The million MAGA muppet march

Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, November 16th, 2020 - 37 comments
Categories: Donald Trump, facebook, uncategorized, us politics, you couldn't make this shit up - Tags:

America is in some trouble.  Covid19 is surging.  The third wave is hitting hard.  Suddenly 100,000 daily new infections is not a scary possibility, 200,000 is.

The POTUS is holed up in the West Wing and is busily firing people partly because he thinks it could save his position and partly because he can.  Clearly he still thinks that some magic will happen and he will be declared the President of the United States again.  His hopes should be fading fast and judging by this press conference it seems that he may be realising the end is in sight.

However grifters are going to grift.  There are still fundraising opportunities available and suckers to rip off.

And a stop the steal campaign has spontaneously recently appeared.  Or has it?  From CNN:

It is an internet battle cry: Stop the Steal has swept across inboxes, Facebook pages and Twitter like an out-of-control virus, spreading misinformation and violent rhetoric — and spilling into real life, like the protest planned for DC this weekend.

But while Stop the Steal may sound like a new 2020 political slogan to many, it did not emerge organically over widespread concerns about voting fraud in President Donald Trump’s race against Joe Biden. It has been in the works for years.

Its origin traces to Roger Stone, a veteran Republican operative and self-described “dirty trickster” whose 40-month prison sentence for seven felonies was cut short by Trump’s commutation in July.

Stone’s political action committee launched a “Stop the Steal” website in 2016 to fundraise ahead of that election, asking for $10,000 donations by saying, “If this election is close, THEY WILL STEAL IT.”

We should not be surprised about current claims.  Trump himself has been obsessing about rigged elections for a long time.

In 2012 he claimed that Barak Obama had lost the popular vote by a lot and yet had won the election and urged revolution.  Obama won the popular vote by 5 million.  Despite this Trump thought that Americans “should march on Washington and stop this travesty”.

In 2016 when Ted Cruz thrashed him in the Iowa and Wisconsin primaries accused Cruz of cheating and tweeted “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it … [t]hat is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!”

He continuously branded his Democrat opponent that year as “Crooked Hillary” and said that she was going to steal the election.  He also claimed “People that have died 10 years ago are still voting,” and that  “fraud is very, very common” and that illegal immigrants are also voting.

He also claimed that that 2.5 million Clinton supporters were given two votes “so they can vote twice”.

Did anyone think that he would be magnanimous and accept defeat gratefully this time?

Unfortunately a disturbing proportion of the population believe him.  It appears that a worrying large number of Americans do not have the mental agility required to spot the openly blatant crap being spun in front of them.

Trump and the Republican Party are still waiting for some sort of miracle to happen even though they are having their arses handed to them on a plate by the Courts.

And so the million person march on Washington was dreamed up in some dark recess of the Internet.

It was no doubt inspired (plaigarised?) from the Million Man March in 1995 protesting against perceptions and threats to Black men in America.  Trump and his followers would bastardise any idea to insult others and to gain advantage.

And so the maga million man march happened.  Samira Sadeque has this description in the Guardian:

The crowd sang the national anthem, sporadically erupting in cheers for the president. The rally began at the Freedom Plaza on Saturday morning, and would culminate in a crowd of hundreds and thousands by late afternoon.

A large number of protesters had travelled cross-country to show their support for Donald Trump, from as far as Los Angeles and Seattle. One group, with the banner “Korean Americans Support 2020 President Trump”, said they came in from South Korea for the election and had showed up to support their man again on Saturday.

Craig Johnson, who had driven 14 hours from Florida, was giving out dollar bills featuring a photo of Melania Trump.

“Isn’t she gorgeous?” he said to protesters walking by. “That’s my first lady.”

“I want this nightmare to end,” he told the Guardian. “I haven’t slept much since the election because I’m sad that Donald Trump is not our president. He’s gonna be our president though.”

Johnson wasn’t the only one with such strong belief in Trump’s claims, made without evidence, that the election was rigged – and in his refusal to concede to Joe Biden after all major media organisations called the race for the Democrat, by 306-232 in the electoral college.

Estimates of the crowd size varied from over a million by Trump spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany to thousands or tens of thousands by everyone else.  More people contracted Covid yesterday than attended the march.

At one stage Trump’s cavalcade, escorting him to a game of golf, drove through the crowds.

Last night there was sporadic violence between Proud Boys and other fascists against the group called Antifa but essentially anyone who opposes fascism.  Hopefully it will not get worse.

Meanwhile in as chilling an example you can think of in El Paso there are reports of jail inmates being hired to move bodies of people who died from Covid into mobile overflow morgues and being paid $2 per hour.

America you really need to get things sorted out.

37 comments on “The million MAGA muppet march ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Enough is Enough 1
    16 November 2020 at 9:51 am

    The only bad thing about Trump losing is he will almost undoubtedly run again in 4 years.

    Trumpism is a political movement, and he will campaign on the basis that the election was stolen from him.

    We have not seen the last of this terrible human being.

    • Treetop 1.1
      16 November 2020 at 10:08 am

      I think Trump will not run again he will pretend to do so. Trump is exploiting the nation's turmoil and grief by using the election loss to misuse his power.

      How many more people will he fire and what is the point in firing more people?

    • dv 1.2
      16 November 2020 at 10:09 am

      Can he run from Gaol?

      • Peter 1.2.1
        16 November 2020 at 10:15 am

        Moot question. There is more chance of the 2020 result being overturned than there is of him ever being in jail.

    • woodart 1.3
      16 November 2020 at 10:10 am

      trump is NOT a political movement, more like a bowel movement. he will leave politics like he has left everything else in his life, with a string of unpaid creditors(voters) wondering why and how they got sucked in. the unhappy middle of america, where most of his voters come from, will go looking for another messiah. unfortunatley for middle america, there is no coming back, a vast flat paddock with abandoned factories and deserted towns, it exists just to grow cheap crops, farmers living on gov subsidies. manufacturing will keep looking for cheap labour, so for americans dreaming of reopened factories, the only factories opening in middle america are meth labs.(that is a whole other sad story).

      • Treetop 1.3.1
        16 November 2020 at 10:27 am

        And burnt out health workers, first responders and a population with chronic Covid health who cannot access health services or afford housing.

        In time Trump will be seen as being an inhumane leader who has blood on his hands. Biden has walked into a human disaster. It will be costly and time consuming to fix.

        The ranting by Trump will not stop once he leaves office.

    • Andre 1.4
      16 November 2020 at 10:22 am

      We certainly haven't seen the lost of him, and he will be forever ranting and raving about the presidency being stolen from him. He would do that even if the Electoral College had delivered the Oval Office back to him. If nothing else, it'll be good for grifting money from his cultists, that fake victim complex seems to play well with them.

      But Mary Trump reckons he won't actually run again. He won't put himself into a position where he might suffer another humiliating loss. His history shows that – after he bankrupted his casinos, he didn't try again. After he failed at selling steaks, or selling fake education, or failed at airlines, he didn't try again.

      The one thing he had succeeded at and made money from, and seemed to enjoy, was pretending to be a success on TV. So that's what he'll likely go back to. Along with using real estate as the vehicle for probable money laundering.

    • nzsage 1.5
      16 November 2020 at 1:12 pm

      "Trumpism is a political movement… "

      As New York journalist Thomas Friedman stated on CNN, it's more akin to a cult than a political party.

      https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/11/13/john-kelly-trump-transition-friedman-cult-tsr-sot-vpx.cnn

  2. Adrian 2
    16 November 2020 at 10:28 am

    A few years ago , sorry I'm hopeless at IT, I'm 70 years older than it is, so I can't link to it without destroying something, but a study done at Basel University looking at the traits of sociopaths found that about 50% of the population cannot detect a given socio or psychopath, interestingly 50% of those can identify a different type of socio/psychopath leaving only about 20-25% of the population reasonably consistently aware of deviant behaviour.

    Theres your 50% of US voters right there. It caught my eye because the headline said something like money market operators ticked at least 7 of the !0 traits of a Sociopath,

    It must have been over 4 years ago now as the topic was pertinent at the time.

    • Treetop 2.1
      16 November 2020 at 10:46 am

      The gun culture tells me a lot. I cannot understand why a person needs to own a AK -47.

      People are becoming radicalised in the US due to politics.

      • greywarshark 2.1.1
        16 November 2020 at 12:35 pm

        I think the USA is being radicalised, torn apart, by being unable to cope with processing the reality they see, and the messages they get from their trusted, regular sources, coupled with the base beliefs about the wonder of their country, their democracy, being eroded in front of their eyes.

        They might vaguely comprehend at the back of their minds that it has mostly been a sham, which they have fought for – the idea of it and the vaunted values of it – but it's always been a 'busted flush'. That's left many people anxious, angry and anomic. Not world-famous in their own backyard, but wondering where in the world they are.

        They cling together with like minds, and gain comfort by blaming, marching, shouting, deriding, punishing; all negative to working for a better outcome.

        • Treetop 2.1.1.1
          16 November 2020 at 1:04 pm

          Obama just on RNZ news, conspiracy theorists are causing the US divide.

          • greywarshark 2.1.1.1.1
            16 November 2020 at 1:24 pm

            Probably but conspiracy mania comes from people not knowing what to believe in – so many lies, half-truths and chicanery going on.

            Their political set up is based on competing for funds and a place in the sun, and those who can't lobby, leverage, stay at the back. That is the conspiracy that ordinary people notice. The democracy is fair, they are taught, and yet the ordinary people get treated unfairly. Yet the democracy is praised. They think hey something is haywire here, I'm running to keep up but the race is rigged against me. So who did it, they look with narrowed eyes at the usual suspects, and form their own conspiracy theory which competes with other such theories, and that is their main product today in the USA, which acts as a talent pool for the media. So it goes!

            The central question for classical pluralism is how power and influence are distributed in a political process. Groups of individuals try to maximize their interests. Lines of conflict are multiple and shifting as power is a continuous bargaining process between competing groups. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralism_(political_theory)

    • Anne 2.2
      16 November 2020 at 11:18 am

      Signs of a narcissist sociopath

      Signs and symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder

      • Grandiose sense of self-importance. …
      • Lives in a fantasy world that supports their delusions of grandeur. …
      • Needs constant praise and admiration. …
      • Sense of entitlement. …
      • Exploits others without guilt or shame. …
      • Frequently demeans, intimidates, bullies, or belittles others.

      https://www.google.co.nz/search?source=hp&ei=WKixX6aSDpSU4-EPjaqegAY&q=signs+of+a+narcissistic+sociopath&oq=signs+of+a+narcissistic+sociopath

      There are plenty of them in NZ.

      Anyone who has been on the receiving end of one (they can be a romantic or business partners or a ‘best friend’ or a colleague or a boss) will know the extraordinary amount of damage they can do.

      In my case, a woman claimed to be a ‘best friend’ and she fooled me for years before the truth finally dawned on me. they are brilliant at covering their tracks.

      • greywarshark 2.2.1
        16 November 2020 at 12:45 pm

        This was informative on mental conditions and psychopaths.

        https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/the-wireless/374726/psychopaths-mean-misunderstood-and-mistreated from 2017

        Devon Polaschek is a forensic clinical psychologist and professor of psychology, and of crime science at Waikato University….

        Even among scientists there’s a lot of controversy about what’s in and what’s out in regard to the definition. You can think of psychopathy as an enduring type of personality disorder in which people have quite distinctive characteristics that can be harmful both to them and others. But there is also quite widespread acceptance that some aspects of psychopathy can be quite positive … So it’s more of a mixed picture of positive and negative characteristics.

        There are three different clusters of characteristics … meanness, boldness and disinhibition. This is known as the Triarchic model of psychopathy, developed by Christopher Patrick. It’s gaining some acceptance because of its usefulness.

      • JanM 2.2.2
        16 November 2020 at 1:38 pm

        Funny, a group of us having coffee this morning after tai chi were discussing this a propos of John Key and the people who were and were not able to see him as a dishonest narcissist

      • mary_a 2.2.3
        16 November 2020 at 3:12 pm

        Hi Anne (2.2) … Like yourself, I have also been on the extremely unpleasant receiving end of a work manager, displaying behaviour as that you have described as narcissistic personality disorder. Despite being thoroughly amiable one moment, she was also prone to sudden humiliating, spiteful and bullying meltdowns the next when things didn't go right, blaming everyone else for her own mistakes and failures. Apart from that, she consistently lied to protect herself, running hot and cold all the time, to the extent staff turnover was high, due to employee stress.

        Seems the Trumps are out there a-plenty.

        • Anne 2.2.3.1
          16 November 2020 at 4:10 pm

          Yes, they do run hot and cold but the dangerous bit is when they put their hatreds and jealousies into practice. In the case I mentioned she was carrying out illegal covert missions to undermine me, then claiming behind my back that I was the one who was acting suspiciously.

          I wasn't the only person whose life she irreparably damaged either but like me… they wouldn't have known what was going on and who was responsible.

          The main reason they get away with it is because no-one is prepared to stand up to them . We are seeing the same thing being played out with Trump.

  4. Stuart Munro 4
    16 November 2020 at 11:30 am

    Ought there not to be sufficient evidence against Trump to charge him with sedition?

    …to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States,

    is one definition, and should cover electoral results. Twenty years in the chokey might discourage further attempts to sabotage the state, for a while at least.

  6. Adrian Thornton 6
    16 November 2020 at 12:58 pm

    Yep while all you guys seem to be able to do is all go on and on and on about how bad Trump is, which by the way is something we already fucking know…I see very little examination of Biden and his forthcoming administration….like this piece of shit lobbyist that will be his Vice Presidential chief of staff apparently…looks like there won't be any swamp clearing going on under Biden either, just more of the same old nepotism that Trump was so widely condemned for, though it's probably OK now cos it ain't Trump doing it..

    Klain arrives with K Street roots

    "After leaving the Clinton administration in its waning months, newly tapped Vice Presidential chief of staff Ron Klain lobbied for an asbestos industry bailout package, an airline merger, mortgage regulations to help Fannie Mae and a drug-maker under congressional scrutiny for withholding life-saving drugs from dying patients, among other clients."

    https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/klain-arrives-with-k-street-roots-015632

    • Andre 6.1
      16 November 2020 at 1:07 pm

      Such a shame the Party candidate didn't come through.

      • Ad 6.1.1
        16 November 2020 at 1:13 pm

        70 million people voting for Trump and easily prepared to back him again, that's a preference for the Orangutan over SparklePonyOAC by a fair old way.

      • Adrian Thornton 6.1.2
        16 November 2020 at 3:18 pm

        Yep, just another corrupt old white guy, not all that different from that last one expect not as uncouth….though Trump will probably end up having a lower international body count if history is anything to go by.

        • aom 6.1.2.1
          16 November 2020 at 4:08 pm

          Trump is probably responsible for a lower international body count? So far there are 246K Covid deaths in the US alone. Add to that the number who have died as a result of his numerous imposed sanctions, support of proxy killings of South Americans, Palestinians and heaven only knows how many other victims of his racism, random illegal or ill-targeted drone attack deaths and the loss of life attributable to his casual callousness. Of course, it is probable that the 'corrupt white guy' will instigate more but it seems the days of tacit support for US exceptionalism are coming to an end.

        • Tricledrown 6.1.2.2
          17 November 2020 at 9:13 am

          Not if you include covid and excess deaths in the US.

          350,000 deaths on home soil.

  7. greywarshark 7
    16 November 2020 at 1:34 pm

    The image at the top of the post reminds of a scene at the end of Brave New World where the pleasure seekers like to get together and experience emotions and get confirmation of themselves as beings by conforming at some event.

    This is a summary and one person's opinion of what is being portrayed in the book. It seems to parallel what is happening at present.

    At the end of Brave New World, a crowd gathers to watch John ritually whip himself. When Lenina arrives, John whips her as well. The spectators begin an orgy, in which John takes part. The next day, overcome with guilt and shame, he kills himself. Brave New World’s main theme is the incompatibility of happiness and truth. Throughout the novel, John has argued that it’s better to seek truth, even if it involves suffering, than to accept an easy life of pleasure and happiness.

    https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/bravenew/what-does-the-ending-mean/

  8. Andre 8
    16 November 2020 at 3:29 pm

    What's the worst job you've ever worked? Reckon it was worse than manning the phones at TRE45ON WE45EL's fraudulent voter fraud hotline?

    https://www.salon.com/2020/11/15/trump-campaign-workers-turn-on-the-president-following-vote-fraud-hotline-debacle_partner/

  9. mary_a 9
    16 November 2020 at 3:43 pm

    In Trump's eyes anyone who or anything which beats him causing him to lose, is either a cheat, a liar or is corrupt. Seems he bases his judgement on his own dodgy standards.

    • Anne 9.1
      16 November 2020 at 4:32 pm

      It’s called projection:

      Essentially, all narcissists tell on themselves.

      Projection is the process through which they reveal who they are and what they’re doing.

      Through projection, they call you what they are. They accuse you of doing what they’re doing or planning on doing. They throw all the uncomfortable feelings onto you because they don’t want to deal with them. They throw their shame onto you so they don’t have to deal with it. They make you feel guilty for who they are and what they’re doing because they’re unable to feel that guilt themselves.

      https://medium.com/@OwnYourReality/projection-the-narcissists-weapon-that-can-be-used-against-them-7ebb63848998

      And here endeth the lessons. 😮

  10. ken 10
    16 November 2020 at 5:35 pm

    They're going to take an awful long time to work through their grief.

    It's been weeks, and they're still in the 'denial' stage – with a hint of anger beginning to emerge.

  11. george.com 11
    17 November 2020 at 8:34 pm

    a several times bankrupt narcissistic liar and a convicted felon grifting and purloining cash from deluded Americans.

    MAGA – yes, make america great again, it starts in January