2024 U.S. Presidential Election Thread: Donald Trump wins & will return to the White House; GOP wins U.S. Senate & U.S. House

[bnew]

Blabbering Donald Trump Hands Jack Smith a Key Piece of Evidence

Trump said something he probably shouldn’t have in that Fox News town hall.

newrepublic.com

Tori Otten/

February 21, 2024/10:23 a.m. ET

Blabbering Donald Trump Hands Jack Smith a Key Piece of Evidence​

Trump said something he probably shouldn’t have in that Fox News town hall.​

DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

Special counsel Jack Smith

Donald Trump must really believe he’s above the law, because he continues to essentially admit to wrongdoing in the classified documents lawsuit against him.

Special counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump in June for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. During a Fox News town hall on Tuesday night, host Laura Ingraham asked Trump why he hadn’t simply returned the material when the government asked him to do so.

“First of all, I didn’t have to hand them over,” Trump said bluntly. “But second of all, I would have done that. We were talking, and then all of a sudden they raided Mar-a-Lago.”



The FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in August 2022 after the federal government—and even Trump’s own lawyers—tried for months to get Trump to return hundreds of classified documents that he took with him when he left the White House. And FBI agents may not have even found all of the documents hidden at the resort.

The former president faces 41 criminal counts for willful retention of national defense information, making false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justice, among other things. He has repeatedly insisted that he had every right to keep the documents. He does not.

Trump has also claimed, despite knowing otherwise, that all the material he brought to Florida was already declassified. Trump said that being president enabled him to declassify documents at will, including “just by thinking about it.” This is not true.

And now Trump has given Smith even more proof that the former president had wrongfully kept classified documents. Trump’

 

[LOST IN THE SAUCE]

A good portion of the Biden vote is the anti Trump vote. Even if Biden is unpopular he’ll still get a similar if not greater turnout because a majority of Americans hate trump and in my opinion that number is growing more everyday.

Are you saying that Trump has gained more support since 2020?

He posted poll results. He didn't state a personal opinion other than saying it wasn't a good situation. Why do you guys keep doing this.

To your point, I think you're right, but I think you're downplaying all the people who are no longer motivated to get out and vote for Biden. Trump doesn't need to have more support, Biden just needs less. The fact that we have 2 extremely unpopular candidates is why I assume 3rd party has been over performing in polls lately.

 

[Outlaw]

He posted poll results. He didn't state a personal opinion other than saying it wasn't a good situation. Why do you guys keep doing this.

To your point, I think you're right, but I think you're downplaying all the people who are no longer motivated to get out and vote for Biden. Trump doesn't need to have more support, Biden just needs less. The fact that we have 2 extremely unpopular candidates is why I assume 3rd party has been over performing in polls lately.

His personal opinion is that these polls hold weight which they don’t

 

[MushroomX]

To your point, I think you're right, but I think you're downplaying all the people who are no longer motivated to get out and vote for Biden. Trump doesn't need to have more support, Biden just needs less. The fact that we have 2 extremely unpopular candidates is why I assume 3rd party has been over performing in polls lately.

Democrats are HEAVILY motivated to vote for whomever is the Democratic nominee, even if Biden is unpopular. If you look around Leftist sites like Daily Kos, and other Left-leaning sites, the major fear talking points are:

• Project 2025 (A Nationalism Christian based State / Banning of Pornograpy / LGBTQ Camps)
• Federal Ban on Abortion
• Federal Ban on Birth Control Pills which Women do need sometimes for non-Fertility needs.

As for Trump's support, he needs more than ever for a variety of reasons:

• He needs a talking points to slam Biden on, the only one being the Border Crisis, and that's not enough.
  • Inflation is going down.
  • Trump cannot slam Biden on supporting Israel
  • Ukraine is still winning the war and that Tucker interview didn't help.
  • He was responsible for Roe vs. Wade being overturned and he claimed it.
• Trump is using all the Donors Money to support his legal fees, leaving little for him or for downvoters in attack ADs.
  • Trump has also NOT promoted Early Voting and Absentee Mailing
  • The reason why Democrats promote it, is that because their voters vote early, they can save money and use it to attack people to convince Independents to vote on Election day.
  • Republicans are not going to have any money, because they just tossed McCarthy, the GOP Plug that brought in the most cash.
• Lastly, some Republicans are legit tired of Trump; just like with Democrats with Biden, but the difference is, is that the Democrats KNOW what will happen if Trump gets elected... Republicans don't care if Biden is president, they will wait until Trump is out of the picture to care.
  • The last election as well was in 2020, just before the big COVID spike and Roe v. Wade overturning.
  • A ton of Republicans died from COVID-19, less so then Democrats, because of messaging.
  • All of the smaller, special elections have had, since Roe v. Wade, either having the Democrats win over over-performing.

 

[FAH1223]

A good portion of the Biden vote is the anti Trump vote. Even if Biden is unpopular he’ll still get a similar if not greater turnout because a majority of Americans hate trump and in my opinion that number is growing more everyday.

Are you saying that Trump has gained more support since 2020?

No

Biden is really unpopular and there’s looking like a bigger third party vote. It’s a disaster for him.

Polls are bullshyt. Trump has never broken 47%. Hillary with historical negatives got 48%. Biden got 51%.

Any poll that has Trump higher than 46% is flawed as hell.

Trump has a ceiling but these state polls should be flashing alarms

 

[Pressure]

Meanwhile in the real world.

 

[Robbie3000]

No

Biden is really unpopular and there’s looking like a bigger third party vote. It’s a disaster for him.


Trump has a ceiling but these state polls should be flashing alarms

State polls are ass too. Trump 48% vs Biden 42% in Georgia laughable.

Georgia is at worst a 50-50 state with a growing Dem advantage over a non MAGA Republican. A MAGA candidate is not getting more that 49% in the great state of Georgia.

 

[Pressure]

Now we're acting like Trump wasn't historically unpopular his damned self.

Anyway, folks not wasting their time to go and vote third party. So most of these polls mjght reflect a sentiment but don't actually reflect realistic voter behavior.

 

[FAH1223]

State polls are ass too. Trump 48% vs Biden 42% in Georgia laughable.

Georgia is at worst a 50-50 state with a growing Dem advantage over a non MAGA Republican. A MAGA candidate is not getting more that 49% in the great state of Georgia.

I understand Georgia is changing. But the margins were so slim last time. If Biden loses any of his coalition by just a few points, it’s over

Now we're acting like Trump wasn't historically unpopular his damned self.

Anyway, folks not wasting their time to go and vote third party. So most of these polls mjght reflect a sentiment but don't actually reflect realistic voter behavior.

Trump was historically unpopular and still is. He’ll be a convicted criminal.

But Biden has worse numbers than Carter in 1980.

Are you saying this is soft disapproval??

 

[Pressure]

Trump was historically unpopular and still is. He’ll be a convicted criminal.

But Biden has worse numbers than Carter in 1980.

Are you saying this is soft disapproval??

Biden was a hold your nose vote for most people last time.

He will be again.

Too many other issues going on where turnout is going to hinge on Joe.

 

[bnew]

https://www.meidastouch.com/news/nikki-haley-is-running-an-ageist-campaign

Nikki Haley Is Running an Ageist Campaign​

Ironically out of touch with young voters.

• Kaivan Shroff
• 2 hours ago

Nikki Haley’s surge has come and gone as she faces inevitable defeat in her own home state of South Carolina in just a few days. Still, earlier today, Haley gave a defiant speech where she trotted out her same lazy attacks on President Biden’s age and made the pitch that her own party needs new, younger, leadership. Strikingly, despite Haley centering age in her campaign — compared to both Joe Biden and Donald Trump — she has failed to resonate with young voters in either form or substance. While I won’t say Haley is “past her prime,” she certainly comes across as a candidate past her time. It’s clear she doesn’t understand this modern political moment at all.

As a young voter and the press secretary for a Gen-Z-led progressive organization “ Dream for America,” Haley is uniquely disconnected from young Americans. Despite her calls for a “new generation” of leadership, Haley has not even attempted to run a 2024 campaign that reflects the political realities of our polarized, digital age. Form aside, substantively, the former U.N. ambassador is antagonistic to every single one of the policy priorities my generation champions.

Though Haley has at times tried to paint herself as the foil to Vice President Kamala Harris, electorally, she does not resonate with our generation the way Harris has, limiting her value as either the GOP nominee or a potential VP candidate.

Haley never goes viral for the right reasons.

That may sound like a silly critique of a presidential contender, but in a political media landscape where over 40% of voters 18-29 use social media as their primary news source — it matters.

Ironically, for someone who has made age-based critiques of her opponents central to her candidacy, attacking both Trump and Biden for being too old, Haley’s campaign seems either incapable of — or uninterested in — meeting young Americans where they are.

President Biden may be 81, but his campaign has embraced both a viral “Dark Brandon” meme and built digital assets like ‘Biden HQ’ to effectively recast the administration and its critics in viral formats. The campaign’s recent decision to join TikTok was widely viewed as a smart strategic decision. For all his faults, Trump of course understands virality and social media better than most. Even the notoriously stiff Ron DeSantis was able to create the DeSantis War Room to deliver engaging content to his base of supporters. Haley’s disconnect in this arena was only compounded by her gaffe suggesting that she would ban anonymous online accounts — a proposal that was widely rebuked by both Democrats and Republicans.

Haley also fails to resonate with young voters who place a premium on authenticity.

If millennials were the “Instagram generation,” Gen Z is the “Be Real” demographic — the former known for overedited staging designed to attract engagement, the latter focused on countering that exact trend ( Be Real is a popular social media app that forces users to capture themselves in the moment).

Despite their age, and perhaps to the chagrin of their campaigns, both Biden and Trump share a quality of coming across as their unscripted, unedited, selves. Haley is just the opposite. She has contorted herself from MAGA to moderate in the span of just one year, and young voters see through this poll-driven political persona. While just months ago, Haley decried so-called “identity politics” she now tries to cast herself as an immigrant and constantly pulls out one-liners that touch on her gender.

On the issues that matter to younger cohorts of voters, Haley is misaligned in practically every instance.

As Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Haley helped orchestrate the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord. She has spoken against “red flag” laws and parroted NRA talking points that gun violence prevention efforts would strip guns from “people who rightfully deserve to have them.” She supports a federal abortion ban — an issue that has galvanized young voters and proved a toxic issue for Republicans since the Dobbs decision last year. At the GOP debate in December, she even claimed that DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, targeting the LGBT+ community, didn’t go far enough.

Gen-Z activists across the country staged walkouts in protest of the extreme law.

On education, Haley has come out against widely popular student loan forgiveness policies; 43% of swing-state Gen-Z voters say that — despite his over $130 billion of student loan forgiveness so far — Biden hasn’t done enough on the issue.

Republicans have long struggled to connect with younger voters, but Haley is particularly out-of-touch with our demographic. While newcomers like Vivek Ramaswamy tookto TikTok and partnered with YouTubers like Jake Paul to attempt to win over young voters, Haley seems content to write-off the tens of millions of voters 30 and under making our voices heard at the ballot box. This approach severely limits her viability as a 2024 nominee. It also makes her less of an asset as a hypothetical vice-presidential candidate.

In elevating Haley, the Republican Party would signal it is giving up on trying to win over young voters altogether.

 

[FAH1223]

This is the electoral college map based on the state polling we have.

 

[Worthless Loser]

Dems should play this in a ad nonstop.

 

[ADevilYouKhow]

Georgia Republicans seek to stop automatic voter registration in state

The Senate Ethics Committee on Thursday voted to advance a bill that would require people to opt in to voter registration when they receive or renew a driver's license.

www.pbs.org

This feels like a big deal

 

[the next guy]