this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023

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251

Donald Trump May 'Turn Off the Internet' if Elected, Former Staffer Says (www.newsweek.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Newsweek.com

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 10 months ago (2 children)

"He could invoke powers we've never heard a President of the United States invoke—potentially to shut down companies or turn off the internet or deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil," he added. "We don't know because the things that are in there, the emergency powers of the president, aren't widely known to the American people.

Wow, it’s almost like we’ve consolidated too much power in the Executive Branch and should do something about it before a despotic asswipe gets elected by an unhinged, manipulated populace.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Again. With nothing to lose this time...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Worse, he's got everything to lose if he doesn't find power to abuse to get him out of the hole he's currently hanging over.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

This was on the principle that only the most intelligent and qualified would serve....wich tbh....they should have seen it comming

[–] [email protected] 61 points 10 months ago (1 children)

No matter where an election is coming up - people tend to vote against their interests. This meme popped up in my head when I read this thread:

[+] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Regarding your edit: This might be the reason, why people tend to vote against their interests. To weed out competition. For instance, people would happily vote against free school lunch - even if the option of free school lunch would benefit them - just because some different ethnical and/or political group would not receive that benefit either.

I see a very similar behavior in German politics right now: The right-wing party (AfD) is gaining popularity and the conservative party (CDU) is going to lose voters towards them. In order to appeal to voters they want to (very oversimplified) alter social welfare benefits to the worse and keep minimum wage from rising, all while claiming that immigration (among other things) is the issue. But those who are voting for the right wing party and the conservative party as well are the ones who clearly would benefit from better social welfare an a higher minimum wage. These people would rather decline any improvements regarding social welfare and minimum wage, so that others (immigrants for example) would not benefit from them either.

Edit: typos

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

More than 50% of white women voted for Trump? Do you have a source for this?!

I'm genuinely asking here, because that's gross as fuck if true. I'm a white woman. I couldn't imagine voting for that POS, however, my mother is suuuuuuper into the "Bible" so I know she did. My parents are unfortunately super fans of his. I didn't think that there were that many like her though.

Edit: I was so appalled I looked myself. I did find a bunch of stuff supporting it like truthout andthe guardian, which is absolutely fucking infuriating to me.

I did see that when it came to women with college, more did vote for Clinton than Trump, but it wasn't enough to outweigh when combined with those who lacked a college education.

FFS. This stat actually massively upsets me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Exit polling shows Trump 39 Clinton 54 for 2016,

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/

Trump 44-Biden 54 for 2020.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/

Alarming that it went up, though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Those numbers are for women as a whole. Looking just at white women, using the same sources:

2016: 45% Clinton 47% Trump

2020: 46% Biden 53% Trump

[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

My thoughts and prayers have started ringing to the tune of "please gods may Trump have a heart attack / stroke at the worst possible time for the Republicans and spare the rest of the world another term of American foreign policy behaving as though it was conceived by racist, classist and eight kinds of phobic Elmer Fudd "

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Another term? If he gets in again, he ain't leaving until he's dead. It's glaringly obvious that he plans to become a dictator like his friends Putin and Kim.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Dude is 77 years old and eats like a garbage panda. Gods willing he at best lasts like 4 years

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If thoughts and prayers actually worked, Donald Trump's head would have exploded like a scene from "Scanners" on one of his countless TV appearances.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If Trump elected, America has "turned off its brain", I say

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If Trump elected again*

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

Turned its brain back off

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (2 children)

He's also promising to go into people's houses at night and wreck up the place.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Arrroooooo!!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I feel a jowl movement coming on!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I literally just watched this scene minutes before I read this.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Please Donald piss off the wrong people. I double dog dare you.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If the Internet goes off, it means most of the US will be pissed off at him. Cellphones would be basically useless.

His followers wouldn't be able to access their favorite propaganda and conspiracy theories, either, so maybe they'd sober up a bit. Either way, it would not be good for him.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean, he can't. Even if he claims to have the executive power, even if he found a bunch of lackeys willing to try to do it for him, he can't do it. Whatever he did would be unenforceable. You can't just turn off the Internet. That's literally the reason we invented it in the first place, it's a communication network resilient against nuclear strikes and war and bad-faith governance all at once.

He could probably make it very hard to use, given a lot of time, but he'd be eaten alive by the angry populace long before it ever reached that point.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (3 children)

How many internet service providers would have to go along before the internet was effectively off? 3? 4?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

You wouldn't need an ISP to have servers communicate, if push comes to shove. So maybe "effectively off" as we know it, but damn near impossible to stop communication if people need it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean, off for whom? There's people who think facebook IS the internet and will be forced to go outside if they can't read their racist memes today. For critical comms, you'd have to shut off way more than 3 or 4 big companies to make a dent. For sensitive, high-bandwidth applications that involve a lot of people being online at once, you would need to hit fewer before the damage is noticeable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I agree that the internet is far more than facebook. But if you're blocked at the edge of the network by your ISP, there's really not much you can do. You'll have access to nothing, Facebook or otherwise. Not even something low bandwidth.

If At&t, Comcast, Charter, Verizon, and T-Mobile suddenly stopped providing service to all their customers, then essentially no-one would be able to use anything on the internet at all. Even if the backbone itself (which I believe is largely owned by those same companies, but not sure) and some large datacenters that are their own isps were able to keep talking to each other, anything business or user facing would stop.

Some people who run their own mesh networks might be able to stay in contact (and people would try and start some local ones as this disaster unfolds), but that's so few people.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Who are the wrong people? Have people similar to them offered significant resistance to past fascist regimes?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yes.

The first time they lost because liberals actively embargoed them while selling guns and oil under the table to the fascists.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It was built to survive a nuclear war.

It will survive Trump.

Even if I have to drive a station wagon full of backup tapes myself.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (4 children)

There are countries that turn off the internet all the time. There's a only a few major Telcos that control all backbone infra. It could definitely happen

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thankfully, he thinks unplugging the router in the Oval Office breaks it for everyone else, too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

He'll just keep hitting the reload button in his browser. Makes it hard for anybody to read anything.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

He already turns everyone else off, so why not?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Who here is old enough to remember the "internet kill switch"?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

many countries have them. they are used to orchestrate media blackouts.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Not sure why you are downvoted. Some countries even use them during testing times so students don't cheat or get distracted or whatever when taking tests. I'm not even kidding

https://pulse.internetsociety.org/blog/tracking-internet-shutdowns-in-2023

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's the sort of thing that leads to actual unrest.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

His MAGAlings must be shocked that he said he'd consult Bill Gates. Of course, cognitive dissonance is like water off a duck's back to them, so that won't last long.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That worked out well for Mubarak.

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