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Not My President

teamgreen02

By teamgreen02
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teamgreen02

teamgreen02

Posted
Posted

Anyone else old enough to remember when you could openly question elections without fear of being cancelled?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/inauguration-2021-2017-comparison-not-my-president

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Since November's election result broke the way of President-elect Joe Biden, Democrats and the media have urged Trump supporters to move on and accept defeat so the country can move on and the healing can begin.

But four years ago, when President Trump first took office, many of those same people were themselves quick to reject the election results, prompting the start of four years of the resistance movement.

Trump's shock victory was met with fury, celebrity threats to move to Canada, and defiant cries of "Not my president!"

Pop superstar Madonna infamously declared she was thinking "an awful lot about blowing up the White House," though she later said her words were taken out of context.

To many, Trump's win was not only doomsday, but it was a wake-up call. And the response from many to the billionaire's surprise win was probably best summed up by the New Yorker, which encapsulated the outcome of the election in three simple words: An American Tragedy.

But the politics of resistance has caught up to both sides, and its result has led to a blue-red divide that is growing ever deeper.

Democrats and Republicans alike are both guilty of painting election losses as unfair or crooked, although Trump's supporters took things to the extreme earlier this month with the storming of the U.S. Capitol that led to the deaths of five people.

Here's a look at some of the extreme reactions that met the 2016 and 2020 election.

 

2016 Election: Resist, Russia, Impeach

Though a recent column by the New York Times's Paul Krugman claims Democrats never painted Trump as illegitimate, history says otherwise.

After Trump defied polls and media analysts with his victory, his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, placed the blame of her defeat on a number of factors. Months after Election Day, Clinton chalked up her loss to Russian interference and the actions by former FBI Director James Comey, who sent a letter to Congress in the month before the election, discussing Clinton's use of a private email server used for government correspondence.

“If the election had been on Oct. 27, I would be your president,” Clinton told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in March 2017.

The former secretary attributed other forces to her loss, including sexism and saying she was given a "false equivalency" by the media.

In 2019, when asked if it bothers her that Trump rallies chant "lock her up," Clinton responded that she believes Trump is an "illegitimate" president, blaming voter suppression for her loss.

"No, it doesn’t kill me because he knows he’s an illegitimate president,” Clinton said. “I believe he understands that the many varying tactics they used, from voter suppression and voter purging to hacking to the false stories — he knows that — there were just a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out like it did.”

With Trump left with less than a week in office, Rep. Jerry Nadler declared that though he believes Trump was "legally elected," Russian interference in his campaign "makes his election illegitimate."

Former President Jimmy Carter didn't deny whether he believed Trump was an illegitimate president when questioned about it in 2019.

"There’s no doubt that the Russians did interfere in the election. And I think the interference, although not yet quantified, if fully investigated, would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016," Carter said. "He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf."

Other Democrats used less obvious rhetoric in their opposition to Trump but didn't hesitate to express how they felt about Trump's win.

In 2017, a day before Robert Mueller's appointment as special counsel to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted, "Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts."

In May of 2017, Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, told the Washington Post, she would "keep working until [Trump's] impeached."

"Why would we let somebody like Trump, a con man, come in here and turn it all upside down with his lies and his disrespect?" Waters said.

Later that year, Waters led more than a thousand people on a march chanting "Impeach 45!"

Trump would eventually be impeached by the Democrat-controlled House in December 2019 on two Ukraine-related charges, but he was later acquitted by the GOP-led Senate.

But, of course, no election is complete without the opinions of Hollywood. Celebrities made sure to use their platform into an 11th-hour public service announcement effort to persuade the Electoral College not to vote for Trump when he rose to president-elect. The ad features several sitcom stars and West Wing actor Martin Sheen.

Elle compiled a list of celebrity reactions to Trump's win when it did come to fruition. Modern Family actress Ariel Winter probably captured the reactions of most best in a single tweet, when she declared: "America, you have failed. What the actual f---. Devastating. I won't recognize @realDonaldTrump as our president, ever."

On Inauguration Day itself, a number of House Democrats skipped Trump's day, with the late Rep. John Lewis saying at the time he believed "Russians participated in helping this man get elected," which made Trump an "illegitimate" president.

To combat the inauguration, anti-Trump protests broke out in almost every major U.S. city. Over 200 people were arrested at a march in Washington, D.C., and six police officers were injured.

Kim Strassel, a conservative columnist at the Wall Street Journal, depicted the events on Inauguration Day while traveling through the district.

Though largely peaceful, violent outbreaks still took place in the aftermath of the most divisive election in recent history.

"I also saw people smashing car windows, racing in mobs after anyone in a MAGA hat, screaming taunts and insults at the media," Strassel writes in her book, Resistance at All Costs. "They were the folks already holding the 'Impeach' signs and promising they would not stop until Trump was forcibly removed from office. The claims of illegitimacy, the scorched-earth tactics - that's the official Resistance."

Pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S Capitol, after President Trump held a rally in Washington D.C., Wednesday, December 6, 2020.
Pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S Capitol, after President Trump held a rally in Washington D.C., Wednesday, December 6, 2020.
Graeme Jennings/Graeme Jennings

2020 Election: Fraud, Riots, Giuliani

Though it's now been just about two months since media outlets declared Biden the winner of the 2020 election, Trump continues to claim the election was stolen from him and plans to leave Washington on Wednesday, skipping the inauguration altogether.

The president sowed doubt in the election months before November. Once the pandemic upended everyday life, and talk of mass mail-in voting became the norm for several state officials, the Trump campaign repeatedly insisted that absentee voting would lead to fraud.

"The fraud and abuse will be an embarrassment to our Country," Trump tweeted back in August, before the social media giant permanently removed his account.

Fact-checkers quickly noted that there's been little to no proof to show that absentee ballots are susceptible to fraud, but that didn't stop Trump from discrediting reports as "fake news."

Trump continued to hold large rallies during the pandemic, in stark contrast to Biden, who spent most of his time campaigning virtually.

Come Election Day, the president's team was outraged at Fox News, the president's once go-to cable network, who called Arizona in favor of Biden earlier than other outlets, including the Associated Press, often considered the gold standard for election calls.

Trump's senior adviser Jason Miller urged the network to retract their call and accused Fox News of trying to "invalidate" people's votes.

The Trump campaign immediately went into defense mode, announcing they would legally challenge several states' election results.

Supporters of the president began organizing "Stop the Steal" rallies around the country to protest Biden's victory, which many deemed was illegitimate.

Trump's personal attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and lawyer Jenna Ellis led the Trump team's efforts to overturn results and investigate fraud in key battleground states. The legal team, the president, and close allies in the Republican Party continued to push unproven theories of voter fraud daily for the last two months.

In a January phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, Trump urged him to find the 11,000 votes in his state he believed were owed to him. The audio, which was later released by the Washington Post, met the criticism of many lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike.

"We won the election, and it's not fair to take it away from us like this," Trump said in the call.

Three days later, thousands of Trump supporters came to Washington, D.C,. in a last-ditch effort to rally against Congress's certification of Biden's victory.

The rally, dubbed "Save America!," ended with demonstrators storming the Capitol. Demonstrators smashed windows, destroyed media equipment, and rifled through Senate desks for "something in here we can use against these f---ing scumbags," as one rioter put it. It also, tragically, resulted in the deaths of five people, including a Capitol Police officer.

Shouts of "Hang Mike Pence!" and calls to find Pelosi and other lawmakers can be heard in video footage that was later released of the incident.

More than 100 people were arrested for their role in the riot, and the Justice Department opened more than 170 cases related to the incident.

The chaotic event led to Trump's second impeachment, making him the first president to be impeached twice. The House charged Trump with "incitement of insurrection" last week, though it's unclear whether the Senate will take up a trial once Trump is out-of-office.

As Trump prepares to leave office on Wednesday, 20,000 armed National Guard members are expected to be on-site to prevent another potential security risk.

 

Trump said he will not attend the inauguration and is expected to leave Washington for his adopted home state of Florida just before the events begin. Biden will be the 46th president of the United States.

 

 

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CFM

CFM

Posted
Posted (edited)
30 minutes ago, $poorsledder$ said:

I heard they are bringing in the national guard to up the numbers.

 

And flags stuck in the ground. Like Nascar painting empty seats. Attempting better optics.

Edited by CFM
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