It was a general comment. It is allowed you know.
Donald Trump is an intuitive genius, and if you don't understand this, you will never stop him.
- Thread starter Andy Hong
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I think she spent too much effort speaking to the converted.
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Nah, that site is too mean for my taste.
Your opinion on the subject matter of the thread is allowed (which you didn't give in the initial post). You inventing something which hadn't happened in the thread in order to try and stir up trouble or whatever else you were doing is not.
It's ironic, really.
Trump claims to love America...yet he clearly can't stand Americans.
It really amazes me that the Russia conspiracy still has so much legs in it after Shattered was released. Shattered + the numerous leaks from former Hillary staffers + Donna Brazille flipping show that the Democrat loss was 99% on the Democrats and the hubris and arrogance of Clinton rather than Russia.
As a common saying I've heard from the progressive wing of the Democrats "The Russians didn't stop the Democrats from campaigning in the Rust Belt".
Why didn't they? (I'm not American). I don't understand why the Democrats and Hillary surrounded themselves with those they were already safely embraced by. It is no wonder parts of the US felt they were not a priority or just taken for granted. That in part goes to what the OP is trying to convey. Trump knew who to reach.
Basically they wanted to move the party right and provide a coup-de-grace to the Republicans by flipping Texas. Most of their efforts were spent in White, Suburban Texan Republican Strongholds. Chuck Schumer said that for every blue collar worker they lost in the Rust Belt, they would pick up 2 white collar suburban Republicans.
They then lost every Blue Collar worker and shock surprise, white Republicans who literally fled to the suburbs to escape ever seeing Black People in urban areas are racist and tribal AF and would never vote Democrat.
Shattered and even reports from during the election show that the Rust Belt Democrat campaigners were completely ignored and were even defunded while the campaigners were screaming that something was very wrong and the "Democrat blue wall" was going to collapse. It was pure hubris and nothing else.
But all you've done here is make a case Russian intervention wasn't the deciding factor in the outcome, not that it didn't happen.
Aside from the fact the US has spent decades interfering in other countries internal affairs themselves you would imagine the key point is not whether the Russians successfully changed the outcome of the election, but the fact they were in a position to meaningfully influence it at all. It's a question of investigating a security concern and whether the incumbent President (or people in his employ) was complicit.
Trump is not a genius. He's an adept opportunist. But far from perfect. Because all you have to do is consider his behavior since winning the presidency. He has made so many, many mistakes... and many that were "unforced errors". His tweets have created a maelstrom of discord and chaos in our country. He obstructed justice... not to protect himself from being caught guilty of collusion, but because of his fear of questionable legitimacy about his winning the presidency. His own megalomaniac narcissism is doing himself in. The Mueller investigation will very likely conclude that Trump obstructed justice and it will be a dark stain on the remainder of his presidency. The GOP doesn't have the nerve or courage to impeach him. I'm hoping that the FBI will have enough of an air tight case that they can pursue a criminal case against Trump after he's done with his first and only term of the presidency.
I don't think "Americans" is what he can't stand. He just can't stand anyone who doesn't fawn over him, suit his agenda, tow his line, or pay him homage. He's competitive and an opportunistic dirty player who will leverage anything if it will help him win a deal, or an election. That's why he openly entertained the idea of his son receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton from Russians... and because that was a Russian trap (to expose attempted collusion, as a means of sowing discord), he then tried to wash it over with a fake story about the meeting being only about Russian orphans. He's a greedy manipulator of the highest order. He loves America only for the opportunity to exploit it. He doesn't care about the general welfare, only the prosperity of wealthy friends and big business at all costs... as he tows the Republican line.
I think his errors and controversies tend to be not that damaging because he does tend to go after/get into fights with opponents that are also unpopular so a lot of people aren't too bothered. Most notably, he hates the media and bashes it, the public also feels the media very much hates him too. And he is overly hostile against protesting athletes, particularly black protesting athletes, but many also dislike athletes protesting, particularly if they seem to demonize the people they're against. He was helped by Russia but what Russia did was hack and leak misdeeds/controversies of the Democratic party during its primaries.
I'm not sure how much legitimacy or bargaining position he could have if he admitted yeah Russia helped me, the public/election was influenced by foreign interference and leaking, but all the denial, let alone illegality, probably hurt his position even more.
Like the man said, he could shoot someone in busy Manhattan and still win. From an outside perspective the US election exposed the nasty belly of the US, they all came out and voted for the devil in the blue suit because he sang their song.
It's not an either/or situation. Both things can be true at the same time. The Clinton campaign committed a major strategic error by largely neglecting the Rust Belt states and disaffected white voters, though contrary to popular opinion, she didn't ignore the region completely, and campaigned heavily in Pennsylvania and Ohio but still lost.
I think you underestimate just how close Trump's margin of victory was in some of those battleground states and how easy it would be for Russian troll farms to swing enough votes away from Hillary and on to Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein though false or misleading or even true but negative (but still election manipulation by a foreign power) social media ads and articles.
That's it. Less than 80,000 people made the difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Are you telling me targeted Facebook ads couldn't deliver 80,000 people out of the 214 million users it has in the US alone?
And Jill Stein had no qualms whatsoever getting help from and even acting as the propaganda arm for the Russians herself.
Before anyone from either side gets worked up, I'm not questioning that Trump is still legally the President of the United States or saying that Stein took money from the Russians (she seemed perfectly willing to do their dirty work for free), and Bernie Sanders was not involved at all.
But to be completely dismissive of the Russian influence on such a tightly contested election is to not learn from our mistakes and to allow them to happen again in 2018 and 2020 and beyond, and who knows, maybe next time it won't have an outcome that is as favorable to Republicans, many of whom are now bizarrely pro-Russian (looking at you, my district's Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, among others) or uncaring about their interference in our elections in contradiction to decades of Republican tradition. Saint Reagan must be rolling over in his grave.
