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Comment by DiggyJohnson | Hacker News Reader

This is just taken wildly out of context. And that’s coming from me, who can’t stand DJT. You’re literally fishing for a retort that doesn’t even make sense.

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I am having a heard time reading his exact words and understanding them to mean something else. When he says to 'my beautiful Christians' that in four years you won't have to vote again, what is he trying to say? What is the missing context?

The full quote being:

> "in four years, you don't have to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good, you're not gonna have to vote."

One can reasonably interpret that as meaning that in the next 4 years, Trump and his party are going to fix the country so much and so well that Christians won't have to go out to vote next time.

Not only is that the most reasonable interpretation of the words, it's the one he explicitly gave when asked [0]. The only way to arrive at the alternate interpretation is to be coming from a place where you already assume Trump is a threat to democracy.

I think there are reasons to have arrived at that place (Jan 6th), but this quote is not evidence for it unless wildly misinterpreted.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/30/dona...

> where you already assume Trump is a threat to democracy

You know, the people who see him as a threat to democracy are not just putting words in his mouth. Maybe they just listen to what he says, and believe him. Is that unreasonable?

Well we've already covered one quote that was grossly misinterpreted. What others have you got that implies he's a threat to democracy in America?

The only people arguing it was misinterpreted are people who support him. Not by providing any context that actually supports it meaning something different.

How about the innumerable times he claimed the election was rigged despite lacking any evidence to support it? Does denying that free and fair elections exist not count pretty specifically as being a threat to democracy?

I totally get that he has an artful way of making alarming statements over and over, but doing it with just a hint of humor, so that his supporters can claim it was all just a joke. In your view, at what point do we get to take a politician at their word?

> The only people arguing it was misinterpreted are people who support him.

Bullshit. I'm as anti-Trump as they come, but I don't let that blind me to reality. What he meant is obvious to anyone who isn't already looking for proof of their preconceived ideas.

I'm not even arguing that he's not a major threat to democracy—I think he is! I disagree that that quote is useful as evidence of that fact, and I disagree with the tactic that the left intentionally adopted of twisting the truth to make a point. People saw through that tactic and it contributed to Trump's victory.

The facts about Trump are scary enough, there was no need to twist his words.

What you are doing has a name these days, they call it sanewashing. Had Harris or Biden said anything even close to trumps comments the maga crowd would have yelled bloody murder, but somehow for trump everything is excusable and can be explained away.

Everything he said and continues to say about the 2020 election, and the attempts he made to overturn said election

Makes me feel like I'm on crazy pills that this guy was electable after this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_memos

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_ph...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempts_to_overturn_the_2020_...

"What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes"

So the most favorable interpretation of his words is that his supporters are delusional? What is their interpretation of "fix the country"? Because if it does not involve changing the constitution (a very tall order) then every single thing he does can be undone with the same effort by the next democratic president. Surely these people know that, right? How could they possibly believe that he will magically "fix the country" so they don't have to vote any more, unless they anticipate that he means something permanent?

Because they don’t take things so literally.

I’m not trying to be flippant, that’s genuinely the answer to your question. Trump is literally being dramatic and funny by putting it like that. And you’re taking the bait and missing the joke.

I know I sound like the enemy and I dislike including this paragraph: But keep in mind, I can’t stand Donald Trump and didn’t vote for him.

Come on. We all know Trump effing talks weird, that's just part of his weird personality that no one likes. I don't like it, think it's confusing and winding around requiring much mental parsing to understand even for normal stories/sentences. But to take this tiny little sentence as definitive proof of some giant plan that's coming to end democracy is just... mental gymnastics in search of meaning for a narrative that they've already decided it means.

Here is the Full quote so everyone can see it. He even explains in the end what he means.

> "And again, Christians: Get out and vote! Just this time. You won't have to do it anymore! Four more years, you know what? It'll be fixed, it'll be fine, you won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians, I love you Christians, I'm not Christian, I love you, get out, you gotta get and vote. In four years you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not gonna have to vote."

From Snopes:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/vote-four-years/

I'm just listening to his words and assuming he means what he says. He is either insulting his followers, or he is telling them he will "fix" the country in such a way that they won't have to vote any more. You can interpret this to mean he will try to subvert the electoral result again, or you can interpret it to mean that he plans to make some kind of permanent change so that christian voters will no longer be required to vote to achieve their goals.

Which is it?

> I'm just listening to his words and assuming he means what he says.

That's not how language works. There's a whole field of linguistics called pragmatics that is about how context contributes to meaning [0].

You're taking a few seconds of his words, joining them to all of your priors, and interpreting them in that context.

His original listeners were taking his words in the context of the whole speech, joining them to their priors, and interpreting them in that context.

It's entirely expected that your interpretation would be different than theirs given that disconnect, and the most reliable way to interpret meaning is to look at who the audience was and how they would have interpreted it, because the speaker chose their words for that context, not for yours.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics

Okay, I'll bite. You make a plausible point. Now tell me, what did his supporters think he meant?

Exactly what he said he meant [0]:

> It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group, they don’t vote. And I’m explaining that to them. You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country, you won’t have to vote any more, I won’t need your vote any more, you can go back to not voting.

Basically "the country is screwed up right now because ${reasons}, if you get out and vote I'll fix it for you for good and you can go back to not voting again". It's more or less the same line that politicians say every election to try to motivate the less-likely-voters in their base, just said in Trump's classic meandering way and with explicit permission to vote only this once if you want.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/30/dona...

So a couple untruths, and something ambiguous. Evangelicals have been a key voting bloc for years (I don't want to say Christians, because there are a huge number of Christian democrats too). If anything they're key to GOP success in the recent past.

But you kinda skipped past what I was asking. How and what do those voters think he was going to fix for good? And do they perceive themselves as being politically inactive except for just this once?

It sounds like you're just giving him a pass because hey, all politicians lie to get people to vote. At that point, why do we even care what a politician says, whether we agree with them or not?

I'm a "supporter" and I know exactly what he means. Means he'll fix all the voting shenanigans so that illegals can't vote and so that democrats can't "rig" and stack the election like last time. See? Not so much a hateful whistle as it is understanding your supporters, what's important to them, and appealing to that with your own words.

Thank you for the actually plausible explanation.

It does not even matter than there was no rigging, no illegals voting, no shenanigans. The truth has never been an effective counter to rhetoric, I get that. But it's an entirely plausible explanation for what a supporter would think.

But after yesterday, maybe we will all agree together than the elections are rigged? ;-). You guys can't put that genie back in the bottle. Everyone thinks it's totally cool until the other side uses it right back.

We’ll have it fixed so good could mean the system will be fixed, as in rigged. You are sanewashing the words of an unstable man

the missing context is that the Christian groups he was speaking to typically have low turn out/don't often come out to vote. He's asking them to please come out to vote, it's important this time. It's exactly the same rhetoric democrats use "this is the most important election, you really need to vote this time, this time it really matters"

“You know, FDR 16 years – almost 16 years – he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/19/trum...

he has vowed to be dictator on day one

https://apnews.com/article/trump-hannity-dictator-authoritar...

On February 27th-the Reichstag in Berlin was set on fire. 4 weeks before, Hitler was appointed to chancellor. Hitler placed an urgency regulation to ban all political activities. He destroyed democracy in one month. Trump can now do it one day.

he is definitely signaling something, whether it will come true or not is another question.

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