[pessimist]

The Democratic Governor of California denounced them publicly and stopped the effort.

Despite Musk raising millions and campaigning viciously against the Democrats the administration kept all of SpaceX contracts and Tesla ev subsidies. In fact the IRA benefited Tesla disproportionately.

Both sides are NOT the same. One is fascist and the other is not

[ETH_start]

The Democratic White House chose to not invite Tesla to their EV Summit. That was not political?

The Democratic DoJ and Democrat DAGs prosecuted dozens of former Trump administration officials and Trump allies, and even Trump himself:

Trump Administration Officials:

Michael Flynn – Former National Security Advisor

Stephen K. Bannon – Former White House Chief Strategist & Campaign Advisor

Mark Meadows – Former White House Chief of Staff

Jeffrey Clark – Former Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice

Peter Navarro – Former White House Trade Advisor

Trump Allies:

Paul Manafort – Former Trump Campaign Chairman

George Papadopoulos – Former Trump Campaign Foreign Policy Advisor

Rick Gates – Former Trump Deputy Campaign Chairman

Roger Stone – Longtime Trump Advisor and Friend

Michael Cohen – Former Personal Attorney to Donald Trump

Elliott Broidy – Former Trump Fundraiser

Rudolph Giuliani – Attorney to Trump, Former Mayor of New York City

Waltine Nauta – Personal Aide to Trump

Carlos De Oliveira – Property Manager at Mar-a-Lago

Sidney Powell – Trump Campaign Attorney

Kenneth Chesebro – Trump Attorney

Jenna Ellis – Trump Campaign Attorney

John Eastman – Trump Attorney

Dinesh D'Souza – Conservative Commentator, Trump Supporter

Joseph M. Arpaio – Former Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Trump Supporter

Ray Smith III – Trump Attorney

Cathy Latham – Fake Elector, Coffee County GOP Leader

Robert Cheeley – Trump Attorney

David Shafer – Fake Elector, Former Georgia GOP Chair

Mike Roman – Trump Campaign Staffer

Shawn Still – Fake Elector, Then-Georgia State Senator

Scott Hall – Atlanta Bail Bondsman

Misty Hampton – Former Coffee County Elections Supervisor

Steve Lee – Pastor from Illinois

Harrison Floyd – Black Voices for Trump Leader

Trevian Kutti – Publicist from Chicago

I'm sure this was just Democrats following the law, with no bias, right?

This kind of narrative that you're forwarding now where the Republican Party are fascists and Trump is a threat to democracy is exactly the kind of mentality that was used to elicit this enormous persecution of Trump and officials near him.

Meanwhile, the real elephant in the room is always ignored:

The Democrats shovel hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money to large unions in order to secure their support and win elections. This is textbook corruption.

https://politifact.com/factchecks/2022/dec/14/kevin-brady/bi...

The recipients of USAID grants? All Democrats. Same story all across DC. That's why 92.4% of DC voted for Harris. DC, meanwhile, has a per capita GDP of $250,000.

[metabagel]

Because Tesla is anti-union.

[ETH_start]

So politics, not the merit of the EV company. This was a EV company summit, not a labor unions summit.

[rat87]

Policy difference not partisan squables or payback for supporting his opponents. Most Democrats feel Unions are important to help workers (union and nonunion) earn more.

[ETH_start]

To base the decision on what companies to invite to an EV summit on whether they support the Democrats' favorite constituents is pure politics. The only policy difference here is one which helps the Democrats win elections.

[rat87]

It's not

Democrats believe that unions help keep wages high and are good for the economy.

If Musk wasn't anti union he probably would have been invited. I say probably because of Teslas issues with racial discrimination

[throwaway173738]

> The recipients of USAID grants? All Democrats. Same story all across DC. That's why 92.4% of DC voted for Harris. DC, meanwhile, has a per capita GDP of $250,000.

Why shouldn’t the recipients receive these grants other than that they are Democrats? What about their projects makes them not meritorious?

[ETH_start]

If you can't see the opportunity for corruption and bias here, then there's nothing I can do to convince you. This is always a story when people call Republicans corrupt or fascists and say the Democrats are not. They have absolutely no impartiality in the way they look at the world.

[conception]

I think you mean convicted. Because they did crimes. If they would stop doing crime they wouldn’t get convicted.

Still waiting for someone to lock Hillary up. Oh wait…

[ETH_start]

There are hundreds of thousands of regulations carrying criminal penalties. If a political party is determined to imprison an opponent, it will find a law they’ve technically violated. In Trump’s case, they used an obscure accounting rule — one so trivial that even prominent Democratic supporters acknowledged it was an inappropriate basis for prosecution.

Hillary Clinton used a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, and in 2014, her staff deleted 31,000 emails they labeled personal to prevent them from being scrutinized in an impending investigation. You don't think that if Hillary had been a Republican and if the Democrats were determined to prosecute her, they couldn't have found some law that she broke and prosecuted her on it?

[sethammons]

Wait. What do you think about Hegseth's signal and atlantic reporter issue? That is wildly worse and where is the court case that absolutely should be happening?

[ETH_start]

That's nothing. Compare that to deleting 30,000 emails to avoid them being scrutinized in an investigation.

[sethammons]

You think Hegseth's use of Signal is nothing. Gotcha. Rules for thee but not for me.

[rat87]

Yes it was them following the law and being unbiased.

Many of the people involved in prosecuting them are Republicans. Trump is the most corrupt president we've ever had and many of his allies are similarly corrupt.

These days they know they just have to follow the maga line to get out of jail free. The Attorney General of Texas was so ridiculously corrupt he was about to be impeached by Texas Republicans but then he just claimed it was a witchhunt against maga got Trump on his side and suddenly impeachment was cancelled and he's polling a win in the next Senate primary.

Also Trump supported an attempted violent coup in addition to things like telling the Georgia Secretary of State to find him votes after the voting.

Trump has been described as a threat to democracy by many leading conservatives and Republicans. Many of them have had their careers ended and been slandered by former associates despite being conservative who had dedicated decades to the party while Trump doesn't care about ideology or party or outcomes only himself.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/22/politics/trump-fascist-john-k... Trump's former chief of Staff General John Kelly

> in a series of interviews published Tuesday, saying the former president fits “into the general definition of fascist” and that he spoke of the loyalty of Hitler’s Nazi generals.

> He also confirmed to The Atlantic that Trump had said he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Adolf Hitler’s Nazi generals showed the German dictator during World War II, and recounted the moment.

> Do you mean Bismarck’s generals?’” Kelly told The Atlantic he’d asked Trump. He added, “I mean, I knew he didn’t know who Bismarck was, or about the Franco-Prussian War. I said, ‘Do you mean the kaiser’s generals? Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.’ I explained to him that Rommel had to commit suicide after taking part in a plot against Hitler

[ETH_start]

Copy-pasting my response to a similar partisan talking point:

--

There are hundreds of thousands of regulations carrying criminal penalties. If a political party is determined to imprison an opponent, it will find a law they’ve technically violated. In Trump’s case, they used an obscure accounting rule — one so trivial that even prominent Democratic supporters acknowledged it was an inappropriate basis for prosecution.

Hillary Clinton used a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, and in 2014, her staff deleted 31,000 emails they labeled personal to prevent them from being scrutinized in an impending investigation. You don't think that if Hillary had been a Republican and if the Democrats were determined to prosecute her, they couldn't have found some law that she broke and prosecuted her on it?

--

What you're claiming is absolutely absurd. This idea that Trump leads a criminal enterprise and everyone affiliated with him is corrupt and that's why so many were prosecuted and not that this is the same politicization of the justice system you see all over the world and Democrats, with the tacit support of establishment Republicans, trying to imprison their opponents.

[ETH_start]

I also want to make it absolutely clear that it is all about framing. From your beltway-manufactured frame, Trump instigated January 6th, and this amounted to insurrection. But a much more reasonable framing is that leading Democrats instigated over 500 riots in the summer of 2020, and are instigating the current riots too:

https://x.com/camhigby/status/1931898945435021349

Kamala Harris even tweeted this out, to bail out rioters:

> “If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.”

Of course the mainstream news media journalists who are all unionized and thus economically aligned with the Democratic Party barely cover this or criticize it.