Trump Issued 73 Pardons, Including Former Chief Strategist Steve Bannon
He also pardoned Lil Wayne.
President Donald Trump issued 73 pardons and commuted federal sentences for 70 other people during his final night in the White House.
Former chief strategist Steve Bannon received one of those pardons.
Bannon is in Manhattan awaiting trial to face federal charges for allegedly frauding people with the “We Build the Wall” online fundraising campaign:
But Bannon, who clashed with other top advisers, was pushed out after less than a year. And his split with Trump deepened after he was quoted in a 2018 book making critical remarks about some of Trump’s adult children. Bannon apologized and soon stepped down as chairman of Breitbart. He and Trump have recently reconciled.
In August, he was pulled from a luxury yacht off the coast of Connecticut and brought before a judge in Manhattan, where he pleaded not guilty. When he emerged from the courthouse, Bannon tore off his mask, smiled and waved to news cameras. As he went to a waiting vehicle, he shouted, “This entire fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall.”
The organizers of the “We Build The Wall” group portrayed themselves as eager to help the president build a “big beautiful” barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border, as he promised during the 2016 campaign. They raised more than $25 million from thousands of donors and pledged that 100% of the money would be used for the project.
But according to the criminal charges, much of the money never made it to the wall. Instead, it was used to line the pockets of group members, including Bannon.
Others include, courtesy of USA Today:
- Former Republican House member Rick Renzi of Arizona, convicted in 2013 of extortion, bribery, insurance fraud, money laundering, and racketeering. Renzi left prison in 2017.
- Former Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham, R-Calif., who was released from prison in 2013 after serving eight years for charges of bribery, fraud, and tax evasion.
- Dwayne Michael Carter Jr., the rapper known as Lil Wayne, who pleaded guilty to possession for a firearm and ammunition by a convicted felon.
- [Trump fundraiser Elliott] Broidy, who pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent and accepting money from Chinese and Malaysian interests to lobby the Trump administration.
He also pardoned Death Row Records co-founder Michael Harris, New York art deal and collector Hillel Nahmad, and gave a conditional pardon to former California Rep. Duke Cunningham.
Trump commuted former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s prison sentence.
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Comments
No Assange. No Snowden. Very disappointing. If Trump thought that would afford him mercy from the Uniparty, he was being selfish, but also very foolish in his hopes.
Lil Wayne? Bless his heart.
I wanted to see Assange as well.
I dont see any terrorist on the pardon list, unlike Clinton and Obama pardon
Nor do I see any any violent criminals on the list unlike Clinton & Obama’s pardons
Such as?
If you’re really that curious, maybe you can do your own research instead of waiting to be spoon-fed an answer.
We could add Jimmy Carter’s pardons of terrorists al so but that also requires research.
I did not much came up and its easier to ask here and get some specific examples to research.
What do you mean “such as”? Are you seriously unaware of Clinton’s and 0bama’s pardons of notorious and unrepentant terrorists, such as the FALN bombers?
(It’s also relevant here to mention 0bama’s deep personal friendships with several terrorists, including his political mentor Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said, etc. They were never convicted so he didn’t have to bother pardoning them, but there is no possible doubt about their guilt.)
Not something i know much about so just a question, now ive got something to google so thank you.
Well said.
He also commuted the sentences of two of the bombers convicted in the 1983 senate bombing (one of whom now works to raise money for BLM) on the urging of Jerry Nadler.
For a particularly egregious example of tendentious “fact” checking, you can see Snopes.com’s take on Susan Rosenberg.
Nothing says populist like pardoning someone, arrested on a Chinese billionaire’s yacht, who defrauded people of money for building Trump’s wall which was supposed to be paid for by Mexico.
Cram it, Xi-lover.
If you did just a modicum of research you would know that the Fed’s case against Bannon is politically driven BS, as it was with Flynn, Poppy and the others they were trying to intimidate to get Trump
Did he take the money or didn’t he?
Why didn’t he pardon Brian Kolfage, of We Build the Wall.
Why Bannon, but not a triple-amputee military veteran?
For the same endeavor?
I supported and gave to the their effort; I’m glad they did it; I hoped they would take money from it; and if they didn’t, they made a mistake. All that work….
Disappointed that Pres. Trump, who has all his limbs, didn’t pardon Brian Kolfage. I hope someone can point out that he DID pardon Brian Kolfage.
Disgraceful to pardon rappers, but not Brian Kolfage.
Here is his legal defense fund page:
https://fight4kolfage.com/
Close The Fed: I hoped they would take money from it
They lied about it. They said they wouldn’t take money, then they did. That’s fraud.
They lied about it. They said it would be a fair and honest election and it wasn’t; that’s fraud.
Just saying.
NJ observer: They lied about it. They said it would be a fair and honest election and it wasn’t; that’s fraud.
You seem to be trying to change the subject.
As for the election, it was reviewed by multiple courts, in state and federal courts. There was no indication of any significant fraud or irregularity.
…and OJ is still looking for who killed Nicole and Ron.
That is not true. Only a few courts looked at the evidence, and while there is not direct evidence of enough fraud to change the result, the indirect evidence is undeniable.
Milhouse, in order to assert that one would have to know exactly how many fraudulent votes were cast/counted
No, one wouldn’t. We don’t know the exact number of fraudulent votes, and we will never know. Nobody knows whether it was enough to swing the election, and it’s likely that nobody will ever know. What we do know is that there must have been a lot of fraud, and the proof is the very fact that the system was deliberately designed to make it impossible to find direct evidence.
If you fish with a six-inch net you will not catch any five-inch fish. If nets with holes under six inches are banned by law, that means whoever wrote the law doesn’t want you to catch any five-inch fish, which proves that five-inch fish exist.
Stop trying to have a conversation when you don’t have a f*cking clue what you’re talking about.
Milhouse: Only a few courts looked at the evidence, …
How many does it take?
Milhouse: and while there is not direct evidence of enough fraud to change the result, the indirect evidence is undeniable.
Can you point to specific indirect evidence? And why weren’t the courts convinced?
You claimed “multiple courts”. The overwhelming majority of the courts involved refused to even look at evidence.
The indirect evidence of fraud, besides the mere fact that the Democrat Party was involved, is that the Democrat Party went to such great efforts to make fraud as easy and as undetectable as possible.
Its not a great argument though you have to admit, no evidence is still no evidence. The idea that fraud can happen at scale just isn’t plausible. Various groups including Trump has tried and failed to establish a coherent picture of fraud. I’m sympathetic to the view that there needs to be a coherent review of electoral processes and so on to establish more confidence in the electoral system but counts of fraud itself on the evidence presented just doesn’t amount to much.
It is a perfect argument. What’s even slightly implausible about large-scale fraud? Go on, tell me. What makes it hard to believe? What evidence do you think should exist of such fraud, that doesn’t? The Democrats fought hard to make sure no such evidence would exist no matter how large the fraud was; why would they do so if there was not going to be any fraud?
A perfect argument? No it is not.
1) fraud at scale would require a mass conspiracy, thats hard to keep undetectable
2) The various state bodies have different systems, procedures and persons, thus insulating each state (to a degree) from fraud in another state
3) We know and have agreed upon that the dominion angle is crap. Thats a major vector for scalable fraud out the window
4) The votes have been checked in a number of states, hand counts, audits of specific counties, signature checks and this has lead to no meaningful change in vote counts
5) Their are paper ballots creating some kind of audit trail for states using machines so that gives a mechanism for checking
6) Fraud requires someone to do some fraud, there are no credible witnesses at this stage
7) fraud in terms of individual ballots isnt going to change an election. Im sure there will be a few cases.
8) Mail in ballots have been used for quite a while now, and the process hasnt produced any issues, and the ballots are tracked and verified. thats another vector for fraud which seems unlikely to work at scale
9) Motivation, given the polls during the election the Democrats could assume that they would win easily. Its only in the last two elections that polls have proven to be so wrong, and plenty on the Democract side were pretty shocked at the results. Their has been a lots of soul searching and analysis on why it went so wrong.
10) evidence matters, in the absence of it how can you draw such a firm conclusion? Pointing out flaws in a system is one thing but stating it was definitively a criminal at is quite another.
Oh ive thought of another one
11) If the system as you describe it was so flawed why did Trump do nothing about it, he has had 4 years to resolve the issue. Instead he had an electoral commission that disbanded early because they had so little to report.
I keep wondering whether you can possibly be for real. Maybe you’re just very young and don’t remember a lot of these things happening.
1. The Democrat Party is a mass conspiracy. But no, in fact it wouldn’t require anything like that. Democrats know what they’re supposed to do, they’ve been doing it every election for most of a century, and they keep getting better at it, so there doesn’t need to be any sort of national organization to give them their instructions.
2. The fraud is in each state. Particularly in some places that are notorious for it, such as Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, King County, WA, Dane County, WI, etc.
3. Yes, the Dominion thing was a load of crap from the beginning. That’s not where the fraud is.
4. All this means is that the machines counted correctly what they were fed. Which there was no reason ever to doubt. It says nothing about the validity or integrity of those ballots. There has been very little auditing of that. Georgia has done some; who else?
5. For the third time, that only rules out rigged or faulty machines, which was never the claim (except by the Dominion conspiracy theorists).
6. Are you for real? There is no shortage of people with the means, motive, and opportunity to commit fraud. And by the way one major pool of such people has traditionally been the poll workers who do the counting.
7. Fraud of necessity involves individual ballots. Millions of them.
8. Absentee ballots have been notorious for rampant fraud for most of a century. Nobody even bothered denying this until this year. Ballots are not “tracked and verified”. Especially in states that just mailed them out without any applications. And this is something that lends itself perfectly to large-scale fraud.
Are you so young or forgetful that you are unaware of the main argument that is constantly made against requiring voter ID, which is that fraud in in-person voting is rare, because the real motherlode of fraud is in absentee voting, which ID doesn’t catch? It’s a valid point, but the obvious response is that even if this form of fraud isn’t the main problem requiring ID will still catch some of it, at practically no cost, so why wouldn’t you do it? But now the same people who made that argument are repudiating it!
9. Democrats don’t need motivation to cheat. If they see an opportunity they take it. But this time they had plenty of motivation, because they could see what was happening. Trump was popular, Biden was not. The pollsters were doing their best to cover this up, but Democrats knew that they had their work cut out for them. Which is why they fought so hard to create such a massive opportunity for fraud.
10. I’ve already pointed out to you several times that if someone has gone to great trouble to ensure that the bank vault is left open and unguarded and that no count is made of what was in there at the end of business, then you don’t need evidence that there was a break-in. The very lack of such evidence is sufficient proof that it happened.
11. What could Trump have done about it? The commission failed for one reason only: the states refused to give it the information it needed. Isn’t that refusal itself the greatest proof of fraud?
1) that’s quite the claim, and suffers from the same issues as your argument in general. I’ve read multiple sources from both sides of the fence and the indication after extensive research is that fraud is exceedingly rare. The Heritage foundations report on the total number of prosecutions indicates something like 1300 cases over 20 years. That’s something like 65 cases of individuals carrying out voter fraud on a small scale. That’s not a lot on context of millions of voters in multiple elections of many years.
2) voting integrity has improved quite a bit over the years, taking on of your examples of phili they revamped the whole electoral system after a serious demo case in 1993. You seem to think that people don’t learn they have, which is why after the Russian election interference in 2016 many things improved as well.
Your point doesn’t really address the point I made either you seem to imply there is a mass conspiracy on the part of the democrats. That simply isn’t the case, sure every party has bad apples but not to the extent that there is a conspiracy. And if there was one I don’t see how it could have been covered up at scale. The DNC couldn’t even protect there emails.
3) agreed
4) Arizona as well I think but the point is where these have been carried out nothing untoward has shown up. And there is a larger point here if you are saying that the machines are fine and that ballots on an individual level might be suspect well that’s much harder to scale up.
5) the point here is that it makes auditing much easier. Having a paper trail is important.
6) that seems a broadly based claim which again lacks substance, all the reading I’ve done shows time and time again that these issues are at a small scale.
7) you miss the point fraudulent ballots on an individual level won’t change an election it has to be scaled up and that makes the whole thing much harder to pull off without any evidence of which there is none.
8) no the argument against voter ID and the various implementations is that it suppresses votes in the absence of evidence of fraud. If fraud were an issue and shown to be then it might become acceptable but that simply isn’t the case. As for absentee ballots again the evidence just isn’t their, it’s been used for sometime now and the voter fraud issues just haven’t materialised. Voter ID laws are pointless when the electoral register already requires Id validation and the negative effects are well documented when it comes to in person Id voter requirements.
9) Did they see what was happening thats not the picture I was getting from various media outlets, the picture was a potential Biden landslide . A crass slur against the entirety of the Democratic party from grassroots to top level that they just cheat is not an argument it’s a catch all slander , gross generalisation and from an evidence perspective lacking in integrity
10) I’m not clear that it is the case that the ‘bank vault is wide open’ there isn’t scalability , there is reasonable means of auditing when a paper trail exists, their is voter ID to register, so no I don’t buy that argument
11) the state’s didn’t provide personal data on individual voters because what the hell would that tell them? They made wild claims about voter fraud but it was quickly established that evidence for those claims was utterly lacking.
Milhouse, No mark311 is not for real. Thanks for your detailed and excellent argument.
Milhouse, A couple more – not election fraud, but sufficient “interference” to change the result.
Zuckerberg’s $500M:
https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/532866119/amistad-project-exposes-influence-of-mark-zuckerberg-s-dark-money-network-in-2020-election
Social media hiding the Hunter Biden laptop story.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/10/15/you-havent-heard-more-about-hunter-biden-emails-because-twitter-and-facebook-didnt-want-you-to/
@gibbie
The links you provide are pretty poor. The dark money it refers to has been in the public domain. The organisations involved deal with things like poll worker training, PPE, poll station rental etc.
This is all well known and doesn’t really show anything.
I keep wondering whether you can really be so ignorant and unthinking that you’re still arguing in good faith, or you’re just having me on.
1. No, the indication after extensive research is NOT that fraud is exceedingly rare. Anything but. The indication is that prosecutions are exceedingly rare. That’s obvious, and it says nothing about the level of fraud. On the contrary, it’s the very fact that the risk of prosecution is negligible that encourages so much fraud.
2. What “Russian election interference” are you talking about? There was no Russian interference in the election process. None whatsoever. The Russians tried to influence voters, that’s all. They bought a few ads on Facebook.
The first amendment says that all humans have the right to do that. The amendment doesn’t give them any legal protection in US courts, because they’re foreigners in a foreign land, so they have no constitutional rights; but they still have the same human rights as everyone else in the world, so there’s no basis for complaining about it.
And maybe they released some true information that better informed voters, thus doing the USA a favor.
I have no idea what you mean by “phili they revamped the whole electoral system after a serious demo case in 1993”.
4. On the contrary, that is how fraud has been done forever.
5. It does nothing for auditing the validity of votes. Not unless someone investigates each individual vote, which nobody is going to do.
6. All the reading you’ve done seems to be Democrat propaganda. The Democrat Party has been notorious for this, for most of a century.
7. Again, no. And it’s not just one ballot at a time; they manufacture dozens or hundreds at a time, where they have control of the process.
8. Absentee ballots have been notorious for rampant fraud for decades. Nobody even bothered disputing this until this year. Also, registering to vote does not require ID; you mail in a registration form and you could be anyone. The problem is that requiring Voter ID won’t stop that; it’ll just show that you’re the person registered, not that the person registered is eligible to vote. As for people who register in fake names, etc., they just vote absentee.
9. Yes, they saw what was happening. They could see the enthusiasm for Trump and the complete lack of any enthusiasm for Biden. They’re not so stupid as to believe their own party propaganda, they way you seem to have done. “Various media outlets” are Democrats with bylines, as Glenn Reynolds dubbed them about 15 years ago. Branches of the Democrat Party. They say what the Party wants them to say, but the Party doesn’t believe it.
10. There is none of that. There is absolutely nothing stopping fraud. And this year they went to great extents to sweep away even more safeguards, in the name of the Wuhan disease. Like signature matching, requiring witnesses, and not allowing late votes, so as to stop the Dems’ favorite tactic of figuring out how many votes they have to manufacture and then producing them.
11. Listen to yourself. “The state’s didn’t provide personal data on individual voters because what the hell would that tell them?” How the **** else can you possibly prove fraud? How can you identify fraudulent voters when you are denied the information to show their fraudulence? This works both ways: under 0bama states that wanted to cross-check their electoral rolls against databases of citizens were denied access to those databases by the federal government. And as far as I know that continued under Trump; the embedded civil servants continued the same deliberate fraud-promoting policy.
How did Joe Biden get 12 Million more votes than Barack Hussein Obama?
If Trump got higher percentage of black and hispanic votes than McCain and Romney when running against BHO, how did he lose?
Not a simple questions. But logic should make us all skeptical of the validity of the vote based on this.
Those are easy questions to answer. There’s no doubt that the total number of votes cast in this election was greater than at any previous one in living memory. The fact that voting was made so much easier induced a lot of people to vote who had never voted before, and would not have bothered this time either if not for the changes. (The same changes also made fraudulent voting easier, and thus must have increased the number of fraudulent votes. This is not at all a coincidence. But it’s impossible to actually prove.)
Thus it’s very easy to understand how Biden got more votes than 0bama, as well as how Trump got more votes than he did last time. And yes, Trump increased his percentage of the black vote. Biden won on the strength of suburban white women.
Because Trump is incredibly decisive. There are many who love Trump but there are more that think he is deeply unsuitable to be in any position of authority including many traditional conservatives
What is your source for this assertion that “many traditional conservatives” think Trump is “deeply unsuitable to be in any position of authority”? Who are these “many traditional conservatives”? Name some names. Let’s see some evidence to back up this claim; after all, turn about is fair play, right?
@fuzzy slippers
Sure how about John Kasich, Cindy McCain, Colin Powell, or maybe David Frum.
Their are a lot more I think their might be a wiki if you wanted to dig through a list. It’s pretty public as well some of the endorsements.
In what universe are any of these people “traditional” or any kind of conservatives? These are not conservatives, traditional or otherwise, and your naming then (thank you) answers a great many questions. These are nobodies, like literally nobodies, Kasich doesn’t hold any office and was laughed off the presidential stage by Republican voters at least twice; Cindy McCain is a nobody, being married to a fake conservative “maverick” means nothing at all to actual conservatives; Colin Powell? I can’t stop laughing, really, this is so hilarious that I am barely able to type because I’m giggling so hard; and David Frum? Um, who?
Your assignment: look up the word “conservative” and then try to formulate an argument for these big government, big war, globalist, tax and spend rejects from the GOP being “traditional conservatives.” Warning: this assignment cannot be completed because the underlying premise is incorrect: not one of the listed lunatics is a conservative, traditional or otherwise.
Since you seem to be a bit dim, this is quality information. Let your handlers know that all that hand-wringing about how having Kascich at the DNC was a waste. It was never going to change a single mind on the right and is their fault only inasmuch as they believe their own press. Repulican voters are the least likely to support a candidate because they claim to be a Republican.
I am a HUGE Ted Cruz fan, totally #CruzCrew all the way, but if I woke up tomorrow and heard that he had–oh, I don’t know used party resources for his personal expenses as Rubio did, I’d be done with Cruz (just as I now loathe and distrust Rubio). Likewise, if Cruz suddenly endorsed AOC or Schumer (really, just insert any Democrat commie loon), I would be beyond done with him. There is no contest in my mind between a conservative I respect and his suddenly showing that he’s not only not a conservative but not in the least worthy of my respect.
Democrats can trot out any fake conservative playing at being a Republican all day long, and it will move the needle zeromuch (well, it’s likely to get the fake primaried and replaced by a real conservative, but I’m pretty sure that Dems trying to use “names” to influence people who could care less about “names” won’t care about that, either. Kasich didn’t work, let’s try Powell. Meanwhile, the right laughs and points and laughs).
I don’t quite get why this is hard for the left, but I guess it has something to do with their base being so easily led by lies and propaganda, so they imagine all Americans are just as stupid as Dem voters. Newsflash: we are not.
David Frum is a writer for the Atlantic and was George Bush’s speech writer, Colin powell served in a republican administration. Are you telling me that you don’t believe the previous bush administration was conservative??
I have to say you saying that when someone switches sides on a point of principle would make you think less of them says a lot. Sure I’d agree that in terms of voter numbers not that many switched sides but in terms of key figures there is something of a story there.
Ted Cruz a man with no principles willing to endorse a lie just so the Trump base will love him in 2024.
You seem very willing to attack me saying I’m stupid or naive or being spoon fed yet having engaged with you and other here on the subject I’m left wondering how you justify your conclusion. The train of thought always ends with the same thing a distinct lack of trust in everything democrat to the point where facts gets distorted , mischarachterised, cherry picked, ignored or twisted. If you are going to over reach in your conclusion with hyperbole you might as well not say anything at all
That is exactly what I am saying (and have been saying since Bush41 was in office). David Frum has long been considered a sell-out nobody by actual conservatives. Further, neither presidents Bush were conservatives, and Jeb! proudly announced that he wasn’t a conservative. And Colin Powell, who endorsed Obama in ’08 . . . you HAVE GOT to be kidding! NO conservative would ever do such a thing; in fact, if you see some random “R” endorse Obama or Biden or any leftist loon, you can immediately write them off as “not conservative.” See how easy that is?
I don’t have any crayons handy, but let’s try this in terms you might understand: Is Joe Manchin, a Democrat, a “progressive”? The answer is clearly “no,” right? (or at least it was until quite recently). But wait, can you honestly tell me that a Democrat supporter of the Second Amendment and one who promised not to support the Democrat expansion and stacking of the Supreme Court is not a progressive? HOW CAN THAT BE? D’oh. Really, thinking is not hard, you should try it sometime.
I think that. But he nevertheless achieved a position of authority, and used it for good. That doesn’t make him a fit person, but we’re long past that point, so I voted for him anyway. It’s not as if Biden is a fit person either, and certainly Clinton was not.
Fuzzy, Kasich used to be a genuine conservative. Used to be.
I don’t recall that, but then, he wasn’t really on my radar until relatively recently. I kind of had the impression he was a “compassionate conservative” type (aka not a conservative except maybe fiscally until it came to vast expanses of government for our own protection/safety/blah blah blah). Anyway, I’ll just take your word for this one since it doesn’t matter one whit what he used to be; he’s an odious little Biden sycophant now.
“Served in a Republican administration” means nothing. Powell was never conservative. The fact that he endorsed 0bama proves it.
Frum was a Bush-family-type “conservative light”, for whom the main fact about Trump is that he’s “not quite our kind of person, darling”, and that trumps (;-) ) everything else. Bush Sr was the one who came up with the term “voodoo economics”; Bush Jr is a genuinely nice and decent person, but he is the one who came up with “compassionate conservatism”, which is really “big government conservatism”. (Which Trump subscribes to too.)
Kasich used to be conservative, 20 years ago. He’s changed a lot.
…so how much fraud is acceptable? How much does it take to matter?
Thats not the question the question is can you prove any fraud and thus far thats not really happened.
There was not sufficient evidence presented, or accepted, to prove fraud changed the election results in the time available. This does not mean there was no fraud or that the fraud that is known to have occurred didn’t change the results.
People are not charged for their crimes, up to and including murder, all the time due to lack of evidence, that doesn’t mean the murder didn’t happen or that the murderer isn’t a murderer.
That’s actually a fair point, personally I think it’s highly unlikely that their was significant fraud however I think it’s a valid exercise to provide a robust rebuttal of the allegations of voter fraud and analysis of the electoral processes. It’s important for these issues to be thrashed out so that people have confidence in the electoral system
It seems to have escaped your notice but there are a lot of people who do not have faith in the electoral system after 2020. No amount of your trotting out Democrat talking points will change that here.
I was watching on Election Night as were millions of Americans, and when Trump won Iowa, Ohio, Florida, it seemed in the bag. Then several states stopped counting, and my heart sank. Yeah, we know how this will go, we said and shut off the tv. And sure enough, it did.
And it made no sense at all. Trump had the momentum, the enthusiasm, the moment, even historical presidential trends in his favor, and I will believe until my dying day that Trump won. Then again, I also believe that Romney beat Obama in 2012, so take that for what it’s worth.
You’re always asking for links; well, here are two on the topic that I find compelling:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/13/5-historical-trends-that-show-its-utterly-shocking-if-trump-lost-in-2020/
https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23/5-more-ways-joe-biden-magically-outperformed-election-norms/
Are these points and the many made by LI readers in comments “proof”? Well, no, of course not, but logic and reason come into play here, too, and they dictate that there was something supremely strange about the 2020 presidential election. Everyone can draw their own conclusions, and you can keep bleating over that dead horse all day long, but it won’t change what people saw, know, and understand.
All of this is relatively moot now in terms of redress because, as Americans, we must accept that Biden has been installed in the White House and will act as president for the next four years (or for at least two, anyway).
@fuzzy slippers
Those are interesting articles, so thank you for the reads.
I think the articles make a simple mistake it looks at past trends on typical elections. This election was possibly the weirdest election ever. Norms have been shattered so understanding the election by referring to past trends doesn’t relate to logic.
Your logic argument is an interesting one. Logically each election is a separate and distinct event and thus when the assumptions of previous elections become invalid for whatever reason then they can’t provide an indication anymore. The polls were an excellent example of this, they failed to recognise Trumps popularity. Previous elections barring 2016 would indicate them to be accurate but not any more. The logic as such then is what, well it’s logical that Trump is popular but it’s also logical that he is well somewhat hated. It was an emotionally charged election which brought out more voters (I think in the region of 8m) and logically these would in the most part be democrats because younger voters tend to lean democrat.
I think what I’m getting at is you can analyse the numbers in many different ways to support a conclusion.
You make one valid point, that 2020 was a unique election. Given the WuFlu and the associated fear-mongering Democrats and the media engaged in every single day, a doddering hair-sniffing child-groping senile old white man who calls his own voters “Fat!” and “lying dog-faced pony soldiers” and who rarely left his basement, a Democrat Party that didn’t canvas or door knock or do much of anything except ensure that universal mail-in ballots (fraud magnets) were the norm, and polling outfits that repeatedly published completely inaccurate polls (as they did in 2016, hoping to help Hillary stumble and fall over the finish line and into an awaiting van that would drive her inert, bloated body to the WH), it’s a wonder Biden got any actual votes at all. I’m pretty sure that Biden and DOCTOR Jill voted for him, though, so that’s two.
Dude, if you are only just NOW getting that different people can look at the same set of facts and come to different conclusions without malice or bad intent, you are way way out of your league here. Or maybe, as Milhouse suggested, you are just very young and naive? If that’s case, I would owe you an apology.
@ Fuzzy slippers
If you are going to charachterise Biden in that manner, Trump comes out a lot worse. The bigger point from your statement is this, you misrepresent mistakes from the polling industry as some kind of conspiracy, your language speaks volumes about your inability to draw a reasoned conclusion from observations and facts.
With regard to your second point well i was responding to your comment about it not being proof in other words the argument presented was not entirely supported by the data set. There are plenty of examples where the data set might only support one conclusion but not in this case. I try not to assume whats obvious and maybe the point i made was obvious, but im afraid your assumptions about me continue to be both pointless and wide of the mark. That said anyone who thinks im young gets in my good books, so lets go with that ha.
Well, considering the entire polling industry was spun in 2016 when Hillary lost (and again in 2020, with regards to the massive Republican downballot gains), I think you are more than a little naive. Further, of course polls are used (by both sides) to suppress the vote; they have been for freaking decades. That’s Politics 101.
As to comparing Biden’s well-recorded hair-sniffing and handsy grossness with children, how does Trump come off worse? Where are viral images of him sniffing children’s hair and groping them for “official” photos? Do you really want to compare Tara Reade’s statement that Biden assaulted her by literally “grabbing her p****Y” and then sticking his finger in it with the tape of Trump merely talking about touching “p***y” because they let you? Even if he thought that was a great thing to do, where are the allegations that Trump himself pushed a woman who was his subordinate against a wall, ran his hand up her leg, pushed her panties aside, and entered her with his fingers, without her consent? Oh, right, nowhere. That was Creepy Joe.
So you reject our guess that you are young and naive (and therefore could have been afforded a measure of understanding regarding your ignorance and pathetic inability to think), so if you’re not just young and uninformed, what it is? No thinking person can stand behind the drivel you spew here for hours every day. Also, why on earth would you invest such time in commenting here when you clearly don’t hold our worldview and when it’s clear you are not up to the task of changing a single mind? Curious minds want to know.
@ Fuzzy slippers
Well the Trump issue list is quite long isn’t it. Some of it we don’t know because of his history of suppressing stories, the many claims of sexual impropriety. Hush money from campaign funds. His history of shitting on sub contractors inappropriately, lying almost constantly. Or maybe his abuse of the Emoluments clause ie using his position to enrich himself, or how about the shattering of democratic norms like conceding an election .. perhaps he should have conceded that night like Hilary did or maybe when the court cases ended in failure or perhaps after he goaded his followers into rioting in the capital. And don’t try that crap about he didn’t he has spewed the election fraud lie line for years. He claimed it in advance and afterwards with no evidence. Or maybe you want to look at his pardons of fraudster and corrupt politicians. Funny how no common folk were pardoned just a few rappers and fraudsters. Or how about his financial interests, that bullshit about his accounts being audited, the loans, tax evasion and all that.
With regard to your second point well maybe my purpose wasn’t to change minds but to educate myself. I like to think I’m no hypocrite so why not try and understand the arguments are what points are made. I will remain open minded as any good skeptic should but so far the evidence and logical arguments are in the favour of no election fraud. The wider point of course is that I’ve learnt plenty about various issues especially in terms of perspectives of others. I may not agree with many here but respecting an alternative viewpoint is part and parcel of democracy. At some point we have to learn to get along which I why I find your attitude so disappointing. The number of ad hominem attacks from you is perplexing, I really don’t see a need for it. It feels like you don’t like your echo chamber being challenged.
OMG, so your response is that there is surely evidence of Trump doing x, y, and z, but he’s suppressed the evidence from a media (and etc.) absolutely focused on his total distruction? Do you hear yourself?
Trump did not violate the Emoluments clause. Ever. If he had and there were evidence to that effect, he would have been impeached for it, with Republicans voting to do so. It never happened.
Hillary did not concede on Election Night, she sent Podesta out to bleat some crap to the wailing babies at the victory party.
Personally, I think Trump rode that election fraud train too far and too long, long past its viability. I do think he won, but when it became clear, early on, that there was no time to prove it, he should have dropped it. He didn’t, but so what? To this day, Hillary is still bitching about Comey and misogyny and the Russians and the thousand other things that deprived her the presidency. Butt-hurt isn’t a solely Trumpian position. Hell, we lived with the lunatic Trump-deranged “resistance” for four years (more, really, since they started when he became the GOP nominee). Let’s hear you condemn Hillary for not accepting her defeat.
Again, you display your ignorance. Did you read the list of those pardoned and those who had their sentences commuted? There were a LOT of, to use your disgusting elitist term, “common folk” on that list. Most for non-violent drug-related charges.
As to your last concern troll whining, you can challenge my “echo chamber” all day long; obviously, since you are still here. But you cannot challenge it with impunity. This means that your challenges will be met with counter points, as they should be. Unless, gee, let me guess, you think you should just spout your Democrat talking points with zero pushback? Bwahaha. That’s so not how it works. You want to blather lies and propaganda here, go for it. But you should expect pushback, and if you can’t take the heat, don’t whine, just get out of our kitchen.
Fuzzy Slippers: There was not sufficient evidence presented, or accepted, to prove fraud changed the election results in the time available. This does not mean there was no fraud or that the fraud that is known to have occurred didn’t change the results.
“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.” — Bertrand Russell
Fuzzy Slippers: People are not charged for their crimes, up to and including murder, all the time due to lack of evidence, that doesn’t mean the murder didn’t happen or that the murderer isn’t a murderer.
But there is typically evidence of intentional homicide, even if the perpetrator is not brought to justice.
One of my most favorite ever leftie tactics is the “great” quote intended to substitute for argument (and showcase the white privilege and superiority of the leftie trotting out the quote). Sadly, with the decline in our education system (K-grad), this is seen far less. It makes me sad, I love the random quote = viable argument schtick. It always makes me laugh. But still, nice that you’ve read Russell before the great purge of dead, white guys happened. Did you also get a chance to read de Tocqueville? Surely you don’t need me to bore you with the glaring counterpoint here, right?
There is evidence of election fraud here, many Zachs, including a ton of weirdness (I’ve linked some in these threads). You may not accept it, and it’s clearly not substantive enough to change the results, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. This is moot at this point, anyway. We have newly-installed president, and we’re going to have to suffer through it.
@Zachriel
It won’t let me thumbs up your comment so here it is ?
Fuzzy, you’re forgetting one factor that does make it plausible that Biden may have legitimately won. There were a lot of postal votes. And yes, it’s inevitable that a lot of those were fake, but most of them were genuine, and they were always going to tilt heavily Democrat, because the Dems were encouraging their base to vote postally while the Reps were warning their base of the risks involved. Plus many of the postal voters never voted before and would never have voted if they couldn’t do it from the convenience of their home. So the late-night and next-day count was always going to go against Trump. Which was of course an excellent way to camouflage any fraudulent votes being inserted into the process, and no doubt there were a lot of those, but you can’t deny that even in a completely honest election there would have been that late surge in Biden votes. Just maybe not quite so big.
I see what you are saying, but no one on this earth will ever convince me that over 80 million people voted for BIDEN. Obama, circa ’08, sure, I’d buy that, but not Biden.
Ha, I started to type up why and realized I am just repeating myself. Anyway, a lot of things are possible, but Biden winning the presidency in 2020 is just too improbable to be believed (by me, anyway, everyone else can think their own thoughts . . . until Biden’s algorithm-based thought police put a stop to that nonsense! heh).
Bwahahaha. Mistakes, my foot. Those were not mistakes.
Trump’s personal failings are that he’s an adulterer, a con-man, a braggart, a liar, not good with facts and figures, or with grasping the details of a situation. I’m aware of some accusations of sexual assault, but nothing compelling; he’s a rich and powerful person so you expect people to make allegations whether they’re true or not.
He did not admit to sexual assault, any more than he admitted to murder. He is not in any way a racist, let alone a homophobe or an antisemite, and it’s absurd to accuse him of that. He has given no comfort to such people.
He did not “use his position to enrich himself”, he did not violate the domestic emoluments clause, and he didn’t do anything that would have violated the foreign emoluments clause either, had that clause applied to him, which it didn’t.
Basically every single accusation made against him once he became president was made up and fizzled utterly. And given his genuine failings, that says a lot. It says that whatever he did earlier, he was squeaky clean during his term.
His pardon list was unspectacular. No comparison to the terrorists and other horrible people Clinton and 0bama pardoned. A few swindlers, lots of black drug offenders. And some good people who suffered unfairly, such as Joe Arpaio, Sholom Rubashkin, Dinesh D’Souza.
Fuzzy, if we’re talking about the foreign emoluments clause, Trump couldn’t have violated it, because it didn’t apply to him. It applies only to those who hold “offices under the united states”, and the presidency is not one of those. Officers of the united states are those who are appointed by the president.
However, it’s also true that Trump didn’t do anything that would have violated the clause, had he been an appointed officer.
The domestic emoluments clause does apply to the president, but he didn’t violate that one either. I haven’t even heard of him being accused of it. I think the usual suspects aren’t familiar with it, or they would be accusing him.
I also don’t agree with you that he should have dropped the fraud claims once it became clear that he wasn’t going to succeed. I think he had a duty to his supporters to fight until it was over, which was the 6th.
I do think that he shouldn’t have built up unrealistic expectations, but I think he didn’t realize that they were unrealistic. He was getting some incredibly bad advice, and I don’t think he has the capacity and background knowledge to tell that what he was being told was ridiculous. The fact that all talk of fraud was being suppressed meant that the saner sources of information couldn’t be trusted, so he was forced to get his information from the crazier sources, and they were, well, crazy.
So, in short, you agree that Trump didn’t violate the Emoluments clause? 😛
As to whether Trump should have persevered after it became clear that he wasn’t going to win, that’s a matter of opinion. I agree that he should seek every lawful avenue to right this wrong, but at some point (um, crazy QAnon Queen Freak shrieking about a kraken?), he had to know it was off the rails and time to call it a day. He definitely had every legal and moral right to continue (on this we don’t disagree), but I don’t think that would have been my advice on the matter (not that he’d ever ask me!).
Fuzzy Slippers: One of my most favorite ever leftie tactics is the “great” quote intended to substitute for argument
You committed a burden of proof fallacy. Sure, there could be a teapot in orbit. But that’s not an argument to support the claim that there is, in fact, a teapot in orbit.
Fuzzy Slippers: There is evidence of election fraud here
What evidence is that?
Milhouse: You claimed “multiple courts”.
multiple, consisting of, including, or involving more than one
Milhouse: the Democrat Party went to such great efforts to make fraud as easy and as undetectable as possible.
Can’t get much more vague of an allegation than that. No wonder most of the lawsuits were tossed.
It’s not vague, it’s very specific.
Milhouse: It’s not vague, it’s very specific.
Uh, no. Simply pointing in the general direction is not being specific. Something specific would be changes in ballot signature matching in Georgia, for instance.
Regardless, the rules are set before the election. That’s when the issues need to be hashed out in the legislature or courts.
Well, that as an example. And no matter when the time to fight it was, it’s still clear though indirect evidence of fraud. If the Democrats did not intend to take advantage of it they would not have fought for it.
Milhouse: Well, that as an example.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigations and election officials audited the signatures and verified them to 99.99%. The few that were not verified were separately investigated, and the ballots were found to be valid.
That’s what is meant by specific.
1Zachriel, do you ever get a breath of fresh air? I ask because it is clear that your head is stuck where the daylight ever shines.
No Snowden, no Assange. I thought he might pardon them, if only to stick it to Bill Barr.
Ending with a whimper.
Tucker says that Mitch told Trump that if he pardoned Assange he would be voted guilty in the impeachment trial
I don’t know whether McConnell told him that, but if he did that he should be.
Zachriel will be serving the Kool Aid right after His Fraudulence is sworn in and they finish playing “Hail To The Thief”.
Mind you I know there are more but this is my person favorite on the ‘Why the **** did you pardon this one list’ for Presidents. It’s a Bill Clinton special.
“Democratic congressman Mel Reynolds of Illinois – convicted of 15 counts of federal bank fraud, wire fraud, and lying to the FEC. Convicted in Illinois of 3 counts of sexual abuse, 2 counts of soliciting child pornography, and 4 counts of obstruction of justice.
He had an affair with a 16 year old campaign worker, and was caught on audio tape soliciting a threesome with her and one of her 15 year old friends.
Before leaving office, Clinton pardoned him and commuted the remainder of his sentence.”
Interesting, and Bill Clinton also visited Epstein.
Don’t forget Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich.
Being retired from law enforcement, I am basically against pardons unless there is a real case of injustice. I was in favor of the Michael Flynn pardon for that reason. That said, I don’t understand why there has to be some sort of tradition for an outgoing president to issue a bunch of pardons.