The Trump Post-Presidency and Insurrection

You say you're trying to help us understand why people support Trump, even after his efforts to retain power after losing an election and inciting and supporting insurrection, as well as the indictments that followed. All your replies, even this one, do give us little snapshots into the psyches of people who support Trump. What we find in these little snapshots are not facts and rationality but confusion and emotion.One of the common contradictions of Trump supporters is the cognitive dissonance they have to maintain to believe the election was stolen but having no idea how it was done. They may mention mail-in voting or voting machines, but the actual mechanics of how they used those voting methods to steal the election are completely absent.Even common sense fails these people. They know when they vote that their names are checked off a list, either by hand or electronically. After they check in, then they vote. The number of check-ins has to match the number of votes. Someone can't just drop off counterfeit ballots, either actual ballots or by manipulating voting machines, because then the number of check-ins would no longer match the number of ballots.I've mentioned my MAGA nephew several times on the forum. We have friends involved in town affairs and have helped out with the vote count several times. We know exactly how the voting works here, both for in-person voting and for mail-in voting. Whether counting the votes is manual, as it is in our small town, or automated, as it is in nearby cities, the basic approach is the same: the count of check-ins has to match the count of votes. Anyone who somehow manages to add a bunch of counterfeit ballots has to also add a bunch of check-ins. Counting the check-in ledgers and tallying the votes are two completely different processes.Engaging in such tampering without anyone noticing would be a massive effort for even just a few hundred votes. Doing it for a hundred thousand votes across multiple jurisdictions in multiple states with all the people that would have to be involved would be a monumental effort that would be impossible to not detect. Far, far fewer people were involved in the fake elector efforts, yet it still came to light. Stealing a hundred thousand votes could not be hidden. Yet my nephew still believes it happened. For him, if Trump said it happened then it happened, and we're fools for not believing him.--Percy

Today's New York Times summarizes the results of the January 6th inquiry so far. The short version: hundreds of prison sentences.Here's some of the data it provided:

• Every week, a few more people are arrested.
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• The charged crimes range from trespassing to seditious conspiracy.
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• 1240 people have been arrested.
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• 710 people have pleaded guilty.
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• 210 of those have pleaded guilty to felony offenses.
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• 170 people have been convicted at trial.
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• 2 people have been fully acquitted.
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• 350 cases are still pending.
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• 720 people have been sentenced so far.
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• 450 of those were sentenced to periods of incarceration ranging from a few days to over 20 years.
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• Total indictments might eventually exceed 2000

--Percy

ABC News and the New York Times, but not the Washington Post, are reporting that Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis is in a relationship with a lawyer she hired.The filing by RICO defendant Michael Roman alleges that Ms. Willis was already in a relationship with lawyer Nathan J. Wade when she hired him to assist with the Georgia RICO case against Donald Trump and 18 other defendants, from which he has earned $650,000 thus far. It further alleges that "Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade had taken vacations together with money he made working for her office."Asked for a response, lawyers for Fani Willis's office said it would come in court filings.--Percy

Peter Navarro, the Trump administration's trade advisor, was today sentenced to four months in prison for two misdemeanor counts of criminal contempt of Congress (Navarro Is Sentenced to 4 Months in Prison for Stonewalling Congress in Jan. 6 Inquiry).When their subpoenas were ignored the January 6th Committee found Navarro in contempt and referred the matter to the Justice Department, which indicted him. It was found that Navarro was part of a strategy to delay certification of the 2020 election, convince vice president Mike Pence to cast doubt on the election results of some states, and convince the public that election fraud had taken place.It is welcome to see some accountability, though of course they'll appeal. Hopefully at least some of the Trump cases will reach trial this year and we'll see more accountability.--Percy

He's expected to appeal, probably requesting that the judge's orders be put on hold pending the appeal.--Percy

I can't give you a name, but I recently read about one of his lead lawyers who demanded $3 million up front because of Trump's history of not paying his bills.--Percy

Just to fill in any holes in people's memories, John Hinckley Jr. attempted an assassination of president Ronald Reagan because he believed it would impress Jodie Foster with whom he was obsessed. He was under a psychiatrist's care while he stalked her at Yale and when he wrote to Foster on the eve of the assassination attempt:

quote:

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Over the past seven months I've left you dozens of poems, letters and love messages in the faint hope that you could develop an interest in me. Although we talked on the phone a couple of times I never had the nerve to simply approach you and introduce myself. ... The reason I'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I cannot wait any longer to impress you.
  —John Hinckley Jr.

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Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was under institutional care for nearly four decades.A request to the originators of subtopics like this: Threads about Trump already by the very necessity of recounting what Trump has said and done have a high nonsense level. There's no need for people to add their own nonsense or to wonder about things that can be so easily looked up--Percy

I'm not sure that a significant proportion of the 2020 BLM protests were violent. Minneapolis-Saint Paul, the site of the George Floyd murder, was hit hard, but I think most BLM protests were peaceful. The article At least 25 Americans were killed during protests and political unrest in 2020 | Protest | The Guardian uses the database of the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project to conclude that nine people were killed during BLM protests during 2020, which is nine people too many but nowhere near the number one would expect had thousands of the protests been violent. The article continues:

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ACLED found that the overwhelming majority of the more than 9.000 Black Lives Matter demonstrations that took place across the US after the killing of George Floyd have been peaceful. News reports at the height of demonstrations over Floyd’s killing cited dozens of deaths in connection with protests, but many of those turned out to be examples of deadly crimes carried out in the vicinity of protests, rather than directly related to the demonstrations themselves, the researchers concluded.

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Police violence against the BLM protestors should also be remembered.--Percy