And the Trump brand turns toxic.

I'm not sure some have grasped just how royally Trump just screwed himself. Or how, (with perfect hindsight), given his character, this now seems inevitable.

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2021/01/10/capitol-riot-officer-beating-trump-go-home-message-sot-vpx.cnn

Warning: Graphic violence

Antifa with extra riot kit are out on the streets of New York

Apparently so. According to witnesses they threw an egg at a reporter. Not even free-range.

While I'm disgusted at what Trump supporters did the other day there have been plenty of left wing and left wing favoured groups that have run riot and done damage. People die in all sorts of protests.

Examples?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/27/us-rightwing-extremists-attacks-deaths-database-leftwing-antifa

Jeremy Corbyn and all his heroes, including Hugo Chavez, the IRA and Communism. A taxi driver was killed during the miners strike. The left took the knee to BLM and look at the deaths and injuries that the riots caused across the World. And many more. And there's just the basic damage caused by XR, anti capitalist marches and even student riots cheered on by Labour and the unions. Usually the police just let them get on with vandalism, something they rarely do with the far right,

One taxi driver? What was his name?

Google it Phil. So you didn't disagree with my list?

The BBC had a documentary recently where they tried to paint British far right groups as dangerous as Islamic terrorists and the most significant example they could come up with was the 2016 race related murder of a white woman by an old far right nutter. Now I'm more than happy that people like the recently convicted Neo Nazi kid planning attacks be treated to the worst we can throw at him but I want all the others treated harshly too, not offered excuses for their plans and actions because of their colour or religion. Like the support some Labour MPs gave convicted murderes and rapists from being deported.

IRA? Bit of a stretch. The list is too vague to dispute, the single concrete example is nearly forty years old.

BLM was a reaction to a long and demonstrable history of institutional racism, it was triggered by an actual event witnessed and recorded where a police officer killed a black man in custody. The protests were overwhelmingly peaceful

By contrast, the Capitol rioters, where police were beaten and one officer killed, were protesting a complete lie, that the election was stolen from their preferred leader. A lie repeated by the subject of this thread.

Donald's tribulations continue. He'll likely be impeached (again) tomorrow. Deutsche Bank, who have $several hundred million in Trump Organisation debt have announced they will no longer do business with him, and Signature Bank have closed his personal accounts, taking the extraordinary step (for a bank) of calling on him to resign. Link. Shopify have taken down the Trump Organisation's online stores.

The FBI is warning of credible threats of violent protest in all 50 State Capitols and two Congresswomen are livid at colleagues who refused to wear masks or social distance during the Trump Riot as they have since tested positive for the virus.

Even so, it seems quiet without the constant Tweeting ;-)

Phil, you're forgetting Jeremy - you know, the former darling of the left. He genuinely supported the IRA... as did/does the Democrat party, especially Nancy Pellosi. All that fund raising. Were the people they maimed or murdered guilty? BLM wasn't justified in looting and killing, no matter what happened to Floyd.

The Troubles effectively ended over 20 years ago, Corbyn's relationship with Sinn Fein was more nuanced than you appreciate, but he was never an IRA supporter. But I am not going down that particular historical rabbit hole.

Political violence from left or right must always be condemned. Tens of millions participated in the George Floyd protests, and they were infiltrated and to some extent hijacked by people more interested in arson, looting and other illegality than peaceful protest. Given the number of guns in the US, a country where forty something murders occur every day on average, it is perhaps surprising the death toll (19) was not higher.

However, the data shows Americans have a lot more to fear from political violence from the far right than the far left.

Antifa do not have a fleet of buses.

Lyra Mckee.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/28/catholics-top-victims-northern-ireland-republican-terror-groups-new-ira

The study, starting at a point in 2007 when Sinn Féin agreed to support the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) as part of a deal to restore devolution, stretches to the end of 2015, when all the people shot by the New IRA, Continuity IRA, and Óglaigh na hÉireann were Catholic civilians.

By contrast, police officers accounted for just over 15% of shooting casualties from 2007 to 2015, while over the same period British soldiers who were shot made up just over 0.5% of the overall casualty list.

Corbyn was also a Chavez supporter and many more scum bags.

You can shy away from evidence you don't like but it makes your own arguments pointless. I wrote

there have been plenty of left wing and left wing favoured groups that have run riot and done damage. People die in all sorts of protests.

You now seem to agree with me. The Right has no monopoly. Most of the victims of Trump's protes were protestors.

I support Phil Clarke's campaign to show on these pages just what Trump is. But it shouldn't be pretended that only Trump-supporters do things like violently invade the Capitol building. Australia in 1996?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Parliament_House_riot

I never denied the existence of far-left violence, I just asked for examples. I was querying the relevance of a group in a different country protesting a partition, with parliamentary representation, >20 years ago to last week's events in the US.

If you're caught fighting in the playground, the argument 'Yes but Tommy was fighting a month ago, Miss' is not going to get you very far.

So you knew I was right Phil but wanted me to jump through hoops. And as I've proved, the 'Troubles' are far from over or were the people who have died since 2000 dog shit? Only recently Pelosi threatened the UK over Brexit. Basically saying that if the violence came back due to annoying border paperwork, it would be our fault. She's a terrorist enabler. You should know all this and not need others to prove it to you. 20 years might seem a lot to you but as someone who could have been blown up by an IRA bomb, but for a quirk of fate, 20 years doesn't seem that long ago.

I also mentioned lefties supporting criminals staying when they should be deported. It encourages migrants to feel safer in commiting crimes. Sod the victims. Not all lefty protest is done on a march, but sometimes on an airplane, when idiot do gooders prevent justice happening.

As for left wing supporters doing damage to property, that's a regular thing. And no I won't prove it.

Trump will be impeached today …

President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government
.
“He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

“Wherefore, Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.

“Donald John Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

However, he is unlikely to be convicted in the Senate; although some Republicans have stated they now think it is time for him to go, it is probable that not enough will 'defect' or abstain to achieve the two-thirds majority required. There's a transcript of the speech he gave to supporters prior to the riot here.. In it he lays out the evidence that the election was rigged. Some claims are so implausible that a moment's critical thinking is enough to dismiss them, some have been disproven in court, all have been debunked in some way. Here's a flavour:

All he has to do — all — this is — this is from the number one or certainly one of the top constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution and protect our Constitution. States want to revote, the states got defrauded. They were given false information, they voted on it. Now they want to recertify; they want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people.

A lie. The Constitution is quite clear, Pence's role in the vote count was completely procedural, he had no power to reject or return Electoral College votes, as he himself made clear before the session. This did not prevent the rioters erecting a working gallows for the 'traitor'.

Trump claimed Forty-eight counties in Georgia, with thousands and thousands of votes, rejected zero ballots, the rejection rate was drastically lower than it had ever been before […] The only way this can be explained is if tens of thousands of illegitimate votes were added to the tally. That's the only way you could explain it. By the way, you're talking about tens of thousands. If Georgia had merely rejected the same number of unlawful ballots as in other years, they should have been approximately 45,000 ballots rejected, far more than what we needed to win, just over 11,000. They should find those votes.

This is a simple lie, he is comparing the rejection rate for signature issues only in 2020 with the rejection rate for all reasons in previous elections.

Then election officials pull boxes, Democrats, and suitcases of ballots out from under a table. You all saw it on television, totally fraudulent, and illegally scanned them for nearly two hours, totally unsupervised, tens of thousands of votes. This act coincided with a mysterious vote dump of up to 100,000 votes for Joe Biden, almost none for Trump.

Lie. There were two recounts in Georgia, both of which would have uncovered this fraud, if it was real.

Over 10,300 ballots in Georgia were cast by individuals whose names and dates of birth match Georgia residents who died in 2020 and prior to the election

There's precisely zero evidence of this. The official State audit found two votes cast by deceased people (mistakes, not fraud). When specific examples were investigated they were found to be ridiculous

.More than 4,500 illegal ballots were cast by individuals who do not appear on the state's own voter rolls. Over 18,000 illegal ballots were cast by individuals who registered to vote using an address listed as vacant according to the Postal Service. At least 88,000 ballots in Georgia were cast by people whose registrations were illegally backdated.

So why has he not challenged the result in court? Oh, because those numbers are just made up.

In Clark County, Nevada, the accuracy settings on signature verification machines were purposely lowered before they were used to count over 130,000 ballots. If you signed your name as Santa Claus, it would go through.

That would require a verification level of zero. In fact the level was set at 40 (/100), which is perfectly fit for purpose. Just more lies.

Also, in Wayne County, poll watchers observed canvassers rescanning batches of ballots over and over again, up to three or four or five times. In Detroit, turnout was 139% of registered voters. Think of that. So you had 139% of the people in Detroit voting.

And nobody else noticed? See what I mean about critical thinking? Turnout in Detroit was 51%, and no there were not 200,000 more votes than voters in Pennsylvania, nor do Dominion voting machines have an 'astronomical' error rate of 93%.

And it goes on. The President of the United States broadcasting utterly discredited lies he's picked up from the internet. I was once not sure whether he actually believes it or he knows he is spreading misinformation (in a sense it doesn't matter), I now lean towards the first explanation.

To be fair he did make reference in the early part of the speech to 'peacefully and patriotically' making your voices heard. But he continued repeatedly to plant the idea that the election was being stolen by a 'criminal enterprise', that accepting the (certified) result would be a threat to National Security, and falsely claiming they had the power to change it, finishing with …

But I said something is wrong here, something is really wrong, can’t have happened, and we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.

I am sure Trump's lawyers will answer the impeachment charges by arguing this was just political rhetoric and protected speech under the First Amendment. They may have a point, and I think he has some wriggle room. That said, his refusal to accept the election result, his lies about election fraud, which lit the flame under his supporters, his praise for the 'very special' mob, are in my view, sufficient and further proof that he is unfit for the office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles

The Troubles is a name given to an arbitrary stretch of time. The deaths have not stopped. You didn't say that you didn't consider those killed as dog shit.

THREAD

A good example of where eyes are averted from left wing thuggery.

https://unherd.com/2021/01/the-antifa-thugs-shame-america/

Ooh look someone has written a piece about Antifa activities in Oregon (which are shameful). Right wing groups are getting a battering so let’s redress the balance somewhat. Let’s add this antiAntifa piece into a discussion thread about Trump. Nothing to do with Trump, but his mates need support. Events happened in November, never mind, all grist for the mill. Now we can blame lefties, hurrah.

AK, my posting this had nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with Phil. Who still hasn't passed opinion on the people who were killed by Irish Republicans since 2000.

And whether you like it or not AK, the largely left wing media are very good at justifying/ignoring left wing violence and then have a fit of the vapours when the right wing (and mostly American) do the same. The media are also very good at portraying the West as utterly evil while turning a blind eye to China and loads of other scummy countries. Trump is a reaction against an elite that fawn over the smallest positive move by China but pour scorn on the US public on a daily basis. They are sick of it. Trump lost the election because forgot that people were vulnerable to covid in a way he wasn't. He treated them like dirt too, rather than having their back like he promised. If the elite, with the left wing giants including FaceBook, Twitter, etc, do not start appreciating the whole public and not just the woke, there will be a lot worse than what happened the other day.

I've never expressed a liking for Trump, never expected him to win the first election and didn't like either him or Biden for the next president.