So you believe the US carried out an operation on foreign soil, and the US Army, the company that was raided, and the
German government are all keeping it hushed up, but one of Trump's lawyers and a tweet Louie Gohmert claimed to have seen are giving you the straight story? Pull the other one.
I realized that getting railed by the Trump Train for the past 4 years have ruined your vision, but maybe magnify the page by 400% and read what I actually fucking said. Maybe you won't look like a complete dipshit if you do.
Gohmert specifically claimed it was the US Army, but neither of them has shown any evidence except
a tweet with no provenance.
I really don't give a shit what Gohmert claimed. Not unless Gohmert is secretly Powell in a fucking wig and 2-inch thick make-up.
The statement came from Chris Krebs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is under DHS oversight. That the systems were secure doesn't mean there were no errors.
That system is not secure. These fuckwits couldn't get their system authorized in Texas because it failed basic penn testing. Affidavits specifically reference that it had easy end-user access and had multiple security failures. So unless Chris Krebs is also willing to write out an affidavits, what he says during an internal US power struggle is pretty meaningless.
It means there was manipulation of the system. The two Georgia counties with significant numbers of uncounted votes resulted from those counties elections being run poorly. In one case the person who would normally be supervising had caught covid-19. That isn't a security failure, nor evidence of malice. I mean, I know you are a well known internet legal scholar with a very good history of understanding what you're talking about, but I think I'll give credence to the professionals.
Your ahem,
professionals seem to include wikipedia editors, the New York Times, ABC, and the Associated Press. All of which routinely misrepresent Trump and are known enemies of his. It's like asking me to trust Fox News about Joe Biden's scandals.
Powell claimed the company was created in Venezuela. That is false. I brought it up because it is evidence she is lying. One of the other companies involved was founded by people from Venezuela in Florida in 2000. But her claim there is a connection to Chavez is baseless.
We can't know what's baseless in this situation, because it is proven that our media sources will lie to us when properly motivated. So the fact that AP, NYT, or whoever else you want to cite says one thing, does not make it true. And it's a rather large waste of my time to try and use those sources as if they are in any way authoritative when you yourself decry them later on the next page.
And even if that were not the case, how exhaustive was the list of yellow-page journalism in the past four years, from both political sources, in regards to rumors? You can't prove jack these days without either sufficiently strong evidence made public or you have people coming forward, willing to go on record as having said it.
That's why all those "leaks" during Trump's first two years always ended at a dry well; it was bullshit disseminated to gullible reporters or maliciously written misleading articles intent on harming Trump's position. Now, is everything that Powell said true?
Not likely.
Is it coherent and plausible? Very much so. Electronic cheating could be easily implemented if officials were willing to look the other way. Could our data be easily sent overseas to Germany without anyone knowing? Certainly. Is it reasonable to suggest that someone might cheat by siphoning off points from Trump's total and adding it onto Biden to avoid an overcount? Certainly.
Is it proven? No. And Trump's legal team and Powell have admitted that; it has yet to be proven. Right now they are gathering evidence to PROVE it in the courts. Running around and screaming about how things are baseless is just pointless. Claiming you know anything as solid fact is just appeal to authority.
That's rather my point. A lot of people were motivated to come out and vote against him.
And THAT could be true. But it's also unlikely that this is the case. Not highly unlikely, but unlikely. Biden had lower in-party support than Hillary Clinton--and yet he got a much higher turnout. That is simply NOT how the Democratic party works. That's a tough sell, even for Republicans. And the major advantage of the Republicans is their willingness to move in lock-step. The Democrats are somewhat opposite; they can't agree on policy-based campaigns and so turnout drops like a rock. They need someone with a strong personality to drive them into the voting booths and they flood out the Republicans every time it happens. See Obama and Bill Clinton.
In addition to this, Biden was presiding over a very divided Democrat party. For this to be legit would mean that it's the biggest fluke of a lifetime. More likely it means that someone somewhere cheated.
Unfortunately you are right, Trump still has a lot of supporters, because a lot of people either believe delusional nonsense like Qanon, make a profit off of Trump's policies, or like his brutalization of minorities.
No, this is factually wrong.
Trump is a symptom of something else and it has nothing to do with beating minorities or Qanon bullshit or big companies raping the land.
It's about breaking down the American Empire.
No, we're not actually an empire, but most people understand it as such. What we really are is a global hegemon. One that formally had been embattled with a rival global hegemon for control of the world. And to ensure that our rival could not threaten us, we made a deal with Europe that eventually expanded to cover the whole world; "we open your markets and we lead the fight against the Soviets".
That means that France could sell all of its exports into the American market without any trade barriers or restrictions. What that didn't mean was the US being able to do the same in France. You want to sell Parmesan in France? Well, you better label it something else, because only Parmesan Cheese made in Parmesan, France can use that label. Or Sparkling Wine? And God knows that Canada has had an absurd 300-400% trade wall against American dairy for the sake of protecting its own dairy industry. Or states using government subsidies to lower the cost of their own goods to outcompete American farmers who don't get those subsidies in the USA.
Then if that wasn't enough, Clinton--in all his fucking wisdom, decided to allow US companies to export their factories overseas to China. Because all those greedy pigs you (for some reason) think support Trump, are not happy that they're going to have to pay closer to $22 an hour for steel work jobs instead of say, $5 an hour if those products were made in the USA. That isn't to say that Clinton's bill didn't have some advantages; it allowed for cheap production of high quality technology such as smart phones, laptops, desktops, TVs, and so on.
I mean, it also mean enabled the Chinese to commit mass genocide in a security state powered by fucking Google, but small prices, am I right? And who needs all those high paying jobs in places like Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, or California when you can just hand a small African boy a hand shovel, a bucket, and push him into a deep hole so he can mine it by hand? Sure he'll never stop having nightmares from the putrid smell of the dead boys who never made it back, but he's likely to die in six months anyhow!
Trump's policies represent the decoupling of all these things. But why?
Well, the current supply chains to make a phone or a laptop are spread out from Africa to the South China Sea to China to South Korea to Japan. And when the US pulls back, it will create a power vacuum. When that power vacuum is exposed, you can expect energy shortages, famine, and territorial disputes erupt all across the known world.
The Chinese can't secure their own energy resources from the Gulf states. Sure, they look as though they have a massive naval force--and they do, but they're brown water, not blue water. They're not intended to do anything than defend China's coast and may strike at nearby nations such as Taiwan. Worse, even if China COULD secure their own oil, they would need a market to sell it to and with a protectionist America, that closes. Especially because Mexican labor is closer, isn't a perceived security threat, is cheaper, and is actually more educated on whole than the Chinese labor pool.
It also solves the illegal immigration problem.
Saudi Arabia, with the US out of the picture, is going to be the primary target of the Iranian military. Whether they can pull it off with their second-rate technology and empty bank account is questionable, but I for one never bet against Arabian military incompetence. The only reason Trump hasn't pulled out of Saudi Arabia is both because he gets resistance from the Pentagon AND because the Saudis are literally paying for us to be there. After Trump, that is likely to end.
Why?
Because Americans have seen what the Saudis do to dissenting reporters and we don't need their fucking oil anymore.
And finally, leaving Europe will reignite the long-asked German Question. Germany is too powerful for its neighbors comfort. And that generally results in a European war--the last two times (of two) it went global and resulted in the US essentially occupying half of Germany and Russia the other half. At this same time, Germany's immensely powerful economy has sucked the economic strength of southern Europe dry...while also lending them billions (or trillions) of dollars that is in some cases, literally impossible to buy out. To make matters even worse, Germany is an export-led economy, meaning that its domestic market cannot absorb its production. They need to send it somewhere else. And unfortunately for them, the rest of Europe is aging rapidly; the Millennial and Zoomer generation is not as evident in those countries.
Why is that double devastating?
Because it means not only do they need access to as many markets as possible in order to sustain the very model of economy of capitalism, but they also can't fill the role of the US due to the sheer amount of costs it would entail, as well as the fact that China would need to export to THEIR market to make up for the loss of the US market.
And that brings us to Russia. Which has far worse demographics than the rest of Europe. At the same time they see the US pulling out, they realize that in 10-20 years, they will not have the military capacity to hold Russia's territory. Their only option is to find the narrowest part of the European plain and plug it to prevent Napoleon War 3.0 from driving their tanks all the way to Moscow. Even worse than that is that because their education system went tits up in the fall of the Soviet Union, the people most capable of maintaining their technology in the highest numbers are going to die in like 10-20 years.
Why is that bad?
Because the most narrow part of the European plain that Russia can latch onto is halfway through Poland. So if the Russians want a chance at their country not falling apart, they have to drive their military forces all the way through several countries to secure it. And they'll do it piecemeal so the US won't feel threatened and warn the Europeans that if they get involved...well, no gas for them.
These are all strategic disasters that will ignite massive wars, destroy supply chains, raise the cost of labor (as it becomes American labor), and absolutely destroys developing (and developed) countries. That's why the neo-cons and neo-liberals HATE him. That's why massive companies that rely upon those same supply chains to cut labor costs (but not end market costs, am I right?)--one of them being tech companies such as Microsoft and Google want Trump out of office.
But for the average American? It means replacing Chinese jobs with American jobs. Or Mexican jobs. Even if only 1 out of 4 of those jobs go to the USA and the rest go to Mexico, the US gains a stronger blue collar work force and the strengthened Mexican economy (which is already #11 in the world) becomes more attractive for potential illegal immigrants, either from Mexico or south of Mexico. Which in turn lessens the strain on race relations within the USA.
The downside for the US is relatively small, the benefits are huge.
It's just that a few billionaires, socialists globalists, and most of the remaining states on the planet lose hard.