You don’t need to be an expert in electoral politics to understand Rule One of any campaign: Candidates should pursue as many votes as possible. In a democracy, it’s common sense: The more votes a campaign has, the greater the chance of success.
With this in mind, Donald Trump appears to have a counterintuitive rhetorical habit. The New Republic noted:
On Fox News Thursday morning, Donald Trump had a weird instruction for his supporters: they don’t have to vote. “My instruction: We don’t need the votes, I have so many votes,” Trump said on Fox & Friends before going on a rant about how much support he has in Florida.
As a clip from the show makes clear, the former president didn’t appear to be kidding: https://x.com/atrupar/status/1816482779581775943
If the phrasing sounded at all familiar, it’s not your imagination. The day after last month’s presidential debate, for example, Trump held a rally in Virginia and told attendees, “We don’t need votes.”
They don’t need the votes because they have a plan in place to seize the power with undemocratic measures.
It’s all he’s been saying the last few weeks. If you listen to him, he says again and again, that they plan to abolish american democracy.
ISTG if trump loses, incites another insurrection and we still don’t put him jail I don’t know what the point of it is anymore.
This is a common feeling with a lot of people. Not jailing rapists and other criminals just because their daddies were wealthy breaks down the social fabric. After all, if it’s everyone for themselves, why shouldn’t I steal from Walmart? Why should I not commit fraud against corps? Why should I not try and murder a presidential candidate?
The public not seeing that crimes against the social contract have consequences will be the actual thing that breaks society, not gay people loving each other.
the social contract
1% toilet paper.
As one of the other posters mentioned (@[email protected]) , it’s exactly this. Johnson will refuse to certify the results of the election that put Democrats in the House, claiming some kind of bullshit irregularities with no proof, leaving the House controlled by facists. They’ll then claim irregularities in the presidential election and force a contingent election where they have a 100% chance of electing Trump no matter what the public votes.
More people need to be made aware that this is 100% legal for them to do, and more people need to be aware that it is almost certainly what they will try. The only thing that can possibly stop it is significant awareness by the mass population of Americans and significant publicity (similar to how mass awareness of Project 2025 turned it into a poison pill).
EDIT: Oh look, they’ve already started making it super-legal in battleground states: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/06/georgia-local-election-boards-allowed-withhold-vote-certification
This does appear to be their plan.
Conservatives: “It’s just a joke!”
Also Conservatives: “Jan 06 was tourists!”
While that’s true, there’s another thing just as true - the other side has a plan to seize the power with democratic measures.
It’s deep state vs bandits. Surely the latter are not cool, but the former, while being cool, are very dangerous.
It’s Palpatine vs Hutts. You wouldn’t want to be ruled by a Hutt. But Palpatine has his quirks.
He’s going to attack the capital. Again.
Attacking capital is great, it’s attacking capitols I have a problem with
Right you are Ken
I understand that reference.
i do not :(
It’s from MXC, a hilarious television show from the early 2000’s.
thanks :)
Last time they only got in because Trump stopped the security forces from doing their job. This time it will be different.
Get rekt, Jackson!
Attacking the capital was a last-ditch hail mary move, and only viable when he controlled the military.
They’re going to use baseless conspiracies to try to fuck with the election certification enough (with an assist from the courts) to force a contingent election in the House, where they’ll likely have a majority of state delegations.
Well, that’s terrifying
The whole Republicans house is in on it again. They have a multi-prong plan to seize the White House, from voter suppression to elector rigging, gerrymandering and outright violent intimidation. The coup will be much better planned this time.
Yeah, but if you know that then certainly the current administration knows that.
Last I checked Biden still controlled the NSA, CIA, and FBI.
Do y’all really thing something being “legal” is all it takes?
Love to see the face of Jan 6 2.0 rioters, when they realized someone in power actually wants to stop them this time
They don’t need a riot this time. Mike Johnson will refuse to recognize the results and then the house will vote for the next president with each state receiving one vote. Republicans control a majority of house delegations, so they will vote for Trump.
The riot was a smokescreen. It was to buy time to strong arm the state legislatures and convince Mike Pence to not certify the results. With Johnson on board, they can forget the smokescreen and just steal the election in plain sight.
They only need the house of representatives to steal a presidential election. The only thing that could stop it is some house Republicans voting with Democrats to remove Mike Johnson as speaker. (Or, I guess, finding their conscience and voting for Harris as a state delegation.
You made me think of Vincent Vega, beause this is how I feel about that prospect.
Boy, I wish I could’ve caught him doing it. I’d have given anything to catch that asshole doing it. It’d been worth him doing it just so I could’ve caught him doing it.
Bring it on, traitors.
Way harder to do when you aren’t the sitting president
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He doesn’t need to. He’ll just the the Republican legislatures of swing states to send electors that will vote Trump regardless of November results.
And the worst part is that it’s probably legal. The Constitution gives individutal state legislatures the authority to select electors in whatever way they wish, and they can probably change their method between the November election and the meeting of the electors in December if they decide they don’t like the outcome.
One aspect of the fake elector scheme was to block the counting of rightfully assigned electoral college votes.
If they can successfully do that in enough states to prevent either candidate from getting 270, then it goes to the House of Representatives to select the president.
Each state gets one vote, and since there are only 19 states with Democratic controlled legislatures, that would guarantee a Trump win, no voting necessary.
They managed to shore this one up after Jan 6. Now, instead of just needing a single Representative and Senator to challenge a vote, you need 1/5 of each body.
So an improvement, no doubt Election Denialers have more schemes in mind though.
Even at 1/5th of each body… 88 Congressmen and 20 Senators… The Republicans have that, 220 and 50.
This article, combined with the Rolling Stone article just posted about 70+ election deniers running elections in critical states and counties, I have a strong feeling that Trump thinks he has already stolen the next election. The fix is in.
This is it. His advisors have told him about this plan, and the orange idiot can’t keep his fucking yap shut about anything. He’s literally saying the quiet part out loud.
Anything we can do to get the traitors out of these key positions?
Nothing I’d want to suggest on a public forum…
Not likely since they are mostly in republican run states.
Ammo box
Since this is from MSNBC…
This is Rachel Maddows take on this as well. Essentially that states will refuse to certify the results.
They tried to do it last election, but weren’t really prepared. This time, they feel they’ve got this on lock.
Because the fix is in with the Republican state legislatures and Republican Governors; and The DOJ / Supreme Court is gladly eating Trump’s soiled diapers with a fork and knife
It’s gonna be 2001 again unless Harris can really knock it out of the park
Only this time tRump owns the supreme Court
This is my take too. Whole country votes solidly blue but the SC crowns Trump king anyways.
I don’t think they can do that, but I don’t doubt they’ll try
Trump has done literally hundreds of things he “can’t” do and only one person has come anywhere close to stopping him.
What are we gonna do, harangue each other about it? Easy there, we don’t disagree about anything. This is serious.
Merely voting is minimal effort. Last election I sent dozens of “vote forward” letters across the country. Will you?
The 💰$upremacy Court💰
It ain’t like the Supreme Court did the right thing then either, Roger fucking Stone was tied up in that shit too
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If there’s one thing magats have right it’s that Donnie tells it like he sees it. The reason he doesn’t need votes is because he thinks he can steal the election. It’s pretty simple when you don’t look too deep and with him you never should.
“We don’t need the votes because we’re going to call this election rigged and stolen just like the last one. We’re going to challenge the legitimacy of Harris as a candidate and draw out the election results in court for years. Hopefully we’ll get it to the supreme court where my lackies will nullify the results and declare me leader. At the same time, we’ll call for more violence against our enemies and try to incite a full blown civil war because I’m a narcissistic man-child who can’t accept that I could be wrong and lose.”
So then what’s he waiting for? If he doesn’t need votes then he doesn’t need an election. If his plan is to seize power without voting or going through the electoral process then there is no point waiting for an election. If that’s the case then what’s he waiting on? Sounds like bullshit to me.
Even if you are planning to cheat, you’d still want as many people voting for you as possible.
This implies he’s conniving. I don’t think he’s mentally fit enough anymore. Behind closed doors he worries about what will happen if he loses and they tell him, “you don’t need the votes, we’ll fix it if you don’t get them” and he’s just not with it enough to not brag about how smart and great he is. He lets things slip all the time. So now he’s made speeches saying people won’t have to vote, they’re going to fix it for him, etc. His team is likely freaking out that he keeps slipping, but it’s mixed in with so much bullshit rambling that it’s easy to play off. We absolutely need to be prepared for fuckery this fall.
Maduro didn’t think that
Sorry, I never watched Naruto
President of Venezuela. Got 30% of the vote. Had his guys say he won anyways.
Damn, I hope Naruto stops him
And did he also say he didn’t need people’s votes?
Are they hoping if his results are abnormally low it will be easier to sell that it was rigged?
Or is it self sabotage so he doesn’t have to face the fact that he couldn’t succeed (“I only lost because I sabotaged myself, otherwise I would have won!”)
So around the time Trump was running against Hillary Clinton in 2016 he also started saying some really bizarre shit like that right before the election. He started claiming that the whole thing was rigged against him, that he never stood a chance, etc. Things that you should probably never say as a serious candidate intending to win. This was partially to shield his own fragile ego, but also to open the floodgates for lawsuits and accusations of election interference/fraud if he lost. The idea being to extend the media frenzy past November and focus on Trump for even longer. He had run for office many times before that and enjoyed the pump from the media reporting on it. Trump is a narcissist that can’t stand not being the center of attention.
I still genuinely think he doesn’t actually want to do the job. He said stuff like “If we lose [in 2020] you’ll never hear from me again!” and he spent most of his time in office on his own private golf courses. He ran again in 2020 because not running for a second term would make him seem weak, which he couldn’t handle because it would damage his reputation as a strongman toughguy who never backs down. He’s running again in 2024 to avoid going to prison, which might still happen anyway if the state cases are allowed to proceed/go to sentencing.
There’s no chance he actually gives a shit about any of the problems he claims to want to fix. This is about him - enriching himself with the job at the expense of the American taxpayer, avoiding the legal consequences of his actions, and having his cult puff up his ego every second of every hour of every day.
I think, maybe, he is really dumb and just thinks ‘we don’t need the votes’ looks strong and will encourage people to show up to share that strength
Because he wants to be a dictator, why is this a question?
“Why does a fascist say fascist things??”
Sounds like something a weird ass geriatric narcissist would say
Because he wants to become a dictator for life
What little life he has left. I’ll never understand how people get to that age and are still behaving like they’re going to live forever. If someone has a forward-looking sense of duty that motivates them to make a better future for others I understand that, but Trump is clearly just in it for himself so I don’t really understand the motivation if it’s not just straight up denial of his own mortality.
The end is right around the corner for old Dumpy, you’d think he’d want to spend it sitting on a beach drinking pina coladas that he got other people to pay for.
Some Narcissists can’t believe the world can go on without them, that death can even be a thing for them
It’s all about the attention for him, and the get out of jail free card.
Reminder that Dick Cheney is still alive, although I don’t know on what n° heart transplant he is right now.
Maybe it’s his feeble attempt at reverse psychology? It’s probably something more nefarious but we must account for stupidity
I’m betting his aids keep saying they need votes and his ego is saying it’s impossible.
One good thing about this era we find ourselves in is the growing understanding that the rich and powerful aren’t smart or good in any way. As soon as all of us realize this, the sooner we can achieve a world run by those that are intelligent and interested in actually running things properly.
The problem with that is that most of the poor are not really smart either. On average we’re a pretty dumb species.
That second part is a bit ambitious.
As they say, aim for the moon… And if you miss…I guess you get to enjoy the immensity of the universe? Optimism might be foolish but here we are narrowly avoiding authoritarian control day by day. So that’s at least something
He is dumb
Probably a mixture of overconfidence and saying the quiet part out loud (i.e. he expects state and local leaders to “give him” the win). If you’re in a swing state you really need to volunteer to watch the polls or help administer.
Because he’s counting on not having, or needing, the votes to win. His plan is to call the Election rigged, get Mike Johnson to refuse to certify the results, throw the election. Being “So confident” that he has more than enough votes to win, and then showing election results that have him way behind Harris, will just feed his narrative of a rigged election. He’ll go on about how a disparity like that isn’t possible, Johnson will parrot the same shit, opening a process that is much more unclear to certify a different result.
Trump is laying the groundwork for an election loss, sewing seeds of doubt that he could lose my any margin, much less a big one. When the results come in, the bigger the landslide against him, the louder his screeching that it was obviously rigged.
