Leaked witness testimony from pro-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro allegedly reveals how the former president’s aides scrambled to overturn the 2020 election
Donald Trump’s campaign team physically flew “fake elector” ballots across the country to Washington DC in a last-ditch effort to overturn the 2020 election, a new report claims.
According to CNN, leaked witness testimony from a Michigan state investigation shows how Mr Trump’s aides scrambled to deliver the allegedly fraudulent paperwork to vice president Mike Pence before he could certify the election results.
The so-called “fake electors” plot hinged on the fact that American presidents are not directly elected by the people, but rather by 538 “electors” who are selected by their states based on the outcome of the vote.
Mr Trump’s team allegedly pressured state legislators to ignore the vote and choose their electors by fiat. When that did not work, they assembled their own group of electors with no legal standing and pushed vice president Mike Pence to accept it instead of the real ones.
It’s because they are cruel people. Trump, and people like him, give them permission to indulge their cruelty. They give them an avenue to lean into their worst, most hateful, instincts and still feel like a good and righteous person.
See, hateful racist pricks don’t view themselves as hateful racist pricks. They view themselves as sensible, rational people who see “what’s really going on.” When someone like Trump comes along and says, “No, you’re right. The Muslims are trying to force public schools to make your child pray to Allah. The Mexicans are flooding over the border to steal your job. The Jews are conspiring to replace good white people with dirty ‘woke’ minorities,” well, suddenly Trump is “making a lot of sense,” and “telling it like it is.”
Trump makes them feel good about being their worst selves. Trump lets them believe that anyone who questions their hateful worldview is just some libtard afflicted by the “woke mindvirus” and can be written off as subhuman and beneath contempt. He lets them think that maybe they’ll finally get to kill a few of them if he’s running the show. And because of all that he has earned their undying devotion.
That certainly describes the people we’ve seen on tv and the internet and outside his rallies but I’d venture to guess the larger segment of Trump voters are just rank and file Republicans who have little interest in politics. There sure are hateful people in this country who’ve found a leader to represent their long-stifled voice. Don’t ignore those who couldn’t care less or those who only care about one thing though. They aren’t ever voting for a D or a catholic or an octogenarian. Because powerful corporations and politicians, the RNC / DNC, religious leaders, etc. have rewired people’s brains. Sometimes it’s not their fault - it’s not cruelty, it’s ignorance and laziness. I think the ignorant and lazy can and should be helped.
I don’t know if this is a larger issue than a sitting president trying to overturn an election but the two party system, the system that often promotes voting against a candidate, is, I think, worth spending more time discussing. We need Ranked Choice Voting in this country for all primary elections.
It’s good of you keep making excuses for these people but we are leaning in toward fascism. If they are still oblivious to it by this point than they have lost any goodwill from me. If it takes gas chambers for you to say, “I was wrong” than there is something seriously wrong with you.
You are so astute! That’s such a perfect explanation.
I don’t think that’s it at all. In reality, many and probably most Trump supporters are perfectly nice, kind and decent people on an individual basis when it comes to how they operate on a day-to-day basis.
In my experience most of them are simply poorly-informed and/or have a very limited understanding of the world outside of their cloistered information ecosystem.
The problem isn’t so much that they are fundamentally “cruel” or hateful, but rather is that our current information economy is such that it’s easy and comfortable for them to live in a sort of unreality that silos them off into tribal-like identities that are self-reinforcing and that as such, create a kind of impermeable membrane that’s almost impossible to penetrate.
That this is so, is not an accident. It comes as an almost inevitable reaction to the fact that for decades now, large swathes of working class white people have been faced with the fact that their interests don’t matter, that no one gives a shit about them, and that the powers that be are more than willing to sell their livelihoods out for the profit of a few elites.
Trumpism is obviously not the answer.
It’s a con job, a fake out, but it feels like the right kind of “fuck you” to a lot of people who hate what globalization has done to their communities.
This has created a kind of tribalistic identity politics that can’t be solved for through things like objective reality.
The only way out is to acknowledge that there are vast swathes of working-class people throughout the West who feel disenfranchised and who cannot be ignored, no matter how much we may think of them as spoiled babies.
That doesnt really explain why Trump has such widespread magnetic appeal. That explains why they vote for republicans as a whole, or any individual republican running for president, but to me it doesnt speak to why Trump has become such a force of nature in the party to the point where he has basically taken it over and if those who do not grovel at his feet are cast aside. As he loses steam that is waning a bit, but man for a year or two he was king shit and no one could say anything bad about the guy, and even now people are obviously scared of him and his base
I also dont think its entirely explained by the cruelty-loving post you replied to, but I do think its a much more emotional response than just the fact based information-silo explanation you’ve given.