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Republicans worry Trump is having a ‘public nervous breakdown’ (www.independent.co.uk)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/news@lemmy.world
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‘Donald Trump is losing his marbles,’ former Congressman and Republican Adam Kinzinger said

Republicans are concerned that party leader Donald Trump is having a “public nervous breakdown” after he made a series of offensive outbursts about Vice President Kamala Harris as he slips behind her in the polls.

The former president has made a number of  insulting personal attacks against his Democratic rival since she moved to the top of the ticket. Last week, Trump questioned Harris’s racial identity  at the National Association of Black Journalists conference. Over the weekend, he accused Harris of having a “low IQ.” 

New polls indicate Trump is slipping behind the vice president in the popular vote and races are tightening in battleground states. 

“This is what you would call a public nervous breakdown,” Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump state department appointee, told Politico.

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[–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

I assume you're just memeing siince he never actually wrote about that?

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    If he didn't write it, maybe Jesse Watters should be demanding to see the book and not just a video he could masturbate to.

    https://www.dailydot.com/debug/fox-news-jesse-watters-jd-vance-couch-video/

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Just gonna share this here anyway since I fell for it originally:

    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jd-vance-couch-cushions/

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  • [–] -2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Snopes doesn't need to be "helping" right now.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I'm confused... Are you saying we should encourage disinformation?

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yes. I am saying America should be convinced that J.D. Vance fucks couches.

    Because that's what you do when the opponents do things like say your candidates turned black all of a sudden or that he wasn't born in the United States.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I mean, there's so much bullshit to use against them we hardly need to stoop to lies. The truth is already incredibly damning and is tearing them apart right now.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    “Couch fucker” is catchy though, it rolls off the tongue, it’s easy to remember

    ‘Diaper Don and the couch fucker’ is a great response to ‘sleepy joe and low iq karolla’ or whatever tf trump is calling her

    — it sucks that this is where American political discourse is, but this is where THEY brought it to. Taking the high road isn’t a virtue when dealing with a bully and it isn’t effective.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    The thing about lies is that they demonstrably work a lot better than the truth on the segment of voters we need to reach. They're practically begging to be lied to, so I say give them what they want. If they wanted the truth, it would be extremely easy for them to find it.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    "When they go low, we go high" almost never works in politics. So good luck telling people that they're smearing poor J.D. Vance with a terrible lie.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I'm not saying we go high. By all means, rip into them. The Harris campaign is doing a great job of that, using the truth. There's so much ammunition that the lies are just a drop in the bucket and serve no real purpose other than distortion. It's just pretty pointless.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    and serve no real purpose other than distortion.

    Dude, I just showed you that Jesse Watters devoted airtime to getting upset about it. So that's demonstrably untrue.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Also, it creates social media engagement much like this thread, so that whether or not somebody believes the truth (that JD personally documented the experience of losing his virginity to a musty piece of furniture) they're still engaging with the idea the whole time they read and respond. That's called memetic fitness.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I hear what expr is saying though - several Democratic-voting people I know actually thought it was real in the initial scrum of the meme. That part I’m not so big on. Everyone going wink-wink-nudge dude fucked a couch is fine.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    What difference does it make if they think it's real? I don't see how that makes a difference in the grand scheme of things. People believe much sillier things that aren't true all the time.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I’d prefer my own political party to believe truthful things. Despite the wild success the reverse has shown in other parties.

    Call it a quirk.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Well, put your mind at ease. The Democratic Party doesn’t think jd Vance fucked a couch.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Which members? Because 100% for sure some of them believe it. When I heard it “was in the first edition of the book” part I was sorely tempted myself.

    It’s a trifle. Not important, and barely a whisper of a shadow of the simplest lie the republiQans tell on an hourly basis. But for the record, there absolutely are Democrats voting for Kamala that believe it to be true. That’s just how media works. Especially when it’s so plausible.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Well then wake me up when they stop deifying JFK. Otherwise I'm not too concerned about a couch-fucking rumor.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    When Democrats stop deifying JFK?

    Well, I guess you’d have to specify. For one thing that was six decades ago.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    And yet Democrats believe all sorts of myths about him anyway. And ignore things like how he stalled civil rights legislation and got the U.S. into Vietnam.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    I suppose some do, but no one’s actively promoting that. Are they? The record is pretty clear by all accounts.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    If the record was clear, people wouldn't still be talking about Kennedy when they talk about civil rights. And yet they do. All the time. Actively.

    I'm not sure why you don't think politicians reach back to their predecessors and talk about how amazing they were when it constantly happens. With Democrats, it's Kennedy. With Republicans, it's Reagan.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    The Early Sixties
    Racial tensions continued to build. In 1962 President Kennedy sent hundreds of U.S. marshals to enforce a court order to admit African American James Meredith to the University of Mississippi. The marshals encountered fierce resistance from violent segregationists. In a melee, two people were killed and dozens injured. In February 1963 Kennedy submitted a civil rights bill to Congress that did not address the important issue of integration of public facilities. He did little to support the bill and it floundered. When racial violence erupted in Birmingham, Alabama, in May 1963, John Kennedy realized it was time to put forward a broad new civil rights bill. Most of his advisers told him it would be a terrible political mistake. But Robert advised him that the future of the country was at stake and urged him to go ahead with the bill.

    A Landmark Speech
    On June 11, 1963, the day that Governor George Wallace made his “stand in the school room door” to prevent two black students from attending the University of Alabama, President Kennedy spoke to the nation in a televised address to ask for support of the civil rights bill. He said, “We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities.”

    Two Reactions
    For some, Kennedy’s speech was a long-awaited show of support. “All of a sudden, he brought passion to it, he brought that eloquence to it and it electrified me and all kinds of other black people,” Roger Wilkins remembered. Fellow civil rights activist John Lewis said, “that night in June… he spoke, I think, to the heart and to the soul of America. I would never forget that speech.” For others, the speech was intolerable. Later that night, a reply came from those who opposed civil rights. Segregationist Byron de la Beckwith shot and killed Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s field secretary in Mississippi.

    Source

    I dunno how we got here from couch-fucking memes, but, okay?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    He did little to support the bill and it floundered.

    Cool. One sentence that is a mild criticism of what actually happened.

    Thank you for proving my point.

    Please do show me the next link about how the Soviets started the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    There’s more in the paragraphs before about their unwillingness to pursue civil rights legislation. Suffice to say it was more nuanced than “JD Vance fucked a couch”.

    What’s your point again?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (1 child)

    My point was that most Democrats think Kennedy was 100% for civil rights regardless of what website you might find says. They also think he saved the world by resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis without knowing he started it.

    Because they believe things that aren't true.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    So, what you’re saying PBS is pretending Kennedy supported civil rights in the documented speech he gave supporting civil rights which was praised by people including John Lewis as a watershed moment for civil rights? I mean sure, you can prove anything with facts.

    And you’re saying Kennedy started the Cuban Missile Crisis by moving nukes into Turkey?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Nope. I’m not saying anything about PBS. How about you actually read my posts?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    My point was that *most Democrats think Kennedy was 100% for civil rights* regardless of what website you might find says.

    I thought I was!

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    There are two kinds of people: those who understand it's juvenile humor and are just memeing on it for funsies, and those who don't understand that and are never going to be high information voters and JD Vance fucks couches must just be the message that gets them to vote.

    My optimism in humanity leads me to believe there are very few of the latter. What I'm certain of is the joke does no harm and is a silly little meme. President Trump was a silly little meme in 2015 but then Hillary ran the worst campaign in living memory (Kamala saved Biden from that dubious distinction), and here we are. So I'm okay with it, but obviously it has no place in serious conversation except to inject some laughs.

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