https://twitter.com/thinman/status/1262078516838887424

Since 2017, so many events in U.S. politics that were previously unthinkable have come to pass. Don’t believe me? A few days ago, the president of the United States baselessly accused a cable television host of murder and it barely made a blip in the news cycle. The shocking has become unsurprising — almost routine — under Donald Trump’s unhinged presidency.

We don’t know whether Trump will be reelected. But, as we head toward November, you have to ask yourself: If he loses, would it be more surprising if Trump graciously accepts defeat and congratulates his opponent or if he claimed to be the victim of a rigged election and a “deep state” plot?

The answer seems clear.

I’ve studied genuinely rigged elections across the globe. The tactics, context and strategies vary enormously from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe. But one trait they have in common is this: The winner doesn’t claim they were rigged.

Not so with Trump. In 2016, when he narrowly defeated Hillary Clinton despite losing the popular vote by a historic margin, he claimed that 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally. That is a lie. But it raised an obvious question: If Trump claimed that an election he won was rigged, what will he do with an election he loses?

Already, he has insinuated that Democratic victories are the result of rigged elections. It’s part of a deliberate strategy to discredit the legitimacy of his political opponents, but it also endangers the peaceful transfer of power, which is a cornerstone of democratic government.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/14/we-need-prepare-possibility-trump-rejecting-election-results/

https://twitter.com/amerindependent/status/1261009511621558272

https://twitter.com/mmfa/status/1261034400352960512

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Somehow this gibberish makes perfect sense to the gun lovin, mouth breathers that vote repuke over and over and over...

https://twitter.com/markszaidesq/status/1260657175371739138

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So Flynn gets caught with his panties down and a Russian dick up His ass and these idiots are countering with rand Paul....-

https://twitter.com/tpm/status/1260722042325938176

NO, HELL NO, AND FUCK NO

During an interview Tuesday with Time Magazine, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser was asked if they had any plans to move or delay the election because of coronavirus, and he suggested they did: “I’m not sure I can commit one way or the other, but right now that’s the plan.”

But Election Day is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November under federal statute. It would take an act of Congress to change the date. In other words, it’s not up to the president nor Kushner to say when the election will be held.

And after former vice president Joe Biden warned that he fears Trump would find some way to try to delay the election, the president didn’t seem so inclined: “The general election will happen on Nov. 3,” Trump said last month.

It’s possible Kushner misspoke, since he later clarified he knows of no plan to change the election date.

I hope the takeaway for you is that it would be very difficult to postpone it. Plus, more and more, states are looking at how to hold their elections by mailed ballots.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1260304353874849793.html

Where we are now: it seems clear that the GOP's political arm has effectively decided to give up on trying to control Covid and reopen the economy; the propaganda arm (Fox and worse) is going all in for conspiracy theorizing and virus trutherism
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At one level this shouldn't be surprising. It's the same script the party has followed on climate change, and the virus truthers are a lot like the inflation truthers who insisted that we had runaway inflation under Obama
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But what's going on now seems to involve a new level of *political* recklessness. Climate change takes place over decades; inflation truthers paid no political or personal price for being wrong again and again. But if the virus erupts, it will happen quickly
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In other words, the GOP has in effect decided to ignore the science at the clear risk of being held accountable in the near future both for killing thousands and for wrecking the economy, because that's what a premature opening would do
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Why take that risk? Partly they may be high on their own supply, no longer able to conceive that there is an objective reality that might be politically inconvenient. Partly I think it's because they know in their hearts that they can't actually do the job of governing
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But anyway, we're witnessing a lethal abdication of responsibility whose consequences will be quickly apparent. It's truly awesome to watch

https://twitter.com/tom_winter/status/1260335659337822210

The nation needs a sprawling network of contact tracers to track and halt the spread of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Public health experts estimate that an effective tracking system will require at least 15 tracers per 100,000 Americans — and, in the hardest-hit regions, a workforce twice that size.

About $3.7 billion will be needed to cover the work of 100,000 tracers, the National Association of County and City Health Officials calculated. Creating this army of contact tracers, bigger than any assembled in U.S. history, will require swift, efficient training.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/05/11/this-course-will-train-an-army-contact-tracers-you-can-take-it-too/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most

You are not a dumbfuck whisperer....