You don’t have to lie about Donald Trump
He says and does enough *unambiguously* bad stuff that there's no need to embellish his record.
First of all, happy Russian Election day to those who celebrate:
In a shocking upset, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin won a nail-biter with 87.97% of the popular vote, his best result yet. I leave it to you to determine if his electoral history shows how popular he is amongst his people, or how much more authoritarian he’s made the country.
In 1987, the late Charles Krauthammer came up with the “Tirana Index” as a measurement for dictatorship:
In 1982 Albania held an election, which Communist Party chief Enver Hoxha won by 1,627,959 votes to 1. A decisive victory. It suggested to me at the time a key to what political philosophers had long been seeking: a reliable tyranny index.
The Tirana Index (named after Albania's capital) holds that repressiveness correlates with electoral success. The higher the score rolled up by the ruling party in elections, the more tyrannous the regime. At one end of the spectrum are places like Albania, the Soviet Union and Syria, where 99 percent of the vote is the norm. At the other end are free-wheeling semi-anarchies, like Italy, where it is unsafe to drive and where the ruling party never gets half the vote. In between lie orderly democracies like the United States (winning margins of 60 percent, tops) and moderate autocracies like Mexico, which will broach 70 but not much more for fear of embarrassment to all concerned.
A few weeks ago, the Tirana Index met yet another challenge. In the midst of a severe food and energy shortage, Rumania held a referendum. The result: 17,699,772 Rumanians voted yes, no one voted no. A shutout. A perennial contender for the honor of most repressive regime on Earth (in Rumania, typewriters must be registered with the police) had conducted what may be the most perfect election yet.
Putin hasn’t quite reached Hoxha or Ceausescu levels of authoritarianism, but he’s getting there.
Not news: Donald Trump said something crazy and threatening at one of his rallies:
Former President Donald Trump has warned that if he isn't elected in the upcoming presidential election "it's gonna be a bloodbath" for the US.
The 77-year-old made the chilling messages while addressing supporters at a Buckeye Values PAC Rally in Dayton, Ohio. It comes just one day after his hush-money criminal trial was delayed.
Talking to the crowd in a red "Make America Great Again" cap, Trump said: "Now, if I don't get elected it's going to be a bloodbath for the country."
Not news: Trump’s team is whining that the remarks are being taken out of context.
News: for once, Trump might be correct:
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