Reposted from My Substack.
This video shows Luke Beasley debating a Trump supporter, and although Luke usually does very well with his responses I posted the following point-by-point rebuttals to the MAGA in his comments because he could be even better than he already is — with the right information.Such as the data I’ve compiled over the last 19 years as a contributor to Dailykos.
Technically, we’re past the point of having debates about this. The debate is settled and for now, the MAGAs have the upper hand. But that won’t last forever, it may not last past the next two years. If we’re gonna fight back, we need to be in the best possible condition to do so.
These people are deeply disinformed, and under-informed by the Main Stream Media. They believe that Democrats are merely mentally destabilized by “TDS” and they simply “Hate Trump” for irrational reasons. [Like the disgusting shit he says, the fascist policies he proposes and the numerous crimes he’s committed.] To them, all that is just “Noise” and they simply want the economy good again the way it was before COVID [While Trump was in the White House] and that great economy was given to him by President Obama.
Yeah, we’re not really impressed by that.
If you are still in contact with Trumpers and need a one-stop-shop for debunking all their nonsense, this is the place. We can’t afford to let the truth disappear down a memory hole.
Please check out my new playlist of Songs for Change on Spotify
False Argument #1: “Operation Warp Speed.” Pfizer the company that first developed a COVID-19 vaccine, was not part of Operation Warp Speed, so Trump gets NO CREDIT for that. Trump also didn’t have or share any plan for vaccine distribution with the incoming Biden administration, Biden did that all on his own.
False Argument #2: “No President before Trump was prepared for such a Pandemic.” Wrong, we faced a similar pandemic in 1918. After the Ebola outbreak, President Obama developed a detailed Pandemic Response plan which would Exactly address a problem like Covid. Trump threw that plan away.
False Argument #3: "America First has not been a Biden priority." He's made massive investments in America (Chips Act, Infrastructure Act, Inflation Reduction Act) to make America strong and competitive on all fronts, particularly manufacturing. Trump will probably try to cancel all those initiatives. Globally Biden has been a leader in reconstructing NATO and forging the international coalition to support Ukraine, while also making a historic 7 country deal to return Americans held prisoner by Russia.
False Argument #4: There were not "3 Assassination attempts" on Trump - Iran never actually made an attempt. He wasn't President at the time and all of the attempts were by Republicans.
False Argument #5: People called Trump bigoted "because he shutdown travel from China and called it the "China-Virus." No, it was because he didn't also shutdown travel from Europe, which is how Covid arrived in the U.S. And yeah, that happened because he's an ignorant bigot.
False Argument #6: “We’re in a recession.” We have not been in a recession since 2021 - most of the economic problems were solved by June 2021, except inflation which has come down in the last 18 months.
False Argument #7: "Trump didn't increase the debt" - Yes, he did. His Tax Cuts added $7 Trillion Debt and caused the deficit to go up to $3 Trillion. The deficit came down by $600 Billion in 2021, and $1.3 Trillion in 2022.
False Argument #8: We are NOT in "Two World Wars." We have no troops in either Israel or Ukraine. We are simply supplying both of them with weapons, which we would probably do in peacetime anyway, although that has greatly accelerated since both have been attacked.
False Argument #9: "Worst pullout ever" - Yeah, things didn't go that well at the Bay of Pigs either.
But on this issue, no one knew or could have been prepared for the Afghan Army and Government to collapse in just 10 days, and that happened largely because Trump left the Afghan government out of the negotiations with the Taliban. There was no expectation that we'd need to evacuate every American first, particularly since we were expecting our embassy and diplomats to still be working with the Afghan government. Americans took all their equipment with them, the only things we left belonged to the Aghan Army. Lastly, Afghan translators hadn't been able to leave for the previous 2 years because of Trump's Muslim ban.
False Argument #10: "Trump had nothing to do with the Capitol Attack" He picked the time and day for his rally to strategically coincide with Congress counting the electoral votes, told people to "Fight", "Fighting" and "Fight like hell or you won't have a country anymore" 20 times. He said "peacefully" once because his speechwriters put that in. Yes, the attack started while he was still speaking which had been openly planned by his supporters led by the Proud Boys who were coordinating with the Oath Keepers, Michael Flynn and Roger Stone. Then Trump threatened Mike Pence again, afterward said nothing and let the violence explode and spread for 3 hours. Since then he’s threatened to pardon the rioters, even the ones convicted of attacking police and Seditious Conspiracy. [Subnote: No, Police didn't "wave and invite people into the building.”]
False Argument #11: "The cases against him are fraudulent". The facts, documents and testimony all prove that Trump was behind payments to silence Stormy Daniels to protect his campaign - that's a crime. The grand jury testimony and evidence show that he coordinated a massive multi-state effort to implement fake electors to steal the Presidency. The evidence overwhelmingly shows that he kept and shared classified documents to unauthorized persons when he had no legal right to retain them, particularly since his security clearance had been canceled. The cases are only being dropped by DOJ because their policy is not to indict and press criminal charges against the sitting President.
False Argument #12: "The cases were only brought because he won in 2016". No, the case against his charity and Trump University were both before he was in the White House the first time. He should have been charged with Obstruction after the Mueller investigation, but that was dropped by Bill Barr. The charges for aiding the insurrection, the Stormy Daniels case (which got Michael Cohen sent to prison), the False Electors and retention of classified documents were all legitimate and caused by his own actions - they simply should have pressed charges earlier so the case could have been completed.
False Argument #13: The "Left's Rhetoric caused someone to try and kill Trump." There's no evidence that the people who tried to harm him were "On the Left" or even listening to anything said by the left. This is a particularly interesting self-serving argument. Somehow NOTHING Trump said after the election or at his rally had anything to do with the attack on the Capitol, but the Left is so influential they're mere complaints about Trump trying to overthrow the election with lies and violence is creating hordes of Zombie Killers!!!?? Somehow it doesn't matter that he called immigrants and Democrats "Vermin", "The enemy from within", "Garbage" and "Scum", or that his Great Replacement Rhetoric is responsible for multiple mass shootings (Christchurch, Tree of Life, Buffalo, El Paso & the Texas Mall) but Democrats are to blame because one nutbag took a shot at him and missed?
False Argument #14: "Harris is a communist" Yeah, everyone believes in wealth re-distribution, that's called TAXES. (Ok, Luke said that too) That's Social Security, Medicare and Unemployment Insurance. None of that is communism which is the State taking total ownership of the production of all goods and services. Harris offered to lower taxes, not raise them except for the very wealthy who can afford them, or can afford to write them off. Harris supporting efforts to curb corporate price gouging are no different from when Trump did the same thing during COVID-19.
False Argument #15: "Trump doesn't like Hitler" - Yes, he does. General Kelly has talked about him saying "Hitler did some good things" and "I'd like Generals like Hitler's, they were loyal." Plus his first wife, Ivana, wrote about him having a book of Hitler's speeches near his bed. Most Democrats didn't say he was "Hitler", they said he was a "Fascist" after both General Kelly and Mattis said so. JD Vance called him "Hitler."
False Argument #16: "The Steele Dossier was Obama spying on the Trump campaign." The investigation of the Trump campaign started before Steele wrote his first memo which was when the Australian Ambassador alerted the FBI to Trump staffer George Papadopoulos admitting that the Russians had hacked the DNC for Hillary's emails. That was almost a month earlier. The FISA surveillance of Carter Page (who had previously been recruited by Russian spies) and Paul Manafort (who had a GRU asset on his payroll) didn't start until both of them had left the Trump campaign. Obama knew nothing about any of this until he was briefed on it months later.
Special Prosecutor John Durham tried to prove that Hillary or Obama were somehow linked to the creation of the Steele Dossier -- they didn't even know about it - but he failed and both of the people he indicted and charged with lying to the FBI were acquitted.
False Argument #17: "Russia Russia Russia was a hoax". Nope. 25 Russians were indicted and 12 including Yevgeny Prigohzin & his troll farm were going to trial until Bill Barr dropped the case. 8 Trump associates were indicted and convicted on various charges. 5 of them were convicted of lying under oath about their contacts with Russia. Russia hacked the DNC, DCCC and John Podesta - they told Papadopoulos about that (and he lied about it), then arranged to release those hacks through Wikileaks.
Roger Stone coordinated with Wikileaks and shared what they told him with Trump (and he lied about it) - then later Trump's people [likely Steve Bannon] told Stone to contact Wikileaks to release the Podesta emails just 30 mins after the "Grab 'em by the P-y" tape was revealed. [That’s collusion!]
Don Jr. met with a former lawyer for the Russian Government and agreed to drop sanctions on Russia in exchange for political dirt on Hillary Clinton, it's only the fact that they were lying about the dirt that the deal didn't go through, and for once, Don Jr didn't lie about it. [This is also collusion!]
Trump wasn't indicted on conspiracy charges only because Mueller was unable to get Stone, Flynn or Manafort to testify against him -- and Trump had offered to pardon them all for keeping quiet, which he did.
False Argument #18. "Which Russian Operative worked on Trump's campaign?" Paul Manafort had been working for the Russian government through Putin's friend Oleg Deripaska for years and had a Russian GRU asset - Konstantin Kilimnick - on his payroll. Carter Page had been unsuccessfully recruited by Russia agents years earlier, and was getting himself involved in Russian business interests during the campaign. Michael Cohen was secretly negotiating with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to build Trump Tower Moscow. George Papadopoulos was coordinatng with Prof Mifsud - who was a Russian asset that told him the Russian's had hacked Hillary's emails - and a member of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs named Ivan TImofeev. Yes, there was a lot of news and coverage of this - because there should have been.
False Argument #19: "[2020] was one of the most non-secure elections in history." That's false according the Trump Homeland Security official Chris Krebs, who was in charge of cyber security during the 2020 election. Trump's own campaign lawyers knew it was false. Fox News knew it was false and that's why they settled their defamation suit with Dominion, also Dominion voting machines already use paper ballots. That's how they did the recounts.
Mail-In ballots have to be signed and that signature has to match the voter registration card - there's no problem with them. Policies were changed by election boards to allow people who were on lockdown due to Covid to vote, again that's not a problem. ID requirements can be exactly like a Poll Tax for the poor, students and the elderly - if people demanding them would offer to pay the cost for them for the poor, it would be no problem.
The Heritage Foundation database of voter fraud cases has only 1,500 entries -- and that's going back for every election in the last 40 years.
There's not a single shred of physical evidence that the ballots were false, every case was lost or thrown out for lack of standing and/or evidence. Rudy Giuliani lost his defamation case against Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss because he had no evidence.
"2000 Mules" has been pulled because the people they accused of stuffing ballots were able to prove that they were bringing legitimate ballots to the boxes, and they had to apologize to him.
False Argument #20: "Democrats had no one to run" - We had Buttigieg, Governor Newsom, and Governor Shapiro who all could have run. In fact, a lot of Democrats - including Pelosi - were asking Biden to step down and let one of them have a shot. They didn't even want Harris, but she did much better than they expected.
False Argument #21: "Trump was honest with the American People". Yea, right. 30,000 Lies later.
False Argument #22: "Trump lowered the cost of drugs for seniors" Only for insulin if you happened to be on Medicare Part-D, Biden lowered the cost of insulin for everyone on Medicare, and gave Medicare the ability to negotiate for better prices on - eventually - all their drugs.
False Argument #23: "Biden canceled Fracking and the Keystone XL Pipeline". No, Biden didn't cancel fracking - but he did cancel the XL extension to the original Keystone pipeline which is still open and pumps Canadian Tar sands oil which is sold on the international market. The XL extension would have increased it's capacity, but that wouldn't help US oil prices at all because it's not US oil. Despite all that, US Oil and Energy production is at a historic and worldwide height, even higher than it was during Trump's term in 2020.
False Argument #24: "People are being taken out of the job market" - There are now a total of 161.50 Million people working, which is the highest total in history. Trump's peak was 159 Million. Missing workers have gone up from about 1.7 Million to 2.3 Million between Trump and Biden so this is half-right for about 500,000 people.
False Argument #25: "Hydroxychloroquine and Iverectin are effective against COVID" - Yeah, obvious nonsense. Far more (43% more) people died in Red States because they believed this BS, especially after the vaccine was available. Hydroxychloroquine does not work against Covid [Mayo Clinic] Ivermectin on the other hand did show some effectiveness, although it may take dangerously high doses to achieve that result. [NIH]
False Argument #26: Biden didn't call all Trump supporters "Garbage" - he was only talking about the statements made by one guy at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally and he made that immediately clear. And it was clear in the transcripts. However, Trump has called Democrats "Scum" and "Enemy from Within" openly and repeatedly. He's never apologized or claimed he was misunderstood on these statements - and he's shown that he fully intends to treat Democrats as "Vermin" and "Scum" using the Military and a politicized DOJ in his policies. Trump is a "Fire Starter" Uh huh. The double-standard here is ridiculous.
False Argument #27 Liberals claim "Only dumb people could vote for Trump". Or people who have been strategically disinformed by Right-Wing media lies (as I have listed them) and insane cultish conspiracy theories. Also, people who are delusional, selfish, bigots and/or mendacious assholes. Yes, we have a sense of moral superiority because you people knowingly voted for a Convicted Felon and adjudicated Fraudster and Rapist. And you don't care because you think you're gonna get something out of it.
Did I mention Assholes?
False Argument #28: "Kamala Harris never accomplished anything in her life" This one takes the cake. She was a prosecutor who put criminals in jail, including Drug Cartels and Human Traffickers. She sued banks who had defrauded people over their mortgages and recovered $Billions for people who had lost their homes during the Great Recession. She was an Accomplished Senator and as Vice President, she cast the tie-breaking vote on the American Rescue Act (which pulled us out of the Covid recession) and the Inflation Reduction Act which brought Inflation down from 9% in 2022 to just 2.1% now. And that list was just off the off of my head.
The idea that Willie Brown somehow got her elected DA, Attorney General, Senator and Vice President is blatant nonsense.
False Argument #29: "We don't see Trump supporters getting upset at Biden/Harris Supporters". UH, have you heard the name Cesar Seyoc who sent pipe bombs to prominent Democrats and the Media? Did you not see the Unite The Right rally? Did you not hear about the shootings in Christchurch, Tree Of Life in Pittsburgh, Buffalo NY and the El Paso Walmart? Did you not see January 6 when Trump supporters attacked the Capitol? All of that was by Trump supporters.
These people are a proven threat. One person screaming on a plane is not equal to any of that. Plus Dems have damn good and proven reasons to be pissed off at Trump (and his supporters) because he's a liar, a criminal, a rapist and a Fascist asshole. And nearly all that's been proven in court, unlike any of your accusations about anyone else.
Just for the record, if you didn’t watch the video, the “I’m quitting my show" thing was a bet that Luke had with the MAGA over whether she would have a response or an answer for when Trump said we needed to “suspend the Constitution” because of the 2020 Election results.
She had no response. They never had a response.
