Twitter hides Donald Trump tweet for “glorifying violence”

"We start from a position of assuming that people do not intend to violate our Rules. Unless a violation is so egregious that we must immediately suspend an account, we first try to educate people about our Rules and give them a chance to correct their behavior. We show the violator the offending Tweet(s), explain which Rule was broken, and require them to remove the content before they can Tweet again. If someone repeatedly violates our Rules then our enforcement actions become stronger. This includes requiring violators to remove the Tweet(s) and taking additional actions like verifying account ownership and/or temporarily limiting their ability to Tweet for a set period of time. If someone continues to violate Rules beyond that point then their account may be permanently suspended."

Somewhere a counter was just incremented. It's going to be amusing if Twitter management simply lets the automated system do its thing. At some point, after warnings, the standard 48-hour suspension will trigger. Twitter management can simply simply say "it is our policy not to comment on enforcement actions".

They've suspended the accounts of prominent people many times before.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions

https://www.avclub.com/twitter-releases-statement-confirming...

"Twitter releases statement confirming it'll never ban Donald Trump"

0. https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1266347307391488002

They didn't suspend Spike Lee who caused direct harm to a private individual who happened to share a name with an infamous individual: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/spike-lee-settles-twi...

Edit: Don't understand the sentiment. Are there any radical left accounts with as much reach as the POTUS, that engage in similar behaviour that I am not aware of? If they exist, they should be trivial to link to. Looking at the top Twitter accounts, they consist of Barack Obama, YouTube, Modi, Bill Gates and a bunch of celebrities. Are any of those folks radical left? Will Lady Gaga or Katy Perry be opening the 2021 Superbowl halftime with "Internationale?"

P.S. I know this comment is auto-dead, and that's okay.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/trayvon-martin-spike-...

When a tweet is deemed response-worthy, they should post the report numbers. Value in numbers shields them in many ways and could legitimize their actions as a neutral party. Then, if they miss something, they can simply say there weren't enough reports. This will then empower the feature in the future.

I suggest this as active Reddit moderator with a community of 40,000+ subscribers who regularly has to enforce rules and uses auto-mod to help manage reports and shares that with the community.

-----------------------

You can report tweets for:

(1) Being not interested in it (you just get redirected to a mute or block button)

(2)It's suspicious or spam

---> The account is fake

---> Includes a link to a potentially harmful or phishing site

---> Hashtags are unrelated

---> Uses the reply function to spam

---> Something else

(3) It's abusive or harmful

---> It's disrespectful

---> Includes private information

---> Includes targeted harassment

---> It directs hate against a protected category (eg race, religions, gender, orientation, disability)

---> Threatening violence

---> They're encouraging self-harm or suicide

(4) It's misleading about politics or civic events

---> It has false information about how to vote

---> It intends to suppress or intimidate someone from voting

---> It misrepresents it's affiliation or impersonates an official

(5) It expresses intentions of self-harm or suicide.

-----------------------

It's pretty good but I would suggest the very simple following updates:

- Updating the main issue (It's abusive or harmful) to (It's abusive or encourages violence or destruction of property)

- Adding a sub-issue to (It's misleading about politics or civic events) with (A political official is supporting false or unsubstantiated information as definitive truth.)

- Adding a sub-issue to (It's suspicious, spam, or false) with (It's supporting false or unsubstantiated information as definitive truth.)

- Adding chevron icons (>) as a visual cue that each main reporting issue has many sub-issues

I wouldn't be surprised if Twitter has exempted Trump's accounts from all automated moderation. However, I'm half expecting them to ban him about twelve seconds after he leaves office.

I think so. The GP's use of the term "leftist lunatics" reads as a right-wing shibboleth to me.

You are missing the forest for the trees.

Twitter's business model is totally reliant on controversy. They want to treat/control, but not cure/extinguish.

Which is a separate reason that twitter's ethically conflicted in making almost any judgment calls on what's "allowable" speech.

Additionally, the nature of mud-slinging politics requires that ones opponents "follow" his online presence in able to attack. So if Trump leaves Twitter, not only do his followers go to whatever new platform he does, but so must his adversaries.

Twitter doesn't want that.

At the top management level, they are probably weighing the possibility that he never leaves office (a plausible scenario at this point), and how that scenario affects their bottom line.

They probably don’t want US institutions to dissolve into full-blown autocracy... But on the other hand, if that were to happen, then it would be better for the stock price if they hadn’t burned all bridges with the new leader for life.

You can bet that Zuckerberg is making the same calculus - except that he seems to have chosen a side. Facebook is no longer pretending to care about preventing autocracy. They are betting on the GOP coup succeeding, and are building bridges accordingly.

Note: no amount of downvoting by the alt-right fringe lurking here will make the facts go away. Downvote away since you don’t have the courage to write down and justify your true beliefs. You are an embarrassment to the technology community. You are the spineless, petty, cowardly foundation upon which all autocracies are built.

I think you are very far from reality

So definitely not "a counter incremented somewhere". This is a political decision.

What facts? What alt-right fringe?

Trump was voted in by tens of millions of Americans and still has tens of millions of supporters.

> At the top management level, they are probably weighing the possibility that he never leaves office (a plausible scenario at this point)

Trump is in his 70s...

> since you don’t have the courage to write down and justify your true beliefs

What true beliefs are you hinting at here and why would they take courage to write down?

which will be in 18 years

> Since assuming office in January 2017, Trump has made at least 27 references to staying in office beyond the constitutional limit of two terms. He often follows up with a remark indicating he is “joking,” “kidding,” or saying it to drive the “fake” news media “crazy.” Even if Trump thinks that he’s only “joking,” the comments fit a broader pattern that raises the prospect that Trump may not leave office quietly in the event he’s on the losing end of a very close election.

Approx. 4000 employees of Twitter all around the world. Every day 100k (edit: 100M) tweets are sent. The reports of tweets that violate the platform policy are (reported by public) enter a queue. These are then inspected by personnel hired by Twitter (number varies proportionally to the scale reports in the queue).

The personnel then go through a series of steps to take an action such as making you verify again, delete those tweets, suspending the account, or in the last resort ban the user permanently.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCBRHOg3PQ

Also, how would he and his family stay out of jail if they can no longer control the judiciary and FBI?

I do not agree that the scenario you're talking about is probable (which is indicated by plausible). Perhaps you mean possible? Sure, but in that case it's also possible money instantly has no meaning, there is no Congress, there are no states, there are no judges or generals, there are no prison sentences, there are no laws at all whatsoever. Nothing matters, everything is possible.

That is a sense of unpredictability a society does not trend toward no matter how ill it is.

But try to understand that completely ending all constitutional order is not how revolutions tend to progress. Even in the U.S. civil war, there were two (federal) constitutions in place for two sets of states. There was order, even in that chaos.

I agree Trump has autocratic tendencies. But he is a weak minded fool. He will not make for a strong autocrat, he even contradicts himself and dithers too much for this. He is Side Show Bob. He's a distraction. To succeed he would need a very high percentage of authority, trust, and compliance - and there's just no way he's going to get that.

I question whether he even does something to sabotage the election. On January 20th his term of office expires. At noon he is not the POTUS if there's been no election. Further, there's no House of Representatives, because their term expires on January 3rd. And 1/3 of Senators are not Senators. But at 12:01pm on January 20th, there is a person who will become POTUS without an election. And that's the President pro tempore of the Senate. Following that, the states will surely already be figuring out how to reinstitute the House through either appointments or new elections. It's not up to the federal government. But to pass new laws, including a new election to make up for the delayed one, we'll need a Congress.

That has never happened. I can tell you many examples from history, things that are way more likely than any of this. Including from American history. Some of those things are violent, even in fact violent for just one person, that are way more likely than autocracy.

Trump's best chance is for the election to proceed.

So, while you can't for sure predict what's going to happen next, just try to have some imagination for rare events that have happened rather than events that have never happened. Trump is a chickenshit asshole but that's like, the least remarkable or interesting thing going on here, because he's been a chickenshit asshole his whole life - not news! And that doesn't really highly qualify (or disqualify) him as an autocrat. He's not going to be one because he's just too incompetent and steps on his own dick every chance he gets. Just try to calm down, let him have enough rope to hang himself, and he will.

[0] https://www.internetlivestats.com/twitter-statistics/#source...

What happens to the “experts” when they are wrong?

Go check into the Qanon cult and similar circles. There are conservatively probably a few hundred thousand people in this country that would take up arms against the (literal) baby eating pedophile illuminati. All he has to do is say "the storm is upon us" and provide instructions. "Where we go one we go all."

Can any constitutional scholars comment on what happens then? What if he as commander in chief orders the military to stand down? Would they obey him or protect the constitution? What about the national guard? Local police? What would any of these agencies do if removing Trump required opening fire on tens of thousands of Americans?

Reagan, Clinton, and Obama were much more broadly popular than Trump, but the thought of them attempting this and having any chance of success is laughable. I don't even think Bush II could have pulled it off right after 9/11 at the peak of his popularity and with his powerful religious right base.

Trump on the other hand has a fan base unlike any I've ever seen. If you don't believe me research Qanon. There's a shockingly large group of people who worship him as something almost akin to a prophet. I'm sure there's some percentage who would die for him. It's a bit disturbing.

I agree that it's unlikely, but it is plausible.

Personally I think he will leave office, but what he has accomplished is to pave the way for an actual future dictator.

If the COVID recession plus unlimited QE results in further divergence between the real economy and the financial economy I could definitely see real fascism or totalitarian socialism winning some day. As I've been saying for a while, which one we get probably depends on which side is able to field the most compelling demagogue. I don't think people will care about left or right as long as there are pitchforks being handed out.

But I would love to be able to agree with you. That would be a better world. But the world we live in is where the President says "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," a racist dog whistle to the 1960s, who "jokes" about staying past any term limits, where enablers in Congress and in the media allow him to toe the line of criminal behavior with no accountability as long as it benefits them. That's reality. I wish it were different, but I cannot take your position and reconcile it with what's in front of us today.

Meanwhile, Trumps only "autocrat" proof is words? He talks snit... What has he done to become a King? Nothing he's done so far isn't powers used by previous Presidents - including Obama.

What actual has Trump taken to expand Presidential powers? And what steps has Trump taken to become a King?

Because until actual actions are taken... words are just Trump talking shit. Which he's allowed to do...

This seems true for a normal president, but Trump has never been shy about self enrichment even while in office, so it's not clear what incentive there is for him to leave.

At least since Augustus, dictators have been diligent in paying lip service to law and established tradition while trampling over both.

This is already part of American history. You're describing some amazing world where people follow the rules even during chaotic situations, and I guarantee that will not happen if there's a contested Presidential election with Donald Trump on the losing side. It will be a lot more like the racist South trying to claw back its power, because his most ardent followers are exactly the same kinds of people. He doesn't need to be good at being an autocrat, he just needs to encourage enough people to support him no matter what, and eventually he'll encourage someone who IS good at it. So you're right that he is not the risk, alone, but he's not alone. He's surrounded by enablers, criminals, and domestic terrorists who have a vested interest in his success.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but how would there be "no election" to that degree? Rather than a single, centrally-coordinated federal election, doesn't the US have 50 state-coordinated elections (emphasis on the plural)? So to truly cancel the elections in November, you'd have to have buy in from all 50 state governments. In a slightly more realistic (yet still unrealistic) scenario you'd still have a POTUS, but one elected by electors from the states that held elections, and there'd still be a House of Representatives, but only with members from states that didn't participate in the cancellation.

I suppose the situation would be similar to what must have happened during the Civil War.

At the end of the day there is no such thing as "the law". They are just words written on paper.

When I worked there we handled about ~6k tweets/sec all day every day. (~500,000,000 tweets/day)

He’d also have to be astoundingly popular among the Secret Service for them to betray their oaths. His military support would tank, and him, his family, and administration would be in constant fear for their lives. IMO, he’s just not that insane, stupid, or popular enough to even try.

Post your sources.

-Large book deal, with title "Winning: How I Made America Great Again Despite All The Dummy Losers In Washington"

-Some sort of talk show or network

-But mostly, going back to licensing the use of his name all over the place

As for staying out of jail, he might not, but I suspect a combination of fuzzily enforced regulations and big money lawyers will keep him out.

1. Sarah Kendzior. PhD on the topic of autocracy (specifically Uzbekistan). Investigative journalist on the topic of corruption in the Trump administration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Kendzior

2. Tim Snyder. Professor of History at Yale university. https://www.timothysnyder.org/

3. Laurence Tribe. Professor of Constitutional law at Harvard. https://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/laurence-tribe-mitch-mcconn...

Now, your turn. Can you cite credible experts who disagree with this consensus?

shrug

At that moment it is less about law than it is about character of other leaders. Does the Vice President, who is still the VP following his own election loss, contradict the POTUS' election fraud claims and call for violence? Necessarily on the table is 25th amendment and/or impeachment. A call for violent revolution to achieve the dissolution of constitutional order is unquestionably a violation of oath of office for any elected official.

People are conditioned to think that an impeachment would take a week or more. If Congresscritters actually get scared? They can follow strict rules of order and still get it done very quickly. Hours. The real impediments to speed are physical presence in the chamber. Not opposition. They will not wait for TV cameras, spectator chairs or tickets to get printed. If they really believe the POTUS is trying to incite an overthrow of the government, which is what autocracy means, they know full well they are inside the blast radius of imploding power.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

Statements like this won't get you taken seriously.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/one-year-after...

The federal government is being stripped for parts, as we speak. Entire agencies have been gutted. Industrial conglomerates can literally regulate their own industries - for a price. Foreign leaders can influence foreign policy - for a price. Federally endicted criminals can get out of jail as if nothing had happened - for a price.

The level of grift and corruption is unlike anything the US has ever known. If Trump remains in power - which he is absolutely planning to do at all cost - it will only get worse. The end game for him is to create a new dynasty of oligarchs - at the same level of the Saudi royal family or Putin. Compared to that, the book deals and talk shows are nothing - crumbs. He wants to join the club. And that requires staying in power so that he can 1) continue stealing billions from the US public, and 2) continue corrupting the federal government to stay out of jail.

Says who? You've never had a President try to suspend or tamper with an election.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/attack-fun...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/16/us/politics/trump-state-d...

I don't think insider trading law would apply, but in any case we seem to have established that he's above the law and can't be impeached. He, or friends beholden to him, could be trillionaires by the time they leave office.

It would certainly explain why he continually makes inflammatory statements about China and everything else, without seeming to consistently pursue anything.

So you need to look at scenarios where other people do stuff, and why it happens. Are there orders he can give and will people follow them? If not directly due to an order, how does it happen?

Let's say a few states agree to the cancellation? For POTUS and VPOTUS, they need 270 Electoral College votes to win. If states drop out, it's decently likely no one gets to 270. That means the House chooses the president, the Senate chooses the VP. In the House, each state gets one vote. I repeat, one. In the Senate each senator gets a vote. This has happened before and it can take a while. It could possibly take weeks. Also, the Congress that decides this is the new one, not the old one. So some election needs to happen because House terms, every single seat, expires on January 3. Do they have quorum? Did enough states elect House members to have a sitting Congress? shrug

Most states are likely to still be red states in the 2020 Congress, so if the decision goes to the House, Trump will probably get another term. Again, each state just gets one vote.

What do you mean by socialism? What socialist ideas did Obama institute? What is the "ruling class" within socialism?

Regarding Trump: what do you make of him removing the inspector general who had opened an investigation against Pompeo? What do you make of him pushing out Jeff Sessions because Sessions recused himself from the Muller investigation?

Put another way: what would count as stepping toward autocracy, other than an explicit suspension of Congress or the like? Barring outright coups, these things happen incrementally. See Hungary, Brazil, etc.

The idea drives a lot of clicks and ad views though, so I’m sure we’ll see many more speculative articles before the election.

Without such support, all the can do is push peoples buttons. He can ask the national guard to go to the location, which the national guard will likely accept in order to look helpful and useful. He might be able to impose a curfew, through the courts will fight him there. He might even be able to impose rules against large gatherings, which again the courts would fight him over. But I don't see how officers and generals would accept an order to start shooting civilians. Even if we disregard the moral question, just the liability risk from "just following orders" makes me question how much control a president have over the military to do acts which the law and common understanding of the law says are illegal. Intentionally killing your own civilians is a pretty major step for any nations military.

Sending in the national guard is naturally still a terrible idea as someone is likely to get shot accidentally. There was a good reason why the 9/11 military posted at airports wielded guns with empty magazines. Trump has likely the ability to cause accidentally shooting when the looting starts by placing the wrong people at the wrong location with the wrong training and wrong gear. He has a much harder time to accidentally cause a military coup and disband elections.

Look at any nation that underwent major coups; factions form, and it tears the organizations you've listed apart at the seams. Because a conflict of legitimacy exposes those seams, and those seams are absolutely present today. A Secret Service agent, an army colonel, armed militia, border patrol agents—if they can be made to believe the results of the election are illegitimate, they may consider the best way to fulfill their oaths to be stopping the "illegitimate" president from taking office. They will think of themselves as the ones stopping the coup.

I'd love to believe that all of those dynamics you're describing are the same as they were 20 years ago. I'd also make your argument then. But they aren't anymore. It can happen here.

Maduro did it in Venezuela recently, that’s actually a more apt comparison as he packed their Supreme Court to do so.

Trump now though? Nobody fears him, the majority disrespect him, government bureaucracy openly defies him. He doesn’t even have the House, nor enough Republican support to pass laws to enable a power grab, nor a Supreme Court loyal to him before the constitution.

But I'd imagine that the states that dropped out of the election would actually get zero votes, and and those would be the states most closely aligned with the president.

> Most states are likely to still be red states in the 2020 Congress, so if the decision goes to the House, Trump will probably get another term. Again, each state just gets one vote.

But like I noted above, the red states would be the ones that would be more likely to follow Trump's lead an drop out of an election. I only count 24 red-tinted states on Wikipedia's map, so a few drop outs would actually hurt the Republicans.

But if it got to the red states picking that, would they be obligated to pick an official presidential candidate? I'd hope the Republicans would at least pick a president that isn't as deranged as Trump. On the other hand, Trump's derangement isn't a completely bad thing, because it leads him to pursue his objectives incompetently.

>"... Twitter now selectively decides to place a warning label on certain tweets in a manner that clearly reflects political bias. As has been reported, Twitter seems never to have placed such a label on another politician’s tweet. .."

When a car manufacture represents their 18-wheeler fleet as a 'passenger cars' -- we understand that this is a lie and demand corrective action.

When twitter manufactures opinions and hides them as 'public forum discourse' -- we are supposed to be ok with that?

I would be ok if their manufactured opinions are displayed to paid subscribers only, who want to care what Jack Dorsey thinks about President Trump, obamagate or Brexit.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...

- Informed populace. Really? It seems to me that propaganda and disinformation are rampant. The rise of radio broadcasts parallels the rise of National Socialism in Germany. Hitler understood the power of this new form of media, and used it to build a superior propaganda apparatus. The same thing is happening now with the combo of cable news and social media.

- Supreme court is now 5-4. The last two nominations do meet the bar of independence and due process. Neither do dozens of federal judge appointments that the Senate is railroading in unprecedented numbers.

- The entire GOP is compromised. Those who are not aligned with Trump have resigned. Remember Paul Ryan? Everyone who is left is fully aware of the new marching orders: absolute loyalty to Trump and his family. Breaking the law is ok - you will be protected. And if the law gets in the way, change it.

- The DoJ is compromised. For example, Federal charges were dropped against Michael Flynn, a federally indicted accomplice of Trump. That has never happened before.

- The election system is compromised. See the revelations by whistleblower Reality Winner. Note that no action has been taken - except exceptionally harsh prison sentence against Winner in retaliation for leaking the fact that the elect infrastructure is under attack.

- The FBI is compromised. Trump and his family have been under surveillance since the 1980s as known associates of the Russian mafia. It’s the only plausible explanation to the FBI leaving him, a known criminal, entirely alone, while choosing to sabotage Clinton with Comey’s eleventh hour announcement.

- ICE is now effectively a para-military operation loyal to Trump personally.

- The Treasury has been compromised by Russian agents since 2015. With Trump appointees now in charge, things have only gotten worse.

- Multiple state legislatures are compromising beyond repair. For example Missouri is deeply corrupt, and effectively controlled by the GOP in perpetuity regardless of popular vote. There is a vicious circle of electoral impunity leading to more dismantling of anti-corruption regulation, which allows more shady practices to tip the electoral scales even further. In Georgia, the secretary of state used his authority to “disappear” thousands of ballots and get himself fraudulently elected as Governor.

- Let’s not even get into the countless state and city police agencies that are infiltrated by white supremacists.

The coup is already underway.

It's no-longer a question of if the Democrats respond, it's a question of how.

2) Also, that seems like something which would make more money for someone else, which does not fit with my model of Trump's behavior.

Right. So you can't assume that outcome. You have to figure out some edge case that would cause toss up states to either drop out, or have their Electors challenged. I think it's less likely a state cancels elections, than having their Electors challenged, even though neither has happened.

>But if it got to the red states picking that, would they be obligated to pick an official presidential candidate?

Yes 11th amendment. House must choose from the top three receiving EC votes.

Actual court packing is a terrible idea, last attempted by FDR, at great political cost. Hearing candidates actively propose plans for doing so boggled my mind.

Maybe not so much. Didn't this court gut important parts of the the Voting Rights Act?

Is everything that disagrees with Trump now "political bias"?

I'm not even from the US and I know what "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" means and what outcome it envisions.

> When twitter manufactures opinions and hides them as 'public forum discourse' -- we are supposed to be ok with that?

What are these opinions? Can you speak them out loud? Which opinions are being hidden? Can you write down the message of these opinions in plain words?

Could you write down these opinions as if they were your own, without violating HN's house rules?

* highly customized and sharded, required team of senior MySQL DBAs to maintain, but still just MySQL.

Using the military to quell civil unrest means people getting shot. Last time in 1992 on the order of George HW Bush, the resulted was 50 dead and 2000 injured.

Unless a person is talking about using the military to assist with natural disasters, the person is envisioning the violence of "when the looting starts, the shooting starts".

The SEC is irrelevant if there's no specific law against it, never mind that there's no evidence anyone can prosecute for anything even if it was a crime.

As far as making money for someone else, doing a "friend" a favor is not the same thing as charity, nor is laundering money through a proxy. If you hypothetically give away a trillion dollars without receiving anything in return formally that doesn't mean you haven't bought something. Ownership is only the convention that other people think you own something, backed up by some sort of written records somewhere.

IF a POTUS can use force to stop them, it is extra-constitutional, and at that point this person is not POTUS but something else.

I think much of the media (bbc, reuters, vox, cnbc, msnbc, abc, cnn, buzzfeed, huffingtonpost, twitter's leadership) basically are the propaganda arm of the anti-Trump Coup.

The use a multi-level approach to execute and to protect it:

- to keep legitimacy of their disinformation efforts, keep 10-15% of the reporting as 'neutral', and then flood the 90% of the time with anti-president message.

This tactic allows for what I call: Plausible Deniability.

When you confront these propagandists about the majority of their disinformation compaign, they point to the '10%' and then claim plausible deniability ('eg we do not do everything wrong)

- Use War propaganda tactics [2]. With emphasis on 4 (We are defending a noble cause, not our particular interests!) and 5 (The enemy is purposefully committing atrocities; if we are making mistakes this happens without intention)

- instigate unrest (and there are a number of tactics to do this, as we are seeing being unrolled)

When you use the above decomposition, it is, at least for me, easy to see what is going on and why.

With regards to:

>".. Could you write down these opinions as if they were your own, without violating HN's house rules?.."

Sure. So let me re-iterate the context

Trump's tweet: >"... ....These THUGS are dishonering the memory of George Floyd, and I won't let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any Difficult and we will assume control, but when looting starts, the the shooting starts.

Thank you. ..."

The twitter suggests that the above is glorifying violence.

I think that an opinion, it is a wrong opinion. And leads to more violence.

I would interpret Trump's message as:

- Laws will be enforced. Help to local police is on the way (in the form of National Guard that Tim Woltz mobilized [1]).

- Physical harm to Innocent people and their property will lead to shootings.

I would interpret Twitter's handling of this as: we do not want law enforcement to enforce laws. Loot all you want, it is your right under the circumstances.

[1] https://www.newsmax.com/politics/tim-walz-george-floyd-riots...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Basic_Principles_of_War_Pr...

I’d love to hear what constitutes your majority of news sources. And also where you live broadly. I almost can’t imagine someone outside of SF who ready HuffPost daily to believe this.

I’d give you 20:1 odds and happily take the bet. I’m very curious how seriously convinced you are about this, as it’s about as far outside what even my extreme leftists friends believe. Not to try and be macho or anything, but I’m very curious how strongly you believe this, or if you are mostly acting as a bellweather, trying to sound an alarm very early on a trend you think others miss.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/shocked-by-th...

I don't see anything about jailing them - and I remember reading a story awhile back about but can't find it. So if I'm wrong on that point, I stand corrected.

With that said - Obama definitely attacked journalists from DC. Spying on them, following them, etc.

> Trump removing various people

Those people work at the Presidents discretion. All previous Presidents have fired staff at various stages for various reasons.

Trump is a businessman who is known for firing people... You may have seen his Reality TV Show. His catch line? YOURE FIRED!

https://www.rollcall.com/2017/05/10/a-list-of-notable-presid...

He has the ability to fire people at will.

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/165983

> The final vote was ten in favor and ten opposed, so Adams, exercising for the first time his Constitutional authority to break a tie, settled the matter in favor of the president’s exclusive removal power.

> The president’s authority to dismiss an appointee is now settled law, but with the text unclear, it had to be settled by the First Federal Congress.

> autocracy

Trump doesn't have the "unlimited powers" of a King or a Dictator though... you can claim it but he's got the same power as those before.

You could argue about "incremental" movements... but Trump hasn't moved the needle any further that I know of. Previous Presidents? Definitely... but Trump has been using everything previous Presidents have used - from Obama on back.

Is that in line with your expectations, given the topic and the manner in which my comments were written?