White House Insists Trump Is 'Joking' About Canceling Midterm Elections(time.com)
24 pointsby perihelions6 hours ago10 comments
  • JohnFen6 hours ago
    I think at this point, everyone is well aware that you can't take anything Trump says as "joking". Particularly when they claim it is. "It was just a joke" is a standard refuge of scoundrels.
    • scarecrowbob5 hours ago
      There's an excellent author named James C Scott who in (IIRC) "Two Cheers for Anarchism" explores the idea that people who are speaking to crowds understand that fundamentally they aren't "in charge" and must respond to what the crowd will accept. So he looks at how folks like MLK (in a positive manner) try different rhetorical directions while speaking with a crowd."

      I believe that it's helpful for understand what Trump and his admin do isn't merely goofin off, but rather "testing" how folks respond.

      You're correct Trump is a scoundrel (he's no friend of mine), but it's helpful to understand that this mode of wanting things both ways is a specific tool being used in specific ways.

      • etempleton4 hours ago
        I have said, that if Trump has one skill, it is that he can read a crowd. His rally's are word salads and nonsensical because he is searching for the right combination of words that garners the reaction he is looking for and when he gets it he tries to hone in on exactly what the crowd liked about that phrase.

        His supporters will often say he is not literal that his words are metaphorical, but he is not a metaphorical person. Everything he says is a serious thought that he is at least considering even if it is absurd to everyone else.

        • scarecrowbob39 minutes ago
          I believe that it's important to take folks at their literal words even though that is hard work sometimes- I don't think it's okay to "float" these dumb ideas. I take them seriously, even if I think the folks trying to make schrodenger's jokes out of them are disingenuous clowns who are simply lying.

          As a fan of psychoanalytic thought, having issues with metaphors is a pretty interesting symptom, and it certainly lines up with my understanding of Trump.

          I used to feel bad for that kind of a person, totally unable to enjoy literally anything. Now I am too worn out for that.

    • quantified5 hours ago
      Remember the "he's being sarcastic" from his first term. Despite sarcasm not being appropriate, "facetious" maybe.
    • CamperBob25 hours ago
      Go to the airport and joke about bombing and hijacking aircraft, and you'll quickly find that nobody in charge thinks it's funny. They have no choice but to take those comments seriously, because the downside of ignoring them is unbounded.

      The American voter had the same obligation in 2016 and 2024, and neglected it both times. Even today a third of us are just fine with what's happening. Why? Well, the right people are being hurt, apparently. And our dogs are safe from being eaten by immigrants, if not from being shot.

  • FrankWilhoit6 hours ago
    Who are the audience(s)? Who wants to hear which? They have been playing it both ways and will probably continue to. The moment to watch for will be if they start playing it only one way.
  • pull_my_finger3 hours ago
    You can find so many parallels to Trump's presidency and the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. I wish there were some in depth political analysis of the similarities because just as a layman, there are many.

    - Both used Cambridge Analytica heavily in their elections and terms.

    - Both appealed to very macho/misogynistic bases.

    - Both made wildly inappropriate jokes and threats, leaving their Press Secretaries to explain it away. "Locker room" talk for Trump, and "Bisaya humor" for Duterte.

    - Both did basically anything they wanted, basically with impunity (although Duterte is captured by ICC now iirc)

    - Both accused of being a foreign asset. Trump->Russia, Duterte->China.

    - Both want to rewrite/dispose of their constitutions.

    - Both wanted to end elections or remove term limits.

    - Duterte declared martial law, Trump wants to.

    - Duterte did door to door searches (under guise of War on Drugs), Trump doing it under guise of Immigration enforcement.

    There's probably more, but those are off the top of my head. If I had a tinfoil hat to wear, I would almost believe this is all still Cambridge or other big data backed planned behavior. I admitted don't know much about Project 2025, but just knowing a) they worked with big data in Cambridge, and b) there is actually goals planned that accommodate expected responses from congress etc make things highly suspicious.

    I wish a political scientist/independent researcher would do the leg work and investigate the two presidencies, because all of it is just really scary and prophetic.

    • 2 hours ago
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  • msie6 hours ago
    He’s not.
  • AnimalMuppet5 hours ago
    Trump throws a lot of stuff against the wall to see what will stick. Hopefully the response to this was bad enough to make him abandon any ideas he may have had.
  • ndsipa_pomu5 hours ago
    I think it's fair to say that the White House is just continually lying at this point.
  • bediger40006 hours ago
    Since there are no "red lines", the most important 25-30% of the voting population wouldn't mind, and oligarch owned media isn't going to show any outrage about this, I'm not optimistic about mid-terms even happening. I'm alson not optimistic about the dynastic succession. None of the princelings look to be wise rulers.
    • functionmouse6 hours ago
      The cool thing about monarchies vs. democracies is that at least with monarchies sometimes you get a cool leader by random chance, whereas with democracies, the current power can always pay/muscle their ideal outcome. Might be 400 years till the next one but we'll have our enlightenment.
  • bediger40005 hours ago
    Trump "backed away" from Project 2025, too, or at least that's what got earnestly reported. Reporters, at least in oligarch owned media, seem easily convinced by certain factions of politicians.
  • like_any_other5 hours ago
    > He’s quoted as arguing “we shouldn’t even have an election,” on account of how much the Trump Administration has accomplished.

    Well I wanted to make up my own mind, but Time thinks it's appropriate to quote one fragment of a sentence, cutting off the start and end to leave only the middle (starts with a lowercase letter, ends with a comma). I don't want to appear greedy and ask for something as extravagant as multi-sentence context, so I guess I'll just think what Time wants me to think.

    • bloak5 hours ago
      Yes, but according to US punctuation law it is permitted to falsely attribute commas. I mean, they put the comma on the wrong side of the closing quotation mark where logically it does not belong.
    • CamperBob25 hours ago
      Here's a more complete quote: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-tells-christians-they...

      Oh, wait, that was from the last time Trump said this. Your mind is made up, so stop pretending otherwise. Nobody's fooled, and nobody's impressed.

      • like_any_other5 hours ago
        Do you think, hypothetically, it's possible to have misgivings about Trump, and at the same time have misgivings about how the news is reported? Somebody mentioned Trump moving the Overton window with such 'jokes'. When a supposedly respectable newspaper like Time publishes out-of-context sentence fragments, even if the context wouldn't have change anything, that also moves the Overton window - it moves how much we'll accept the news being mangled, until "Oh I'm sure the stuff they cut out wouldn't have changed anything" becomes a habit.

        If you're okay with that, then just outsource your right to vote to Time, or some other newspaper, because you've basically already done so.

        • CamperBob23 hours ago
          You know people follow him around with actual video cameras and audio recorders, right?

          There's no need to speak of hypotheticals here... and only morons and professional sealions still have "misgivings." Which are you?

          • like_any_other37 minutes ago
            Yes, I know the full quote and context is available, which is exactly why I'm upset at Time for omitting it, training their audience to accept cherry-picket snippets. Which is exactly what I said in my post, so I have no idea what you're replying to, but it can't be anything I wrote. Goodbye.
  • recursivecaveat5 hours ago
    Midterms will happen. They may or may not be ""secured"" by ICE. The midterms don't matter because the Senate cannot flip hard enough to actually remove Trump, and otherwise I don't think he cares at all what the legislative branch does. For now he is just floating it to move the Overton window. I don't think he would attempt to full on cancel until the following election. If he has a brain left though the next presidential election will just feature some ICE agents to "prevent illegals from voting" or whatever who can find him the 11,780 votes he failed to get from Georgia last time.