Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Why Do Republicans Keep Forgetting Who's President in 2020?

Steve Benen: Today, Donald Trump published this missive to his own social media platform: "Zuckerberg admits that the White House pushed to SUPPRESS HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY (& much more!). IN OTHER WORDS, THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGGED. FoxNews, New York Post, Rep. Laurel Lee, House Judiciary Committee. Of particular interest was a pertinent detail the GOP candidate overlooked: He was president in 2020, not Joe Biden.

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To hear Trump tell it, "the White House" was responsible for trying to suppress a controversial report, which in his mind, necessarily meant that the 2020 election was "rigged."

But in light of the fact that we're talking about events that unfolded in 2020, he was referring to his own White House.

It's striking how often this comes up. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia last year blamed the Biden administration's policies for a Michigan woman whose sons died in 2020 - when, Biden was a private citizen and Trump was president.

Months later, Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, blamed Biden for "paying people to stay home" in 2020, referring to a law that Trump signed into law. The same week, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado blamed the Democratic president for Covid-related school closures in 2020 - which, again, was a year that Biden spent campaigning, not in the Oval Office.

More recently, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody took aim at the Biden administration's approach to criminal justice protests in 2020 - when there was no Biden administration.

Geebus, Trump and his minions continually prove that they're not the sharpest crayons in the box - or they're showing just how effective gaslighting is when they use it to alter perceptions of reality.

This is a perfect topic for Harris to use at the debate to trap Trump in one of his own lies. Lord knows she's got dozens and dozens to choose from, but this one looks particularly ripe due to how deeply Trump has already sunk his teeth into it.

Basically, if Trumpers ain't lyin' then they aren't really tryin'.

#1 | Posted by tonyroma at 2024-08-27 06:21 PM

" This is a perfect topic for Harris to use at the debate to trap Trump in one of his own lies."

Personally, I was hoping for an opening statement by Kamala that might go like this:

"During this debate, you're going to hear my opponent do what he does most often: lie. And I'm going to treat this like a courtroom, where you're not allowed to make a claim without proof. Here are a few facts, and fact checkers? Be sure to check me!

" Crime is down, not up. Border crossings are less than when Trump was President. Trump spoke about P25 (here, here, and here) even though he'll tell you TODAY he knows nothing about it. He'll tell you gas was cheaper when he was President, hoping you've forgotten he'd mishandled a pandemic. He'll complain about the border, hoping you don't know, as lead Republican author of the border bill James Langford said, (Trump killed the deal, for a campaign issue). And he'll tell you he'll be good for women's rights, when we all know he's bragged about destroying Roe v Wade."

This will not only get under his skin, but it'll undercut a lot of what he says. When he goes off about crime being out of control, listeners will naturally respond, Oh, yeah, she said he'd lie about this ... .

#2 | Posted by Danforth at 2024-08-27 07:04 PM

They support a ------- liar.

#3 | Posted by LegallyYourDead at 2024-08-27 08:38 PM

Denial of reality is the bedrock of their cult.

#4 | Posted by SpeakSoftly at 2024-08-27 08:50 PM

DANFORTH @ #2

I don't usually try to second guess Kamala Harris (or Jack Smith either) but that was a GREAT opening statement!

If Trump doesn't bugger out of the debate with a claim of laryngitis (or some such sudden onset), I expect we'll hear a lot of exactly what you said in Harris' opening statement.

#5 | Posted by Twinpac at 2024-08-27 10:00 PM

His idiots will accept whatever lie flows from his cakehole.

The best was the trumpidiot who blamed Obama for 9/11 because he was not in white house and was out golfing.

The party that is forcing schools to put the ten commandments in classrooms WHILE refusing to provide hungry kids with school lunches is cool with this guy who violates just about ALL of the ten commandments.

I think a lot about how the "chreestians" are cool with an adulterer, rapist, sexual assaulter, pedophile, compulsive liar, cheater, bully who is in obvious mental decline.

Every day is a new level of word salad.

"We have a phenomena [sic] coming up right now and I was talking about it the other day to David and that's AI, little things ... simple two ... little simple letters ... but it's big, And I realized the other day, more than anything, when we were at David's house and talking to a lot of geniuses from Silicon Valley and other places, they need electricity at levels that nobody's ever experienced before to have to be successful, to be a leader in AI, And a windmill turning with its blade knocking out the birds and everything else is not going to be able to make us competitive,"

On why he did not ban Tik Tok:

"So" I had it done. And then Congress said, well, they never, they they ultimately, usually fail, (laughs) you know, they are a -----" like, extremely political and they're extremely subject to people called lobbyists who happen to be very, very talented, very good and very rich. I could have banned TikTok. I had it banned just about, I could have got that done.

But I said, you know what? But I'll leave it up to you. I didn't push them too hard because, you know, let them do their own research and development, and they decided not to do it. But as you know, I was at the point where I could have got that done if I wanted to. I sort of said, you guys decide you make that decision because it's a tough decision to make.

Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who who will go crazy without it. There are a lot of, users. There's, you know, a lot of good and there's a lot of bad with TikTok.

But the thing I don't like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger. And I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media.

What Facebah-book did with lock boxes, with a $500 million, Zuckerberg's, lock boxes that he put in. I mean, I considered illegal. But, you know, so they, you know, they put people in jail when they spend, they put people in jail when they spent more than $5,600 in a campaign.

They go to jail if they're $200. Look at Dinesh D'Souza, and they put him in jail over a couple of hundred bucks, and yet here's the guy spends $500 million and he doesn't go to jail."

#6 | Posted by Nixon at 2024-08-28 07:15 AM

" Look at Dinesh D'Souza, and they put him in jail over a couple of hundred bucks"

Not true at all. Trump is off by MAGnitudes. D'Souza was put in jail for $20,000 of illegal contributions.

Trump is pathological.

#7 | Posted by Danforth at 2024-08-28 11:11 AM

They haven't forgotten a thing.

They just know they can count on their base being stupid enough to run with it.

#8 | Posted by jpw at 2024-08-28 02:16 PM

Remember the GOP saying 9/11 was under Obama's watch? Obama wasn't elected until 7 years after 9/11.

#9 | Posted by a_monson at 2024-08-29 08:37 AM

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