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"We're losing a lot of people because of the internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."
He said this in 2015, folks. And we still elected him. We're fucked.
'We' didn't elect him. A horde of deluded, ignorant douchebags in just the right states did.
No, a bunch of empty land elected him.
I can only imagine where the country would be if we reformed the Electoral College and the Senate. It's absurd to be giving 1 million people in Hickle Dickle the same votes as 30,000,000 in another state. Or even worse, in the EC people in small states get 3-4 times the voting power as citizens of some larger states.
The idea behind doing that was so that the people in Hickle Dickle have their needs heard as much as the people from New Franciscago. Why? Because small towns have different needs than big cities, and it's important to hear from the people living in each area.
However it absolutely needs an overhaul as A) the population difference between New Franciscago and Hickle Dickle have become obscene (you're talking 30m vs 1m, when the reality is closer to 30m vs 100,000 or less), and B) the electoral college is becoming weaponized to override New Franciscago when it was supposed to balance the two and make sure Hickle Dickle still has its needs met.
Don't forget the tens of millions of Americans who stayed home because "both parties are the same"
Yeah, that's always the problem. Sometimes it's just a lack of motivation. Also don't discount voter suppression, like how voting day still is not a holiday and there's a significant lack of facilities in urban areas compared to suburban and rural regions. Nobody should have to wait in line for 5 hours (complete with BS like 'giving them water is a crime') to vote.
If the Republicans allowed real democracy to happen, they'd never get elected. They've said this pretty openly.
They used to claim they were the vast majority, silent majority, and so on, but it seems like they changed their tune on that and now it's "we don't need a majority! We're a constitutional republic"
We have to go see Bill Gates
This line... Lol
"Hi Bill, you're the CEO of the internet, right? I'm going to need you to turn it off for me. Thanks."
Well he doesn’t know Al Gore personally, for some reason he never seemed to show up to Epstein’s parties
It’s amazing, he’s said so many terrible things, I’m still learning about stuff like this he said years ago.
That's just locker room talk...
"He could invoke powers we've never heard a President of the United States invoke—potentially to shut down companies or turn off the internet or deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil," he added. "We don't know because the things that are in there, the emergency powers of the president, aren't widely known to the American people.
Wow, it’s almost like we’ve consolidated too much power in the Executive Branch and should do something about it before a despotic asswipe gets elected by an unhinged, manipulated populace.
Again. With nothing to lose this time...
Worse, he's got everything to lose if he doesn't find power to abuse to get him out of the hole he's currently hanging over.
No matter where an election is coming up - people tend to vote against their interests. This meme popped up in my head when I read this thread:
Unless their interest are not obvious to you in so far as that they are voting to maintain a racist hierarchy and privilege that equates to tangible benefits.
More than 50% of white american women voted for trump. Trump is a sexist, they know this. They also know that he will maintain their racist advantages over blacks, mexicans, jews, natives, asians you name it. So they voted for the ability to call the cops on you and have the police shoot you if they see you in their neighborhood.
It is basically a cast system that they voted for. Just in this case the cast system is based on racism.
Anybody knows a better explanation, please, feel free to reply and give your view what the benefits or expected pay-offs were for voting trump as a poor white woman.
edit: i forgot to mention what the expected reward is: if blacks, gays, jews, mexicans, asians, natives are beaten into submission and constantly harassed, then they can't compete with them for jobs as well, and their kids won't be able to compete with their kids either, as they will be constantly harassed, bullied and even murdered by the police and other racists.
He's also promising to go into people's houses at night and wreck up the place.
And sell our children's organs to zoos for meat?
If Trump elected, America has "turned off its brain", I say
My thoughts and prayers have started ringing to the tune of "please gods may Trump have a heart attack / stroke at the worst possible time for the Republicans and spare the rest of the world another term of American foreign policy behaving as though it was conceived by racist, classist and eight kinds of phobic Elmer Fudd "
Another term? If he gets in again, he ain't leaving until he's dead. It's glaringly obvious that he plans to become a dictator like his friends Putin and Kim.
If thoughts and prayers actually worked, Donald Trump's head would have exploded like a scene from "Scanners" on one of his countless TV appearances.
Thankfully, he thinks unplugging the router in the Oval Office breaks it for everyone else, too.
Please Donald piss off the wrong people. I double dog dare you.
If the Internet goes off, it means most of the US will be pissed off at him. Cellphones would be basically useless.
His followers wouldn't be able to access their favorite propaganda and conspiracy theories, either, so maybe they'd sober up a bit. Either way, it would not be good for him.
I mean, he can't. Even if he claims to have the executive power, even if he found a bunch of lackeys willing to try to do it for him, he can't do it. Whatever he did would be unenforceable. You can't just turn off the Internet. That's literally the reason we invented it in the first place, it's a communication network resilient against nuclear strikes and war and bad-faith governance all at once.
He could probably make it very hard to use, given a lot of time, but he'd be eaten alive by the angry populace long before it ever reached that point.
How many internet service providers would have to go along before the internet was effectively off? 3? 4?
Who are the wrong people? Have people similar to them offered significant resistance to past fascist regimes?
It was built to survive a nuclear war.
It will survive Trump.
Even if I have to drive a station wagon full of backup tapes myself.
There are countries that turn off the internet all the time. There's a only a few major Telcos that control all backbone infra. It could definitely happen
He already turns everyone else off, so why not?
Please, ask him to download it before turning it off.
The internet has gone to shit. Let’s hear him out. Speaking as a web developer who just sat through a wireframe meeting, I’m not completely averse to the internet disappearing.
computers were a mistake (I'm a software engineer)
I'm starting to lean towards the industrial revolution should never have happened.
"In the beginning the Universe was created.
This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Donald Trump may turn off the internet if elected to a second term in the White House, a former staffer has warned.
Miles Taylor, Trump's former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, was asked on MSNBC about what potential damage the former president, who is the frontrunner in the GOP primaries, could do in government without breaking the law.
I think Americans still don't understand the full extent of the president's powers and things Donald Trump could do, bubble-wrapped in legalese, that would be damaging to the republic."
"He could invoke powers we've never heard a President of the United States invoke—potentially to shut down companies or turn off the internet or deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil," he added.
In a Republican debate later that month, Trump said he was "open to closing areas" of the internet to prevent terrorism.
Removing internet service in certain areas of the U.S. would require multiple companies to turn off their cell towers and fiber networks, and to restrict satellite access to people living in those regions.
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