Iâd imagine youâre talking shite and because Trump winds up woke people youâre willing to exaggerate in your head how Biden is different than literally any other American president would be.
Biden is quite obviously not senile. Can the same be said for Trump?
The problem for Biden is Israel. Turnout among the Democratic base will be depressed because people are disillusioned with him enabling Israelâs genocide. Johnson didnât stand in 1968 and you can make a plausible argument that it would be better Biden stood aside.
But if Biden stood up to Israel, the Israel lobby would destroy him. So in terms of re-election, heâs trapped either way.
But any hypothetical other candidate for the Democrats would also face the same problem.
âAs vicious.â
No one with a conscience or an ounce of decency would have a blocked the peace deal in ukraine.
1 Like
He wants to replace Biden with a dictator whoâll double down tenfold on support for Israelâs genocide.
Sounds like somebody who supports genocide to me.
Thatâs it all these world conflicts are unfolding for years. They donât happen overnight. A lot them go back to trumps weak foreign policy. The right wing agitators have been waiting for their moment to strike. It just so happens Biden is president now.
1 Like
It goes back to the creation of Israel. Israel holds the ultimate moral blackmail over the west - the Holocaust. Israel uses the Holocaust to blackmail the west to fund and enable it to do whatever it wants. If as a western politician you donât publicly prostrate yourself at the feet of Israel, the Israel lobby will ruin you. This ensures the west as a whole is completely subservient to Israel despite the reality that a majority of populations in the west are deeply hostile to Israelâs oppression of Palestinians.
This blackmail Israel holds over the west was always going to come back to haunt the west , because Israel are animals and have made a complete mockery of any claim the west has to be a moral arbiter on anything. Some people who are poisoned by cynicism will celebrate this. In reality it is a disaster.
Some people are now so poisoned by cynicism that they openly want the world to be run by an axis of Russia and China and India and whoever else.
Russia is committing genocide. China is committing genocide. India is run by a regime which would love to commit genocide.
South Africa, despite their case against Israel, support Russiaâs genocide.
You do not want the world to be run by these people.
Despite what Israel is doing and the USâs shameful capitulation to it, Biden remains the only reasonable choice in the election because itâs a binary choice between Biden and Trump and thatâs it.
Trump will win though. I saw Frank Luntz on Channel 4 News the other night and he was deluded, saying that Trump couldnât get to 50%. Trump doesnât need to get to anywhere near 50% because of the electoral college and because he already has Russia pumping and priming three disruptor candidates.
Hard wired into Trump and Trumpism is a deep admiration for all that is worst in humanity.
Rape. Paedophilia. Murder. Genocide. All of these are things that Trumpism holds dear to its rotten heart. They fantasise about all of them, and when they happen in real life they rabidly support them.
Look at the absurdity of the far right in this country. They endlessly drone with hysterical, preposterous nonsense about supposed âplantationsâ and âcolonisationsâ and âgenocideâ, yet they all support an settler-colonial state which is genociding the native population.
The Ralph Wiggum style simpletons like @glenshane want Trump to win, they say he will be a man of peace. What they want is a Putin puppet to destroy the west. Thatâs like saying the Allies should have sued for peace with Nazi Germany in June 1942 and installed Nazi rulers of each of those countries. That such puppets would have been âmen of peaceâ. These simpletons think Quisling was a âman of peaceâ.
What Trump promotes is a Vichy America. Vichy America will support the extermination of Palestinians, and the likes of @glenshane will say nothing.
For football fans eager to see a new team in the Super Bowl, the conference championship games on Sunday that sent the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers back to the main event of American sports culture were sorely disappointing.
But one thing is new: Taylor Swift. And she is driving the movement behind Donald Trump bonkers.
Listen to This Article
10:46
Open this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.
The fulminations surrounding the worldâs biggest pop icon â and girlfriend of Travis Kelce, the Chiefsâ star tight end â reached the stratosphere after Kansas City made it to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five years, and the first time since Ms. Swift joined the teamâs entourage.
The conspiracy theories coming out of the Make America Great Again contingent were already legion: that Ms. Swift is a secret agent of the Pentagon; that she is bolstering her fan base in preparation for her endorsement of President Bidenâs re-election; or that she and Mr. Kelce are a contrived couple, assembled to boost the N.F.L. or Covid vaccines or Democrats or whatever.
ADVERTISEMENT
âI wonder whoâs going to win the Super Bowl next month,â Vivek Ramaswamy, the conspiratorial presidential candidate, turned Trump surrogate, pondered on social media on Monday. âAnd I wonder if thereâs a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall.â
The pro-Trump broadcaster Mike Crispi led off on Sunday by claiming that the National Football League is âriggedâ in order to spread âDemocrat propagandaâ: âCalling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and âendorsesâ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield.â
Other detractors of Ms. Swift among Mr. Trumpâs biggest fans include one of his lawyers, Alina Habba, one of his biggest conspiracy theorists, Jack Posobiec, and other MAGA luminaries like Laura Loomer and Charlie Kirk, who leads a pro-Trump youth organization, Turning Point USA.
The right has been fuming about Ms. Swift since September, when she urged her fans on Instagram to register to vote, and the online outfit Vote.org reported a surge of 35,000 registrations in response. Ms. Swift had embarked on a world tour that helped make her a billionaire. Gavin Newsom, the California governor, praised her as âprofoundly powerful.â And then Time magazine made her Person of the Year in December, kicking off another round of MAGA indignation.
ADVERTISEMENT
The love story that linked her world with the N.F.L. has proved incendiary. Mr. Kelceâs advertisements promoting Pfizerâs Covidvaccine and Bud Light â already a target of outrage from the right over a social media promotion with a transgender influencer, Dylan Mulvaney â added fuel to that raging fire.
Image
Ms. Swift embarked on a worldwide stadium tour last year, which included a May stop at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.CreditâŚJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times
The N.F.L.âs fan base is huge and diverse, but it includes a profoundly conservative element that cheered on the star quarterback Aaron Rodgersâs one-man crusade against Covid vaccines and jeered Black players who knelt during the national anthem. The league has long battled charges of misogyny, from the front offices of the Washington Commanders to multiple cases of sexual and domestic assault and abuse.
The Swift-Kelce story line, for some, has delivered a bruising hit to traditional gender norms, with a rich, powerful woman elevating a successful football player to a new level of fame.
Some of the Monday morning quarterbacking has been downright silly, including speculation that Ms. Swift is after Mr. Kelce for his money. (Her net worth exceeds $1 billion, a different universe than the athleteâs merely wealthy status.)
Other accusations appear to be driven by fear and grounded in some truth, or at least in her command of her 279 million Instagram followers: that she has enormous influence, and has supported Democrats in the past. For much of her extensive music career, Ms. Swift avoided politics, but in 2018, she endorsed two Democrats in Tennessee, where she owns two homes: former Gov. Phil Bredesen, who was running for the Senate against then-Representative Marsha Blackburn, and Jim Cooper, a House member who has since retired.
âI always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country,â she wrote on social media. âI believe in the fight for L.G.B.T.Q. rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG.â
She added, âI believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.â
ADVERTISEMENT
The alarm bells were loud enough to pull Mr. Trump into loudly backing Ms. Blackburn: âIâm sure Taylor Swift doesnât know anything about her,â he said at the time, knowing all too well how influential Ms. Swift could be. âLetâs say that I like Taylorâs music about 25 percent less now, OK?â
He probably liked her even less in 2020 when she criticized his pandemic response, and then endorsed Mr. Biden.
While her early pop music may have mainly attracted teens and preteens, those fans have reached voting age, and her music has grown more sophisticated with the albums âEvermoreâ and âFolkloreâ to match her millennial roots and her fansâ taste.
Image
In September, Ms. Swift urged her fans on Instagram to register to vote, yielding a surge of 35,000 registrations on the website Vote.org.CreditâŚJutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times
Much of the Swift paranoia has lurked on the MAGA fringes, with people like Ms. Loomer, the conspiracy theorist from Florida who declared in December that â2024 will be MAGA vs Swiftiesâ and Mr. Kirk, who declared in November that Ms. Swift would âcome out for the presidential electionâ after Democrats had another strong showing in an election that demonstrated the issue of abortion motivated voters to the polls.
ADVERTISEMENT
âAll the Swifties want is swift abortion,â he said.
Then Swift-bashing reached Fox News in mid-January. The host Jesse Watters suggested the superstar was a Defense Department asset engaging in psychological warfare. He tied Ms. Swiftâs political voice with her boyfriendâs Pfizer endorsement to the remarkable success of her Eras tour, which bolstered local economies and landed her on the cover of Time.
âHave you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?â Mr. Watters wondered on air. âWell, around four years ago, the Pentagon psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting.â
Andrea Hailey, the chief executive of Vote.org, made the most of the Fox News criticism, saying the organizationâs partnership with Ms. Swift âis helping all Americans make their voices heard at the ballot box,â adding that the star is ânot a psy-op or a Pentagon asset.â
But her appearance on the field with Mr. Kelce in Baltimore after the Chiefs beat the Ravens on Sunday, complete with a kiss and a hug, appears to have sent conservatives into a fit of apoplexy that may only grow in the run-up to Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas Feb. 11.
The feelings are so strong that Fox News ran a segment on Sunday lamenting that Ms. Swiftâs private âjet belches tons of CO2 emissions,â showing a sudden awareness of the leading cause of global warming.
Mr. Ramaswamy said his Super Bowl conjecture was dead serious.
âWhat your kind of people call âconspiracy theories,â I simply call an amalgam of collective incentives hiding in plain sight,â he said.
The White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stoked speculation still more by invoking the Hatch Act, which prohibits political actions by civil servants, in declining to answer whether Mr. Biden would be appearing with Ms. Swift.
âIâm just going to leave it there,â she said Monday. âIâm not going to get into the presidentâs schedule at all from here, as it relates to the 2024 elections.â
The Trump campaign, which had initially planned to ignore the frenzy, dispatched Karoline Leavitt, a campaign spokeswoman, to dismiss concerns about a potential Biden endorsement.
âI donât think this endorsement will save him from the calamityâ of his record, she said.
Audio produced by Parin Behrooz.
Sheâd be a great running mate for Biden
The maga cult really has been losing its mind over her. The insecurity is hilarious.
5 Likes
Shes the best of us. We all know it, all too well.
Qanon has been after her for years now. This is now manifesting itself in the mainstream. Bonkers stuff.
Why are MAGA types against people registering to vote anyway?
They are generally against African Americans registering to vote.
How democratic
Murica. Fuck yeah.
@Fagan_ODowd could you please ladybird this for us? A brief scan suggests the biden lads have a conspiracy theory about a republican conspiracy theory?
Why donât you read it instead of briefly scanning it?
3 Likes
Surely they wonât be stupid enough to elect trump again? Itâll be a disaster and the world is already on edge as it is.
Trump will walk it
I doubt it.
Its too long. And ive enormous respect for your ladybirding