What does the future hold for Donald Trump? - threadbans in OP

I really still think he won't be the nominee, I'm prepared for having egg on my face however.

And now she's on the grift wagon 🤣

GOP have no choice but to support him, no matter what he does, because his base - whose vote the GOP continues to seek - support him no matter what he does. Despite this idea that we often have that politicians are aloof to the wishes of the ordinary person, there are at least sometimes wishes that they cannot ignore unless they're happy to commit political suicide. You have your outliers like Liz Cheney, who have condemned Trump for the lies he has perpetrated, and their reward has been to be pushed to the margins of the party, or pushed out altogether. Under Trump, the Republican party has gone through an ideological purge, and any politician within the ranks of the party who want to maintain relevance and an opportunity to rise in the ranks must either be silent on Trump or be outspoken in their support.

There has not as of yet been any major movement within the party to get back to something like 'normality'. There doesn't appear to be much appetite for one. I'm sure that in private, many senior politicians within the ranks have crunched the numbers on doing just this and come to the regretful conclusion that their best bet is to grow a beard and parrot some truly idiotic lines.

What's even more pathetic is that a lot of people will actually send this oxygen thief $500.

Looks like another forensic audit has found...nothing. This time, in Texas.

https://www.newsweek.com/texas-election-audit-demanded-trump-fails-find-significant-voting-issues-1664815

Yeah, confusion between the constitution and terms and conditions is rife with those types

This came out as quick as the news about the subpoenas.

Closely followed, by this.

Those last 7 words sound great, but we all know that that is not necessarily the case.

They are old hands at not blowing money on legal fees, mostly by not paying attorneys who represent them. Michael Cohen essentially worked for Donald for a year and then accepted a job at the end of it with the fees Donald had incurred essentially being written off iirc from Cohen's book.

You can be damn sure that Sydney Powell or Rudy Giuliani saw only a fraction of what was owed to them, if anything for all the time they put in fighting his corner last year.

These people are terrifying.

Yeah, no-one is really surprised by this news. It's worth reiterating the point that these audits are not being carried out to prove fraud but to sow doubt in electoral procedures and give momentum to the push to strategically restrict voter access to the polls. So, they're absolutely futile in terms of overturning the result of the most recent U.S presidential election, but potentially very fruitful in greatly influencing the result of the next.

It does feel like the U.S. is closer to that scenario than I can remember in my lifetime, but I'm not old enough to remember things like the Civil Rights movement or Vietnam protests. Maybe it felt the same way back then, too. Still, it feels like a hell of a leap to get to civil war. I think when you get down to brass tacks, the numbers willing to take up arms would be too few and too disorganised in their aims. It would be such an odd mix of people. You'd have your militia types, but you'd also have lads in cosplay knight armour, livestreaming their attempt to take over a neighbourhood in Portland, Oregon, plus middle-aged women attempting to run people down in their gas-guzzling 7 seaters while rattling off a stream of consciousness rant about vaccines.

Lot of guns about in the U.S., yes, but also a hell of a lot of people who are too fat, too dumb and too comfortable to really get that serious, when it comes down to it.

New: Jan. 6 committee says Fox News host Sean Hannity sent a stream of texts — presumably to Trump chief of staff Meadows — on the night before the Capitol attack: “Im very worried about the next 48 hours.”

Getting interesting.

They're not the people in that video however.

There might be the odd one or two "successful businessman" in the various groups that supported Trump, but as the lawyer for Jacob Chansley said...

"A lot of these defendants—and I’m going to use this colloquial term, perhaps disrespectfully—but they’re all fucking short-bus people. These are people with brain damage, they’re fucking retarded, they’re on the goddamn spectrum."

While that may, indeed, be over the top, I think that anyone trying to peddle the "election was stolen" mantra needs the fucking head examined. At best, they severely lack basic critical thinking skills. At worst, they are actually "retarded" (to quote Albert Watkins) in some fashion.

A lot of Trump's supporters may just be a touch naive. But when faced with the sheer lack of evidence regarding a "stolen election", coupled with 60+ rejected court cases and audits (even by pro-Trump elements) turning up absolutely nothing, then the mental capacities of those still clinging to that baseless propaganda has to be called into some serious question, irrespective of whether they own a private plane or not.

This struck me as quite bizarre. While it does happen, he rarely backs down from anything.

I wondered as to why and thought from a moment it was based on political concern. But that didn't strike me as true. He wags the dog.

I read online that the concern comes from a legal perspective, ie. self preservation. I wonder if there's anything more available on this?