Sunday, October 16, 2016

The Trump lynch mob mentality

One of the strangest phenomena of the campaign for the presidency is the response those who normally would be supporting the Democratic candidate for president but will not vote for Trump and will also not vote for Hillary Clinton.  Press those who also say they will not vote for Donald Trump  to tell why they also will not vote for Clinton, and and what they often say "Hillary is a liar." Then if you ask them to give examples and  up comes "the  emails".  Press them more, and ask them what she lied about and they become very vague: "well, she sent classified correspondence and she said she didn't. ". "  They are repeating a slogan Clinton's opponents delivered and yet has not stood up to fact checking, from the FBI or by independent fact checkers.  

Trump's demagogic oratory raises the issue to a dangerous level. If you listen to the rallies Trump holds, the chant becomes: "Jail her, jail her". whenever he accuses Hillary Clinton of lying on whether she knew she sent classified material or destroyed her emails.   Forget the Constitution, the law, the provisions of due process, and any similarity to a Banana republic practcies. In Debate #2 Trump said if he were in charge of the law, she would be in jail. 

 Fortunately he could not be in charge of the law, thanks to the Constitution, but his  rally audience is ready to be judge, jury and executioner: ". Jail her, Jail her" They chant with such fervor that all that is missing from their lynch mob fervor is to grab the torches, and a rope and hang her from the nearest limb.

 Even more frightening are supporters of Trump and Trump himself who claims the election is rigged, undermining faith in the process and setting himself up to fail with a prefabricated excuse: the election "will be"" rigged (the election has not taken place; no proof of fraud yet available)  and the press is rigging it  by covering his controversial statements. Some of his followers feel urged to start a revolution if Trump loses the election. They are getting prepared not to accept the vote outcome.   In fact, a speaker at Grand Lake's" Constitution Week"  recently is loudly proclaiming. Scheduled as the keynote speaker was Milwaukee County Sheriff, David A. Clarke Jr., , ""Grab the torches and the pitchforks; the election is rigged" are comments for which Clarke is most famous. I thought the purpose of Constitution Week was to support the Constitution, not advocating to violate it.

Both independent fact checkers and the testimony of the FBI director set the record straight regarding why they believe Hillary Clinton could not be prosecuted for criminal action. 
The FBI found she did not lie to them, and that she had not intentionally sent emails marked classified (they were not correctly marked and buried in them when quotations were made, they were obscurely marked). In order to even prosecute someone for a criminal act, there must proof of intent to break the law beyond a reasonable doubt, and the FBI found no evidence of either. 
  Typical of Donald Trump, he responded by attacking the Republican FBI director as rigging the findings.  If he does not like the message, he tries to destroy the messenger, facts notwithstanding nor refuted by presenting other facts.

Trump has doubled down accusing Hillary Clinton of acid washing and destroying emails after she got a subpoena but per factcheck.org not factually correct. Nothing was acid washed.  Per factcheck.org,  the sequence and that Clinton ordered the destruction make such prosecution a failure: Trump told Clinton “after getting the subpoena” to turn over documents related to the Benghazi investigation “you delete 33,000 emails.” A contractor managing Clinton’s server deleted the emails. There is no evidence Clinton knew when they were deleted.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Footnotes:
http://www.factcheck.org/2016/10/factchecking-the-second-presidential-debate/  on FBI findings."emails were deleted after Clinton received a subpoena from a Republican-controlled House committee investigation into the 2012 deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. But there is no evidence that Clinton knew that the emails were deleted after the subpoena was issued." and there was no acid wash

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/david-clarke-pitchforks-and-torches_us_580257ffe4b06e04759531a6?

No comments:

Post a Comment