                But let me take this a step further.

                                During the Republican primaries, one of the arguments that Good Republicans will deploy against Trump as a way of passively challenging him will be to say something along the lines of, “Trump is great! But if Trump is the nominee, we can only get four years, because he couldn’t run for reelection in 2028. We need a Republican nominee who can give us eight years.”

                                Well I come to you from the future and I’m here to tell you that Donald Trump will respond with the following:
                                -
                                A lot of people are saying that, actually, I could run again. I was treated so unfairly during my first term—the Russia hoax, the witch hunt, the lovers—more unfairly than any president in history. [sniffs] And so I should get a third term. Let me tell you that we’re looking into it and we’ll have a statement very soon. It’ll be a strong statement. And I think a lot of you are going to be very happy with it.

                                In response, his Republican challengers will gape and sputter and twist their toes in the dirt. But they won’t say that a third term is impossible. Elite Republicans in elected office will decline to comment. And the various precincts of Conservatism Inc. will either ignore this claim, coyly play along with it, or roll their eyes and say, “Well of course this is nonsense so it doesn’t matter. Trump just says stuff.”


                                Why am I certain that this future is coming down the pike?

                                Because Trump already did it in 2020.

                                Look, there was a lot going on in 2020. Impeachment. A pandemic. Massive unemployment. Hundreds of thousands of Americans dying. A presidential campaign. So much to keep track of.

                                So you probably don’t remember this moment at a rally in Wisconsin in August of 2020:
                                -
                                “We are going to win four more years,” Trump said at a rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on Monday. “And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.”

                                The crowd went wild. Republican voters loved it. And this idea wasn’t a one-off bit of improv. It was a staple. In September at a Nevada rally he said,
                                -
                                And 52 days from now we're going to win Nevada, and we're going to win four more years in the White House. And then after that, we'll negotiate, right? Because we're probably — based on the way we were treated — we are probably entitled to another four after that.

                                Do you remember what Republican elected officials and people in conservative media said about the frequent assertion by their candidate that he would flout the Constitution in pursuit of a third presidential term?

                                Let’s go to the tape:


                                All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.

                                So get ready for the Trump Gets a Third Term argument. It’s coming.
                                ____________

                                It's always time to recite the Trumper's Prayer. You know the one.
                                “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                                Comment

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