AZ - 123K+ 7.2%+ of Trump’s total vote.  Enough to reverse the outcome.

As odd as it is, you are not cramming 123,000 ballots in there without anybody noticing. It's just not going to happen. Even spread out, that's still thousands if not tens of thousands of ballots per district. Somebody would have noticed. Somebody would have said something. Some counties would have vote counts higher than the number of registered voters. There would be a giveaway. You don't cram 7.2% of Trump's total vote in a state as big as Arizona and leave no trace. That's just impossible.

Here's the problem:

• After spending 4 years saying that our elections are secure, how do you start a serious investigation into this without sounding like whining hypocrites at best?
• Even if you prove to be 100% in the right, do you honestly think that you're going to get people to believe it?
• Even if you prove to be 100% in the right, doesn't that also just prove that our elections really aren't secure and can be manipulated pathetically easily?
• The number of people needed to pull a stunt like this off would be in the thousands. Yet, not a single person has come forward and talked? Not a single election worker saying "Hey, I opened up a box of ballots to count, and all of them were just votes for Trump and nobody else." Not a single worker tasked with tracking the shipment of these ballots reporting any anomalies? Remember. Every state went redder. You don't think that in blue states like California or even purple states like Wisconsin, that if there were any anomalies they wouldn't be screaming about it on social media before they were done unpacking the damn box?
• Wouldn't this have just lead to several anomalies in the voting count in at least some cities? Bulk cramming votes by the tens or even hundreds of thousands would surely lead to the number of votes cast in some states or counties being higher than the number of registered voters.
• How do you prove that it wasn't just a bunch of low-information Trump voters showing up just to support him, not caring about the other downballot races?

Personally, I'd rather stick with the narrative that our elections are safe and secure, and the US voters simply voted against their own interests. The best we could hope for beyond that is the GOP saying that the election was stolen in 2020, the Democrats saying it was stolen in 2024, and nobody believing our elections are secure at all heading into 2026 and 2028.

These claims have little to no basis in reality and should be immediately disregarded just like Trump's claims of 2020. The fact of the matter is that we lost.

Right. 65% of voters. With a turnout far higher than the national average.

And they basically voted 2:1 in favor of Trump.

"Woman told House Ethics Committee she saw Gaetz have sex with minor, her lawyer says"

First, watched? I have several dozen questions....

Second.....you didn't immediately call the police to report a child was being raped?

Given that over 60% of voters in the county voted for Trump, they can't be all that concerned.

And if you voted for Trump and are suddenly concerned, you did this to yourself.

You don’t need to concede to their belief and subsequent policies if they aren’t grounded in reality, like on immigration. You provide a counter narrative grounded in reality that actually address their needs and concerns, real or perceived.

The Republican narrative on immigration is that immigrants are criminals, bringing crime and drugs into our country to kill our citizens, steal jobs, and exploit welfare, so we need mass deportations. None of that is based on reality.

Here's where your argument begins to fall apart. The above statement is true. However, to those who feel this way, the only acceptable solution is "Get rid of them all".

US citizens are responsible for smuggling in drugs. Immigrants are responsible for less crime per capita than US citizens, use much less welfare than citizens, and contribute far more than they use. The underlying fear is cost of living and safety.

Just sayin'......trying to tell US citizens that they're the real bad guys is probably not going to go the way you think it does.

So a counter narrative that both points out the realities of mass deportation, aka concentration camps, and provides real solutions to the problems, would absolutely capture those voters and fracture the Republican base.

Harris tried countering bullshit with reality. Voters voted for the bullshit.

Those real solutions would include legalization of illegal immigrants

This will never, ever, ever, ever happen. If you believe that any candidate could ever win an election campaigning for full legalization and just opening up the floodgates, you are living in a bigger fantasy world than Trump is. Every state in the US went redder. US voters voted overwhelmingly in favor of "get rid of 'em all". And you think that they'd vote for a policy that not only legalizes the ones that are already here, but rolling out the red carpet for even more of them, I have beachfront property to sell you. On Mars.

In fact, many progressive policies are popular across the board, including Republicans and independents.

How many elections does Trump have to win before you realize these polls don't mean shit? If there is anything to learn from Trump's time in office, it's that people will gladly tell pollsters something completely different from what they actually end up voting for, if they bother voting at all.

The only poll that matters is the one that happened on November 5th. About 150 million or so participated, and the voted overwhelmingly against these things.

I mean sure, you could try to put up a candidate who believes this in 2028. But then you'll be sitting there during Don Jr.'s inauguration speech wondering why we're having the exact same conversation.

EVERYONE thinks they are the totally no-homo love child of John Matrix

Gotta give props for the Commando reference alone.

Lol love the smoke. I voted for Harris, even encouraged my irl friends and family to. I just think that tacking to the right is insane.

Cheney’s the one I happened to hear the most about and they’re all shitbirds, but go off about the misogyny.

You're proving my point for me. Schwarzenegger is a career Republican, endorsed Harris, and is infinitely more influential than Liz Cheney could ever dream of being. But nobody had a problem with him. Kinzinger sat right next to Cheney at the J6 hearings and endorsed Harris, but nobody has a problem with him. Anthony Scaramucci. Michael Cohen. Former Trump associates and aides up and down the GOP political spectrum.

But Cheney -- who, to remind you, is a Republican who sacrificed her political career to stand up to Trump in the first place -- is the straw that supposedly broke their backs. Gee, I wonder why that is.

And y'all act as if Cheney herself was running for office. She wasn't. She was run out of politics. She was not up for election. Her policies were not ballot initiatives. Her entire campaign was saying "Look, we don't agree on anything outside of the fact that Trump cannot return to power." But that was just too much. I mean, what was it that set her apart from her equally or more prominent male counterparts who also endorsed Harris? I guess we'll just never know......

I’m the parent of a trans kid, I’m at a real risk of being chased out of the fucking country right now or maybe just thrown in jail, based on the chitchat around the watercooler now by both Dems and Rs. I’ve already been chased out of one home by bigots empowered by these pieces of shit.

Of course you are. I absolutely believe you, because nobody on the internet would lie about things that can't be proven in order to give the illusion of "credibility".

I absolutely didn’t want Trump to win. His win emboldens right wing terrorists across the country.

The Democratic party deserves to burn for this, but instead they’ll all be #resistance and send out more fundraising texts while the rest of us suffer. The lesson they’ll most likely take from this is the one people like you seem to be taking “we can’t run a woman because misogyny and we need to start burning leftists because we’re not right wing enough.”

Of course, it's the Democrat Party's fault, and has nothing at all to do with voters who sat home and allowed a dictator to return to power because his opponent was not the omnipotently perfect candidate.

And I'm going to challenge you to answer these questions:

How does allowing Trump to return to power make this situation better in any way?

How does allowing Trump to return to power not make everything exponentially worse?

How does allowing Trump to return to power benefit you and your community in any meaningful way?

Because the only answers I've been able to get to these questions from people like you are silence, insults, and downvotes.

But yeah. In 2024 when all people care about is “not the status quo” and “why eggs expensive”? A guy arguing for MORE government programs does not fair well against “Yo, what if we got rid of all taxes and government funding? Don’t ask where the money is going”

This is something I've always tried to get people to understand.

If you're running for office, and your opponent is saying monkeys flying out of your ass are terrorizing the city and causing a huge problem, you'd be right to want to write them off as an unhinged lunatic with no grasp on reality, because anyone can see there are no flying monkeys. Should be pretty cut and dry; ignore him and let him go back to giving sermons to pigeons in the park.

But if 51% of the voting base believes that monkeys flying out of your ass are their top concern, you had better come up with a solution for the flying monkeys. Of course, you could try to appeal to reason and logic and point out that you have pants on and there are no flying monkeys. But if 51% of voters are hooked on the flying monkey problem, you'll be making those appeals during your concession speech, while your opponent will suddenly point out that there are no flying monkeys because he managed to solve the problem on day one.

That's just the reality of running for office. Sometimes, feels win out over objective reality. There are a certain number of voters who fall into this category, and those voters were always out of reach. You cannot use logic to persuade someone to change a position they didn't logic their way into to begin with.

They also should have just had Kamala drop out and replaced her with Liz Cheney, that would have gotten the moderate vote.

Let's take a look the other Republican politicians that endorsed Harris:

• Anthony Scarramucci
• Adam Kinzinger
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Geoff Duncan
• Alberto Gonzalez
• William Webster
• Jeff Flake
• Fred Upton
• Liz Cheney

These are all former politicians who either sent out media or actively campaigned to support Harris. But Liz Cheney was the bridge too far. Gee, I wonder what's different about Liz Cheney compared to literally everybody else on that list.

Liz Cheney was never the fucking problem. If Liz Cheney endorsing Harris was supposedly the breaking point for you, you were never going to vote Harris to begin with.

They also should have shamed the people who don’t like funding wholesale slaughter around the world more, these are jobs we’re talking about here!

Ok, now answer this:

How does allowing Trump to return to power make any of this any better in any way?

How does allowing Trump to return to power not make all of this exponentially worse?

How does allowing Trump to return to power benefit you in any way?

So let me get this right.

The Democrat party was upset we were putting up a president that was "too old" and showing signs of cognitive decline, especially since he was going up against another old man with even more cognitive decline.

So the Democrat party gets the old man to drop out at the last minute and since there's no time for a Democrat primary, they put up a black woman as the nominee.

But because the black woman wasn't the absolutely perfect candidate, wasn't articulate enough on her policies, and didn't hand the left everything they wanted on a silver platter, they opted to stay home in protest and let the old white man with even more dementia return to power in order to "send a message" to Democrats not to put up old white guys.

And now they're saying that the solution to the old white guy that they didn't want to vote for was to put up an even older white guy who managed to get even less votes than her in his own home state.

Please, make it make sense.

And if you're one of the 10+ million Biden voters who opted to sit home, you still fucking voted for this. "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." And you made that choice fully informed, knowing it was a de-facto vote for Trump.

If your solution to the problem of "old white guy" is "even older white guy", then just admit it. You didn't vote for Harris because she's a black woman and are just using the narrative as a convenient excuse so you don't have to admit (to yourself, to friends) that you're a closeted racist. Because nobody with three active fucking brain cells believes that the solution to anything is to sit back and allow Trump to return to power.

"I don't like Harris's economic policies, so I voted for a guy who's economic policy is "They're eating the dogs!"

"I don't like Harris's policy on Gaza, so I voted for a guy who promised to speed up the genocide even faster."

"I don't like Harris flip-flopping on policies, so I voted for the guy who says he has "concepts of a plan".

"I don't like Harris's record as a prosecutor, so I'm going to vote for a guy who wants to have me deported because of my race."

"I don't like Harris being endorsed by a Republican woman (the men are just fine, though), so I'm just going to allow all of them to return to power."

And all I keep seeing from the people defending this line of bullshit is that "They couldn't vote for Harris because.....", or "Harris went too far to the right.....", or "Well, Liz cheney showed up that one time.....". Yet asking the questions of "So how the hell does allowing Trump to return to power help in any way? Better yet, how does allowing Trump to return to power not make the situation actively worse? What is Trump going to do to help me?" is met by silence, insults, and downvotes. Because they know what the answer is. It doesn't. It makes everything worse. But they just don't want to admit (again, either to themselves and/or to others) that they would rather allow an old white wanna-be dictator to return to power before they'd vote for a black woman. Everything else is just excuses.

I can’t remember what media I was doomfully consuming, but someone basically said Dems should not try to court Republicans to vote… because even if it works, they’ll arrive at the polls and vote Republican.

Now this is an interesting take on it that at least makes some more sense. I don't think we have any precedent to really go on; how many times do we really see someone from one party advocating for the other guy. It would be interesting to study how valid it actually is.

You laugh, but remember that at one time, someone walked into a boardroom and actually said "<puff> So, I've got this idea for a new cartoon. It's about a sponge. <puff> And it lives in a pineapple......<pass>", and is now a millionaire many, many times over.

So who do we get to play the two dudes that have to Weekend at Bernies Drew Carey around the oval office all day?

We are on Day -67 on a second Trump administration.

We already have:

• An anti-vaxxer with self-proclaimed brainworms as HHS secretary, given as part of a deal for him dropping out of the Presidential race.
• An alleged sex trafficker who is under investigation for various crimes including having sex with minors as AG, giving Trump an AG that will do his bidding without having to go through a Saturday Night Massacre since Trump can just use the trafficking case as leverage to keep him in line.
• An ambassador to Israel who believes Palestinians don't exist.
• Demands from Trump that the Senate immediately go into recess upon Trump's inauguration so Trump can appoint "recess appointments", amid reports that several potential picks are too extreme even by some far-right standards.
• A "government efficiency czar" or whatever term he made up for it headed by a man who has already said he intends to cut the budget by $2 trillion and inflict hardship on poor people "for their own good".
• Several prominent GOP figures admitting that they were lying about Project 2025 all along and there's no reason to lie about it any more since voters can't do anything about it now.
• Judges across the country pausing J6-related cases, citing the inevitability of Trump pardons for the rioters.

.

Bribery is now legal. The corruption is now blatant and open. Lies are now worn as a badge of honor. The winners are saying the corruption will continue and is now the new normal. They have seized control and have purged anyone who would have dared to speak up, let alone do anything about it.

And remember, we're not even on day one yet. There's still a little over 2 months before the Trump HateTrain 2.0 really takes off.

This isn't going to be pretty.

You know how I know I'm too stoned right now? I can actually picture this being a sitcom with Drew Carey starring as Grover Cleveland. I'm telling you, there's something there, and I'm going to go ponder what that is over some more weed.

Those Palestinians were going to lose their land, families and lives either way. Biden has done nothing to stop Israel, neither would Harris. She made it abundantly clear that “protecting” Israel was more important than stopping genocide.

Let's be realistic. Israel could raze Palestine any time it wants. They have the backing of the US and a vastly superior military. If Israel thought Biden and Harris would support Israel annexing the West Bank, they'd have done it over a year ago. In fact, they specifically said they're annexing the West Bank because they have Trump's backing.

If you were going to lose your land, would you rather lose your land X months or years from now, knowing you at least have a roof over your head until then and being able to hold on to the hope that maybe things might get better, or would you rather just wake up tomorrow with a giant orange bulldozer gleefully running over your house? Saying "It was going to happen anyway" is not only demonstrably false, but also doesn't mean that the solution to that problem is making it happen faster. If Israel were going to annex the west bank under a Biden administration, he'd have done it already.

but getting his nomination torpedoed by the Senate

He will not get his nomination torpedoed by the Senate. By doing this, Trump has ensured that he has an AG that will do his bidding without question, since Trump will be able to hang this investigation over his head to keep him in line.

This is why Trump was demanding recess appointments a few days ago. This is why Tuberville is threatening to torpedo careers of Senators who don't fall in line. This is a test for Republicans to get back in Trump's good graces until he demands another loyalty pledge. He will either remain as "acting" AG and stay that way for Trump's whole term, he'll be appointed in a recess appointment, or dissenting senators will fall in line to save their political careers (and possibly their safety, as many of them have already confessed to being threatened).

And this won't even be to "own the libs". Heck, he doesn't give half a shit about Gaetz outside of his usefulness as an AG puppet. If not Gaetz, there was always Cannon. Or Jim Jordan. Tuberville. Plenty of suck-ups to choose from. It's just that Gaetz just happens to be the suck-up that's also the easiest to blackmail if push were to come to shove.

This will be Trump's way of making sure that republicans know who's calling the shots. This is Trump's way of telling republicans that the train isn't stopping. This is Trump's first loyalty test for them. This will tell Trump who needs to be purged and who can be trusted in the party. Trump just put his dick out on the table, and told Republicans that if you want careers, you had better get in line to pet it.

Mark my words, one way or the other, they'll all line up.

Sometime last night. He allegedly quit abruptly and immediately in preparation for the AG role he was nominated by Trump for, because abruptly quitting in the middle of the night without warning is what all nominees do, don't you know.....

In completely unrelated news, the house Ethics committee was about to release a report about his involvement in underage sex trafficking, among other criminal activity. And wouldn't you know it? Committee rules prohibit the release of that report since he's no longer a member of Congress. Complete coincidence, I'm sure.

Everyone pointing at people that didn’t vote for Harris over Gaza like this is some gotcha moment are totally missing the point.

Yes, yes. We get your "point". Harris's policy on Gaza was bad, so of course the clear solution was to hand the Presidency to someone who would make it worse. To send a message.

Good job, guys. Your message was loud and clear. I'm sure that in 2028, Democrats might have a slightly more pro-Palestine agenda. Maybe. Until they realize there's a hell of a lot more Jewish voters that would be even more pissed off. Lesson learned. I'm sure the people of Palestine who will lose their land, their families, and their lives between now and then will take solace in knowing that you sacrificed their lives on their behalf to send a political message in a country 5000 miles away. I'm sure that's exactly what they wanted.

So am I, but if I were a betting man.....