The play book has become ever so familiar now. Make a prediction, nothing happens, so make same prediction with a new date. Rinse and repeat. Mike Lindell had not only promised “irrefutable proof” would be presented at his Cyber symposium that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, but had also promised 13 August would mark Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office. None of that happened, no “evidence”, not one jot, and no reinstatement.
This past week he got out the play book at the Trump Alabama rally and sure enough, once again the goalposts have been shifted – we have a new date …
“By the morning of Aug. 13, it will be the talk of the world,” Lindell said in July, envisioning Trump’s grand return. People, he predicted, would be saying: “Hurry up! Let’s get this election pulled down, let’s right the right. Let’s get these communists out.”
But Lindell hedged his forecast late last month, even before his first prediction had a chance to flop, when he said Trump’s reinstatement might actually happen in September, once he finally presents the Supreme Court with all his supposed proof of a fraudulent election.
Now, Lindell has moved the goalposts again, though he maintains Trump will reassume the presidency sometime before the end of the year.
Trump was at that same rally and listened to all of this. When the fool-in-chief was up, he described Lindell as a “patriot” and branded his failed “Cyber Symposium” as “amazing.”. Er … yes it was indeed a truly “amazing” shit show that presented a nothing burger.
Why do people keep falling for this?
Trump’s rally was rather pedestrian, in the sense that it was a masterclass in gaslighting MAGA cult members. You might wonder why those that turn up to such rallies embrace such blatantly false rhetoric as “truth”. The answer lies within the observation that humans are fundamentally deeply social animals. When you invest emotionally in something, part of the deal is the embrace of specific ideas in exchange for accepted by the group. They then lock themselves in by trusting those on message and dismissing any source that is off message as fake-news. Break that deal and you are ostracized by all those in your group circle. This social force is for many far stronger than family bonds, hence membership of MAGA and QAnon rips family bonds apart.
So what else has happened during this past week?
Each week I make a selection of some of the truly bizarre claims and declarations. What follows below comes with a hat-tip to my main source, Right-Wing watch. They simply report the absurd silly claims without comment. The snarky commentary under each is wholly mine, and is me having a bit of fun mocking these fools. Why get angry, why not laugh at this truly absurd stuff that they continue to churn out week after week.
Anyway … on with the show.
Jan 6th
The day following the Jan. 6 insurrection, DeAnna Lorraine declared that she “never felt more pride” than she did watching “American patriots” storm the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. Now Lorraine is claiming that the insurrection was an FBI set-up “to frame Trump supporters and conservatives.”
- She clearly also believes that her followers suffer from alzheimer’s and thus don’t actually remember her previous stance. We should ensure that we keep reminding them.
Afghanistan
Dave Hayes claims former President Donald Trump “set up the withdrawal from Afghanistan” with the intention that President Joe Biden would “botch it” and be removed via the 25th Amendment, at which point the military will step in before Vice President Kamala Harris can be sworn in, make mass arrests, and restore Trump to the White House.
- Dave Hayes previously claimed that Trump won the election. He is now confirming here that Trump lost, knew he would loose, and deliberately set the Afghanistan withdrawal into motion so that he could then get back into office, and thus bypass the democratic norm.
- So which is it Dave, did he win or did he loose? Can you please get your rants aligned.
COVID-19
Pastor Shane Vaughn assures his followers that former President Donald Trump doesn’t actually support COVID-19 vaccines and just says that he does for political purposes.
- [Makes note] (Trump does not support the Trump vaccine) … OK got it.
- This is MAGA Seppuku. Apparently taking the vaccine brings dishonour, so they are willing to literally die rather than have the vaccine.
Also again last week Pastor Shane Vaughn Claims COVID-19 Vaccines Don’t Work Because The U.S. Is Under God’s Judgment
- … and yet it’s the people who believe in God, but don’t believe in vaccines that are dying.
- There is a judgement here: For people like Shane Vaughn and others taking an anti-vax stance, there is a rapidly rising body count that they are now wholly responsible for. With the availability of the vaccine the deaths are preventable.
Dave Hayes thinks that Trump allowed vaccine makers to ignore all safety protocols in order to rush dangerous COVID-19 vaccines to market so pharmaceutical companies would be sued out of existence: “What if this whole thing is a freakin’ set-up to take down Big Pharma?”
- For Dave, actual facts are a rather inconvenient truth that must be ignored because they conflict with his fantasy.
- Fact Check: All the formal clinical trails were completed robustly. See here.
Truly Bizarre
Josh Bernstein says that the “deep state” includes not only U.S. intelligence agencies, but also the media, every politician, higher education, and even “the sandwich shop owners” in Washington, D.C.
- It just might be quicker if he listed those he thinks are not part of the “Deep State”
- I can but speculate that he also thinks that the Dalai Lama and the Pope are part of the US “Deep State”
- As for who is not, I suspect it would simply be him and a couple of his buddies, and that everybody else on the planet is.
Right-wing activists are demanding that PolitiFact be kicked out of the International Fact-Checking Network, which is dedicated to promoting best practices among fact-checkers.
- Yes, you read that correctly. The folks who don’t do facts, want a fact checking site removed from IFCN for fact-checking and labelling their article as false because it really was not factual.
- Least you wonder about the details, PolitiFact fact checked a posting by the conservative leaning Media Research Center and labelled it “False” because they falsely claimed that only 2,000 people had been hospitalised in the US with COVID-19
- “Newsbusters” claims this as bias against the right. Nope, left vs right plays no part in this. It is all about “fact” vs “fiction”, and in this instance, they very clearly don’t do facts.
A little over 60 days ago, Stew Peters warned that if Trump “doesn’t come back within the next 60 days, I believe that we are looking at an extinction-level event.”
- (Checks pulse) … nope, not extinct yet, how about you?
- Well yes, we all knew it was BS 60 days ago. It’s still worth calling out and reminding everybody that he made this claim.
Michele Malkin appeared on the “TruNews” program where she warned that those who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine will be forced into quarantine camps.
- Nobody will be forcing anybody into any quarantine camps. This whole kerfuffle started as a bit of satire, then fools like Michele picked it up and ran with it as “evidence” because she thought it was real.
- Meanwhile, it may also be worth pointing out that Michele Malkin literally wrote the book back in 2004 defending the use of forced Internment camps as a jolly good idea. Does her latest announcement mean that Malkin no longer supports her own book?
(Via Hemant Mehta): Evangelist Robin Bullock: I Met God, and He Lives in a Cube Made of Gelatin
- For Robin, reality is indeed not just an unexplored country, it is an undiscovered and quite foreign concept
The False Profit$
The stars here are of course the religious grifters. To be wholly clear, most humans, regardless of their cultural belief or non-belief are decent. Some however deploy and leverage belief as a tool to manipulate and enrich themselves with. This section is very much dedicated to religious fraudsters …
Self-appointed prophet Hank Kunneman delivers a word from God: “Flop Flip.” What that means, he said, is that “the agenda of Hell” to steal the election from Trump will “flop” and when it does, those responsible will “flip” in an effort to save themselves.
- Does the phrase “Flop Flip” carry more weight in the original Aramaic?
- What is fascinating here is that evangelicals like this guy make the QAnon folks look sane by comparison.
- Clearly Hank is going to go to his grave denying reality. He i$ ju$t too deeply inve$ted in his self-inflicted fanta$y.
- Reminder: This religious grifter (who would really really really like you to donate to hi$ mini$try), guaranteed that Trump would win. He has now rather robustly demonstrated that he is indeed a false prophet. The bible he claims to believe in advises that false prophets should be put to death. I’ll place good money on a bet that he no longer believes that bit of the only book he ever reads.
(Via Hemant Mehta): Over 1 year ago TV Scamvangelist Kenneth Copeland declared COVID “Destroyed”. One year later we have seen over 600,000 dead, and he is playing the same card again ..
- I’d speculate that he needs to up his donations to buy a new jet
- When it comes to the fine art of grifting, this guy is a grand master. All the money he receives is to enable him to live a lavish lifestyle. He lives in a $6.3 million mansion, owns a $20 million jet … all tax free.
One Last Serious recommendation
If you have not yet been vaccinated, then now is the time to go do it.
If you are worried about what those around you might think if you did, then go do it in secret and don’t tell them.
Is that it for the past week?
It never is. I honestly wished it was, but no, the flow of batshit crazy is not just a trickle, it’s a full torrent.
Will next week be any different, is it possible for all these fools to suddenly find some common sense?
Nope. Remember, this is now a cult where common sense is so dam rare that having it qualifies you for membership of the avengers because it is akin to having a super power.