US Election Thread 2024

[Discendo Vox]

Roosevelt's shooter was declared innocent by reason of insanity and committed, after saying he shot Roosevelt because McKinley's ghost visited him and told him to avenge McKinley's assassination.
Reagan was shot by a mentally ill man with no politics and a Jodie Foster obsession. He tried to get Carter first.
Trump's shooter was a registered Republican but there was nothing before the shooting to suggest a political motive. It was seemingly done for notoriety.
But the guy who they just captured is a politically motivated Democrat supporter, I'll give you that.

I believe the recent arrestee was all over the place on political affiliation and was also in the "severely mentally ill" category.

I think that body count is vastly inflated. Pandemics cannot be stopped by any one individual and the majority of the deaths would have happened regardless who was in power. The invasion happened after Lord Dampnut had already been fired. And I haven't heard of any deaths of US intelligence agents or assets that can be linked back to his mishandling of intelligence information.

It's fair to place a significant degree of blame for the pandemic at Trump's feet. The Trump administration defunded a monitoring and research entity in Wuhan which was basically set up to study and monitor the exact kind of viral outbreak that produced Covid-19; it would have at least provided greater opportunity for an early identification and response, even if containment was still unlikely. Trump also has historically and continues to promote anti-vaccine sentiment and a number of harmful pseudoscientific cures. His specific actions on that front have politicized and polarized a large swathe of the population against vaccines and other public health measures. That has a body count associated with it that we won't be able to measure for a generation, and is going to feed other harmful pseudoscientific beliefs for a very, very long time.

Trump was not responsible for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but his actions toward Iran, particularly the highly publicized assassination of Qassim Suleimani, may well have played a galvanizing role in the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, and Iran's continued aggressive approach to the conflict via regional proxies.

On the handling of sensitive documents and damage to US intelligence agents and assets, it's hard to have concrete information and inquiries on that subject likely won't produce public results, but there have been spikes in the loss of informants abroad following the 2020 election.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/u...-captured.html

[mxleader]

It's fair to place a significant degree of blame for the pandemic at Trump's feet. The Trump administration defunded a monitoring and research entity in Wuhan which was basically set up to study and monitor the exact kind of viral outbreak that produced Covid-19; it would have at least provided greater opportunity for an early identification and response, even if containment was still unlikely. Trump also has historically and continues to promote anti-vaccine sentiment and a number of harmful pseudoscientific cures. His specific actions on that front have politicized and polarized a large swathe of the population against vaccines and other public health measures. That has a body count associated with it that we won't be able to measure for a generation, and is going to feed other harmful pseudoscientific beliefs for a very, very long time.

Funding may have been cut but there is yet to be any evidence that the cut was linked to the pandemic. One can speculate all day long and point fingers but once a virus spreads there isn't much you can do to stop it when there's no vaccine available. Trump can be blamed for his anti-vaccine stance though and all that goes along with that. He had a powerful opportunity to silence the foolish conspiracy groups and really slow the pandemic down but he loves the excitement that comes with stirring the pot.

He literally could have been the biggest hero of the pandemic but chose to be a stupid grandstanding show off. I don't know if he can tell the difference between the harsh reality of the presidency and the lack of reality of his role on the former reality TV show The Apprentice. Everything is a game to him. He could have been a huge hero with massive popularity if he would have listened to reason, kept his bullshit to himself and followed the teleprompter. He did, and is still doing, a lot of damage to the GOP.

One thing I'm curious this time around is if those people who were on the fence with voting republican last time, and probably threw away their vote, will do the same thing or rally around Trump because of the attempts on his life. I'm willing to bet that during his presidency and the following years he hasn't learned a damn thing other than what it's like to be shot at.

[Starker]

I think the biggest damage to the pandemic response was probably the denial it was happening at the very start. It really reinforced the idea that it's a nothingburger that will blow over very quickly and that it is not any worse than a flu. The early days were crucial to buy as much time and prepare as thoroughly as possible. There were even instructions on this very situation left by the previous administration that he threw out and completely ignored.

The second biggest damage was then not addressing the supply issues and not coordinating the response on a federal level. It forced states to compete against each other and try to procure supplies at exorbitant costs, leading to some places having a surplus of items while other areas were drastically overburdened and underequipped.

A not insignificant amount of damage was probably also done by constantly having big rallies and other gatherings that likely sped up the spread of the disease among his followers. It might well have contributed to the situation where deaths among Republican voters were significantly higher than among Democrats, even though Republicans tend to live in more sparsely populated rural areas and Democrats live in densely packed cities. And the gap only widened over the course of the pandemic.

As for the anti-vaccine stance, he was tentatively for the vaccines at first (and he could have easily touted the speedy development of the vaccines as his administration's accomplishment), but it was his base that was giving him pushback on any positive vaccine messaging and even booed him whenever he brought it up. Also I think at that point it was purely personal responsibility whether a person took the vaccine or not.

[Discendo Vox]

Notably Trump was anti-vaccine before he was pro-vaccine, before he was anti-vaccine; before his presidency, Trump infamously promoted the idea of vaccines causing autism ("Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!"). This was around the time he was developing a branded "personalized" dietary supplement. His alignment with some of the most self-serving and catastrophically harmful pseudoscience in modern history was always a clear synergy for him.

[Nicker]

I think that body count is vastly inflated. Pandemics cannot be stopped by any one individual and the majority of the deaths would have happened regardless who was in power. The invasion happened after Lord Dampnut had already been fired. And I haven't heard of any deaths of US intelligence agents or assets that can be linked back to his mishandling of intelligence information.

My most sincere apologies for over stating. It's a mere 461,000 deaths due to 45's incompetence. including 50,000 health care workers.

That’s assuming that you find many more deaths to be a negative health impact. According to the report, Trump’s policies or lack thereof contributed to the deaths of around 461,000 Americans in 2018. In 2019, about 22,000 deaths resulted from Trump’s dismantling of environmental protection measures alone, based on the Commission’s analyses. And of course, there was 2020, when the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic hit. Many have written about the Trump administration’s failure to mount a scientifically appropriate response to the pandemic. The Commission determined that 40% of Covid-19-related deaths in the U.S. could have been prevented had the U.S. only had the same Covid-19 death rates as those of other Group of Seven (G7) nations, namely Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

The invasion was delayed by Friend Putin in order to boost Trump's electoral chances. The invasion of Ukraine happened because Trump and his cronies in the Senate and Congress blocked defence funding encouraged and signalled that Putin was free to go in, unopposed because Zelenski refused to invent dirt on Biden. Remember the "perfect phone call"? Trump's hands are soaked in Ukrainian blood. Even after he was fired he continued to use his minions in the house to block funding to Zelenski.

And do you really think that Trump's secret meetings with Putin, Little Kimmy and Xi Jinping were bloodless? Like the CIA are going to admit that shit publicly?

Trump fucked US diplomacy and intelligence for the next generation. And people have doubtless dies for that.

[Cipheron]

The early days were crucial to buy as much time and prepare as thoroughly as possible

Which was exactly what Trump was thinking for the entirely wrong reasons.

A large part of it in my view comes down to Trump's original re-election strategy. Trump's tax cuts and massive deficit spending cause a spike in the stock market. You can read around for why this wasn't sustainable, but from Trump's point of view, it didn't need to be - it just needed to sustain things long enough for him to win re-election in 2020.

So Covid coming along was bad news for his election plan, which is why he wanted it swept under the carpet as long as possible. He bet big on "buying time" but by that he was thinking that a real response could be delayed 6 months until the election, but he bet wrong.

This also explains why he flip-flopped on a vaccine and also tried to promote any miracle cure that came along. Anything to basically make it seem like there was no problem, no need to shut anything down or have a public health response.

[Starker]

Notably Trump was anti-vaccine before he was pro-vaccine, before he was anti-vaccine; before his presidency, Trump infamously promoted the idea of vaccines causing autism ("Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!"). This was around the time he was developing a branded "personalized" dietary supplement. His alignment with some of the most self-serving and catastrophically harmful pseudoscience in modern history was always a clear synergy for him.

His vaccine denial is still not anywhere near RFK jr level where he actively goes out and tries to get people killed. Of course, if he manages to get elected and appoints RFK jr as the head of Health and Human Services, it's not like there would be much difference anyway. RFK jr is apparently already helping him to pick new leaders for the FDA, NIH, and CDC... https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...p-fda-nih-cdc/

My most sincere apologies for over stating. It's a mere 461,000 deaths due to 45's incompetence. including 50,000 health care workers.

Cut that in half to account for all the conspiracy nuts and anti-government free thinkers that would have been undeterred in any case and once more in half for the Republican leadership that found it politically expedient to rail against any measures they saw as hampering economic activity. Even if Lord Dampnut had made all the right policy decisions at the right time and spent all of his political capital trying to convince his followers to heed them, the US is just too big for a federal response to have a significant effect to that extent. I'm fairly certain that local policies (and local politics) played a significant part in why the death toll was so much higher among Republicans.

The invasion was delayed by Friend Putin in order to boost Trump's electoral chances. The invasion of Ukraine happened because Trump and his cronies in the Senate and Congress blocked defence funding encouraged and signalled that Putin was free to go in, unopposed because Zelenski refused to invent dirt on Biden. Remember the "perfect phone call"? Trump's hands are soaked in Ukrainian blood. Even after he was fired he continued to use his minions in the house to block funding to Zelenski.

I think the invasion happened because of Putin's megalomania and because he has long thought the West is weak and in decline. Brexit and the election of Lord Dampnut undoubtedly reinforced that belief, but it's something he has always believed, if you follow his speeches and public statements. But if we start pointing fingers at Lord Dampnut, then we also have to start pointing fingers at Obama's red lines, Clinton's reset button, and Bush jr's soul-searching as well as decades of failed Russia policy.

And do you really think that Trump's secret meetings with Putin, Little Kimmy and Xi Jinping were bloodless? Like the CIA are going to admit that shit publicly?

Trump fucked US diplomacy and intelligence for the next generation. And people have doubtless dies for that.

Diplomacy yes, but intelligence we just don't know about and absence of any proof there is no point in speculating whether or not any deaths have occurred due to mishandling of classified information.

[Vae]

Now that Drumpf wants make it so illegals can't vote!...



Quiet, Orange Man!...Only wanting legitimate citizens to vote is racist!...

[Discendo Vox]

His vaccine denial is still not anywhere near RFK jr level where he actively goes out and tries to get people killed. Of course, if he manages to get elected and appoints RFK jr as the head of Health and Human Services, it's not like there would be much difference anyway. RFK jr is apparently already helping him to pick new leaders for the FDA, NIH, and CDC... https://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...p-fda-nih-cdc/

This was largely from his staff keeping him distracted from direct involvement with these matters; the Trump administration appointee to run FDA, Scott Gottlieb, was unusual for an appointee in that he was knowledgeable about the agency and not particularly disruptive (this is because Gottlieb is basically aligned with slow, long-term pharma industry deregulation).

Cut that in half to account for all the conspiracy nuts and anti-government free thinkers that would have been undeterred in any case and once more in half for the Republican leadership that found it politically expedient to rail against any measures they saw as hampering economic activity. Even if Lord Dampnut had made all the right policy decisions at the right time and spent all of his political capital trying to convince his followers to heed them, the US is just too big for a federal response to have a significant effect to that extent. I'm fairly certain that local policies (and local politics) played a significant part in why the death toll was so much higher among Republicans.

The cited report is about all health impacts, not just covid; I feel strongly that it's massively understating its outcomes.

I think the invasion happened because of Putin's megalomania and because he has long thought the West is weak and in decline. Brexit and the election of Lord Dampnut undoubtedly reinforced that belief, but it's something he has always believed, if you follow his speeches and public statements. But if we start pointing fingers at Lord Dampnut, then we also have to start pointing fingers at Obama's red lines, Clinton's reset button, and Bush jr's soul-searching as well as decades of failed Russia policy.

The specific timing of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has more to do with domestic and regional pressures from the Putin regime than anything domestic to the US, including any aspect of US policy toward Russia.It's worth remembering this genocidal invasion was a continuation of a previous genocidal invasion of Ukraine and tied to Russia's ongoing efforts to undermine, sabotage, and consume neighboring countries. To a significant extent, early Russian messaging (from the days when the country believed the invasion would be an immediate success) strongly suggest that at even the highest levels, there's a serious problem with Putin increasingly consuming and believing his government's own propaganda materials.

Diplomacy yes, but intelligence we just don't know about and absence of any proof there is no point in speculating whether or not any deaths have occurred due to mishandling of classified information.

I've already provided some fairly strong evidence about contemporaneous deaths.

Now that Drumpf wants make it so illegals can't vote!...

Quiet, Orange Man!...Only wanting legitimate citizens to vote is racist!...

It's already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. There is no indication that the Democrats are registering "illegal voters" at all, let alone in the "tens of thousands". The SAVE Act appears to be some combination of messaging and exploiting, or if you're less skeptical, failing to recognize, that many states have really failed to roll out the REAL ID system, which keeps getting its timeline pushed back. In practice it's an attempt at suppression targeting younger voters and college students...and more budget brinkmanship from the Republicans, a party less interested in stable federal program funding.

This BPC article on the SAVE Act, while it has issues, provides some context on the issue. Again, there's already a federal law on this, and there's no sign of voter fraud involving noncitizens (though there have been a few organized voter fraud cases recently involving state GOP actors).
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/fi...-the-save-act/

[Nicker]

Cut that in half to account for all the conspiracy nuts and anti-government free thinkers that would have been undeterred in any case and once more in half for the Republican leadership that found it politically expedient to rail against any measures they saw as hampering economic activity.

The number of 461,000 unnecessary deaths was developed by the Lancet, not conspiritards. Besides, where did Rethugs at the local level get the tacit permission to ignore the science and suppress mitigation efforts? From TRUMP. If Hillary had been in power or a GOP president with half a brain and a dusting of scruples, hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths could have been avoided.

[Nicker]

For the pro-Trumpers who ignored the previous Lawrence O'Donnell video about Donald Trump killing American women, here's another video for you all to ignore; a re-evisceration of him and his OWG cronies, who embedded misogyny and child abuse into America law.

[Starker]

The number of 461,000 unnecessary deaths was developed by the Lancet, not conspiritards. Besides, where did Rethugs at the local level get the tacit permission to ignore the science and suppress mitigation efforts? From TRUMP. If Hillary had been in power or a GOP president with half a brain and a dusting of scruples, hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths could have been avoided.

So, do you think Obama's policies led to the deaths of millions of US inhabitants? Cause he's on the chart too. And it goes back decades.

The point I'm making about the conspiracy theorists is that there was already a significant local pushback to COVID measures regardless of any federal policy. They didn't really need any permission. And other significant figures in the cult were pushing the same line.

The thing with the MAGA party is that the pressure often comes not from the top, but from the bottom. And there are pressures that even the leaders must bow down to (cf. abortion). And I assume that you're familiar with the QAnon religion and how it shapes the MAGA ideology.

I've already provided some fairly strong evidence about contemporaneous deaths.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc?

[SD]

The number of 461,000 unnecessary deaths was developed by the Lancet, not conspiritards.

Wasn't the Lancet the first mainstream publication to give credence to MMR autism conspiracies?

[Cipheron]

Now that Drumpf wants make it so illegals can't vote!...

Quiet, Orange Man!...Only wanting legitimate citizens to vote is racist!...

... which is you being 100% dishonest about what's going on.

It's already illegal for non-citizens to vote, and there's no evidence of illegals having been added onto the voter rolls.

So the only possible target of legislation that adds more hoops you gotta jump through than you have already to register to vote is the people who have already been registering to vote - actual citizens.

They do check your registration against databases to ensure when you register to vote that you're a real person who is already a citizen.

So what crime is this actually preventing and how is that related back to illegal immigrants?

--------------------------------------------------------------

The only way it would make any sense is if the illegal was actually pretending to be someone else, and gave the details of a real citizen when they registered. The names and details do get checked against databases.

So they'd need to know enough details for that, that match what's on record, but they'd also need to know that this person isn't already registered to vote. So exactly how is the illegal immigrant getting that information?

Also keep in mind it's at least 5 years in prison if they catch you trying to pull this shit, all for the sake of one lousy vote in one election. People simply don't do this crime because it's fucking suicidal and there's no real benefit. It's all risk, no gain.

And it would be REAL EASY to get caught already - what if the REAL citizen you are impersonating then tries to register to vote only to find that someone else did so in their name. If the crime was actually happening - you'd expect people to be coming forward and stating that other people had registered to vote in their name all the time.

If you want to prevent this supposed crime happening - people trying to register to vote in someone else's name - a real citizen who isn't registered - then just ... make sure there are no unregistered eligible voters. Make registration automatic when a citizen turns 18, then there would be no possible unregistered people you could impersonate for what the bill mentions.

[heywood]

So, do you think Obama's policies led to the deaths of millions of US inhabitants? Cause he's on the chart too. And it goes back decades.

The point I'm making about the conspiracy theorists is that there was already a significant local pushback to COVID measures regardless of any federal policy. They didn't really need any permission. And other significant figures in the cult were pushing the same line.

The thing with the MAGA party is that the pressure often comes not from the top, but from the bottom. And there are pressures that even the leaders must bow down to (cf. abortion). And I assume that you're familiar with the QAnon religion and how it shapes the MAGA ideology.

I agree with you. The energy is coming from the bottom and Trump channels it.

I also don't have any major complaints with how the Trump administration handled the very beginning of the pandemic when their actions were most critical. After the spring of 2020, Trump did put his re-election above the safety of the people, but I don't think that had much effect on anyone's behavior. The people's response was split right from the beginning, and a great many people were ignoring the guidance of the Trump administration anyway. I think the problems we had at the beginning of the pandemic with supplies etc. were due to inadequate preparation and would have been there regardless of who was in office.

[Discendo Vox]

Post hoc ergo propter hoc?

There's a reason it's considered an informal fallacy. You're requiring an unrealistic standard of evidence, and no alternative causal explanation for a significant and plausible causal sequence.

Wasn't the Lancet the first mainstream publication to give credence to MMR autism conspiracies?

Not exactly- Lancet made the catastrophically stupid decision to publish Wakefield's fraudulent autism study (https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journ...7)11096-0.pdf), but wasn't the first source for the broader false claim about autism and vaccines. Lancet does, compared with other similarly positioned medical journals, have a worse reputation for headline chasing with out-of-scope and overbroad publications, but in reality this is a widespread problem with current scholarly publishing practices. It probably justifies skepticism about the specific report, but total rejection really requires engagement with the report itself, not just the outlet. They're still one of the giant, well-regarded generalist medical journals, and they've still got levels of editorial scrutiny better than the ones you've not heard of.

[Starker]

There's a reason it's considered an informal fallacy. You're requiring an unrealistic standard of evidence, and no alternative causal explanation for a significant and plausible causal sequence.

I don't think a causal link is an unreasonable standard of evidence in this case. And I don't think the theory that Lord Dampnut is to blame for these deaths is very plausible in the first place.

For one, given how self-centered Lord Dampnut is, he would hardly be interested in digging up this information in the first place, because he only really cares about himself and things that benefit him and his business.

Also, this is very specific information that would require memorization of details. Reportedly, Lord Dampnut did his best to resist his daily briefs to the point intelligence officials had to come up all kinds of novel ways of presentation and simplification just for being able to hold his attention span and even then it was a real struggle. Being able to hold and wield this information in a way to kill US assets would simply be outside of his capacity.

As for Wakefield, there's an excellent video on this very topic, about how he faked data in his study and lied:

[DuatDweller]

Stipendium peccati mors est.






Sorry, have been playing FNV mods again.

[Discendo Vox]

I don't think a causal link is an unreasonable standard of evidence in this case. And I don't think the theory that Lord Dampnut is to blame for these deaths is very plausible in the first place.

For one, given how self-centered Lord Dampnut is, he would hardly be interested in digging up this information in the first place, because he only really cares about himself and things that benefit him and his business.

Also, this is very specific information that would require memorization of details. Reportedly, Lord Dampnut did his best to resist his daily briefs to the point intelligence officials had to come up all kinds of novel ways of presentation and simplification just for being able to hold his attention span and even then it was a real struggle. Being able to hold and wield this information in a way to kill US assets would simply be outside of his capacity.

It does not. A big part of the subsequent Trump documents case was that he retained the classified documents themselves at a private residence and publicly rented space frequented by individuals with ties to foreign governments. No memorization.

More broadly, the entire idea of causal reasoning relies upon the comparative likelihood of events occurring in sequence. That's literally how causal reasoning works, and it's all that is possible under the many, many circumstances where counterfactuals can't be tested, including this one.

As for Wakefield, there's an excellent video on this very topic, about how he faked data in his study and lied:

I'm familiar with the video and am deeply familiar with the harms of the antivaccine movement in general; I literally cited the underlying study and referred to it as fraudulent. My statement about burden of proof was relating to the documented significant uptick in deaths in foreign intelligence assets during and after Trump's term.

[Starker]

The documents Lord Dampnut squirreled away to his "Southern White House" had to do with things like military capabilities and the affairs of the leaders of foreign nations. To the best of our knowledge, there was no information about asset recruitment. Also, assets have been lost in different countries and the documents only left the White house after Lord Dampnut got the boot while the increase of asset loss happened already before it.

And as far as causal links go, there are also explanations for the increase in the very article you cite:

[...]
Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft; being too trusting of sources; underestimating foreign intelligence agencies, and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks — a problem the cable called placing “mission over security.”

The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of C.I.A. officers in order to discover their sources.
[...]

[Nicker]

It's not just about the documents he stole and illegally retained and lied about having at Mar a Largo, it's about his unmonitored meeting with Putin, it's about him inviting the enemy into the oval office, it's about him publicly soliciting the assistance of Russia in 2016, it's about his private, unmonitored cell phone with which he dispensed who know how many national secrets.

I don't want to quibble over whether it was a few hundred thousand unnecessary COVID deaths, or a half million, give or take a few tens of thousands, and let's leave aside the question of possible covert damage tRump has done to the USA's diplomatic and intelligence communities, let's just look at the clear and present danger he represents to Americans today.

I am not talking about the fact that, despite being told repeatedly that Haitians are not eating pets, Vance and tRump continue to attack people from "Haitia" (sic) and promoting threats against Americans and legal immigrants alike. Bomb threats, cops patrolling schools, Proud Boy militias roaming the streets.

I am talking about this...

TRUMP: If I lose, blame the Jews!



What could go wrong?

[Starker]

I just don't think there is any point in making up numbers when it's just wild conjecture. If there's very little to back it up, it just veers into the "millions of illegal immigrants are voting illegally" territory. There is no point in claiming millions of deaths when there's probably "just" tens of thousand of deaths that can be attributed to the incompetence.

That Forbes article, for example, makes it clear that it's not that the unavoidable deaths just suddenly grew to 461k by 2018, but that they grew to that from about 420k unavoidable deaths under Obama. Policy isn't something that just kills hundreds of thousands of people overnight -- it's decades of failed policy at play here starting from Reagan when the Republicans began to dismantle the New Deal and the civil rights era advances in addressing inequality.

Also, can I just point out that COVID-19 wasn't a thing in 2018. So you can't really claim any COVID deaths before the virus had begun to spread.

[Nicker]

Ok. How about, more than ten times as many people died as a direct result of tRump's incompetent handling of COVID than were killed by enemies of the USA on 9/11?

Now let's all just chill to some dope rhymes.

[Tocky]

Oh well, in a very short time democracy will be gone. It will be gone "poof like magic, you will see". Do you really think his fanatics haven't been plotting to take over polling places? Through threats and intimidation they have been pushing out officials who have been there decades. Under the guise of illegals voting they will stop citizens from voting for Harris and have a plan to bring in fake ballots to swing states. Remember that the lies they claim about others are the lies they will make true for themselves.

Not even Kiffness will be allowed to remain in a take our country back mania.

I hope that is just a fear but it is based on what they have been inching toward.

Oh wait. You said chill.

[DuatDweller]

I was reading on BBC News, that two persons, one who loves him and one who hates him, said he staged all the assassination attempts.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvglm0rjy2go

'I hate Trump, she likes him - we both think he staged assassination attempts'


Wild Mother - the online alias of a woman called Desirée - lives in the mountains of Colorado, where she posts videos to 80,000 followers about holistic wellness and bringing up her little girl. She wants Donald Trump to win the presidential election.

About 70 miles north in the suburbs of Denver is Camille, a passionate supporter of racial and gender equality who lives with a gaggle of rescue dogs and has voted Democrat for the past 15 years.

The two women are poles apart politically - but they both believe assassination attempts against Mr Trump were staged.

Their views on the shooting in July and the apparent foiled plot earlier this month were shaped by different social media posts pushed to their feeds, they both say.

I travelled to Colorado - which became a hotbed of conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen - for the BBC Radio 4 podcast Why Do You Hate Me? USA. I wanted to understand why these evidence-free staged assassination theories seemed to have spread so far across the political spectrum and the consequences for people like Camille and Wild Mother.

Dozens of evidence-free posts I found suggesting both incidents were staged have racked up more than 30 million views on X. Some of these posts came from anti-Trump accounts that did not seem to have a track record of sharing theories like this, while a smaller share were posted by some of the former president’s supporters.

For Democrat Camille, Trump’s team orchestrated this to boost his chances of winning the election.

Wild Mother - who already follows QAnon, the unfounded conspiracy theory which claims Donald Trump is involved in a secret war against an elite cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles - wants to believe Trump’s own team staged the attack in order to frame his supposed enemies in the "Deep State".

The Deep State is claimed to be a shadowy coalition of security and intelligence services looking to thwart certain politicians.

There is no evidence to support either of the women’s theories.

The idea that news events have been staged to manipulate the public is a classic trope in the conspiracy theory playbook. Wild Mother says she is no stranger to this alternative way of thinking.

Camille, however, says this is the first time she has ever used the word "staged" about an event in the news like this. She always believed Covid-19 was real and she was extremely opposed to false claims the 2020 election had been rigged.

But on 13 July this year, when she was sitting in front of her TV at home watching live as Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, she says she immediately thought: "Oh, that's staged."

The way Donald Trump was able to pose for a photo and raise his fist in the air was what ignited Camille’s suspicions.

She had questions about how the US Secret Service allowed the shooting to happen in the first place. The director of the service has since resigned over failings that day.

The shooter was a 20-year-old called Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by Secret Service snipers. His motives remain unknown – which left many questions wide open. And so Camille’s thoughts continued to spiral.

Already sceptical that something did not add up, Camille turned to X for more answers. In the years before the shooting, she had already started spending more and more time on the social media site, formerly known as Twitter. She had taken an interest in pro-Democrat anti-Trump accounts and followed some of them.

"I would admit to you that I spend too much time on social media now, and it, in my mind, is kind of a problem," she tells me.

Recent changes to how X’s "For You" feed works meant she started seeing more posts from accounts she does not follow, but that pushed ideas in line with her political views. Lots of these accounts had also purchased blue ticks on the site, which give their posts more prominence.

So when the first assassination attempt happened, unfounded conspiracy theories suggesting it had been staged were not only recommended directly to her feed - but were all the more convincing as they came from other profiles with the same political views she holds about Donald Trump.

Most of the social media companies say they have guidelines to protect users and reduce harmful content. X did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.