Stripe 'Will No Longer Process Payments' For Trump's Campaign Site (techcrunch.com) 584
"It might be easier at this point to ask which tech platforms President Donald Trump can still use," jokes TechCrunch.
The Wall Street Journal reports: Stripe Inc. will no longer process payments for President Trump's campaign website following last week's riot at the Capitol, according to people familiar with the matter.
The financial-technology company handles card payments for millions of online businesses and e-commerce platforms, including Mr. Trump's campaign website and online fundraising apparatus. Stripe is cutting off the president's campaign account for violating its policies against encouraging violence, the people said...
Stripe asks users to agree that they won't accept payments for "high risk" activities, including for any business or organization that "engages in, encourages, promotes or celebrates unlawful violence or physical harm to persons or property," according to its website.
TechCrunch fills in the rest of the story. "Sources told the Journal that the reason for the company's decision was the violation of company policies against encouraging violence....
"The deplatforming of the president has effectively removed Trump from all social media outlets including Snap, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Spotify and TikTok."
The Wall Street Journal reports: Stripe Inc. will no longer process payments for President Trump's campaign website following last week's riot at the Capitol, according to people familiar with the matter.
The financial-technology company handles card payments for millions of online businesses and e-commerce platforms, including Mr. Trump's campaign website and online fundraising apparatus. Stripe is cutting off the president's campaign account for violating its policies against encouraging violence, the people said...
Stripe asks users to agree that they won't accept payments for "high risk" activities, including for any business or organization that "engages in, encourages, promotes or celebrates unlawful violence or physical harm to persons or property," according to its website.
TechCrunch fills in the rest of the story. "Sources told the Journal that the reason for the company's decision was the violation of company policies against encouraging violence....
"The deplatforming of the president has effectively removed Trump from all social media outlets including Snap, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Spotify and TikTok."
Itâ(TM)s a scam, anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Heâ(TM)s just collecting money for personal gain, at this point. His solicitations for campaign donations basically amounts to fraud. Itâ(TM)s probably legal in the same way televangelists conduct legal fraud, but heâ(TM)s still conning his followers out of money.
Re: Itâ(TM)s a scam, anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Itâ(TM)s a scam, anyway (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps I'm missing your North American definition of 'campaign'.
If the election ended 2 months ago, why is any candidate still campaigning? Surely there is a cutoff for contributions soon after election Tuesday.
Re: (Score:3)
Our politics has devolved to the point that campaigning for the next term starts even before the current term gets started.
Re:Itâ(TM)s a scam, anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's important to articulate the ways he is using this money, because "Fraud" implies a legal issue, and I'm not sure he's doing that, directly anyway. He can't put campaign dollars in his pocket legally, I think he knows that.
He is allowed to use it to pay off debts of his campaign, including debts his campaign is racking up in frivolous court cases paying good money for lawyers to mostly do nothing. Including paying buddies to be his attorneys, paying expenses for buddies to roam around loosely connected with the campaign, etc. He's also allowed to move the money to future campaigns, where he, or his buddies do more of the same. He could spend time in the future getting money from his friends on the campaign trail, while he racks up some bills. With the necessary pretexts, it's legal.
It makes sense based on this for a candidate to continue to raise money as long as they can get anyone willing to donate. Whether all of this should be legal or not is largely irrelevant. I personally won't give any of these people a dime, if for no better reason than my entire net worth is miniscule compared to the pocket change of the people who will actually be buying the agenda.
Re: (Score:3)
There's little evidence that we're talking about someone who gives a shit whether what he wants to do is legal. The only deciding factor appears to be whether he can get someone else to do the dirty work for him.
Re:Its a scam, anyway (Score:3)
> Can not you see the irony here in that you anti-trump people are acting worse than Trump,
I don't see ant-trumpers committing insurrection, do you? Please list the offenses worse than insurrection that are being committed, thanks!
>Who needs due process, just let a collusion of corporate buddies who are in one party just decide to punish who the like.
So, you believe the government should pass a law that corporations cannot do business with whomever they choose?
I don't think any of they really got tog
The main reason Trump has kept this going (Score:4, Interesting)
More than anything else cutting him off from that will help calm things down. It removes the incentive he has to keep pretending he didn't lose. More than anything cutting off that flow of money will move the country forward and calm things down. Because as I've said before Trump's not gonna stop until the money does.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It troubles me to no end the degree to which he is presented as the disease rather than the symptom.
When symptoms are this acute (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
He is both. The dysfunctional state of American politics put him into power, and he in turn acted to make the situation even worse.
Democrat saying Stripe should not do this. (Score:3, Interesting)
Trump is a vile disgusting criminal who has screamed fire in a theater he filled with people. As such, it is totally reasonable for those businesses that he uses to communicate stop allowing him to use their service. He violated their terms and used it to commit a crime.
But he is still a politician and should still be allowed to receive money. It is not appropriate to stop him from doing this, he has in no way abused Stripe's terms of service.
Also, I would rather the idiots that like him to give him their money as he will not be using it to help the GOP.
Much better than allowing them to give it to other Republicans.
Re:Democrat saying Stripe should not do this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Trump is a vile disgusting criminal who has screamed fire in a theater he filled with people.
Ya, and I don't know why Pence, who was someone trapped in that "theater", isn't more publicly outraged. He was in the Capital Building along with his wife and children when the insurgents, stoked by the President's words, stormed the building and several groups went around yelling "Hang Mike Pence" -- all because he was doing his job as VP, within the bounds of The Constitution to simply manage the Electoral College Vote Count, instead of abiding to Trump's false assertions that the VP could simply ignore any EC votes he wished. I also can't understand how the President and all his followers there believed they had a legal way forward along the lines they pursued.
Re:Democrat saying Stripe should not do this. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm no fan of Mike Pence, but I saw no sign this week that he was going to be Trump's lap-dog anymore. I think he bit his tongue, did his constitutional duty (which was basically to be an emcee to the Electoral College vote) and looked towards 2024. No doubt he's pissed at Trump. But expressing it in any way hurts his future.
And for the record, I hope sincerely that he and his family remain safe from the crazy going on, and he gets a chance to retire as a former VP with no further involvement in politics. But if he runs in 2024, I wish him a safe but certain political defeat. And if he wins? He will have my respect always, and my support when I think he deserves it.
Re: (Score:3)
Pence is the contemptible coward in this passion play. Both sides now find him contemptible, spinless, and weak. You could extend this to many Republicans right now... like Cruz.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Democrat saying Stripe should not do this. (Score:4, Informative)
Stripe is within their rights to refuse service to any customer. Nobody is stopping checks from being delivered to Trump.
Re: (Score:3)
He can still receive checks or cash, and I'm quite sure there are Chinese credit card processing companies who would be happy to have his business.
Re:Democrat saying Stripe should not do this. (Score:4, Insightful)
I would go a step further. Financial services aren't a case of free speech, they are a fundamental utility and should not at all moderate based on morality. The only term of service that should apply to financial services is the fraudulent use of said financial service. For everything else there is a legal process which should apply.
A financial service is not linked to someone publicly, it's not hosting content, it's not spreading messages, it's simply moving money from a to b. Within the bounds of law financial services should not be allowed to chose with whom they do business.
I'm happy to nuke the rest of Trump off the face off the internet for his bullshit, but if he can find idiots that want to give him money then at no point should a company be allowed to prevent that.
Trump needs to start an Only Fans (Score:5, Funny)
Also PornHub should put out a press release saying they've banned him. Free advertising.
Re:Trump needs to start an Only Fans (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Trump needs to start an Only Fans (Score:5, Funny)
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/i... [kym-cdn.com] Look how thicc he is.
You're welcome.
Re: (Score:3)
Ewwww! At least we know he wears underwear.
But that's still not thicc by onlyfans standards. Not thicc at all.
Ya, about that ... (Score:2)
"It might be easier at this point to ask which tech platforms President Donald Trump can still use," jokes TechCrunch.
Maybe MySpace?
Re: (Score:2)
I think it must be photoshopped, my space has been dead for years, right?
Re: Ya, about that ... (Score:5, Funny)
Tech platforms? (Score:2)
"It might be easier at this point to ask which tech platforms President Donald Trump can still use," jokes TechCrunch.
Scrabble Go?
Stripe should show they're consistent (Score:5, Insightful)
in applying their rules, by listing all the other campaign sites and groups they have dropped for promoting violence. There are several legislators in the US who are on record encouraging violent riots. Some have even participated in them.
Stripe should defuse the entire situation by simply showing that they cancelled those other legislators' accounts, just like they did for Trump.
Deutsche Bank (Score:5, Interesting)
The next thing you know Deutsche Bank is going to call his loans. That will have some... unfortunate side effects for the Trump Family Organization.
Waiting for MySpace to take a stand... (Score:4, Funny)
C'mon MySpace, grow a pair!
Self Regulation (Score:5, Informative)
Big Companies regulating themselves when it comes to being used for inciting violence.
Slashdot: No, not like that!
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, wish I could moderate...
This is the funny thing. "Oh, a business has feelings and rights. If I own a business and I don't want to make wedding cakes for gay couples, I should be able to say no." Okay. So if I'm a business and I don't want to have Donald Trump as a customer, I should be able to say "No," right?
Personally, I somewhat agree. While I appreciate these businesses not wanting to be associated with Trump (and, personally, I love it), I also believe that if you hang up a shingle and say, "I
Re:Self Regulation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
That case centred on freedom of religion and artistic expression.
THIS is irrelevant. They had freedom of religion and artistic expression. No one forced them to have pro-gay views. I suppose you're also in favour of segregation, since it was many Christian's freedom of religion to not serve black people or have them in the same schools as them.
they went out of their way to express support for these people, many of whom were engaged in violence.
Engaged in violence protecting themselves from police who escalated peaceful marches to riots. They did not pre-plan the violence using their services.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:explain (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: explain (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nope (Score:5, Informative)
Watched it live (although he had taped his comments). Every network was in continuous coverage. He said We love you; You're very special. as his "condemnation". Giulliani said it was armed combat in his speech.
Re: Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
When people call for citation and proof, and the answer is "everyone aired it, just google it, don't be lazy", then you're really missing the point.
Re: explain (Score:5, Informative)
Here you go: https://www.rev.com/blog/trans... [rev.com]
He uses the word "fight" 23 times during the 1 1/4 hour rambling speech. This is what he says towards the end:
“Something’s wrong here. Something’s 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. ...
So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give The Democrats are hopeless. They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You know who else uses 'fight' a lot? Elizabeth Warren. Her words absolutely evoke violent imagery. "We came to this movement to pick a fight (please see 2:32 in the following video): https://youtu.be/y57Zgz41UKw?t... [youtu.be]. No one blinked an eye at that, did they?
Anyone who decries Trump but turns a blind eye to every other politician who uses aggressive language in their speech is a complete hypocrite.
That's what post-Trum presidency will be known as: The Rise of the Hyopcrites.
Again, Context matters (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump didn't do that. And so he's getting deplatformed. He crossed the line into violence, and your whataboutism can't change that.
Re: explain (Score:4, Insightful)
Notably, her speech didn't include picking a target and commanding her flying monkeys to take flight. No riot followed, nobody got killed. Just those tiny little details.
Re: explain (Score:4, Insightful)
One key feature of authoritarianism is that the Leader is never accountable.
Re: explain (Score:5, Insightful)
When the people invading the Capitol are wearing Elizabeth Warren baseball caps and waving Elizabeth Warren campaign flags, I'll be right on board with you.
You can't shake the devil's hand and say you were only kidding.
OMG that would be hilarous (Score:4, Insightful)
"Sensible Monetary Policy!"
"When do we want it?"!"
"During the next full session of Congress!"
Warren's base is predominately middle aged professional women (I followed her a lot in the primary). Molotov Mimosas anyone?
Re: explain (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is you're trying to disconnect cause and effect.
To use the standard free-speech analogy, imagine I go into a crowded theater, light my lighter, hold up the flame, and call out "Fire!" while pointing at the flame. The joke being that I am not saying that the building is on fire, I'm just letting people know what fire looks like. Now suppose everybody in the theater recognizes this, groans, and goes back to watching the show. I have done nothing wrong.
Now let's look at the same scenario except one person panics, jumps over the back of his seat to get out of the theater, trips, falls, and breaks his neck. Dead. I am responsible for his death. He would not have panicked had I not made my joke.
You can say whatever you want. But you cannot avoid responsibility for actions taken by others due to what you say by claiming "Free speech." About my only defense would be to say that the vast majority of people "got the joke"--only one person in a crowded theater panicked after all, so this one person must have no sense of humor and I shouldn't be expected to have to deal with the lone person who doesn't get it. If a large enough number of people panicked, that defense would be harder to maintain.
So, yes, if people took Elizabeth Warren's words to mean pick up a gun and start shooting, she could be held responsible for the people who died. Fortunately, no one did that.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: explain (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, like a bunch of people breaking a few windows and doors to get into a congressional chamber vs. a group of rioters that shut down an entire city block for 3 weeks, looting businesses and committing arson.
Strange, I don't recall any of those BLM protests rising to the level of sedition by forcibly ending a legal democratic election to keep a wannabe dictator in place and/or involving an attempt to take senators hostages in this country's highest seat of power. The worst riots in history will never be equivalent to a coup attempt no matter how you and your crew of parrots try to spin it. You surely know all this already, so I'm guessing disingenuous is the label for you after all. If you don't know what that word means, I suggest you look it up along with any of the other words the adults are using that you don't understand.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: explain (Score:5, Insightful)
you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them.
When Maxine Waters or Kamala Harris organizes a protest that turns violent, I would support banning them from everywhere as well.
Re: (Score:3)
The word "fight" is often used in a political or legal context.
Your lawyer might "fight" for you in court, that doesn't mean he starts punching the opposing counsel.
An election is also often referred to as "a fight", but you never saw Trump and Biden stepping into a ring together.
Re: (Score:3)
Fight.. as in Fight for my rights, Fight in court, you need to better than that.
How about.
In 2018, Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) told her supporters to physically harass members of Trump’s cabinet. “Squad” member Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) called for continued "unrest in the streets." When Minneapolis was burning because of rioters, another Squad member, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), tweeted, “Our anger is just. Our anger is warranted.”
Missouri Democratic State Sen. Maria Chappelle
Re: (Score:3)
"They’re never voting for anything, not even one vote."
Notice its in the present tense. Not the past tense.
What was he implying they weren't going to be allowed to vote on? What was he implying was going to need to be done to stop it?
Those are the two questions he wanted the crowd to answer. And they did.
Re: explain (Score:5, Informative)
Is not a threat and they can argue in court it was just a business proposition. Dog whistles are well known and recognized and been used to convict people of extortion.
Re: explain (Score:5, Insightful)
"You're going to get what's coming to you."
In some contexts: a threat.
In other contexts: description of a package delivery.
Re: explain (Score:5, Insightful)
The rhetorical technique is known as Gricean Implicature and it stands out a mile. Everyone knows it's a threat.
https://plato.stanford.edu/ent... [stanford.edu]
The fine reddit poster @Jackpot777 did the hard yards in explaining so I don't have to:
https://www.reddit.com/r/polit... [reddit.com]
Re: explain (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you "take back 'our' country" with "strength"? How do you read that? By going back in time and turning up in greater numbers at the ballot box 2 months ago? Is that what you think he's saying?
After being impeached, Trump should stand trial for the murder of the capital police officer.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Biden won because regular people have grown really tired of Trump. It's the Reality Television Show they can't turn off.
The fact that the vote count was a close as it was shows what a stinker Biden is. Nobody really voted for Biden. They voted for not-Trump. Now that Trump is out of the picture, the hangover after the party is about to start.
Re: (Score:3)
The fact that the vote count was a close as it was shows what a stinker Biden is.
Not much less than half the country would vote for a dead rat on a stick if it had an R next to its name. You know this. All of the bible bashers for example.
Re: explain (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: explain (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a stretch to think he meant physical violence
And yet, somehow, that's exactly how it was interpreted.
Unqualified for office, unsuited to serve, unfit to command. Trump must go NOW.
Re: explain (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn’t see armed nutjobs carrying zip cuffs storming the senate back in 2016. Very odd.
Context matters (Score:4, Insightful)
Again, context matters, and from that context we can easily infer Trump & the GOP meant for there to be violence. The GOP is hoping to use the violence to oust Trump from control of the party. Trump was hoping to keep his base engaged and donating money and, quite possibly, to get an opportunity to declare martial law.
The Capital Building was occupied by violent extremists. The extent of what that means hasn't fully sunk in. After all, It Can't Happen Here.
Re:Context matters (Score:5, Insightful)
Biden is calling them terrorists because that's what they are. They used violence and threats of violence to accomplish a political goal including (but by no means a complete list):
- Breaking into a Federal building where the Vice President and full Congress were meeting
- Chanting "Hang Mike Pence"
- Constructing a noose and gallows
- Multiple people had bunches of zip cuffs of the sort used by police when they have to arrest multiple people
- Planted bombs
- Brought guns and weapons into the Federal building
If a group of Muslims from the Middle East did this while chanting "Jihad", we'd be (rightfully) calling it a terrorist attack. Just because the perpetrators were white Americans doesn't mean it's not terrorism. It just makes it domestic terrorism.
They are terrorists. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Those zips were weird in any case. They're a cop thing. Part of what makes the riots worrying is there is a lot of sympathy in services with arms. Police, armed forces, even CIA funnily enough.
Re: explain (Score:4, Insightful)
You can interpret fight many ways. It's a stretch to think he meant physical violence, especially since he condemned that.
Incitement is all about what a reasonable person knew or should have known. In this case, Trump absolutely should have known (and maybe knew) that a percentage of the people he was speaking to were ready for violence. He'd been feeding them a steady diet of "Your government has been subverted and democracy no longer works" for months, and QAnon and associated conspiracies had been preparing them for longer. The Proud Boys openly embrace violence, and had announced their intention to be there and be ready.
Had he gotten lucky and no violence happened, this would have been written off as yet more dangerously irresponsible rhetoric that "only" undermined confidence in democracy. But he didn't get lucky, and his dangerously-irresponsible rhetoric led to deaths, to a crowd who broke into the capitol looking to hang Mike Pence, etc., etc., etc.,
Any reasonable man would have focused on calming and reducing the chance of violence, but Trump did none of that. Oh, he threw in the occasional phrases about being peaceful, salted lightly into his aggressive rhetoric, heavily laden with violent metaphors. But a responsible person would have flipped that 180 degrees. Trump chose to continue pushing and the outcome, while not guaranteed, was totally predictable.
Re: explain (Score:5, Insightful)
The best part is that Trump told them "we love you" on one day and the very next when someone explained to him the legal and political exposure he turned on his beloved Patriots and wanted them punished to the "fullest extent of the law".
He has zero loyalty to anyone and Pence can attest right now. He pushed Pence to do something that would have gone down in the history books as straight-up sedition and unconstitutional and when Pence refused he turned in an instant and called Pence a coward.
This is Trump's MO, push people to risk everything but he will never risk anything himself and will turn on them when things go bad.
Re: explain (Score:4, Funny)
And one of them was President of the United States.
Re: (Score:3)
Trump wasn't using "fight" metaphorically. The proof was in the pudding.
Re: (Score:2)
You're repeating headlines. Cite the source material. Quotes - in context. Video - unspliced. Serve it.
There is literally video of Trump directly telling the protestors that he loves them and that they're very special. I've seen it on several news channels, including Fox.
Re: (Score:2)
Why? You didn't pay any attention when you heard it from major news organizations, why would you pay attention when you hear it from some random Slashdot users?
Re: explain (Score:4, Informative)
1. The evidence is emerging, that he withheld NG from protecting the Capitol and only Pence called National Guard after several hours of the siege.
2. Infamous "Stand by".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
3. 1:14 "If you don't fight like hell, you don't have a country anymore"
However as the commentator from the video mentioned, political speeches are often hyperboles and not necessarily it will be used for prosecution.
4. All those deleted tweets and facebook videos are still archived, just not available for the public at the moment, so who knows what was there, which triggered permanent bans from those platforms.
Re:explain (Score:5, Informative)
Trump is a master of the implied violence. Words like 'use strength' incite violence.
Re:explain (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump is a master of the implied violence. Words like 'use strength' incite violence.
Chants like "No justice, no peace" or "All Cops Are Bastards", along with the closed fist symbol used by BLM are inherently violent. Any individual or corporation supporting supporting such violent rhetoric and symbolism should be de-platformed, lose their jobs, and be unable to engage in financial transactions...just like Trump.
93% of the BLM protests were nonviolent (Score:5, Insightful)
So no, the two are not even remotely equivalent. One lost a fair election and attempted to overthrow the US Government, failing largely because he pissed off the military by ignoring bounties on their heads by a foreign adversary. The other would just really like it if the cops would stop killing them with impunity. Your whataboutism won't change that.
Trump allowed the Capital Building to be occupied by domestic terrorists. And he appears to be open to another attempt on inauguration day. Never forget.
Re:93% of the BLM protests were nonviolent (Score:5, Informative)
"All Cops Are Bad" gets 142K results on Google. "All Cops Are Bastards" gets nearly triple that with 397K results as well as showing Wikipedia's article titled "A.C.A.B." as the first result... article starts with: "A.C.A.B (All Cops Are Bastards) is an acronym used as a political slogan associated with dissidents who say they are subjected to political persecution and ..."
Re:explain (Score:5, Informative)
I've been to BLM protests. Nobody beat a cop with pipes and fire extinguishers.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The cages were built during the Obama administration.
Was it intended to be for a petting zoo for the poor little illegal immigrant kids?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For people who are not fully plugged into the lunatic fringe lore to understand the dog whistles and the code words used.
He was understood loud and clear by the terrorist mob. And he thinks language like, "it is really a nice store you got here, Mr Anderson. Would be a shame if something should happen to it" can be argued as non threatening.
Re: explain (Score:2)
"Go home, we love you, you're very special." If that's condemning to you, then you had a very twisted upbringing.
fuckwittery explained (Score:4, Funny)
You can be a fuckwit online, but if your fuckwittery encourages other fuckwits to be fuckwits in the real world - and I mean trespassing, property destroying, life taking fuckwits - then you have to be held responsible. At this point Thump is both a criminal and a fuckwit.
Re: (Score:2)
You can be a fuckwit online, but if your fuckwittery encourages other fuckwits to be fuckwits in the real world - and I mean trespassing, property destroying, life taking fuckwits - then you have to be held responsible.
At this point Thump is both a criminal and a fuckwit.
He was both long before, but this time he angered wayyyy too many powerful people.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
How exactly did Trump incite violence? He condemned the insurgents. He said today that killing cops should result in the death penalty. How exactly is he inciting violence?
How exactly is it that you have so little personal honor and integrity that you can push such a statement?
Re:explain (Score:5, Interesting)
Months of claiming election fraud and a "stolen" election despite his own people saying they way none. Organized a protest (which was called "Save America") on the day of the electoral vote certification. Got up to a podium and said:
"Our media is not free. It’s not fair. It suppresses thought. It suppresses speech, and it’s become the enemy of the people. It’s become the enemy of the people. It’s the biggest problem we have in this country. No third world countries would even attempt to do what we caught them doing and you’ll hear about that in just a few minutes." (referring to the certification.)
and
"After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down. We’re going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here. We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong."
And the whole speech is loaded with inflammatory rhetoric that the Democrats/media are destroying America, the constitution is being trampled on, we're being sold out to China, etc. The whole speech by Trump is an incitement to violence, to say nothing of Rudy Giuliani literally saying we should have "trial by combat."
And, no, he did not say specifically "go to the Capitol and ransack it." He doesn't have to. If I roll up to a crowd and say "They're murdering children in that McDonalds over there!", and the McDonalds gets burned down. I would be liable for incitement, even though I didn't suggest that action.
Re:explain (Score:5, Informative)
How exactly did Trump incite violence?
Good question. Dog whistles are supposed to be inaudible to humans. So what was it about Trump's losing this election that saw the first attempted coup in 200 years in a country that sees itself as a great, due in significant part, to its democracy?
An important incitement was, of course, the misinformation. He has been claiming a fraudulent election since months prior to the election. Many of the rioters genuinely believed that the election had been stolen, and that they were therefore justified in rising up against the fraud.
A second is demagoguery. Trump has long complemented white supremacists [businessinsider.com.au], and appealed to religious fundamentalists [rollingstone.com].
A third is encouragement of violence [nytimes.com] as a means to political ends. ("Terrorism", as it is also known).
So prior to the speech, his people were preparing for violence [nytimes.com]. They came to "be there" because it would "be wild". And they'd shown what weapons they would bring to each other on social media. So when he said "You'll never take back our country with weakness, [...] Demand that Congress do the right thing [...] fight like hell." That what they came to do, and that what they took him to mean.
Re: (Score:3)
Google doesn't delete your data. None of them do. They just make it unsearchable from their tools. If you didn't block your history back in 1999 you're basically screwed.
It's capitalism, not totalitarianism (Score:3)
As for Totalitarianism, well, he hasn't been removed from the banking system. You can write him a check, etc. But that requires a lot more effort and thought than a credit card payment. Meaning you're gonna pause and
Re:Totalitarianism Rising (Score:5, Insightful)
After Wednesday, what Stripe did is not too different from refusing to funnel donations to Al Qaeda. Trump tried to violently overthrow democracy in the United States by storming the Capitol Building.
Re: (Score:3)
The other side didn't see that coming and has treated an elected president as illigitimate (sic) since then, preferring to see him as Putin's tool instead. You want an assault on democracy , there you have it.
I guess I can't remember back 4 years as well as I used to . Could you point me to an article or a posting of some kind where Clinton (or any other Democrat for that matter) failed to concede the election to Trump? It would also help if you could point out all the Democrats complaining about fraudulent votes in 2016.
If you are unable to show an instance in 2016 where the Democrats refused to have a normal transition of administrations then I would have to conclude that what Trump has done this year is a bit
Re:Totalitarianism Rising (Score:5, Insightful)
They're trying to make sure an unhinged president doesn't do anything crazy and irrevocable in the last days of his political life. Note that even the VP has demonstrated deep concern. Are you claiming Pence is a closet technocrat?
Re: (Score:3)
It is jaw-dropping that this is being done to a sitting president and a leader of a party.
Right? I mean that a sitting president would go so far beyond the pale that he would garner such a reaction mere days before leaving office is indeed jaw dropping. It does at least show America is a functioning democracy: a sitting president is a very powerful person but even so his mini insurrection failed and he can't stop lots of people refusing to associate with him.
Now, these technocrats are setting themselves to
Re: (Score:3)
Good grief, what if invisible pink unicorns farted rainbows with pots of gold at the end of them?
Re: (Score:3)
Its the free market at work. Nobody is forcing these companies to do business with anyone.
Re:These companies ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... are like the guy who jumps in front of your car, then shrieks about how you hit him. And wants your insurance money for his "injury". It's all theater.
They think if they talk enough about smoke, that they can make everybody believe there is fire. But in the world of reality, there was no election fraud. Anyone who can read can figure that out.
FTFY
Re: (Score:3)
What freaking country do you live in? There aren't any burned-out cities here in the US, except in California where a couple of small communities were hit by wildfires.
Re:BLM too? (Score:4, Insightful)
Take your time, Stripe. We can wait.
You'll be waiting for ever, because those two things aren't remotely equivalent.
Re: (Score:3)
If the criteria that you use for comparison is political ideology, then yes, they are not the same.
Given that insurrection is now a political ideology, then sure, it's "political ideology".
If you look at rioting, attacks on law enforcement, attacks on federal property, and general lawlessness then similarities are obvious.
Not really.
Police murdered yet another black person. Mass protests ensued because people want the police to stop murdering people. That, first and foremost is a sound point, and one few pe