We need more viral leftist shitposting, and less concern about getting every single fact exatly right.

“And of course, as an important Republican, he will face no repercussions whatsoever.”

Good question! I mean, I’m not suggesting that the left should create compelling, motivating, entertaining (but not necessarily “literally” true) content targeting low-information voters in an effort to swamp out fascist garbage. Nor would I imply that the time has come to use every underhanded, dirty, ratfucking trick in the book to make those voters distrust Republicans. Heaven forbid!

But I will say outright that in my estimation the left’s fastidious, timid, mousy attempts to debunk the tidal wave of fascist bullshit is not working out very well.

The couch was appalled by JD’s lack of pants, frankly.

Just a harmless observation here, but I can’t help but notice that liberals spend way too much time de-bunking, but not nearly enough time bunking.

I don’t have any evidence to suggest one way or the other that Trump is or is not a Russian asset. But I think the news-worthiness of this post is not necessarily the supposed turning of Trump, but with the story was scrubbed.

A notable news outlet merely reported something said by a well-known ex-intelligence operative. That is legitimate news. And if they got what the ex-intelligence operative said wrong typically, a news outlet would update the story and issue a retraction. Instead they just deleted it, and so did everyone else, and I think the reasons for that is a valuable thing to think about.

No idea if this story is true or not. Weird it got published, and weirder that it got scrubbed.

As far as intelligence assets go, from what I’ve read you want as many as you can get, just in case they become useful eventually.

Here’s one from the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20250221153932/https://www.thedailybeast.com/former-intelligence-officer-alnur-mussayev-claims-kgb-recruited-donald-trump-under-codename-krasnov/

I’ve had good luck with https://www.removepaywall.com/

There’s a lot of reasons. Some got passively sucked into right-wing brainwashing by Fox News and talk radio. Some dove into fascist Internet rabbit holes.

But my guess is most are people who avoid political news and commentary, don’t really know what’s going on, and don’t really care unless there’s an election on, and even then only at the last minute; and they’re most influenced by the last, loudest message they heard before pulling the lever. Those folks stopped paying attention the day after the election, and they aren’t really. paying attention now. If you point out to them that eggs are still expensive, they’ll look back at you in confusion and say, “Are we still talking about that?”

For sure. Trump needs Musk to keep the Republican Congress in line.

During the 2020 through 2024 political cycle, Trump continually voiced support for various candidates who were die-hard Trumpers, and discovered that his mere endorsement didn’t move the needle as much as he wished it would: A lot of those candidates lost their races.

What proved to be a larger influence (especially in close races) was massive infusions of cash, which is something that Trump is unwilling or unable to provide. Musk, on the other hand, as the richest man in the world has the cash and the will to spend it. Most important to Trump, Musk has threatened to “primary” any sitting Congress person who does anything that Trump doesn’t like. Any Congress person who might raise a stink about the Executive branch usurping their Constitutional powers will likely find themselves facing a well-funded Trump loyalist in their next election – and they would rather lose the power of their body then their own personal career.