Jay Ashcroft flopped when faced with the most dreaded predicament amongst grandstanding blowhards: a follow-up question

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s attempt to justify his ludicrous threat to have President Joe Biden removed from the state’s electoral ballot spiraled into chaos over the most basic of questions: “How so?”

During a Monday interview with CNN’s Boris Sanchez, the Republican was asked how he justified his threats to have Biden removed from the state’s ballot in retaliation for recent attempts to remove Trump from state ballots on grounds that his actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election constitute insurrection. The constitutionality of such a removal will soon be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

“What would then be your justification for removing Joe Biden from the ballot in Missouri. Has he engaged in your mind in some kind of insurrection?” Sanchez asked.

“There have been allegations that he’s engaged in insurrection,” Ashcroft replied. He was then met with the most dreaded predicament amongst grandstanding blowhards: a follow-up question.

“How so?” Sanchez asked, prompting Ashcroft to demand that Sanchez stop interrupting him. “You can’t say something like that and not back it up,” Sanchez countered.

“You interrupted me before I could back it up,” a flustered Ashcroft complained. “Are you scared of the truth?”

  • Fapper_McFapper@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Isn’t Missouri the show me State? Is this fucktard going to show any evidence of insurrection or just blather on about how other governors have made the claim of insurrection against Biden? My god Republicans are stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid to the fucking core.

    • sndmn@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      That’s why they attack education constantly. Education prevents conservatives.

      • S_204@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        We’re seeing a lot of conservative action and behaviour on college campuses these days though. Go far enough to the liberal side and you end up standing right next to the conservatives!

          • S_204@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            It’s not both sides. What we’re seeing is that it’s human nature. It goes well past whatever your political beliefs are…

          • S_204@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            I’m talking about the banning of certain ideas and speech.

            20 years ago when I was in university that was an entirely conservative ideal. Today we don’t see that being the case…

              • S_204@lemm.ee
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                10 months ago

                They’re not being banned technically, they’re being run off campus which amounts to the same. The congressional hearings covered some of this, it’s not like I’m putting forward a new idea here. There’s testimony of student groups having their spaces taken away.

                  • S_204@lemm.ee
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                    10 months ago

                    .

                    https://pix11.com/news/israel-war/jewish-students-locked-inside-library-told-security-they-felt-unsafe/

                    This is one example of a few that have been in the news lately. Do you think that targeted group is going to continue to meet on campus?

                    They’re being discouraged with extraordinary levels of animosity and as we’re seeing before Congress and in various law suits, the institutions are not really doing anything to stop it. If you can’t see that as tacitly approving the behaviour, then I guess you’re one of those where the context is dependent.

                • Jazzy Vidalia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  10 months ago

                  They are being “ran off” because they no longer hold muster and they refuse to provide any new ideas. This is how the marketplace of ideas work. Their ideas failed and are being rejected because they are unserious. Now they are demanding these ideas which have failed to be inserted back into the academic space by force.

                  If only there were other opinions and ideas we could discuss implementing other than “liberalism” and “conservatism” but academics won’t let other ideas replace those in the marketplace because the failures are refusing the leave the square and are threatening violence if they don’t get their way.

                  Don’t both sides this. They weren’t banned. They weren’t mobbed. They lost and refused to leave.

                  • S_204@lemm.ee
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                    10 months ago

                    Are you serious? The marketplace of ideas is violently chasing people out of their designated meeting places?

                    That’s censorship by violence. You’re justifying this.

                    This is literally the problem I’m talking about and you’re acting like it’s the civilized way to engage in disparate ideas. That’s fucked up. They’re going to be inserted back into the academic space legally because it’s unquestionably bigoted to target a protected class, even if you’re claiming it’s because you disagree with their ideas. That’s just fucking wild.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        10 months ago

        The problem here is the ambiguity of “Republicans”. If you mean politicians, then yes, they’re malicious AF and often pretty competent about it. If you mean their voters, then most of them are just abysmally stupid (and arrogant enough to think they’re smart).

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Missouri is one of the last and proudest slave states (followed only by Arkansas, Texas, and Florida - go figure?). They routinely slaughtered Kansans for their refusal to brutalize and own other humans. Rush Limbaugh is from there. Ferguson police just shoot black people for sport and openly laugh about it. It’s an infected polyp on the anus of racist America with some of the worst, most hateful people scowling and lurching around in it.

      That this chud would be representing the people of Missouri is not a surprise at all.

      They do have some lovely scenery though, and there are a few decent people there as well. Just - on the political front, you can pretty well expect when you hear Missouri it won’t be good news.

        • nomous@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Finally, something I can speak to, crime!

          Most large cities follow the trend where the city center is higher crime than the surrounding areas, because crime is strongly correlated with population density and poverty. St. Louis crime follows the exact same trend.

          However, in other places the city center + surrounding areas are considered to be one political entity, the higher crime stats in the city center are “diluted” by the lower crime stats in the surrounding area.

          In St. Louis, the city is a distinct political entity from the county. As a result, the amount of “dilution” is much less than in other areas, leading to St. Louis City having an abnormally high crime rate per capita, and St. Louis County having an abnormally low crime rate per capita. If you combine the City + County crime stats, you get a picture that looks very much like all the other rust belt cities (Philly included).

          There are other factors as well. For example- St. Louis City is not a residential city- very few people actually live downtown compared to its size, and there is much less night life and nighttime activity compared to other cities of our size. In the 2020 census, just 5400 people lived in the “Downtown neighborhood.” This is a commuter area that might have 200,000-300,000 people moving through it on a daily basis. When you look at the crime stats for Downtown on a per-capita basis, they’re computed against a population size of 5,400, even though there are 50 times that many people using the area. If Busch Stadium sells out a game they seat 60,000 people- more than 15 times greater than the recorded permanent population of the area. All these effects are true for the larger St. Louis City crime stats as well. The population of the city is only 300,000 or so, but there are 200,000 people or more that commute to the city every day.

          And every city is different, criminologists and the FBI consistently and adamantly say that crime stat comparisons across different locations are not meaningful. Despite that, people love to compare crime stats and find out what city is most dangerous or the homicide capitol because they can’t stop themselves.