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[–] 159 points 3 months ago (3 children)

As I understand his argument, it goes like: the 2020 Trump administration so badly bungled national security that foreign agents corrupted the election. The 2024 Biden administration fixed things enough to produce a fair election. Now that Trump is back in charge, he, himself, is saying that the 2026 election is going to be just as corrupt as the last time he was in charge.

Seems highly out of character to admit that he's incompetent., but whatever

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  • [–] 38 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    He invented a threat to which the only solution is giving him more power.

    You don't have to even look at the details.

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  • [–] 24 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Pretty sure China wouldn't mind an utter imbecile as US president every single time.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    That is a careful what you wish for.

    Not so smart as to challenge competitively, but not so dumb as to think they can go bombing whoever they feel like to get their way.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (1 child)

    I'm not wishing anything, just stating the obvious. And if anything, Trump has made it much much more likely that other countries will use force to fulfill their perceived interests. You'd have to be asleep not to realize it.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago

    Perhaps I should have put it in quotes, "careful what you wish for" intended as the expression and "you" being China.

    An imbecile is desirable in some ways to have the USA act against it's own best interests making competitive interests easier, however when the imbecile goes and bombs Iran, that is a problem. And who knows what bone head move to screw things up for everyone comes next.

    In some ways an imbecile is harder to predict and negotiate with.

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  • [–] 47 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    He did no such thing. He just did what he's been doing for the last 10 years and continued making more claims with no evidence.

    Elections remain firmly in the control of states, for now. For exactly this reason.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Not true... There is evidence...He released documents that directly show Russian interference in the election on his behalf, and them being the source of the fake Biden/Burisma stuff.

    So, just not evidence of what he claimed.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago

    Trump just did more damage to American elections than he did damage to Iran.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago

    Yes that was the goal. And if he doesn’t get that bill passed (and frankly even it goes through) then Americans will be saying hello to his private army dragging people off at the polls. This has been predicted since day 1. The only thing this speech did was start getting his troops in motion. Everyone knows there was no proof of anything except the opposite of what he said in those documents, but that wasn’t the point because his cultists don’t read.

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  • [–] 33 points 3 months ago (27 children)

    Counterpoint: China helped elect Trump

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (26 children)
  • [–] 29 points 3 months ago (24 children)

    Propaganda, same as the CIA and the US does it. Either both are correct or both are wrong. And it wasn't just China either.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Thanks. I knew about the Russian stuff but this is the first I've heard about Chinese actions in this vein.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Heh yeah I was going to say. I've seen you around posting enough that I certainly didn't think you were a campist.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I try my best not to be, but living in the west I will acknowledge the possibility that I have some bias towards my own culture.

    But I am openly biased against governments because fuck the state.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    You and me both. 🤜🤛

    Yep we should always be able to question what we know. Otherwise how do we know that we really know it. And yeah, I can't think of a good state. There are some that are less damaging but that has more to do with external factors than the state itself.

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  • [–] -5 points 3 months ago* (18 children)

    Propaganda

    Systematic partisan content skews in TikTok during the 2024 US elections

    We doing the "Singapore company heavily invested in by US Tech Billionaires is Chinese State Propaganda"? Is this like how Facebook is controlled by Russia? Or FOX News is the black hand of the insidious Australians? Is Twitter a cut-out for the ANC of South Africa?

    How many American billionaires are going to do American propaganda on American media platforms before Americans realize that the ones pushing an American politician born in America and heavily influential in both American political parties are American?

    And it wasn’t just China either.

    You know someone's just dishing xenophobic agitprop when they fish out a fist full of "Evil Foreigners Are Controlling The Media" but refuse to mention India, Qatar, the UK, or Israel.

    But it still rankles that every single major media studio has a HQ in NY, Chicago, or LA, and y'all never stop to think "Fuck, maybe that's where the propaganda is coming from."

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (16 children)

    Found the campist. 🤡

    Just because byte dance who still owned Tick Tock in 2020 pushed us servers off to singapore. Doesn't mean that byte dance and by extension the Chinese government no longer had control. Tick Tock has always been right wing owned. Bite dance has always been a capitalist company. The current CCP is state capitalist. But the major shift to American capitalist ownership didn't even have until 2026. Long after they had helped elect Trump again. And things have arguably only gotten worse.

    And what are you? Bibi netanyahu's brother? Yes I am exactly as racist against China for being against their government, as people who are against the government of Israel are anti-semitic. Which is to say I'm not. I'm also against the government of the United States Canada UK etc etc etc generally. But damn you're disappointing. You had a perfect chance to use your camps buzzword and you missed it. I was waiting for you to call me sinophobic. Which I mean was basically what you did. But even as a 🤡 you did it in the most impotent and baseless way.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    O don't know where the hate for China comes from. Oh their spying on you. Oh their cars could spy on you. So no different then every American company. But i guess american spying good Chinese bad. I which both these fucking countries would just implode. It would be hard since UA minor countries would have to actually start doing shit ourselves but with it.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    First of all, nobody here ever said the USA was great.

    China is an authoritarian state which bans the mere sharing of information as a criminal offense. They have successfully committed multiple genocides. They promote war abroad by backing similar regimes in North Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran, often funneling weapons in during the process. They singlehandedly kept the Russian invasion of Ukraine afloat. They have conquered Tibet and Hong Kong with millitant force and are preparing to conquer Taiwan and part of India. They used the IRGC to attack a music festival in Israel and jumpstart the most recent round of war across the entire middle east. They now have military footholds across Africa recently. They promoted Donald Trump and the GOP as well as alt-right leaders in Germany and other EU provinces. Even their trade practices are scummy by utilizing largescale slave labor and subsidies to undercut all competition and doing currency manipulation to make countries under hard times have even harder times as their economic recovery is seen as strengthening their enemies: everyone not subservient is their enemy.

    So fuck China. China is the largest threat to human life on earth. China must be destroyed before they destroy us all.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    I just hate the state myself. I've worked with Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Japanese, Philippino and even know a tiny tiny useless bit of Mandarin. They're just people like everyone else. Just as the state is always the state, and not your friend. Doesn't matter where they come from.

    There absolutely should be none of these unwieldy unmanageable entities state or business wise. Just self governing communities allying with other communities for mutual benefit and aid. Not holding eachother back. Tribalism/campism is always the stumbling block.

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  • [+] -6 points 3 months ago (12 children)

    byte dance who still owned Tick Tock in 2020

    And who owns ByteDance?

    Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, SoftBank

    :-/

    Yes I am exactly as racist against China

    At least we're getting to the nut of it.

    Fucking wild to tune into MSNBC and get the latest "China Invasion Of American Media" scare story, then spin around and call someone else a campist, though.

    🤡

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (11 children)

    Chinese companies like byte dance still answer to the Chinese government. Who is notoriously controlling. It doesn't matter who the major investors are. All the investors care is if they are making money and if they stand to make more.

    You cannot celebrate China as a country that regularly puts people in Chinese companies to death for what it's deems corruption. And not simultaneously claim that such companies are free to operate however they want independently.

    And if you're going to keep being bad faith and using baseless arguments. Which you are. Again use the right terms. I don't even watch it, but even I know it's MSNow not MSNBC.

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  • [–] -3 points 3 months ago (10 children)

    Chinese companies like byte dance still answer to the Chinese government.

    Bytedance isn't a Chinese company. It's a multinational - just like so many of the other social media companies - with corporate oversight coming from the same Silicon Valley cartel that backed Trump on every other platform.

    And if you’re going to keep being bad faith

    Why is it so hard for you to accept that Americans did this to themselves?

    Why do you need to make this an Evil Foreigner problem that can be used as a rationale for war?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Bytedance was founded in China and the headquarters is in Beijing. It's a CCP/PLA run company.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 months ago

    Bytedance was founded in China

    And incorporated in the Cayman Islands. So the election much have been stolen by a bunch of dodgey UK bankers.

    It’s a CCP/PLA run company.

    Without a single member of the party on the executive board?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (6 children)

    Because they can’t accept responsibility for it, that’s why. Individuals run to claim they voted against it, it’s always a foreign controlled problem. It’s embarrassing for them too, because it’s all caused by a selfish lack of voting…something they blame media for, when their conservatives prove every election how effective it is.

    They know it takes some hardship to fix now, they aren’t prepared to deal with that so they’re lashing out. Good on you for calling it. They’ll lash out at me as well probably but I couldn’t care less.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (5 children)

    it’s all caused by a selfish lack of voting…

    I've seen far too many election irregularities in Texas, up to and including the arrest of poor black residents on spurious charges, to write this off entirely as "selfish" lack of voting.

    I will not be surprised if we see Talarico and friends eat shit in another Blue Wave year, as Abbott's goons pull thousands of extra votes from countries with no election monitoring and flimsy election infrastructure. Or if we get a wave of broken machines, extraordinarily long lines, and missing boxes of ballots in the big urban centers.

    You don't have to go all the way back to The Brooks Brothers Riot to find rot under the electoral floorboards. But that's not the result of China or Russia or Iran or Transgender Muslim Communist Athletes or Time Traveling Space Aliens or whatever the scapegoat of choice happens to be this year.

    They know it takes some hardship to fix now, they aren’t prepared to deal with that so they’re lashing out.

    America's greatest vice is in assuming it's always someone else's problem to solve.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (4 children)

    Texas aside, it’s definitely a selfish lack of voting.

    This has been repeated for years, with not only low turnouts overall but religious turnouts by Republicans across the country that prove voting works.

    There’s no way in the world outcomes wouldn’t be different if at least 80% of them turned out to first primaries then the actual elections. It’s definitely a lack of voting issue at all levels.

    Now, it’s a completely different story. We know the vote, if it happens, will either be tampered with or they’ll just send goons out to either stop the vote, force people to vote red or destroy or shut off polling booths. This time the excuses will be legit because they failed to do their national duty when they weren’t legit.

    Now the rest of us around the world are copping this Seppo froth politics bullshit with bots everywhere on social networks paid for by American associated conservative interests and CPACs. None of which we asked for but are getting inundated with. All because they couldn’t turn up to vote when required. They even have honed excuses for that.

    Sorry but I’m tired of their shit and I’m tired of seeing them gang up on people willing to call them on it.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (3 children)

    Texas aside, it’s definitely a selfish lack of voting.

    Texas isn't the only state with abysmal election practices.

    There’s no way in the world outcomes wouldn’t be different if at least 80% of them turned out to first primaries then the actual elections.

    I think Democratic turnout has to be predicated by a certain understanding that you'll get at least some of what you asked for by participating.

    If you're in a 60/40 district where people kick sand in your eyes when you lose, and you always lose, then there's very little incentive to show up.

    And, when you look at all the people who were turning out in the 80s/90s for third parties and independent candidates, only to get blamed and screamed at and shat on for participating outside the two party system? I can't say I'm shocked to see them give up on the public sector and focus exclusively on private accumulation as a political remedy.

    Sorry but I’m tired of their shit

    And they're tired of yours.

    "Things would be better if you voted harder!" is a promise that is consistently broken.

    At some point, it's your duty to deliver if you want someone to keep turning out for you.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    Texas isn’t the only state

    They’ve been electing lunatics and not turning out for years. This is not due to prevention of voting or bad election practices. It’s because they, particularly the progressives, don’t turn out to vote.

    I think Democratic turnout

    Isn’t the expectation of getting what you want in a candidate and by extension what you ask for, the purpose of a primary? That’s without a presidential candidate like Trump, where the priority becomes keeping them away from the reins of power.

    They get what they vote for, and their participation earns. Shit candidates, who aren’t working for them.

    And, when you look at people…

    That’s just another summary of selfishness for mine.

    And they’re tired of yours

    Yes, they don’t react to the mirror at all well. They look for excuses everywhere. Sounds like you are now as well.

    At some point it your duty to deliver

    Correct, and we see that in action with Mamdani in New York, who was put there by a decent turnout and being the right candidate. Proving both works if they do it.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    They get what they vote for

    They don't. If they did, they'd have universal health care instead of another war in the middle east.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago

    Yeah nah they get what they vote for. In terms of turnout and result, their leaders represent them and reflect their vote.

    In order to get what you’re saying, they’d want 80- 90% turnout in primaries and elections and they are too lazy and selfish for that.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    Well yeah, because China didn't damage them at all.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    Was he trying to damage China?

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  • [–] 25 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    Just making up shit so he can reject the results when he gets pantsed

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (4 children)

    Pantsed where? He can't run again he's not gonna be on the ballot in 2028

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    A felon with dozens of convictions is running the place, and has already successfully taken many actions that should be illegal for the president to do. I somehow doubt they'll suddenly start caring about the rules now.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 months ago* (1 child)

    As an American, I can't say that I ever felt threatened by China. But by American Confederates? Definitely.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago

    Trump just did more damage to American elections than Monaco.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    Ah, so we’re into the paranoid delusional phase of the dementia onset now. What fun!

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Good thing this is paywalled.

    Guess the end of democracy isn't enough of a crisis for a f*ing newspaper to let people find out about it without a subscription fee.

    America may be dying but at least it's dying doing what it loves - playing chicken with disaster for a quick buck while pretending nobody has any responsibility to anybody else.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago

    Trump Just Did More Damage to American Elections Than China His speech was a mash-up of charges that aren’t supported by the documents he released.

    By Tom Nichols July 16, 2026

    President Trump addressed the American people tonight and told them that their elections are at the mercy of foreign actors—especially China. He called the current situation a “crisis” and vowed to prevent any future elections from being “stolen.” He directed the public to a website where people can peruse documents that he says prove not only that bad actors have influenced U.S. elections, but that all of this was kept from him by “deep state” malefactors during his first term.

    Foreign powers do, in fact, try to influence American elections, but that was about all that the president—who seems shocked that other nations have preferences about who wins elected office in the United States—got right. The rest was a mishmash: Much of the previously classified material that Trump just splattered on the internet does not support his accusations, and in some cases, these declassified documents actually undermine and refute his charges.

    Trump’s speech tonight rested on a few solid facts submerged in wild, and even somewhat paranoid, extrapolations. It’s true that bad actors have accessed basic data about the names and addresses of voters in several states. It’s also true that China has some pretty strong views about Trump and probably didn’t want him to be reelected in 2020. (The Chinese wanted him out because, Trump said, “I was wise to them,” which does not explain how he was nonetheless hoodwinked.)

    From there, however, we slip the surly bonds of Earth and head into the dark and cold of the space of conspiracy theories. Trump strongly implied that in 2018, China was on the attack and trying to influence the outcome of the 2020 election, and that American intelligence operatives plotted to keep that from him while he was in the Oval Office. He said that attempts to rectify all of this have fallen “catastrophically short” but that he will take “swift” action in the coming days.

    The documents he offered tonight, though, tell a different story—so different that they raise the question of whether Trump, or anyone else in the White House, actually read them.

    For example, one of the memos from the National Intelligence Council (the analytical group within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence) said in 2020 that the group in charge of cyberissues and threats to U.S. elections “assesses that Beijing has taken at least some low-level, exploratory steps to undermine the President’s reelection chances by denigrating him and shaping voter perceptions.”

    That sounds pretty bad. Except that (as often happens in the intelligence community) this group was representing a minority view, as it says in the very next sentence: “Their assessment differs from the IC’s judgment that Beijing has considered but not deployed influence efforts to affect the Presidential election.”

    So, which is it? The IC (shorthand for intelligence community) seems to have reached a pretty firm judgment in these documents: “The IC,” one of the memos says (with some passages redacted),

    has seen no evidence that Beijing is engaged in an effort to influence the outcome of the presidential election, nor has it observed activity that it assesses is likely the result of such an effort by Beijing. While we have seen Beijing develop other options that could be used to influence the election, we have not seen these capabilities deployed.

    Note that what these documents discuss are influence operations—propaganda, proxies who speak for foreign interests, fake stories, and so on—rather than interference, which would involve actual manipulation of data or sabotaging of electoral infrastructure. These classified revelations, despite Trump’s assertions, show that the intelligence community didn’t even agree that China was fully engaged even in these more limited influence operations.

    One document says, with more firmness, that the Chinese were attempting to undermine Trump’s chances and to pressure business partners into withdrawing support for the president’s reelection. This is perfectly plausible behavior from a U.S. adversary. Of course, Trump skipped over the part about other nations, including one where “senior officials” and their leader were seeking to “covertly influence US politicians’ and political candidates’ thinking” about the election.

    That nation? Turkey.

    On one point, however, the declassified reports are clear. One country, more than any other, actively engaged in operations against the 2020 election: Russia. And the Russians had a clear preference:

    We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia establishment. For example, it is directing or encouraging proxies to spread claims about Vice President Biden. Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media.

    This isn’t news, but Trump carefully cherry-picked his way around it. In charts provided by the White House itself that compare Russia, China, and Iran, only Russia is judged to be actively involved in such efforts.

    Trump not only ignored these multiple (and much more categorical) judgments; he interpreted the normal in-house fighting that goes on every day in the intelligence community as evidence of some sort of plot against him. He made much of a comment in a group email—these conspirators were pretty relaxed about sending their nefarious ideas around to everyone—about “massaging” the President’s daily brief to take out references to the 2020 election. But the conversation was clearly about which product would include such issues, and how strongly the minority view would be stated. Like so much else in the speech and the documents, Trump threw everything he could find at the wall in the hope that some of it would stick.

    So what, then, was the point of Trump’s speech? First, he is almost certainly trying to soothe his wounded ego over the 2020 election. He is obsessed with his loss to Biden and wants to blame it on foreign manipulation. But Trump might also have a darker motive, attacking the integrity of American elections because he wants to delegitimize the coming midterms—and perhaps even create the predicate for interfering in them.

    The Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, the North Koreans, and many other enemies of the United States clearly hope to undermine the faith of every American citizen in their own elections. But no regime, no spies, no saboteurs have yet matched the damage that America’s own president did tonight.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Do you expect these journalists to work for free? Sure they could make the site ad supported but then you have to deal with that.

    Edit: since you didn't respond to me and just downvoted, I'll take your answer as "yes".

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago
    [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    It's always someone else's fault.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    The CCP and PLA knew MAGA would weaken the USA and that is what they want. There are enough dumbfuck voters in the USA that will continue to guzzle down the shit from Moscow and Beijing.

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