Donald Trump’s supporters, like the man himself, are not what you’d call gracious losers, so it comes as no surprise that they’re taking The Donald’s second-place finish in Iowa hard. And given Trump’s own forays into conspiracy theory (all that birther stuff), it’s also not exactly a shock to see his fans claiming that the Iowa caucuses were rigged.
What is a little surprising is who they’ve picked as the supervillain in the alleged plot against Trump. Not the winner of the Iowa caucuses, Ted Cruz, but Marco Rubio — the guy who came in third, after Trump. With a little help from the dastardly computer whizzes at Microsoft.
Their peculiar theory, first spread on 8chan and then picked up by such highly reputable publications as Breitbart and Infowars and Return of Kings, is that Microsoft, which provided free software used to count the votes in the caucuses, rigged the vote to make sure that Trump came in second and that Rubio won.
Oh, sorry, I forgot. Rubio didn’t win. He came in third place. After Trump.
But hey, the conspiracy theorists claim, he got more votes than people thought he would! And Trump didn’t win. Therefore skullduggery.
The “proof?” First, Trump lost, which his fans can’t imagine could have happened without vote rigging behind the scenes. Second, Microsoft was the second biggest donor in Rubio’s last Senate campaign. CHECKMATE.
But as Philip Bump of the Washington Post points out, Microsoft is only “sort of Rubio’s second-biggest donor.” The $33,000 that the Center for Responsive Politics reported as coming from Microsoft did not all or even mostly come from the company itself. As Bump explains, “most of that money came from various people working at Microsoft.”
Naturally, Trump’s fans — including a number of people familiar to readers of this blog — aren’t buying this debunking. On the Twitter hashtag #MicrosoftRubioFraud, the accusations are flying. As is the racism and homophobia.
https://twitter.com/basedmattforney/status/694366883676622848
https://twitter.com/genophilia/status/694365183276224513
https://twitter.com/genophilia/status/694375549360189440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/genophilia/status/694569313244557312
https://twitter.com/brelly1978/status/694612090506600448
https://twitter.com/thpuzzler2/status/694603418690834432
https://twitter.com/AidanTierian/status/694376320873144320
https://twitter.com/JihadTheJews/status/694615181385568256
@deutsche_physik @Ricky_Vaughn99 I am against Rubio but Microsoft isnt doing this to protect illegal Mexian programmers. its #WhiteGenocide
— ProWhitesUnite (@prowhitesunite) February 2, 2016
https://twitter.com/Krauserpua/status/694489309030780928
But a few managed to find a silver lining:
https://twitter.com/arierhase/status/694380385635962880
And yes, he did refer to the Iowa caucuses as the Iowa CUCKus.
One Tweeter managed to find some humor in it all:
https://twitter.com/Marmel/status/694438587836690432
Clippy is one sneaky bastard, huh?
“Ibn al-Khattab @JihadTheJews
Down With AntiWhites @prowhitesunite”
It’s so inspiring to see a dude with an Arabic name (and a somewhat suggestive twitter handle) and a white supremacist join forces in their hatred of other ethnicities. Trump really does bring people together.
(oh my god yes firefox, “ethnicities” is in fact a real word)
Interesting…interesting…could it be that Microsoft would prefer any other Republican but Trump as a candidate?
Yeah, but that’s also most people.
Well, until he got on Twitter.
http://img.wonkette.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/trump5.png
“I will keep doing, but not worth it!”
It’s good to know he has such a sound fiscal policy.
@Katz:
BULL. FUCKIN. SHIT.
His campaign is not “Self-funded”. Plenty of gross people donated to another gross person.
Not to mention his shady “veterans’ fund” thing.
@ CPphazor:
“At this rate we’re gonna sink back into the 50s. :/”
No. We’ve got to remember that Trump, Cruz and their followers are a lunatic fringe whose influence and media coverage is way out of proportion to their numbers. All the decent people have to do is get off their asses and vote, and we’ll be all right, or at least no worse off than we are now. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself…
Trump’s a uniter, not a divider!
And I really think it is considerate of the right-wing wackadoodles to have such obviously vile Twitter handles, as it makes avoiding them so much easier.
There’s a tradition over here in parliamentary elections that you always vote for your opponent so no-one ever gets zero votes (Aww).
I asked one of my chambers mates if he done this. He said he would have done but he wasn’t on the electoral register. That’s the level of commitment I want in an MP.
(Theoretically you’re supposed to be on the electoral roll in order to stand but that’s often missed because you don’t have to live in your own constituency, and this guy was up against someone who was bound to win anyway so it’s not like he was going to have to move there)
One of my other chambers mates actually wanted to be an MP. He initially stood for Labour but when the Tories offered him a safe seat he changed sides.
And people ask why I’m not into politics 🙂
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehman_Chishti
ETA: I really hope Reh becomes Prime Minister one day, because I still have the photos from the chambers Christmas party and it will be handy to have immunity from prosecution 😉
This is awesome. If even just 10% of Trump voters refuse to vote because they think the nomination was stolen from him, then the GOP’s chances in November drop considerably.
It was my expectation this caucus/primary season that Trump would have a temper tantrum about not winning, then insult any state that did not give him a win. I did not expect that his followers would provide such . . . um . . . “entertainment.” I really should be embarrassed for this country since these idiots are either becoming more vocal or more abundant.
Even if every penny of it had been his money, that would just mean “I’m really really really rich.” Only a GOP candidate could think that in and of itself was a selling point.
I’d actually argue that Trump supporters are probably right to aim their ire at Rubio – I strongly suspect that the RNC will do everything in its power to give the nomination to Rubio simply to ensure they’re not stuck with either Cruz or Trump, neither of whom are willing to work with them.
But it didn’t work, Rubio got third – …
http://i.imgur.com/bF3CoDj.jpg
“And now we just press this button and your victory is assured!”
*Automatically installing 1 of 233 updates. There’s fuck all you can do to interrupt this*
“Bugger”
Dear weirwoodtreehugger:
That second .gif almost makes me not terrified of bears
Ben Carson accused Ted Cruz of rigging the election by falsely telling people that Carson had dropped out and they should therefore switch their votes to Cruz.
Cruz’s campaign has actually apologized and admitted they should have clarified that Carson wasn’t actually dropping out. So there was something fishy going on with the results of this caucus, but it wasn’t what the neo-Nazis thought it was.
My local zoo has 3 grizzly bears. Their little pond is right up against the glass wall. One time when I was visiting, two of the bears were wrestling in the pool, right up against the glass. It was really cool to see that so up close, but it was also a little scary. Especially since a couple of years later, one of the bears managed to break one of the layers of glass!
https://youtu.be/nFmqIxStDXY
They are super cute though
https://youtu.be/-xC-8Vhw1l4
At this point, Iowa mostly seems to serve as an excuse for low-performing candidates to suspend their campaigns.
I can’t say I’m surprised to hear Cruz’s campaign pulled a dirty trick out of their bag.
@SFHC
That cat photo . . .
***
These neo-Nazis have an utterly absurd conspiracy theory. Dudes, do you even theorize?
It’s clear that Microsoft was not behind Trump’s loss. No, it was behind Sanders’ “loss.” Microsoft used its terrifying black box program to rig the coin tosses.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/coin-toss-broke-6-clinton-sanders-deadlocks-in-iowa-and-hillary-won-each-time-2016-02-02
I know this is a bit weird coming from me, and feel free to call me out on my detachment when it comes to non animal stuff, but can I make a plea to people to think very carefully about zoos?
Some zoos do great work in the fields of research and conservation, but creatures like bears are used to a much larger habitat. They’re inherently curious in nature and need a lot of stimulation. They get that in the wild, but no matter how nice captivity conditions are (and I know a lot of zoo staff genuinely care about the animals they supervise) they’re still a very inadequate substitute.
There’s a reason that bear tried to escape.
I think the point of the OP was that conspiracy theories don’t look good on anyone.
The bear wasn’t trying to escape. It was playing with a rock. The Minnesota Zoo is very good at providing large areas that are similar to the animal’s natural habitat. The tiger habitat is so big that you often don’t even get a glimpse of them. You can’t really see the whole habitat in those videos, but the bear habitat is sizable as well. Plus, the birds get to fly free in the tropical area (indoor and climate controlled because Minnesota). There used to be dolphins at the MN Zoo, but they transferred them because they kept getting sick or dying and even though the dolphins were very popular, they would rather not have dolphins than be irresponsible.
I know some zoos are shit, but the Minnesota Zoo is pretty great. I don’t go to the other zoo in my area, the Como Zoo because I think the animals don’t have good enough habitats. Although I hear they’ve gotten better.
Some zoo habitats are particularly horrendous, but for animals like bears, no matter how large an enclosure they still suffer. They can have territories of hundreds of square miles in the wild. It doesn’t take them long to fully absorb the repetitive environment of a zoo paddock.
Be wary of organisations that operate for profit saying escaping animals are just playing, they can hardly broadcast the truth.
A gilded cage and all that.
Cetacean captivity is just evil. They capture the dolphins at a place called Taiji. Check out the videos, but make sure you have a sick bag. They capture whole pods of dolphins, that can be 50 at a time, select the ones the zoos and seaparks want (they go for $250,000 a time) and slaughter the rest. No, I don’t know why either.
http://www.zoocheck.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Cherokee_Bear_Welfare_Report.pdf
@ WWTH
Check this out (TW for animal cruelty). You’re brilliant at speaking out against injustice so the cause could really do with your help 🙂
http://youtu.be/kzGKPhdsWSI