Welcome to life in 2020, where the lion’s share of what passes for political discourse consists of Explaining Extremely Obvious Things to People Who Refuse to Listen

- Donald Trump ordered the Soleimani assassination for two extremely self-centered reasons:

1. To get impeachment off the front page

2. To attain whatever privileges come with being a wartime President

That’s really it. As always, Trump’s only priority is himself.

- Trump isn’t an expert on the Middle East, and he doesn’t listen to the people who are.

- Not only is he unwilling to consider how the consequences of his actions affect anyone else, he appears genuinely incapable of doing so. One cannot assess his motivations in any other way.

REASONS DEMOCRATS CONDEMN THE KILLING OF SOLEIMANI:

- No Congressional approval
- Iran is motivated to retaliate
- Hezbollah is funded by Iran
- Thousands of casualties likely

NOTICEABLY ABSENT FROM THE ABOVE LIST IS THE FOLLOWING:

- Democrats think Soleimani was a good person

- There is no such thing as a Democratic Party “plantation”. Black people overwhelmingly reject the GOP’s dismissive attitudes toward racism, police brutality, & economic injustice.

- It has been over 50 years since Republicans have supported any kind of civil rights activism.

- “Biased” is not synonymous with “factually incorrect.” It simply indicates a lack of ideological balance.

- When one side of the political divide operates entirely independently of verifiable truth, it is counterproductive to “balance” news reporting to cater to their views.

- The most successful third-party Presidential run in 50 years was in 1992, when Perot won 19% of the popular vote & took zero states in the Electoral College.

- In every Presidential election since then, it has been statistically impossible for a third-party candidate to win.

- When you vote third-party in a Presidential election, you are indeed sending a message: “I’ll just let the rest of the people in my state decide this.”

- If you live in a swing state and you vote third-party in 2020, it means “I’m BASICALLY OKAY with Trump getting re-elected.”

- The people who end posts with “I’LL WAIT” or “I’M WAITING” are invariably trolls who are accustomed to being ignored and/or blocked, so they try to pre-emptively declare victory against anyone who refuses to indulge them. The tactic is similar to “If you block me, I win!”

- Most Trump supporters have no idea what Hunter Biden did in Ukraine, and don’t care.

- “BUT HUNTER BIDEN!” is now a mindless retort for any accusation levied at Trump, period. It’s the “BENGHAZI!” of 2020. Same Whataboutism, different year.

- Trump uses the same strategy every time he is accused of wrongdoing:

1. Deny everything
2. Accuse Democrats of doing the exact same thing

- There need not be any factual basis for the counter-accusation. The only thing that matters to Trump’s followers is that it was made.

- Donald Trump has lied over 16,000 times in office. Adam Schiff has not once been publicly caught in a lie. (A paraphrase is not a lie.)

- Nevertheless, Trump’s supporters accuse Schiff of also being a liar. They have no other choice, really: it’s just in their playbook.

- Schiff did not lie about Trump’s phone call with Zelensky. A full transcript doesn’t exist, so Schiff described it in his own words.

- Schiff’s description wasn’t a verbatim quote, nor was it intended to be. This is as close as Trumpers can come to justifying their accusation.

- With their actions, both Democrats and Republicans appear well aware that calling witnesses to testify in front of the Senate would hurt Trump.

- By their refusal to even call witnesses to testify, the GOP demonstrates that they stand for nothing other than protecting Trump.

- If you care at all about restoring the rule of law to the U.S. government, you have no choice but to vote for the Democrat in November.

- That said, no candidate is above criticism during the primary. Keep personal shit out of it, but policies & accomplishments are fair game.

- The names “Coronavirus” and “COVID-19” are perfectly descriptive, and were already in common use before Trump began calling it the “Chinese Virus”.

- There is no good reason to call it the “Chinese Virus.” Trump explicitly chose that term to stoke national & ethnic resentment.

- Donald Trump’s inital reaction to COVID-19 was comparable to his reaction to climate change: instantly dismissive. He downplayed its severity, and insisted it was no big deal. Any conflicting reports were clearly a conspiracy by the Democrats & the MSM to make him look bad.

- It was in this context that Trump said “This is their new hoax.” It was absolutely an attempt to downplay the severity of COVID-19, & thereby excuse the inaction of his Administration.

- Those who attempt to contextualize Trump’s words in any other way are simply gaslighting.

- Donald Trump has never once acknowledged any criticism of him as legitimate. His only response is to misrepresent his own performance, and attack the messenger.

- It is entirely unsurprising that his response to the Coronavirus outbreak would follow this same pattern.

- Anyone who tells you “You’ll have to be nicer to me if you want me to vote for your candidate” has no intention of voting for your candidate. They’re just gaslighting you.

- Anton Scalia was confirmed to the Supreme Court 98-0. In 1986, the confirmation process was not driven by partisan politics. If you were a Senator in ‘86, you voted to confirm Scalia.

- It is dishonest to suggest that Scalia is the kind of justice Biden would nominate today.

- Political “debate” is more meaningless than ever these days, as both sides invariably rely on sources telling them that they are right & their opponent is lying. (That doesn’t mean both sides ARE right, but it illustrates the futility of expecting anyone to change their minds.)

- There may have once been a time in the gauzy haze of our shared history when it was possible to “catch” someone in a lie, but that has been neutralized by the deliberate dismantling of the credibility of objective news sources

- Furthermore, “BIAS” is not an antonym of truth

- The Coronavirus is a public health crisis, requiring solutions of a medical and scientific nature.

- It really isn’t an immigration problem, but this is the only avenue Trump was ever interested in pursuing. That’s why “BUT CHINA!” is often his only retort.

- Trump is an authoritarian who wants the police to have more power

- Contrary to what he says, he is not the least bit supportive of peaceful protests of police brutality

- Republicans focus on “looting” because that’s the narrative which discredits the purpose of the protests

- Trump’s focus on “Antifa interlopers” is less an attempt to preserve the reputation of peaceful protesters than it is to demonize those who protest all other actions of his Presidency

- Contrary to what the NRA will tell you, Antifa has very little interest in home invasion

- It’s not hard to guess the motives of people who decry the rioting & looting for obscuring the true purpose of political protests when these same people make damned sure the conversation begins with “rioting & looting” and ends with “rioting & looting”

- Joe Biden isn’t planning to defund the police. Trump is just capitalizing on a leftist slogan to scare moderates away from him.

- By forcing Biden to vigorously deny it, Trump is taking advantage of the deep divisions between the progressive Left and the centrist Democrats.

- “White privilege” does not mean whites are privileged in all aspects of their lives. It is a term that describes situations where white people are given the benefit of the doubt but people of color are not. This includes, but is not limited to, interaction with law enforcement.

- A gaffe is not the same thing as a lie. A gaffe is a one-time mistake, and is frequently acknowledged as such. There is no belligerent defense of the gaffe, or “doubling down”.

- It is clearly in the best interest of Donald Trump to pretend that gaffes and lies are equivalent.

- Transgender women are not trying to “replace” cisgender women, nor are they trying to erase the concept of gender. That is a transphobic strawman argument which is not corroborated in any way by the lived experiences of trans people.

- You can’t accuse anyone of leaking classified information and then call them a liar. That’s an implicit contradiction.

- Trump doesn’t care about keeping his story straight; he just wants to poison the figurative well until his supporters dismiss the allegations against him.

- The recent spikes of COVID-19 have occurred in states that loosened social distancing restrictions before it was recommended

- There have not been similar COVID-19 spikes in states with high frequencies of BLM protests

- “So how come protests are OK, huh?” is a false analogy

- Joe Biden is a moderate Democrat who has expressed willingness to work with Republicans.

- Trump will spend the rest of the campaign baiting his base with leftist activism and baselessly accusing Biden of wanting to do the same things (or not being powerful enough to stop it).

- “Open-mindedness” is a virtue only up to a point. It is not a virtue to compare a good idea to an actively harmful idea and refuse to acknowledge any qualitative differences.

- To suggest supporters of a female politician are YAS KWEEN-ing is sexism writ large.

- Twitter’s not going to ban Donald Trump. Reporting him for violating Terms of Service is a waste of time.

- It’s probably better to have a permanent record of his unhinged ranting; if we didn’t, it’d be easier for the GOP to pretend he didn’t say half the stuff that he does.

- The term “Cancel culture” is a deliberate attempt to conflate public criticism with authoritarian suppression

- The expression is used almost exclusively by conservatives to portray themselves as victims of a left-wing mob

Trump’s focus on the volume of Coronavirus testing is twofold:

- By drawing attention to the sheer numbers of COVID-19 tests, it allows him to boast of his pandemic prevention efforts

- More importantly, it is his go-to excuse for why the U.S. rate of infection is so high

- The Democrats are not falsifying Coronavirus data for political purposes

- Nobody is artificially inflating COVID-19 fatalities, nor are they advising schools & businesses to be shut down just to make Donald Trump look bad

- Doctors are not lying about hydroxychloroquine to hurt Trump

- Educators are not advising schools remain closed to hurt Trump

- In fact, you can safely dismiss claims of any conspiracy where the sole justification for misinformation is “They’re lying about it to hurt Trump”

- Donald Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and never has. This statement is 100% consistent with his words during his campaign and his actions over the past three years. Of COURSE medical professionals and public health advisors know more than he does about COVID-19.

- “They’re lying about it to hurt Trump” is simply a tactic to avoid admitting that Trump is dishonest, deceitful, and incompetent. Anyone who suggests the former has likely never acknowledged the latter. It’s not evidence-based reasoning; it’s political identity.

- There are no substantive differences between mail-in voting & absentee voting

- There is nothing inherently unreliable about mail-in voting

- Trump is only casting suspicion on mail-in voting as a pre-emptive measure to cast suspicion on the upcoming election results

- Donald Trump is only amplifying concerns about voting during the pandemic as a pretense to delay (or cancel) the election

- If he were truly concerned about safety, he would not have downplayed the threat for months, nor would he repeatedly insist schools be open by September

- If widespread mail-in voting is permitted, Trump’s faux-concern about pandemic safety will collapse like a house of cards. So he has been doggedly casting aspersions on mail-in voting (poisoning the well) to convince us that he has no other options but to postpone the election.

- There is no GOP plan for fighting COVID-19. They believe it’s all a hoax, or at best an exaggeration inflamed by the media.

- Many Republicans reject masks as a tool of Deep State control, but they never explain what statists would actually gain from everyone wearing masks.

- The ideology of the Republican Party is now driven by conspiracy. Formerly fringe movements such as Infowars and QAnon are now well within the mainstream of the GOP.

- Any narrative that demonizes liberals or makes Trump appear righteous will likely be accepted as truth.

- Republicans’ ceaseless defense of Trump is 100% driven by their political agenda; therefore, they must portray all prosecution of Trump as driven by a political agenda as well

- The FBI was entirely justified in their investigation of Trump’s Russian connections

- Trump never had a plan for helping to combat COVID-19; he is prepared for no other outcomes than “Virus goes away by itself”

- Failing that, his supporters are now deeply invested in the narrative that the CDC is falsifying COVID-19 data to artificially inflate the statistics

- Donald Trump very rarely “succeeds” at anything. He will simply declare victory no matter what happens.

- The rest of his efforts are devoted to finding ways to blame the Democrats, the mainstream media, or any other political enemies for any glaring failures.

- “FAKE NEWS!” is merely a transitional mantra for Republicans to allow themselves time to fully absorb whatever godawful thing Trump did that they just learned about; they will eventually accept it as no big deal once Fox News explains to them why The Democrats Are Just As Bad

- Trump’s insistence that “Democrats will destroy the suburbs!” has no foundation in truth; it is nothing more than racial fearmongering

- His depiction of BLM protesters as enemy combatants in a new civil war will only encourage pro-Trump vigilantes to “fight back” against them

- There is nothing inherently scandalous about mailing ballots to those who have not requested them.

- Social distancing is now a largely partisan issue, and Trump knows that his base is more likely to want to vote in person. That is why he doesn’t want mail-in ballots to count.

- When Mitch McConnell refused to hold confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland, he cited one reason & one reason alone: it was too close to a Presidential election (aka the “Biden Rule”). Ex post facto justifications like “The Democrats didn’t have the votes” are not accurate.

- By moving forward with the Senate hearing for Trump’s nominee, the GOP are acknowledging that Merrick Garland was blocked for no good reason at all.

- To do this without offering the slightest restitution is every bit as malevolent as the original theft of the SCOTUS seat.

- The way Americans consume political news has made Presidential debates obsolete

- There is nothing to be gained by watching both candidates call each other liars in real time; no minds will be changed

- There are no performance-enhancing drugs that make you better at debating

- There is nothing productive to be gained from asking “WHERE IS THE MEDIA OUTRAGE?” Trump supporters only demand “outrage” from the media to deflect focus from events that make their side look bad.

- Liberals demand accountability. Conservatives demand proportional outrage.

- In 2016, Trump’s LGBT outreach was “We will protect you from bloodthirsty Muslims”

- Trump’s message to women, similarly, is “We will protect you from BLM rioters & trans women in restrooms”

- The only “inclusion” we see from the GOP is that which dovetails with their bigotry

- The term “partial-birth abortion” was created by pro-life activists to describe a process of intact dilation & extraction in the very late stages of pregnancy. This is only done when a doctor determines that a mother’s life is in danger. It is not an elective procedure.

- The expression “partial-birth abortion” was specifically chosen to conflate the aforementioned procedure of dilation and extraction with elective abortion. It is intended to make all abortions seem as grisly and horrifying as possible.

- Donald Trump has spent most of his adult life surrounded by yes-men. He demands obseqious affirmation of everything he says. He feels entitled to deference at all times. If his words are met with any other response, he runs crying to Twitter and screams “UNFAIR!”

- The term “Biden Lockdowns” is a MAGA scare tactic which misguidedly suggests that the “lockdowns” are the problem we need to worry about

- It is profoundly unwise to end social distancing restrictions prior to a comprehensive plan to ameliorate the spread of COVID-19

- I’m not even gonna bother with the “Hunter Biden’s Laptop” story because there’s already about a 95% overlap with a post I made back in January. So if you’ll forgive my lapse into recursive logic... https://twitter.com/Dreamweasel/status/1220034530448433157

- There are almost no overconfident Democrats who think favorable polls mean it’s in the bag. That is a misguided projection of the 2016 race onto the current election.

- The hurdle separating “I DON’T CARE” from “I CARE” is greater than the one between “I CARE” & “I VOTED”

- When Democrats call attention to Trump’s hostility, his bigotry, his self-obsessed whining & general incoherence, it is not an implicit acknowledgement that he’s “rough around the edges but gets things done”. Trump hasn’t done shit except hold rallies & make court appointments.

- The threat of COVID-19 has prompted an unprecented influx of votes by mail

- In many states, mail-in ballots are not counted until Election Day voting is complete

- So no, there is nothing suspicious about thousands of votes being counted in the days following the election

- Officials are not “finding” votes in the days following the election; they are counting them

- The race is always close in swing states; that’s why they’re called “swing” states

- Do not fall for the “exact numbers” myth; the additional votes were never 100% for Biden

- Donald Trump has fought like hell to prevent mail-in ballots from being counted because he has known for months that their numbers would substantially increase the chances that he would lose the election

- There were never any circumstances where Trump would ever admit he lost

- Republican poll watchers were not shut out of polling locations while the ballots were counted.

- Trump has no legal grounds with which to contest the election results. He simply refuses to acknowledge that he lost and is incapable of graciously conceding defeat.

- I’m a little surprised I have to include this statement in this thread, but I will: Joe Biden won the 2020 Presidential election.

- Donald Trump is behaving the way he always does when he doesn’t get his way: he throws a massive tantrum, and then he files lawsuits.

- Despite what Trump says, “the media” did not decide the election. The votes were counted by the board of elections in every state, & results were announced on television when a winner was determined. This is how we have announced election results since television was invented.

- Trump’s attack on “the media” is akin to a football coach who runs the same play every time: whenever an event occurs that does not favor him, he will blame “the media” for it.

- Democrats were angry that Trump won the 2016 election, but they did not engage in obstruction

- Hillary Clinton conceded within 48 hours

- Barack Obama graciously invited Trump to the White House for transitional activities

- Donald Trump refuses to do either of these things

- Having lost the electoral vote AND the popular vote, Trump’s only plan to remain in power involves strong-arming legislatures in no fewer than 5 states to overturn the electoral vote. If he succeeds, we will no longer have a democracy OR a republic; just an authoritarian state.

- The winner of our Presidential election is declared when a majority can be conclusively determined in every state

- We never wait for electoral votes to be cast in mid-December; this premise is driven solely by Trump’s efforts to persuade electors to rebel against their voters

- Donald Trump is refusing to concede an election he clearly lost

- “BUT RUSSIAN COLLUSION” is not a valid example of how Both Sides Do It; this is more weapons-grade Whataboutism

- The FBI had legitimate reasons to investigate Trump’s campaign; it was not political obstruction

- It is entirely possible to understand the Electoral College and still be against it

- The red-blue Electoral map graphically represents acreage of land, and not the people who live there

- “But California & New York would control everything!” is a scare tactic which ignores the sheer volume of people who live in California & New York. (In addition to being a dog whistle, it also implies homogeneous thought within two of the most diverse states in America.)

The 2000 election was very different:

- The Electoral College was a virtual tie

- There was exactly one contested state (Florida), which was determined by a margin of 537 votes

- Al Gore conceded

- Trump would need to overturn at least 5 states in order to change the outcome

- The FBI investigation of Donald Trump was spurred by his administration’s clandestine communications with Russia. It was not driven by partisan politics.

- Once again: Hillary Clinton conceded the 2016 election. She was not the instigator of the investigation against Trump.

- The overwhelming majority of MAGA supporters who insist “Democrats are stealing the election” know fully well that this is a lie. They support Trump’s plan to remain in office despite having lost the electoral vote, which makes them as deceitful and anti-democratic as he is.

- None of the lawsuits have held up in court, so Trump supporters point to the sheer volume of unsubstantiated lawsuits to bolster their point: “Are you living under a rock? How can you ignore so many allegations?”

- The question for Republicans is not “Would you acknowledge Trump’s defeat if the electoral vote was proven to be fair?” Rather, it is “Will there ever be a scenario where you will acknowledge the 2020 electoral vote was fair?” For the mainstream GOP, the answer remains “No.”

- Democrats oppose the Electoral College because it frequently denies the Presidency to the winner of the popular vote

- Similarly, Republicans support the Electoral College because it frequently denies the Presidency to the winner of the popular vote

- The Electoral College is unique to the American Presidency. All of our other elections are determined by popular vote.

- Despite its ubiquity, “You are very stupid & you clearly do not understand the Constitution” is not really a defense of the Electoral College per se.

- When you explain the Electoral College to anyone for the first time, particularly if they come from another country, the response is often akin to: “That makes no sense. Why the hell do you do that?”

- Nobody ever asks “Why the hell do you do that?” about the popular vote.

- The number of counties won by a Presidential candidate is not representative of candidate’s popularity & irrelevant to the Electoral College. It is a completely meaningless statistic intended to falsely imply that the Republican is far more popular than he actually is.

- Seven weeks after the election result was determined, Trump is fighting tooth & nail to overturn the will of the voters

- People who warned of a “coup” were not being alarmist

- The coup will not be successful, but it is astonishing how much of the GOP is going along with it

- Our two major parties remain “TRUMP” and “OTHER”. The view of the “TRUMP” party is that the election was rigged.

- The few Republicans who publicly acknowledge Trump lost are now politically stateless until the GOP collectively opposes Trump & demands that he accept reality.

- Donald Trump believes he can simply “order” the Republican Party to flip the election for him. For him, that is a non-negotiable instruction. But they do not have the power to actually do this.

- Trump will just become more furious at the GOP for their lack of loyalty to him.

- Several GOP Congressmen & one Senator intend to challenge Biden’s election on January 6th. All that would do is force a vote. The House is controlled by Democrats, and most GOP Senators do not support overturning the will of the voters.

- If the electoral vote were somehow nullified by Congress, that would not automatically hand the Presidency back to Trump. The result would be the same as if we’d held no election at all. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi would become President on January 20th.

- I have been saying for weeks that Trump’s only options to remain in power involve a coup or secession. If Congressional Republicans were to successfully conspire to deny the Presidency to the winner of the election, that would absolutely quailfy for the former category.