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Bill Maher made an ominous prediction about Trump supporters and the 2024 election

Real Time with Bill Maher/YouTube

Bill Maher described the "slow-moving coup" happening in the U.S.

We are living in weird times in far more ways than one. Not only are we coping with a global pandemic that some people still refuse to acknowledge, but we are also dealing with an ex-president who still refuses to admit that he lost the last election, whose fan base keeps spiraling deeper and deeper into kooky conspiracy theories and whose adopted party inexplicably failed to cut bait and run from Q-ville when it had the chance.

So now we're watching democracy flail and sputter because millions of Americans simply reject objective reality. It's genuinely, mind-bogglingly weird.

Such is the backdrop of Bill Maher's recent run-down of what he sees happening in the next election. Under normal circumstances, it would be far too early for such punditry from comedic political commentators, but the U.S. sailed right past normal years ago. So now, not even a year past the last election—and with no one even announcing an intention to run—we're already pondering what will happen in 2024. (Seriously, why does everything have to be so dumb?)

Maher laid out the plan that appears to be unfolding before our eyes in a segment titled "A Slow-Moving Coup," starting with the Eastman memo that basically was a blueprint for Trump overturning the results of the election he lost.


New Rule: The Slow-Moving Coup | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)www.youtube.com



"Here are the easiest three predictions in the world," said Maher. "Trump will run in 2024. He will get the Republican nomination. And whatever happens on election night, the next day he will announce that he won.

"I've been saying ever since he lost, he's like a shark that's not gone, just gone out to sea," continued Maher. "But actually, he's been quietly eating people this whole time. And by eating people, I mean he's been methodically purging the Republican Party of anyone who voted for his impeachment or doesn't agree that he's the rightful leader of the Seven Kingdoms."

Maher explained how the small number of Republicans who outwardly opposed Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election will be gone by 2024, and how state legislatures and election officials are being replaced with loyalists who will hand him the presidency whether he actually wins it or not. He predicted that Republicans would win the House in 2022.

"And yet, 2024 comes and Democrats treat it as a normal election year," he said. "They are living in a dream world where their choice of candidate matters, their policies matter, the number of votes they get matters, none of it does. I won't even predict who the Democratic nominee will be, because it doesn't matter."

Maher explained that even if the Democratic nominee wins the election, "Trump won't accept it." But this time, his conspiracy theories about election fraud "will be fully embraced by stooges he is installing right now."

The only thing that kept the U.S. from a full-blown constitutional crisis was that some Republican elected officials put their foot down and insisted on reality. What happens without people who are willing to go against pressure from their party and do the right thing?

"The ding dongs who sacked the Capitol last year? That was like when Al Qaeda tried to take down the World Trade Center the first time with a van. It was a joke. But the next time they came back with planes," Maher said.

"I hope I scared the shit out of you!" Maher said, in conclusion.

Yeah. A majority of Americans are already there, Bill.

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Expert on tyranny explains the Trump 'Big Lie' you've been hearing so much about lately

Reuters/Twitter, Timothy Snyder/Twitter

In October, the Washington Post shared an updated count of the lies or misleading claims President Trump has made since he was elected. The count, as of August 27, was 22,247 claims in 1,316 days. Why did the count only go through August? Because the president's pace had accelerated to more than 50 lies or misleading claims per day, and the fact-checking team couldn't keep up.

And it's not just the Washington Post. Fact checkers across the media landscape have repeatedly lamented that it's impossible to keep up.

All politicians stretch the truth sometimes, some more often or egregiously than others. But the frequency, nature, and shamelessness of President Trump's lying is in an entirely separate category than most politicians. This is not an opinion or even a judgment; it's an axiomatic fact.

The problem is, a shocking number of people overlook his lies, believe his lies, or in some cases, even love his lies. Opportunistic politicians and idealogues have seen him rise to power through lies, have seen the adulation he receives from his base for his lies, and have decided it's worth it to hitch their wagon to his lies. That's largely how we've ended up here, in a broken government and political culture where the president's supporters rally behind the lie that he won the election with a not-insignificant number of them willing to die or kill to defend that lie.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder calls the claim that Trump won the election a "Big Lie." Snyder, who specializes in the history of Central Europe and the Holocaust and has written books on tyranny, explained what that means in a Twitter thread.


Snyder wrote:

"The claim that Trump won the election is a Big Lie.

A Big Lie changes reality. To believe it, people must disbelieve their senses, distrust their fellow citizens, and live in a world of faith.

A Big Lie demands conspiracy thinking, since all who doubt it are seen as traitors.

A Big Lie undoes a society, since it divides citizens into believers and unbelievers.

A Big Lie destroys democracy, since people who are convinced that nothing is true but the utterances of their leader ignore voting and its results.

A Big Lie must bring violence, as it has.

A Big Lie can never be told just by one person. Trump is the originator of this Big Lie, but it could never have flourished without his allies on Capitol Hill.

Political futures now depend on this Big Lie. Senators Hawley and Cruz are running for president on the basis of this Big Lie.

There is a cure for the Big Lie. Our elected representatives should tell the truth, without dissimulation, about the results of the 2020 election.

Politicians who do not tell the simple truth perpetuate the Big Lie, further an alternative reality, support conspiracy theories, weaken democracy, and foment violence far worse than that of January 6, 2021."

Everyone who lives in objective reality understands that Trump did not win this election. There was no widespread fraud, and not enough small instances of fraud (which have occurred on both sides in every single election throughout history) to even come close to changing the outcome of the election. The election officials charged with carrying out the elections in every state, both Republican and Democrat, have said so. International election observers that Trump invited to witness our elections have said so. The federal agency charged with election security under Trump's own administration has said so.

Investigations into allegations have borne no fruit, and nearly all of the affidavits and "testimonies" (notably, not given under oath) we've seen have been from people describing normal voting and tallying processes that they don't fully understand. Voting machine companies have now launched billion-dollar defamation lawsuits against Trump allies who pushed conspiracy theory-laded lies about voting machines. The courts have been decisive in their rulings against the president and his allies, who are now 1 and 64 in lawsuits attempting to prove both fraud and unconstitutionality in some states' election processes.

The facts are not in question; it's only what people believe or want to believe that is in question.

Psychologists have explained that the president will never concede because his narcissistic nature and pathology will not allow it. He will double down on the Big Lie for the rest of his life. That's a problem—but it's not the only one.

A Big Lie can't succeed without support. Those in power who have gone along with this lie have breathed life into it, which also fuels the anger and resolve of those who believe the lie. Every person who has supported and disseminated this lie since election day bears responsibility for the attack on our U.S. Capitol and for how close we came to witnessing a massacre of our lawmakers last week. Every single one.

The bombardment of thousands of lies over the past four years have wounded and weakened our body politic. But the Big Lie slashed an artery and our democracy is bleeding out. Every single enabler of this lie needs to stand up and say "It wasn't true. We were wrong," as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. Not just the politicians, but the media personalities who know the truth but supported the "Stop the Steal" message anyway. The only immediate remedy is to decisively end the lie, to clamp down on it hard and fast. Damage has been done and will need to be assessed, but right now the goal is survival.

That requires putting the truth and the country before any and all political or popular ambition, which some have proven time and again they will not do. But if there's ever been a time to swallow your pride and do the right thing, it's right now.

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Why I regret writing about trying to understand Trump supporters

Photo by David Todd McCarty on Unsplash

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about how I was done trying to understand Trump supporters after having spent four years at it. While I try to only write things I am proud of, I occasionally write something that doesn't sit well with me after it's published. This is one of those times.

I have messages in my inbox from people thanking me for that piece, saying it helped them understand their loved ones better, so I know some people found some parts of it helpful. But ultimately, I would take it back if I could. Please bear with me while I try to explain why.

My goal as a writer is to put stories and ideas out into the world that will, in some small way, help humanity progress toward a better future. Sometimes that means writing something positive that lifts people's spirits and gives them hope. Sometimes it means writing about injustices and hardships that need to be brought into the light and better understood. Sometimes it means challenging the status quo and helping people see things in a different way.

It also means avoiding things that I think are ultimately counterproductive to progress. While I don't shy away from tackling issues, I avoid writing about partisan politics because I see our two-party system as inherently divisive. I try to avoid writing about specific politicians as well, unless they've done something praiseworthy. There are more than enough political pundits putting out hot takes these days, and I have no desire to add my voice to that fray.

These past four years, however, have tested my convictions on these fronts, both internally and externally.

Issues that should not be considered partisan or divisive have become so in the eyes of many, making it nearly impossible to have a conversation that doesn't devolve into labels and generalizations and assumptions. When I write about racism or climate change or human rights—even basic public health at this point—I'm automatically placed into a political box, despite having never aligned myself with any political party. Even if I write about objective reality and verifiable fact, I'm placed into a political box, despite that making no sense whatsoever.

Labeling and categorizing is a natural tendency that's easy to slip into, especially in our current climate. But all it does is create an "us vs. them" filter on everything we discuss. I think that's the point of most political rhetoric, actually. "Us vs. them" is the simplest way to gain political power. Demonizing and "othering" make it easy to maintain.

The sneaky thing is that once that tendency takes hold, it starts to feel not just right, but righteous to "other" the people we see as on the wrong side of history or democracy or justice. It can even feel necessary and truthful to put them in the "other" category. Then it starts to feel okay to state the truth about them more and more harshly. Then we throw some potshots in, because those people deserve it. It so easily escalates from "they're wrong" to "they're insane" to "they're evil."

That's literally how everyone justifies division, on every "side," in every political system. But where does that lead us in the long run?

Whenever divisions seem intractable, I like to zoom out and look at the big picture. It's not like we haven't seen what we're seeing now in various times and places throughout history, from toxic partisanship to populist demagoguery. So the real root of the problem isn't the individual people or politics we keep arguing and complaining about, but something more fundamental.

In my opinion, the root cause of nearly all of our issues is people's inability or unwillingness to recognize that we are all "us." The lack of recognition of our essential oneness as human beings is manifested in all kinds of "othering"—racism, sexism, xenophobia, religious prejudice, political party prejudices, and so on and so on. But no matter the form, the root of most human problems is the "othering" of a group of people. My group = good. Other group = bad. So simple, but so wrong, every time.

I talked in my Trump supporters post about people wanting problems and solutions to be simple, but I should have been clearer that none of us is immune to that pull. We are all tempted to jump down the "us vs. them" hole because problems are simpler down there. It's easier to think in dichotomous groups and "sides" than to wade through complex ideas and nuanced beliefs on an individual level. Everything in our political discourse is designed to draw us into that hole.

And I allowed myself to fall in when I wrote that piece. I made Trump supporters a "them," and by doing so, perpetuated the very thing I see as the root of the problem. I fed the beast I was fighting while trying to fight it.

In the big picture, the beast isn't one individual with power or one political party or the people who support both of those things, no matter how it may appear in this era. The beast is the human tendency towards prejudice—a tendency that we have to overcome in ourselves and convince others to overcome in themselves.

How to get people to understand this is the challenge. But I know that categorizing a group of people in a way that they feel belittles or insults them isn't going to get us where we need to go, no matter how justified it feels. It's just not.

Cynicism about the redeemability of our fellow Americans won't get us where we want to go, and writing off millions of human beings will just have us living in perpetual limbo. Lasting solutions to our problems aren't going to be found in political boxes, and they aren't going to be found down an "us vs. them" hole, either.

We all have to decide how we are going to use our voice and how we're going to contribute to humanity's progress. I'd rather focus on the universal truths at the heart of the issues we face and work toward solutions in that way, rather than analysis of the political labels and ideological "sides" that only serve to divide us further.

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Democracy

I've spent 4+ years trying to understand Trump supporters. I'm all done now.

Photo by David Todd McCarty on Unsplash

Writer's note: I wrote a follow-up to this piece explaining some things I would change about it. You can read it here.

Many Americans had been hoping for an overwhelming Biden landslide win in this election. Not just the clear majority victory that it turned out to be, but a full-on tsunami that would thoroughly wash away the stain of Trumpism from America forever.

That didn't happen. And we really shouldn't be surprised by that.

As in 2016, there's a push in the social discourse to try to understand why 71 million Americans thought Donald Trump was a better choice than Joe BIden. (Cue the thousandth media interview with a rural, small-town American.) But Trumpism isn't that hard to understand. It's multi-faceted and multi-layered, but it's not complicated. In fact, simplicity is one of its key features, which I'll explain in a minute.

I am going to speak frankly and somewhat forcefully about my fellow Americans here, but first I want to be clear about my perspective. I am a political independent who would best be described as "leaning left," though I hate those kinds of labels. I have always voted for both Democrats and Republicans, including on my own state's ballot in this election. The only real passion I have for politics is my disgust with our two-party system, so don't take my words here as toeing some partisan or ideological line.


I also believe there is a distinct disconnect between why Trump supporters think they support him and why they actually do. I've spent four years listening to their reasoning. I've tried to make it make sense. And though entire books can and will be written about this, I've landed on what I see driving Trumpism the most.

Though partisanship certainly plays a role in his number of supporters, the support for Donald Trump isn't about political parties. Yes, there are people who will vote Republican even if they have to hold their nose or sell their soul to do so (same with some Democrats, I would assume). For some people, elections are all about one issue—usually abortion or taxes—so they vote Republican, but Trump hardly represents the traditional party identity.

I mean, let's be real here. Anyone who thinks a serial-adultering, porn star banging, pussy grabbing, charity stealing, student defrauding, non-church-going, faith-mocking, unrepenting man like Trump is a reflection of true conservative values is as delusional as he is. And anyone who thinks that a military-bashing, deficit-building, debt-ballooning grifter is a true Republican is fooling themselves. There's a reason why many lifelong Republicans rejected Trump from the beginning.

Despite appearances, Trumpism isn't about Republicans vs. Democrats. Political parties are merely weapons Trump wields in his battle for personal glory. After all, this is a man who changed his political party four times in less than three decades. He's not now and has never been about party.

No, Trump is about Trump. It's what he's always been about and will always be about. He is a textbook malignant narcissist, always and forever obsessed with what will serve his personal need for power, glory, and adulation.

The question then is, how did Trump get 70+ million voters to believe he's all about America or all about them? He did it the same way every demagogue with authoritarian tendencies throughout history has done it—by keeping the message painfully simple, appealing to people's basest human instincts, lying egregiously and relentlessly, and undermining people's faith in the real-world journalism and fact-checking that keep them from being sucked into his unreality.

Let's start with the messaging. Trump's gist is this: "The government is broken. I'm an outsider, but clearly a powerful one because I have money and fame. I alone can fix what's wrong. The problems are simple and are caused by [insert 'other' group—undocumented immigrants, Muslims, Democrats, long-time public servants, etc.] and the solutions are simple too [build the wall, ban them from the country, vote for me—I'll drain the swamp]. Yay, America!"

No matter how ridiculous that all sounds to many of us, there's a significant portion of the country who relish in such simplicity. We don't want to have to think about complicated problems or work through unclear solutions. Making things black and white, removing all the gray area and nuance and complexity from the issues, feels refreshing to a lot of people. It doesn't matter if it's based on falsehoods instead of facts. Keeping problems simple and making it seem like solutions are cut and dry makes people feel safe.

The problem is, in order to reach that simple, safe world, you have to appeal to people's prejudices and fears. People of every persuasion are easy prey for fear-mongering. Prejudices are common, fear is an easy instinct to manipulate, and Trump is shameless about combining the two. Scary caravans of immigrants. Scary Muslims coming in from scary Muslim countries. Scary gang members moving in next door. Scary poor people coming to live in your suburban neighborhood. Scary rioters. Scary ANTIFA.

I know there's some debate about exactly how racist Trump is, but we don't even have to quantify that. It's very clear that he utilizes and allows for racism when it suits his needs. Same with xenophobia. Same with partisan tribalism. Again, Trump is all about Trump. And pushing people's prejudice buttons, indicating when they should feel fear or enmity and then convincing them he'll keep them safe with his simple solution is a strategy that works.

One of the weirdest things for those of us outside of Trumpland, of course, is that it doesn't matter whether anything he says is true at all. His followers don't seem to care that he lies constantly and egregiously. I've heard some try to brush it off as "Oh, all politicians lie," but no, all politicians don't lie like Trump. Trump doesn't just stretch the truth or mislead by creative wording or omission like most politicians. Trump does the Big Lie thing, where if you say untrue things enough times and with enough conviction, people will believe you, even when what you say is verifiably false.

This part of Trumpism gets tricky, because in order for it to work, you have to also successfully discredit the people who hold politicians accountable and fact check them. Hence the outright dismissal of mainstream media. Hence the constant "Fake News!" drumbeat. Hence today's Twitter rampage against Fox News for actually reporting facts instead of constantly praising him. Hence the proliferation of right-wing news outlets that keep going further and further into conspiracy theory land.

Misinformation is Trump's engine and praise and flattery are Trump's fuel. The more he gets, the more he pushes the simple messaging and fear-mongering that give people the brain chemical releases they crave. (If you think people don't like having their fears triggered, there's an entire horror movie industry that disagrees with you.) And the more he gives people what they want, the more they give him what he wants—big crowds and rabid fandom and heaps and heaps of adulation. And so the cycle goes on, with Trump seeing himself in the thousands of faces in the crowd, which serve as narcissistic mirrors in which he sees his power and glory.

Which he then turns around and claims is all for them. And they believe him because at this point, his reality is their reality and real reality doesn't exist anymore.

Of course, not everyone has full-on fallen into the Trump cult. We can't discount the role that good old-fashioned self-interest plays in some people's decision. There are a whole lot of people who simply don't want to pay taxes, don't care who Trump's policies hurt, and think destroying the dignity of the office of the presidency is a small price to pay for filling their own pocketbook. There are also those who will put up with anything if they think it'll "own the libs."

So yeah. Trump's support is not hard to understand. Between playing on people's loyalties, prejudices and fears, and manipulating people with misinformation, Trump's demagoguery works the way it has always worked in other cultured countries throughout history. Americans are not immune to the psychological pull of a "Dear Leader" type—we're just incredibly lucky that this particular demagogue also happens to be an incompetent fool.

I know that Trump supporters will fall all over themselves trying to claim that I've gotten them all wrong here, but here's what they'll miss. If they genuinely believe that a known conman who has embarrassed the country on the world stage and whose pandemic oversight has caused countless American deaths is a truly a better choice than a man with more than four decades in government and who is personally well-liked on both sides of the aisle, then whatever they believe about either Biden or the Democrats is almost assuredly based on misinformation pushed in Trump's unreality.

At this point, you can't support Trump and be living in the same objective reality as the rest of humanity. You really can't. And if you are living in objective reality and chose him anyway? Sorry, but you've got some soul-searching to do.

There's nothing more to be understood at this point.

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