Remember 2016, when a hostile foreign power hacked the campaign of one of the two primary American presidential candidates and laundered stolen data through a front organization in order to help the other primary presidential candidate? Remember how there are all these massive ongoing investigations into just how much Campaign Number Two helped that hostile foreign power with its attack on Campaign Number One and also American democracy? You'd think patriots on both sides would agree that never shall this ever happen again, because no matter what, AMERICANS need to decide who runs America, and we don't want hostile foreign powers tipping the scales for Republicans, Democrats, or anybody else.
That's right, you'd think that.
Here's a shocker so big you'll need your smelling salts and your blood pressure medication, but the 2020 version of Campaign Number Two, which is fighting for the re-"election" of Individual Number One, won't commit to eschew using hacked/stolen data in order to win. Are you so surprised right now? We are so surprised right now.
The Daily Beast reports that every other major campaign has disavowed such interference/assistance and pledged never to use any sort of hacked/stolen data in order to win in 2020. ALL OF THEM. And Daily Beast knows because they asked ALL OF THEM.
Bernie!
Josh Orton, a top adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), said that the senator "believes the American people want an issue-based campaign," while adding, "We would not use stolen material to attack another candidate."
Gillibrand!
"For my part," Gillibrand [said], "I vow that our campaign will not seek out stolen hacked information from foreign adversaries or knowingly weaponize or promote stolen hacked materials, and I urge all of my colleagues in the 2020 field to pledge the same."
Peter Bootygiggles!
Lis Smith, communications adviser to Mayor Pete Buttigieg's campaign, told The Daily Beast that the candidate "will not use" any hacked materials against fellow candidates.
All of them! EVEN THE COFFEE FUCKHEAD FROM THE SEVENTH LEVEL OF VENTI MOCHA HELL took the pledge.
Here's the Trump campaign, represented by Kayleigh McEnany, who went to Harvard Law and then immediately threw all the tuition money her parents (we're guessing) spent on her in order to pursue a career where she's required to pretend to be dumber than country-fried dogshit gravy at all times:
Numerous attempts to obtain comment from the Trump campaign were not returned. But after publication, Kayleigh McEnany, the Trump campaign's national press secretary, sent the following note: "We're not in the business of taking pledges invented by the liberal online media."
Oh go fuck yourself.
None of this is surprising, of course, because SPOILER ALERT: It's the only way Trump can win in a two-person race for the presidency.
For all the truly ridiculous Monday-morning quarterbacking that happened after the 2016 election -- and is still happening, oh my God shoot us now -- about how Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate and Hillary Clinton was a radical email terrorist and how there was some secret silent majority out there in the hinterlands who propelled Trump into office, the truth has always been that Hillary beat Trump's fucking ass by almost three million votes, and if you minimize the importance of that, you're simply saying you agree that the votes of people in Cowfuck Acres, USA, should count MORE than the votes of millions of people in great big states like California.
We still don't know the full story of Russia's election interference -- there might be a Robert Mueller report next week, there might not be -- but we do know that Robert Mueller indicted a metric fuckton of Russian military intelligence actors and Russian troll farms and that the Department of Justice would liketo arrest Julian Assange and drown WikiLeaks in a bathtub, because it's a front for Russian crimes. Seriously, go back and read all those indictments if you need to Hot Tub Time Machine yourself back to 2016 to remember what really happened.
Trump's approval rating has never crossed 50 percent in a real poll. (Yes, we mean Rasmussen, Trump's favorite polling outfit because it's consistently full of shit, is not a real poll.) That's what happens when you let a huge fucking popular vote loser, despised by the majority of Americans, be the president! The number of Americans who currently say they would never vote for Trump in 2020 is almost 50 percent, a historic and breathtaking number for a president a year and a half out from an election. (Probably-Notters make up another almost 10 percent.)
The point is, barring an X factor like an independent asshole spoiler candidate, Trump really doesn't have many paths to victory besides "cheat again." Sure, Democrats like to fight, but the truth is that the party is more ideologically in sync than it's been in a long-ass time, and Trump's best bet is for somebody -- Russia, China, 400-pound computer whiz from New Jersey -- to hack the Dems, to try to tear us apart so much that people stay home or protest vote if their chosen candidate doesn't win the primary.
BREAKING NEWS: Lookie lookie, it's already happening!
Of course Trump is not going to take the pledge and of course his best buds in hostile foreign nations are going to try to tear us apart. It's their only fucking play. (Besides literally letting Russia hack voting machines, not that we're certain they didn't in 2016.)
But it only works if we let it work. So let's not do that this time!
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