Rapist Felon Who Almost Ended Democracy Probably Not Joking About Ending Democracy
Yes, we should take Trump seriously and literally.
Donald Trump, convicted felon and aspiring autocrat, told a crowd of young dullards at a Turning Point Action event on Friday: “Get out and vote just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years it will be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”
“You’ve got to get out and vote,” he pleaded. “In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”
Trump’s deranged references to Hannibal Lecter are probably off script, but this particular riff has become part of his stump speech. He said at a Florida rally in June: “I actually tell our people, we don’t need your vote. We got so many votes we don’t need them. We just don’t want to see votes stolen. We don’t want to say … steal the vote. We’re not going to let it happen.”
A week later, he told attendees at a Washington, D.C. event: “You gotta get out and vote. Just this time. In four years, you don’t have to vote, OK? In four years, don’t vote. I don’t care. But we’ll have it all straightened out, so it’ll be much different.”
It’s a big deal that the Republican presidential nominee is so openly opposed to democracy, but the New York Times instead delivered the sanitized headline “Trump, Honing Attacks on Harris, Casts Her as a Far-Left Threat.” Hurricanes might cast levees as a significant threat, but they aren’t particularly credible.
Why so serious?
Journalist Michael Tracey argued that Trump was obviously joking during his speech to fundamentalist Christian conservatives, a group historically know for their sense of humor.
Tracey accused liberals of flipping out needlessly and ignoring Trump’s record, which includes an illegal attempt to overturn the 2020 president election, for which he was indicted and faces felony charges in two separate jurisdictions. He’s promised to pardon people convicted of attacking the Capitol on January 6, 2021. His record isn’t funny.
Republican Gov. Chris Sununu from New Hampshire told ABC’s This Week Martha Raddatz that Trump’s remarks were simply “a classic Trumpism if you will.” (I will not.)
“Obviously we want everybody to vote in all elections, but I think he was just trying to make a hyberbolic point that it can be fixed as long as he gets back into office and all that,” Sununu said.
Raddatz left Sununu’s pathetic response unchallenged, swiftly moving instead to another topic. She didn’t ask Sununu if he gives every convicted felon this much benefit of the doubt, nor did she remind him and her viewers that at a 2022 event, Sununu said Trump was “fucking crazy! The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy. And I’ll say it this way: I don’t think he’s so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution. But I think if he were in one, he ain’t getting out!”
David Cohen at Politico wrote that Trump’s comments “set off alarm bells among progressives who saw them as signs that Trump might not intend to allow future elections should he be elected in November.” Cohen never once mentions Trump’s coup-related criminal charges. Democrats aren’t reading tea leaves when they take Trump at his literal fascist word. Like Huck Finn, we’ve “been there before.”
It’s not just desperate Republicans and a clueless media making excuses for Trump. Former White House communications director Kate Bedingfield posted on social media, “I realize this will earn me the ire of many Dems, but … I don’t think that here he’s saying there will be no more elections. I think he is saying I won’t be on the ticket either way, so who cares. Which is hideously damning in its own right, cause this is what the Republican Party has turned itself inside out and shredded its credibility for — to become a stan account for this one awful, narcissistic guy.”
That’s shockingly naive. Sure, on the surface, Trump’s comments are just poor civics and ego-driven stupidity, but a lot has happened since 2016. Trump staged an attempted coup. He considered seizing voting machines. During his current campaign, he’s talked about suspending the Constitution and ruling as a dictator on day one of his second term in office. He’s repeatedly talked about serving more than just the constitutionally mandated two terms.
Bedingfield has no reason to believe Trump is telling his supporters they won’t have to vote after this election because he won’t personally be on the ballot. A consistent theme of Trump’s campaign is that everything has gone to hell because he’s no longer in the White House and President Joe Biden ruined all his amazing achievements (aside from the corrupt, far-right Supreme Court). It doesn’t make sense that he wouldn’t care if a Democrat replaces him in 2029.
The MAGA position is that if Democrats gain power, they’ll defund the police, ban hamburgers, dismantle your gas stove, and make your kids trans. The only way Republicans would believe they are safe from the “radical Left” is if we cease to exist.
recently observed that Trump’s fundamentally hates voting. He doesn’t even appreciate it as a form of narcissistic supply. “There’s a simple reason for that,” Berlatsky writes. “Trump is a fascist who dislikes and distrusts electoral politics. He would rather win by cheating and violence than win actual electoral victories because he sees voting as inherently illegitimate.”The mainstream media and unfortunately many Democrats fail to understand this fundamental fact about Trump. He is not a normal, terrible politician who nonetheless wants the approval of the U.S. electorate. Trump believes he’s already the leader of “real America.” After his assassination attempt, when he exclaimed with a raised fist, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” he doesn’t mean with mere votes. He will grudgingly tolerate the democratic system as a means to regain power, but he’s already proven that he will eagerly reject democracy when he wants to retain power.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has framed this election as a choice between “freedom” and “chaos.” It’s true that the first Trump administration was a mess, but Project 2025 offers a more organized assault on democracy. That’s why everyone should take Trump both seriously and literally. He’s not some bombastic showman pitching snake oil. He’s the serpent ready to bite.
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NPR went even further and completely restated what he said:
“Speaking at a gathering of religious conservatives, Donald Trump said if he’s reelected, Christian-related concerns will be ‘fixed’ so much so that they would no longer need to be politically engaged.”
Fucking NPR...
Well you think the Republican'owned MSM is going to report this to the fervor of Joe Biden old? I mean there's tax cuts they want to get, for goodness sakes! Keeping the thumbs on the scales by not repeating this on blast (or even worse minimizing it as 'he said, they said,') is not only journalistic malpractice but so, so expected.
"Obviously joking," the toadies say, one after another, and they seem to not be immediately followed up on. And they always have Murc's Law to fall back on. Completely allergic to followups unless it's a Democrat.
What a way to run a railroad. And then of course it falls to Democratic messaging, which a lot of people love shitting on, to correct all these misdeeds. This while knowing that the so-called MSM just prints the truth and then a Republican lie after and essentially says "You decide which is right! I dunno!"