Tag: Trump wants to be a dictator

Trump critic: I am not afraid of Trump

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Adam Kinzinger says he isn’t scared of President Trump.

Kinzinger, an Air Force veteran and lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, has garnered a reputation for being one of the few GOP lawmakers willing to push back on Trump. 

The Illinois Republican has been one of the most outspoken critics of the administration’s decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan, was one of the first in his party to recognize President-elect Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election, slammed the president’s allegations of voter fraud on Twitter and has come out heavily against the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Experts: It’s possible — and necessary — to stop Trump from running in 2024

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“We’re trying to do another four years,” President Donald Trump said at a Saturday night rally in Georgia. “Otherwise, I’ll see you in four years.”

Trump’s “increasingly overt flirtations with running again in 2024,” as the Associated Press put it, must be met with “a proportionate response,” wrote political scientists Alexander Kirshner and Claudio López-Guerra. The president’s transparent attempts to “subvert” the outcome of the 2020 election threaten the “viability of democracy in the United States,” they argued, and this impeachable offense should compel Congress to convict Trump, thus rendering him ineligible for a future presidency.

While political commentators are debating “the wisdom of pursuing criminal prosecutions of Trump” after Inauguration Day, the pair of scholars made the case in a Friday op-ed in The Guardian that “criminal prosecutions are not the only, or even the best mechanism for responding to the Trumpian challenge to self-government.” Continue reading.

Trump touts misleading video as ‘proof’ of Georgia voter fraud

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“I don’t run to see if people are walking in with suitcases and putting them under a table with a black robe around it. I don’t do that. That’s up to your government here.”

— President Trump, during a campaign rally in Valdosta, Ga., Dec. 5, 2020

President Trump continued to make baseless accusations of voter fraud on Saturday night, many of which we have already fact-checked. During a campaign rally for GOP senators facing runoff elections in January, he pushed a video he called “proof” of Georgia poll workers illegally stuffing and counting ballots at the State Farm Arena on Election Day. That’s where absentee and military ballots were counted in the state.

The minute-long clip he references — which was uploaded to Trump’s personal YouTube account from an OAN broadcast — is part of longer testimony presented by Trump’s legal team at a hearing Thursday in Georgia.

The footage, which was referenced directly at the rally in support of incumbent Sens. David Purdue (R-Ga.) and Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), was part of a litany of falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims surrounding Trump’s election loss. Continue reading.

Georgia leaders rebuff Trump’s call for special session to overturn election results

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Top Georgia Republicans criticized President Trump on Sunday for spreading falsehoods and misinformation about the election, warning that his comments could make it harder for the GOP to win its upcoming Senate races and arguing that his continued attacks on the process put local officials in danger.

On Sunday night, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) issued a joint statement in response to a call for a special session of the legislature to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state, saying that “doing this in order to select a separate slate of presidential electors is not an option that is allowed under state or federal law.”

The criticism comes a day after Trump headlined a two-hour rally in the state. The event was designed to whip up support for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are locked in tight Jan. 5 runoff races with their respective Democratic challengers. Instead, Trump railed against Kemp, the news media and Democrats, baselessly suggesting that the election was plagued with widespread fraud and falsely claiming that he had defeated Biden. Continue reading.

Senate GOP brushes off long-shot attempt to fight Biden win

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Senate Republicans are shooting down a long shot effort to challenge the Electoral College vote early next year. 

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, grabbed headlines when he announced that he would challenge the votes when Congress officially certifies President-elect Joe Biden‘s victory on Jan. 6.

But GOP senators are dismissing the effort, even as President Trump publicly praised Brooks. Continue reading.

Trump calls Georgia governor to pressure him for help overturning Biden’s win in the state

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How Trump’s fraud claims could backfire on the GOP in Georgia’s runoff elections | The 2020 FixThe Fix’s Amber Phillips analyzes how some of the rhetoric from Trump allies could depress Republican turnout ahead of the Georgia Senate runoff elections. (Blair Guild, JM Rieger/The Washington Post)

The governor later referred to his conversation with Trump in a midday tweet, noting that he told the president that he’d already publicly advocated for a signature audit.

Kemp’s spokesman, Cody Hall, confirmed that the two men spoke. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh declined to comment. Continue reading.

Judges turn back claims by Trump and his allies in six states as the president’s legal effort founders

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President Trump and his allies faced a crush of defeats in post-election litigation Friday, a further sign of their ongoing failure to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory through the courts and to gain traction through baseless claims of widespread fraud.

Just over a month after the Nov. 3 election, the Trump campaign and other Republicans suing over Biden’s win were dealt court losses across six states where they have tried to contest the results of the presidential race — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Judges ruled decisively that Trump’s side has not proved the election was fraudulent, with some offering painstaking analyses of why such claims lack merit and pointed opinions about the risks the legal claims pose to American democracy. Continue reading.

Trump’s Pentagon nominee promoted calls for the president to declare martial law: report

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Scott O’Grady is a former fighter pilot who President Donald Trump has nominated for a senior position in the Pentagon. And according to CNN, he is also a Trump loyalist and far-right conspiracy theoristwho has been echoing Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and shared tweets calling for martial law.

Trump supporters who have posted or forwarded tweets urging the president to declare martial law include attorney Lin Wood (who has been fighting President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia) and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

According to CNN reporters Nathan McDermott, Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, O’Grady “retweeted an account that shared an article that said former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had shared a petition that called for martial law. He then retweeted the same account which suggested that Trump should declare martial law.” Continue reading.

Here’s why Republicans who are calling for a Trump dictatorship should not be taken lightly — and aren’t going away

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The United States dodged an authoritarian bullet when former Vice President Joe Biden, a centrist Democrat, became president-elect, winning 306 electoral votes and defeating defeated President Donald Trump by more than 6 million in the popular vote. But when Republican Lin Wood, a pro-Trump attorney who has been fighting the election results in Georgia, implores Trump to impose martial law and elections officials are receiving death threats for acknowledging Biden as president-elect, it is painfully obvious that there is a strong appetite for fascism in parts of the United States. And journalist Sasha Abramsky, in an article published by The Nation on December 4, warns that Republicans who are openly calling for fascism should not be taken lightly.

We are less than seven weeks away from the inauguration, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t counting down the seconds,” Abramsky writes. “For the last spasms of Trumpist rule are truly a sight and sound to behold. Trumpism is, at this point, nothing more than a blend of cultism and fascism — a violent, nihilistic howl against the pillars of American democracy unparalleled in presidential history.”

Abramsky adds, however, that when “people surrounding Trump are calling for dictatorship,” it “ought to send a chill up all Americans’ spines.” And Abramsky cites some specific examples of Trumpistas who haven’t been shy about showing their authoritarianism. Continue reading.

Fascism Unmasked — With A Trump Trademark

Nearly a year before he accepted the Republican nomination for president, Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses already were too obvious to be ignored. By then he was encouraging physical attacks on undocumented immigrants, demanding the deportation of millions more, and constantly appealing to hatred and bigotry. He bragged of being the “most militaristic” candidate and denigrated the free press. So extreme was his rhetoric during those months that prominent conservatives — including several who now spinelessly truckle to him – warned of what his rise to power might portend.

His campaign reeked of an ideology that today can be named without hesitation. Trump has cultivated a constituency for fascism in America — and his most fanatical followers may soon pose a real threat to the republic.

Having lost a fair election by millions of votes and an Electoral College margin that Trump himself has defined as a “landslide,” he has mounted a campaign to discredit democracy with false allegations of fraud. Defeated repeatedly in courts and counting rooms run by Republicans, he has refused to desist from these debunked claims. Even as his followers threaten GOP election officials with mayhem, Trump has continued to stoke their rage. And now we are entering the darkest dimension of politics, as his henchmen predict “civil war” and demand that he impose “martial law.”