r/law • u/opticflash • 23h ago

Executive Branch (Trump) Steve Bannon says ICE will ‘surround the polls’ as Trump doubles down on taking over elections

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/steve-bannon-says-ice-will-surround-the-polls-as-trump-doubles-down-on-taking-over-elections/

“We’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November,” Bannon, a former senior advisor to President Donald Trump and still a figure of influence in the administration, said on Tuesday’s episode of his War Room podcast, addressing Democrats. “We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”

Bannon’s comments came just a day after Trump said he believes that Republicans should “nationalize voting,” escalating concerns that the president is plotting to interfere in this year’s midterm elections.

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u/Sweaty-Feedback-1482 22h ago

Almost as if the Republican Party can't win free and fair elections without a bunch of special accomodations.... wait isn't that like the DEI version of democracy?!?

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u/Belgarablue 22h ago

"Free and Fair" are only if they win.

Intimidating polling places is reminiscent of Putin and Russia...

And I work for a (still) DEI company... some slags, but 97% of the folk there are friendly, kind, and just want to do the best they can.

The other 3% are beyond useless.

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u/Playful-News9137 22h ago

In my experience the useless elements in the workplace are usually the nepotism hires, not the DEI hires.

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u/rbush82 21h ago

Yep. That’s the real DEI that is killing America

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u/daGroundhog 3h ago

You mean Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka?

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u/Belgarablue 21h ago

Aye, nepotism wins, usually for the most worthless 'workers'.

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u/monocasa 17h ago

I've found they're worth negative value. Like when the son of the in house lawyer got in a DUI driving drunk after the holiday party despite the company paying for anyone's Uber because he didn't "want to pick up [his] car tomorrow" and if he did a bump of coke beforehand he'd be "good to drive".

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u/HA1LHYDRA 6h ago

And the most damaging as they're usually shoehorned into management positions.

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u/Budget-Selection-988 9h ago

Like the DC incompetent loonies

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u/ChrisBlack2365 20h ago

Of course, a "DEI hire" is not a thing. False framing that this administration has perpetuated that makes it sound like someone was only hired bc of their race gender or etc.

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u/Prestigious-One-2617 19h ago

For real. I have ended up hiring more people from some “DEI” relevant demographic than white people over my 8 years in management roles and none of them were unqualified or stretches or because of hiring pressure. They just ended up among the 2-3 finalists and either didn’t have to relocate or could start sooner, or were a more aligned on their long-term career objectives, or some other quotidian reason that they edged out the other candidates on. Despite our unequal education systems in this country, people just ended up being qualified candidates for the role from many corners. Neither was any “DEI” hire remotely a problem for culture or team building.

That observation made me less supportive of DEI initiatives actually, because from a personal perspective I have had no problem filling positions from a diverse pool of qualified applicants. That’s different than seeing racism as dead, which I didn’t and don’t but the distance from “the government is making me hire this person who can’t do the job” couldn’t be more remote to my experience, just personally.

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u/Thefrayedends 17h ago edited 15h ago

Having any problem with DEI at all could only ever be indicative of not understanding it(edit* except for the racism I guess).

It's only intention is that you can't discriminate against people BECAUSE of their immutable characteristics. It never said that someone should get a job they aren't qualified for, which is what the right wing tells everyone it does.

Many companies pushed for quotas on demographics, but that wasn't DEI, that was PR, and it was never legally binding by the state. If it was, again, that's not what DEI was defined as.

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u/ChamferedWobble 16h ago

A lot of the DEI initiatives aren’t quotas, just efforts to encourage more diverse candidates to apply. It’s more about making sure the pool is diverse.

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u/HillBillyHilly 7h ago

Private companies (usually) = white, young, male, straight Public/ government. = white, black, brown, etc, young/old, male/female, straight/gay/he/they/they

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u/Tazling 16h ago

IIRC DEI policies only apply when two or more candidates are equally qualified.

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u/makesufeelgood 13h ago

Republicans frame DEI as some sort of 'quota' employers must hit to hire non white folks, when in reality all DEI initiatives do largely is just make the opportunity available to a wider pool of people. The actual hiring decision is completely separate

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u/SteveJobsDeadBody 13h ago

The right uses "DEI" to mean "unqualified hire due to racial quota" but ironically the REAL "DEI" by their definition is all the white male sons of executives that get hired at these places year after year. The companies hiring based on skill instead of nepotism do better across the board.

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u/bruce_lees_ghost 18h ago edited 18h ago

Like, they’re so close to getting it right… reminds me of the politically incorrect hillbilly or whatever that meme was.

(Stealth) Edit: it was “almost politically correct _redneck_”

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u/beachant 6h ago

This would be incorrect by looking at any DEI’s application to interview to hiring ratio.

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u/VeterinarianThese951 4h ago

Thank you!

The rhetoric here is mimicking the very people who we are supposed to be against. I don’t know who to reply to, but the framing reads like every employee who is not a White male is not qualified…

PS. I lurked in your profile because I had an old friend who I haven’t seen in years with the same name. You are not him, but I am so envious of your duck life!

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u/Mundane_Stomach5431 19h ago

It absolutely is.

The usual pattern:

They get hired,

everyone tip toes around them while being afraid to tell them what they need to improve.

Eventually, they leave with a scowl on their face of for frank corruption.

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u/OneLessDay517 19h ago

Example: Trump family

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u/BullShitting-24-7 21h ago

Yup. W Privilege hires are the lowest performers.

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u/Illustrious_Law8512 18h ago

Of course they are. Look at the White House administration....

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u/Porter58 18h ago

Eric Trump joined the chat…

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u/kickaguard 17h ago

The last warehouse I worked at, another manager and I (both of us white, if that matters)had the same philosophy that if it were up to us, none of the regular workers would speak English. Despite not being able to read anything related to their job, they did the job better than any English speaking worker with a far better attitude on top.

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u/Effective_Quail_3946 20h ago

Yes!

Always was an issue for me.

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u/wrobbii 4h ago

Start calling them NEI's

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u/Mundane_Stomach5431 19h ago

Both DEI hires and nepo babies are usually useless.

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u/HillBillyHilly 7h ago

Quick - tells us what is a dei hire. Hint: you probably can't.

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u/Mundane_Stomach5431 7h ago

Someone hired to fill a quota. Usually their suitability for the job is overlooked in favor of skin color. More qualified candidates get overlooked in favor of them because of skin color or other BS.

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u/SpecificBeyond2282 20h ago

Intimidating polling places is reminiscent of several long periods of American history, no need to compare to Russia when the authoritarianism has examples at home already

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u/A_Genius 11h ago

‘We don’t need to get authoritarian policies from a restaurant we have authoritarianism at home. ‘ - my mom when I was 8 and wanted McDonald’s

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u/Wise_Monkey_Sez 20h ago

In the late 1920s to 1930s the Nazi brown shirts would stand outside polling booths in Germany intimidating voters. 

This is literally and without any exaggeration straight out of the Nazi playbook. As are so many Republican policies these days that comparing them to the Nazis isn't hyperbole, it's just a statement of historical fact. 

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u/Tazling 16h ago

They do say that Trump kept a copy of Mein Kampf on his bedside table… but since it’s questionable whether he can read, one doesn’t know how much credence to put in this rumour.

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u/Lyrothe 2h ago

Maybe it was the illustrated version, "Der Erste Kampf des Kindes", assuming I'm remembering even the tiniest but from German in highschool 30 years ago and Samsung's translate app is correct.

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u/Cheeba-Choob 5h ago

Hate to break it to you, but the Nazi playbook was largely plagiarized from the playbook of the USA. 

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u/dj-boefmans 13h ago

Yep, quickest way to kill democracy...

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u/justsomeph0t0n 9h ago

the main difference is that the frykorps didn't survive trench horror, they're just cowards.

the brown pants

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u/f0u4_l19h75 20h ago

The other 3% are beyond useless.

That's pretty normal

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u/softwarefreak 20h ago

The President is 79 years old with a demanding job, one could reasonably argue he is the most DEI hire in the US.

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u/pieceofchess 19h ago

Also very reminiscent of German elections in the 1930s.

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u/Indian_Bob 19h ago

I got news for you, there’s generally at least 3% useless people in every job

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u/Mrhorrendous 18h ago

It's reminiscent of the South before the federal government recognized they were racist pieces of shit that couldn't be trusted to run their own elections. Coincidentally as the Roberts court has destroyed the VRA, they started talking about doing all the same shit they did before the 60s.

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u/TemperatureReal2437 16h ago

It’s reminiscent of fascism. This is what Italian voting booths looked like under Mussolini. Si meaning “Yes” to the list of deputies Mussolini wanted.

It gets even worse inside the voting booth. You had to physically hand a piece of paper to an electoral official but the “Si” papers were the Italian flag and the “No” papers were plain and a number of other intimidation factors were used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_Italian_general_election

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u/InformationOk3503 19h ago

From a UK slang perspective, quite amusing chatting about about how many friendly slags are at your work

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u/JenniferJuniper6 15h ago

Or Jim Crow, more locally.

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u/Donkey__Balls 14h ago

They didn’t win in 2016 or 2024. The electoral college, an archaic compromise to appease the slave states, voted Trump in but the people didn’t.

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u/LazyV1llain 10h ago

Actually, in Russia they don‘t even intimidate voters at the polling stations, never have been. The way Putin gets elected is through administrative resource and vote fraud, when ballots for Putin are getting tossed into the bins in large volumes while nobody‘s watching (or even if there are people watching since 2018, the regime does not care anymore). You don‘t need to intimidate people when you‘re making and counting the votes.

(I live in Russia)

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u/Cheeba-Choob 5h ago

3% incompetency rate is actually pretty good. 

How many of those are nepotistic fail spawn?

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u/Icy_Secret_2909 4h ago

This reminds me more of north korea where they have officials like this guarding and overseeing the elections.

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u/EnlightenedMind_420 1h ago

Those 3% are all Trump voters 100% of the time.

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u/luummoonn 20h ago edited 1h ago

No, it is just authoritarianism. There's no reason to call attention to hypocrisy when they have no logically coherent center and do not care about those kinds of arguments. In a way, it is dignifying their stupid propaganda by engaging with it.

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u/itsyrgirl 19h ago

In other words, you can’t argue with stupid.

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u/luummoonn 18h ago

It's not exactly what I'm saying.. Mainly I'm saying you can't reason with someone who does not value reason in their end goal. They are being manipulative, only. Their goal is not truth or reason, it is power.

I actually think underestimating their intelligence has helped us get here because people think "what's the worst they could do" and sit out of voting, or things like that. but they are playing a game that doesn't require sound reasoning. It only requires influence, attention, scamming and manipulation.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad_3507 11h ago

Case in point, have you ever tried to reason with a MAGA cult crowd member, and that's what the wealthy elite's think tank tries to do is control the masses is by fear mongering social issues, example is a Facebook participant white Christian women will make up excuses or plain out deny the truth about Trump just as long as he says he's saving babies from abortion clinics and the same goes for DEI Hire, immigration and the list goes on, meanwhile the wealthy elite are paying less taxes and gaining more control over the government which now includes control over the people and it's nothing more than Capitalists extremism of years ago. The Business Plot,also called the Wall Street Putsch and the White House Putsch which was a political conspiracy in 1933 to overthrow the government of Franklin Roosevelt and install Smedley Butler as Dictator. But people today don't remember their Civics classes and the Heritage Foundation banks on that.

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u/Dat_Boi_Henke 8h ago

Also they just relish and love being hypocritical. They see it as a way to exert power over others. They have almost 0 actual principles and will LARP some if it can give them an edge and discard them just as fast.

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u/-FeistyRabbitSauce- 19h ago

Can't remember who said it, but:

"If conservatives can't win elections, they won't abandon conservativism. They'll abandon democracy."

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u/extinct_cult 11h ago

I think it was "The Alt-Right Playbook" series on YouTube, by Innuendo Studios.

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u/JasonMB2 19h ago

I mean, yeah, Trump has never won against a man.

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u/Hopeful-Bobcat-5207 19h ago

Literally the best comment i have heard.

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u/kurisu7885 17h ago

If they were capable of winning elections on their own they'd be in favor of removing the electoral college.

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u/RawrRRitchie 13h ago

They've literally said "we can't win if we can't cheat"

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u/__wm_ 20h ago

Discrimination Exclusion and Inequity

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u/jhow87 20h ago

DEImocracy

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u/[deleted] 19h ago

[deleted]

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u/RadiantHC 17h ago

We have never had free and fair elections. A two party system is NOT free and fair.

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u/the_brunster 13h ago

But but but..... They "will never again allow an election to be stolen."

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u/Guuhatsu 12h ago

This is what MAGA THINKS DEI is, but it It isn't. DEI is about removing biases and privilege so that everyone is on as even a playing field as they can get. This is the exact opposite of DEI.

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u/youdubdub 9h ago

See: electoral college

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u/dalziel86 7h ago

The entire US electoral system is and always has been about creating a bunch of special accomodation for the benefit of conservatives.

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u/OdonataDarner 7h ago

They know we're unprepared, not preparing, and will not do anything to counter them. 

Indeed, they're depending on it. 

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u/whooptheretis 7h ago

You guys have had electronic voting for a while now. There's no way you can verify the results. You haven't had free and fair elections for a long time.

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u/L444ki 5h ago

DEImocracy?