He said a lot of crazy shit like that since he was first elected. The thing I was referring to is that he and his circle deliberately riled up a crowd to the point of storming the capitol, obstructed the response to the attack, and only back-paddled when it was clear the scheme had utterly failed. That was a coup attempt. He openly tried to subvert the constitutional order. And then the weak response given to that by the opposition made it possible for him to get re-elected four years later. And it was already clear what he would be doing, he told everyone who would listen from the very start what he would do and then proved it beyond any doubt on January 6th.

So not only did he already attempt a coup because his ego couldn’t take the loss (i.e. “messing with elections”), but beyond that his party is aggressively gerry-mandering their own states, they are messing with the election related laws, they are trying to acquire voter registrations from Democratic states. Trump has openly questioned the two term limit for presidents, he sells Trump 2028 merch for fucks sake, he constantly threatens political opponents in public, has said he would like to be king or dictator, and so on and so forth. It couldn’t be any clearer where this is going. How much more proof do you need before you will accept that he is a “persistent threat” to the constitutional republic?

If he starts messing with elections, sure because he becomes a persistent threat even for me. Otherwise I’d wait it out

If?! He’s been doing that out in the fucking open for nearly five years…

Instead it’s a couple little boys peacocking around bragging about how masculine they are to a captive audience.

Uhm, well there was a lot of that stuff, but Hegseth spoke for like 45 minutes and inbetween the usual incoherent rambling and machismo, and the book plug [!], there were some actual important announcements thrown in. Internal investigations is to be gutted, records of wrongdoing will be expunged, “DEI” purges will continue, and a whole lot of “you can do whatever the fuck you want now, we will back you” messaging. This was a rallying cry to the fascists in the audience, and I fear there is a subset that will act on it.

Haven’t made it through the entirety of Trumps speech yet, but most of the first ~20 minutes have been his usual meandering.

Edit 1: Heh, nice Freudian slip a bit later into Trumps speech:

That’s why I chose ‘razin’ Caine. He’s fantastic, by the way. I hope you all agree. If anybody disagrees, could I please have your hand? Who disappears that ‘razin’ Caine is no good? Just raise your hand. *inhales* I don’t see any hands raised.