I don't think the audience Vance's message is supposed to resonate with cares about being fact-checked, or facts in general.
Trump doesn't care if he's being fact-checked because facts don't matter to him, and his voters have the same outlook.
It's actually worse.
The core MAGA people are utterly convinced that 'fact checking' is literally the moderators lying to prevent Republicans from saying what is actually true.
They are way, way, waaaaay down the rabbit hole of the lugenpresse, I mean fake news, that basically any time the figures they adore/worship are ever fact checked, well actually that is evidence of a vast liberal media conspiracy against them.
They actively despise fact checking, and when it happens, this triggers their conspiracism harder.
The reason why Vance made a show of crying about fact checking was partly due to personal anger/embarrassment/whatever, but the other part is that he knows that complaining about it is appealing to core Trump voters.
And the fact that Lügenpresse has even come up at all is freaking wild. That's something which should send a chill down the spine of anyone with even a whiff of understanding of modern history.
That they're down the rabbit hole about it should be impossible. The whole idea should have been political suicide. I take it as evidence of the extreme control years and years of Republican propaganda has on its constituents. They not only vote against their own interests, but they now actively stand against democracy. Absolutely insane.
For clarity: Vance did not literally say lugenpresse or fake news, he just performatively complained about fact checking.
I am the one saying lugenpresse.
...Because one of the many fascist elements of Trump's cult is his repeated refrain of 'fake news', which is exactly the same tactic as Hitler and many other fascists have used in their rise to power.
Again, Vance did not literally say lugenpresse at the debate.
Personal Aside
But uh yeah, in general, widespread American conservative adoption of fascist culture and talking points is not surprising to me.
These people it appeals to the most are narcissistic assholes who have largely failed in life, and are fueled by raging against their inability to achieve the American Dream(tm) ... and then that rage is directed toward anything that conservative hate mongers can blame for that failure.
I grew up in a religious, conservative household and had to do a considerable amount of research and investigation to learn it was all bullshit, then learn how to argue to be able to refute it, and then expend basically all my wit, energy and resources to escape these toxic people.
Incurious people who grow up in that setting often never really have any inkling to challenge any of it and are basically always ostracized, negged or disowned for doing so.
They just get more and more indoctrinated, culminating in basically QAnon/MAGA worldview: Just make up a narrative that makes you superior righteous and truly knowledgeable , and all your ideological enemies extremely brainwashed at best, literal, actual demons (reptillians?) at worst.
My dad went from making me listen to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage every time we were in the car together, to, last time I spoke with him, attempting to convince me that Tom Hank's son actually was a pedophile who raped and ate babies for their adrenochrome.
The... more and more time I spend away from my family, the more and more I talk, either in person or online, with other people, the ... more and more I realize just how absurdly insane my life experience has been, that I can best describe myself as a traumatized survivor of it.
Its taken me around two decades to escape the constant physical, mental and financial trauma inflicted upon me by the narcissistic, moronic hypocrites that raised me, taken me two decades to undo all the brainwashing.
Its a cult. American conservatism is a cult of rage and hatred.
That's why it isn't surprising to me that it finally went mask off with Trump. It's always been there seething beneath the surface of begrudging civility.
You just have to have come from it, been born into it, and then escaped, to know how bad it has been, and still is.
It is not a stretch to say that Lügenpresse is a key talking point of the Trump platform. Was the exact word said at the debate? No. Has Trump (and potentially Vance) called the press liars when it comes to the Trump campaign? Yes, on many occasions.
We shouldn't split hairs about semantics in the face of fascism.
This is exactly what they are saying on a few conservative subreddits I saw today. That the moderators fact checked him about migrants, then when he tried to explain some detail that explained everything they cut his mic.
As if Vance hasn’t famously been lying about the topic for weeks and endangering a whole community.
I'd say it's even worse than that. Part of the culture on the right is that "yeah, it's a lie but that's fine". Even proving they lie beyond a shadow of a doubt doesn't dissuade the core, because they have been conditioned to take lies in stride, so long as it agrees with them.
You have Vance going on and saying the lies are necessary because unless they lie about Haitians and paint them as barbaric savages then people will fail to recognize them as the barbaric savages that everyone knows "those people" really are, even if the facts don't support that. That maybe they can't accurately state how they are savages or they can't support it, it "sounds right" and that's good enough because surely they are up to something like that, because they are "those people".
You have people in their camp like Scott Adams spinning things as "directionally true", again, they may not be actually true, but common sense tells everyone Haitians are bad people, so it's good enough.
Speaking of common sense, Vance said during the debate that experts are explicitly people to disregard and to follow that "common sense". Expertise, research, honoring the facts, all these are bad things because "common sense" knows better (so long as "common sense" agrees with whatever Trump camp feels, if your "common sense" disagrees, well then you don't have common sense or you are somehow evil).
Like the one "outright lie" they caught Walz in, that 35 years ago he was in Hong Kong in August instead of June, Walz seemed genuinely ashamed about that pretty mild scenario. Meanwhile Vance just effortlessly carries on without a hint of caring about being called out on anything.
JD Vance actually said that it doesn't matter because, "It's how it feels."
This mirrors almost exactly what the Alex Jones staff said during depositions. It didn't matter if they had facts. What mattered is that the alternative felt true and they would report on that.
I think Lindsey Graham said the same thing after the RNC back in 2016. It's been going on forever, but that's the first time I remember one of them saying it out loud. Paraphrasing, "I'm a politician. You can have your facts, I'll take people's feelings every time."
I wish Walz did better at calling out ALL of Vance’s bullshit. Vance said, “we as republicans need to do better to earn your trust on bodily autonomy.”
It doesn’t take much effort to say bullshit. If you want to have more trust, then don’t get rid of the only thing protecting women’s bodies!
Honestly to me Walz looked so exasperated/disappointed that he was dealing with such a dumbass and his followers.
I got that feeling too. He was in shock a few times.
I still find the fact that the ultra auth-left instance hexbear.net is the most republican instance on the entire fediverse extremely amusing
Not surprising. Tankies are fascists with leftist aesthetics.
Saying this is a no-brainer is essentially in and of itself, a no-brainer. But yet, here we are, frustratingly attempting to educate leftists and undecided people on the dangers of “protest voting” and how cataclysmically dangerous it is to assume that you know better without ever seeming to possess the ability to simply just prove it.
We have the receipts. We know damn well what is going to happen if Trump is allowed to win.
And if you think you’re teaching someone a lesson with your withheld vote, I’ve got news for you-
A LOT of people are going to be hurt. And the ones you think it will be, the ones you’d want it to be- won’t be counted among them.
I promise you this.
Anyone thinking a protest vote will help anything should think about how much protest votes would have made Hitler pause.
Mussolini didn't even care about votes at all and just marched an army of supporters into the capital and the king went along with it because Mussolini said he could stay on as a figurehead.
Franco fought a civil war to bring fascism to Spain while the capitalist States in the area watched on (and Hitler and Mussolini helped).
Israel continues to get support from Western leadership despite many protests and demonstrations. Western powers haven't turned live ammunition on protestors yet, but they've done so in the past. I think the only reason they haven't is because they have more effective tools that don't generate as much outrage, but if those tools don't work, I believe they'll fall back to those methods.
The idea that a protest vote or boycott will help anything is naive with all of these examples of people who don't care about protest votes or even election outcomes when taking or wielding power. The amount of protest votes it would take to matter would be enough to win the election outright. They don't even have to do anything about them other than ignore them entirely.
Is it just my imagination, or did that weasely fuck spend the entire time Walz was talking trying to do a Jim Halpert look at the camera?
Probably because it played so well for Harris.
That's because she was genuinely baffled. Vance was just faking.
This needs to be a billboard.
EEEEEEVERYWHEEEERE!
Can someone please fucking explain to me how people are saying Vance won this debate?
On reddit the bot propaganda message is that Vance won the debate. I guess the answer is Russian interference
Every time republicans mention mental illness in this country ask them if they are just scapegoating or how much money they would be willing to put down in the budget to ensure everyone had access to mental healthcare
Oh that's an easy one. Its 100% a scapegoat because there is no fucking way in hell they don't use the term "mental illness" without thinking either.
A) They need to bootstrap themselves out of mental illness
B) Something Something Euthanize Something
Because they are 100% uninterested in fixing stuff, its just a shell game of placing blame elsewhere and doing nothing about anything ever.
To be fair, if we think about the bigger picture and not just abortion, unless US States disappear then people's rights will continue to vary quite a bit depending on their geographical location in the same country, including their body autonomy...
But the federal government is allowed to say "Alright, this is the baseline for rights. Go from there."
Sadly, both will resonate equally with their bases. Although I think they Walz had a better performance, I don’t think this debate changed anything.
According to the numbers, it didn’t.
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