Donald Trump’s supporters, like the man himself, are not what you’d call gracious losers, so it comes as no surprise that they’re taking The Donald’s second-place finish in Iowa hard. And given Trump’s own forays into conspiracy theory (all that birther stuff), it’s also not exactly a shock to see his fans claiming that the Iowa caucuses were rigged.
What is a little surprising is who they’ve picked as the supervillain in the alleged plot against Trump. Not the winner of the Iowa caucuses, Ted Cruz, but Marco Rubio — the guy who came in third, after Trump. With a little help from the dastardly computer whizzes at Microsoft.
Their peculiar theory, first spread on 8chan and then picked up by such highly reputable publications as Breitbart and Infowars and Return of Kings, is that Microsoft, which provided free software used to count the votes in the caucuses, rigged the vote to make sure that Trump came in second and that Rubio won.
Oh, sorry, I forgot. Rubio didn’t win. He came in third place. After Trump.
But hey, the conspiracy theorists claim, he got more votes than people thought he would! And Trump didn’t win. Therefore skullduggery.
The “proof?” First, Trump lost, which his fans can’t imagine could have happened without vote rigging behind the scenes. Second, Microsoft was the second biggest donor in Rubio’s last Senate campaign. CHECKMATE.
But as Philip Bump of the Washington Post points out, Microsoft is only “sort of Rubio’s second-biggest donor.” The $33,000 that the Center for Responsive Politics reported as coming from Microsoft did not all or even mostly come from the company itself. As Bump explains, “most of that money came from various people working at Microsoft.”
Naturally, Trump’s fans — including a number of people familiar to readers of this blog — aren’t buying this debunking. On the Twitter hashtag #MicrosoftRubioFraud, the accusations are flying. As is the racism and homophobia.
https://twitter.com/basedmattforney/status/694366883676622848
https://twitter.com/genophilia/status/694365183276224513
https://twitter.com/genophilia/status/694375549360189440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/genophilia/status/694569313244557312
https://twitter.com/brelly1978/status/694612090506600448
https://twitter.com/thpuzzler2/status/694603418690834432
https://twitter.com/AidanTierian/status/694376320873144320
https://twitter.com/JihadTheJews/status/694615181385568256
@deutsche_physik @Ricky_Vaughn99 I am against Rubio but Microsoft isnt doing this to protect illegal Mexian programmers. its #WhiteGenocide
— ProWhitesUnite (@prowhitesunite) February 2, 2016
https://twitter.com/Krauserpua/status/694489309030780928
But a few managed to find a silver lining:
https://twitter.com/arierhase/status/694380385635962880
And yes, he did refer to the Iowa caucuses as the Iowa CUCKus.
One Tweeter managed to find some humor in it all:
https://twitter.com/Marmel/status/694438587836690432
Clippy is one sneaky bastard, huh?
@Alan Robertshaw
Thanks for the info on bears and other creatures.
So they’re attacking third-placed Rubio with some crackpot theory, but not Ted Cruz (who’s of Italian and Cuban descent) because he wants to deport ‘illegals’ and maybe looks a bit whiter…
OT, but here goes:
I made a cool design for my Redbubble and personal Zazzle stores if y’all want to take a look.
http://i1307.photobucket.com/albums/s598/Paradoxys3DS/Do%20no%20harm_circle_zpsoq5pbkxp.png
@ kat
You’re very welcome. I hope I didn’t come across as looking like I think people who go to zoos are bad, or that all zoos are inherently evil (that’s just seaparks). I loved zoos as a kid. It’s just as we learn more attitudes can change, it’s an education thing.
It’s great that people are interest in animals, but the substitutes for actually seeing them in zoos improve all the time, and there’s no real substitute for letting them live in their natural environment, so preservation of habitats is a key issue. Of course, we need to keep the interest up to feed into that, so it’s quite a tricky balance!
I don’t know who owns loser.com but they have a heck of a sense of humor; that page now redirects to Trump’s Wikipedia entry.
I know something was going to crop up about the caucuses, but not in this fashion.
It’s like you’re in the wacky races and you won 2nd place with your souped-up DeLorean and lost to the guy driving the Love Bug, but managed to beat the guy in the Pod-racer that crashed and burned before it got to the finish line. Instead of trying to figure out how you lost to a volkswagen, you’re complaining about someone who didn’t even win who was using something that wasn’t a car. It just makes no sense.
Now that I realize it, my whole analogy makes no sense either. I think I’ll just talk about elephants. Elephants are descendants of mammoths, and female elephants lead the herd… Wait a second…
I still think zoos can do good (if and only if they take care) because they can teach kids, as well as adults about conservation and because kids who visit the zoo a lot will grow to care about wild animals, not just pet animals. Let’s face it, people don’t care about things they don’t have any personal connections to.
@ WWTH
That’s very true of course, but we have to be careful to,avoid an ends justifies the means approach. We can create personal bonds in other ways. No kid has seen a real dinosaur, but if we told them there was one living is some faraway jungle they’d happily chip in their pocket money to help preserve the habitat. People invest in things they can’t personally encounter all the time. Remember all that thing about people wanting to live on that ‘Avatar’ planet?
We can educate kids and encourage their enthusiasm in all sorts of ways: TV, computers, animatronics etc. Lots of people care about polar bears, mountain gorillas and pandas never having seen a real one.
Oh, I’ve been spotted. Sorry I meant to say I. Am. Posting. This. Entirely. Of. My. Own. Free. Will.
*tries to remember how to blink in morse code*
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samita-sarkar/3-reasons-all-feminists-should-support-animal-rights_b_7299578.html
ETA: I’m not convinced by some of the arguments in this article but it raises some interesting intersectionality points
Well, I think this cartoon eloquently summarizes the overblown rhetoric and fawning congratulatory tone of the Trumpies.
You say that this is a conspiracy but I have evidence that it’s true.
Rubio is so completely incompetent that rigging an election to land in third is totally something that he’d do.
Prove it.
I love it! Is it by the same artist that did that Milo cartoon? If not, they are brothers in spirit.
Anon, please do show your evidence. If you have it, of course.
Just saying you have evidence of something is kind of meaningless without actually providing evidence.
For instance:
I have evidence that suggests the moon is indeed made of cheese.
Do you believe me?
@Falconer
Ha! That comic is so ridiculous! I love that the Sun is “reality” seeing as the average Trumpite wouldn’t know reality outside of their white supremacist bubble if it bit them on the ass.
I thought it looked familiar!
@ contrapangloss
I beloved it’s traditional in such matters that you have to meet in a subterranean carpark and stand in the shadows when disclosing things like that.
@katz:
I’m pretty sure it’s the same guy. He sure does love him some Entitled White Men.
EDIT: Oh lord, I hadn’t noticed the Illuminati eye-pyramid hanging off of Obama!Dracula’s neck before.
It’s like an onion of ridiculousness.
@ falconer
Don’t forget “MSM” mouse.
As my father’s side of the family came from Dubuque, Jones, and Alamakee Counties, I have some idea how these people think. Even those who are fuming with *white*- hot rage are not going to vote for someone who openly and repeatedly talks about boffing his daughter… a point I imagine is lost on MRAs.
Alan, you’re right!
I’ll have to think of a suitably contrived and cliche location and time for an exchange of evidence.
…You guys really couldn’t tell that that was a “Marco Rubio sure is stupid!” joke?
I’m pretty sure Anon was making a joke.
Poe’s law is in effect and I assume anything like that without sarcasm tagging is serious.
Ninja’d and for some reason no edit button is appearing.
Poe’s law.
I kind of guessed it might be a joke, but at the same time… I know some folks who are dead serious saying similar things.
And it’s ridiculous.
So I snark.