Remember, as you read this offal, that Maddow is arguably the least villainous of the assorted Marxists, racists and liars employed by MSNBC, and is certainly the smartest.
A New York Times story by reporter Alan Feuer claimed “Trump has made no secret in private conversations with his aides of his desire to solve his jumble of legal problems by winning the election. If either of the two federal trials he is confronting is delayed until after the race and Mr. Trump prevails, he could seek to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general simply dismiss the matters altogether.” Maddow, being a corrupt journalist herself, naturally assumes anonymous sources’ hearsay statements as interpreted by a New York Times propagandist is Gospel truth, even though its impossible to tell if the last part of the section (which Maddow read) is what Trump said, what the sources claims he said, or what Feuer thinks he meant (that would be double hearsay). Never mind: it was good enough for Maddow’s fearmongering purposes, so this was her follow-up analysis…
I know that learning that Trump has been saying that privately to his staffers is not shocking news per se, right? We’ve known that was probably what he was planning, probably what he was thinking… It does seem sort of significant that that’s what he’s now telling people. That’s what he’s telling people he’s gonna do. He will ‘solve his jumble of legal problems by winning the election. And whatever you think about that, that’s how he’s thinking about that, what does that say about the election for all of the rest of us, right? It means in his own mind and those of his campaign and his supporters, presumably, these are the stakes. And again, whatever you think about that as a legal strategy for Trump, that is how he is thinking about the election. And that is how he is going to be talking to his supporters and his aides and his campaign about the stakes of the election….The election means one of two things, if this is the way he’s going to approach it: either he loses the election and he goes to prison. Or he wins the election. He doesn’t go to prison.
And that, is that for life that he gets to be President? Will we keep having more elections, or no? If every election is a new opportunity for him to go to prison, do you think he allows us to have new elections? If those are the stakes, if winning the election is his plan to stay out of prison, what happens in that election if and when he does not win it? Does that kind of an election end with a graceful concession to a fair and square reelected President Biden? If Trump and his supporters see the stakes as ‘losing and going to prison,’ or ‘winning and being president’ — and probably president for life — how should we expect that he and Republican Party and Republican officials in swing states are going to handle the conduct of that election that Trump may very well lose?
And because we are prone to forget, we have to say out loud that we would be remiss, we would be willfully naive, to ask that question as if our politics exists in a vacuum somewhere outside the rest of our lives, as if the politics pages are totally different than the crime pages. As if we are not in a moment where far right politics is coinciding with far right violence with regular shows of force from paramilitary extreme right groups and with acts of violence by people who are explicitly and admittedly motivated by far right elimination as political ideas. We are prone to forget, but we do not have to forget. So what what should we know, what can we know about what happens in the far right politics? When it appears to be in nexus with far, far right violence that right now is just pinging off the charts.
The Axis of Unethical Conduct (the resistance, Democrats and the news media) prevailed in the previous Presidential election through hate, manipulative news reporting and a China-inflicted disease. This time around, the plan is criminalizing politics and spreading fear far and wide. Maddow’s theme is an extension of…
of course, the cynical strategy of painting any opponents of the Progressive Borg as fascists determined to end democracy even as the Democrats pursue the prosecution of their opponents, the censorship of dissent, indoctrination of school children , racial scapegoating and other familiar totalitarian tactics.
The idea that Trump would refuse to leave the White House if he lost the election was floated several times in 2020 by the more shameless anti-Trump pundits; the fact that he couldn’t and didn’t apparently hasn’t discouraged people like Maddow at all. There is literally nothing Trump could do to halt future elections and become “President for life,” and that Maddow would suggest such an impossible scenario marks her as a villain, an idiot, or an ignoramus who doesn’t know how the country works. The obvious conclusion is “villain” who is deliberately appealing to idiots and members of the public who don’t know how the country works. Anything to terrify sufficient voters into concluding that a vote for a doddering, semi-conscious puppet is preferable to electing a James Bond super-villain.
Listening to Maddow, one might almost forget who is responsible for placing Trump in the situation she describes. For the first time in U.S. history, an entire political party in its state and national positions has targeted a political opponent and used the criminal justice system to attempt to neutralize him as a threat to its power. Of course Trump regards winning the 2024 election and foiling the effort that stretches all the way back to 2016 as the best solution to his politically-triggered legal problems. Anyone would. Somehow, Maddow weaves the obvious into some sinister plot.
The sinister plot lies elsewhere, and she is a participant in it.
Ethics Alarms 
What I find most dangerous is when people are so convinced that if the opponent wins, the opponent will arrange to be Dictator for Life. Republicans did that with Obama, Democrats have done that with Trump. I’m not sure Republicans are stating that about Biden, because Dictator for Life might not even finish a second term, but Republicans are anxious that Democrats hold almost all the cards and it is just a small effort to permanently prevent Republicans from holding power ever again. Both sides are being primed at the moment to believe that victory for the other side is an existential threat, and the only question is who finally decides to preemptively strike so as to avoid losing power.
From that TIME magazine article in the wake of the 2020 elections, we know the Democrats have hordes of rioters they can summon whenever it looks like the election is going their way. I’ve heard many Republicans repeating the saying about the four boxes of liberty, and how Democrats have taken away the soap box and the ballot box, that now they are now taking away the jury box, and all that remains is the ammo box. That feeds into Democrat fear that Republicans are violent extremists, and if they are so frightened of a choice between Republican victory or Republican violence, what is to stop them from a preemptive strike? Maddow’s screed seems geared towards priming the base to take action before Republicans do.
Am I missing all the voices calling for dialogue, compromise, and civility?
Nope. We’ve reached the point where asking for those things is seen as calling for surrender.
I always said the cartridge box, but the same thing. So, how do you think we’d look in frock coats with two rows of buttons and kepis? You think you’d look better in blue or gray?
Do you remember Maraxus?
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?p=3857818#p3857818
– Maraxus
Keep in mind that Maraxus was posting to defend the indictment of Rick Perry (which jack had blogged about).
– Maraxus
– Maraxus
– Maraxus
“Maraxus’s” ideals were adopted by the Democratic Party. There is no denying it.
Maraxus must be stopped at any and all costs.
No, and I’d just as soon not know him. He sounds like an asshat.
It astonished me at tyhe time there were people actually thinking this way.
For Maddow and her fellow travelers, it’s still Wednesday morning, November 9, 2016. It’s their version of Groundhog Day. Hillary just lost and they’re not happy.
Please, Rachel, cite specific “examples of the far-right violence with regular shows of force from paramilitary extreme right groups and with acts of violence by people who are explicitly and admittedly motivated by far-right elimination as political ideas. …far, far right violence that right now is just pinging off the charts.”
Not even Madcow’s own network is reporting any such thing, nor are any other legitimate news outlets. “Pinging off the charts”?????
I can hardly wait until the MSM starts trying to gin up support for the next round of Wuhan Flu restrictions just in time to justify screwing up the integrity of the 2024 elections.