> If you're telling people that the election is actively being stolen, what are your expectations for their response exactly?
So the 4 years that Democrats said the election was stolen, and they illegally stormed the US Capitol at the Kavanaugh hearings, what should we have thought of that?
Basically every organization and politician on the left was supporting that and there was no Twitter censorship.
> Basically every organization and politician on the left was supporting that
not the left. Lots of D politicians, granted. But I can't believe you seriously think that the "the election was fraudulent theatrics" (which I'll take for granted as theatrics, though a more careful treatment is warranted) of D politicians and e.g. Rachel Maddow could ever have had the same effect as these theatrics from Trump and co, which call for armed citizens to take action.
And the citizens weren't armed. The people killed were the unarmed protestors, by the police.
We can imagine what would happen if they had a certain skin color and were protesting a different event. It isn't the reaction that would happen today.
I've seen people on social media in the past few weeks talking about bringing weapons to DC for what happened earlier today. Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, was arrested a couple days ago in DC while carrying high capacity magazines [0]. A lot of pictures I've seen of people in the capital building today show them carrying heavy duty zip ties. Why did they have these? Were they planning on taking prisoners/hostages?
We've also seen the reaction to other protests in DC in the last few years. The police response today was much smaller than other recent protests.
Donald Trump's response to statues being torn down was to push for long sentences for people damaging federal property [1]. Has he also pushed for long sentences for people trespassing in the capital buildings and damaging them?
It's totally legitimate to say "I hate Trump and want to see him go", but it's impossible to stand on principle and say "Hey, Stacy Abrams is really in the right to say that her election was fraudulent forever" but Trump can't say the same.
It puts Twitter in the position of legitimizing certain claims of fraud and discounting others in national elections. That's frightening, and people supporting this should think what an alternate world would look like where billions of people were on Parler and not Twitter.
Hillary Clinton conceded immediately, and the Democratic party did not launch a wave of legal challenges to the election results. The argument that the extreme Russiagate types were making was that Russian agents and bots on social media had convinced people to vote for Trump. There were none of these unbelievably absurd claims about manufactured ballots etc.
” Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday.”
I would "object" to Trump doing so in the sense that I would judge it to be the rationalizing behaviour of an egomaniac. Which is exactly my reaction to the linked statements by Hillary Clinton.
It is still absurd to act like there is an equivalence between her claiming that Russian interference misled voters into choosing the "wrong" candidate, vs. Trump (a) claiming that ballots were manufactured, altered or tampered with and that actual voting infrastructure and processes are corrupt, (b) having his legal team launch a bunch of frivolous lawsuits in various states, and (c) pressuring the secretary of state of an electorally-close state to overturn election results.
Clinton's statements, as overblown as they may have been, were just an accusation of unfairness, not calling for the results to be overturned and the loser installed in office. All of the #resistance rhetoric was about the need to defeat Trump through the electoral process, or through parliamentary procedures (based on his actions after taking office). Again, there is a fundamental difference between claiming that voters were lied to, and claiming that the government itself directly interfered in the voting process without ANY remotely credible evidence to back that claim.
Trying to equate the two situations because they both involved the use of the word "illegitimate" is beyond laughable.
One is a coordinated scheme to influence impressionable voters backed by evidence. The other is a claim of election fraud with zero evidence. Not the same thing.
If Trump claimed the election was stolen in 2022, nobody would accuse him of a coup attempt that needs freedoms curtailed. The treatment is different because the intention is different, Clinton was throwing mud while Trump seems to want to stay in power.
So the 4 years that Democrats said the election was stolen, and they illegally stormed the US Capitol at the Kavanaugh hearings, what should we have thought of that?
Basically every organization and politician on the left was supporting that and there was no Twitter censorship.