Laura Ingraham had an interview with a blacked out, voice modified figure, sounding like one of the contestants on The Masked Singer, to claim they saw election fraud and are now scared for their life.
The irresponsibility of broadcasting that interview is astonishing.
It’s a really difficult problem.
Whilst offering the olive branch, reaching across the divide, seems the intuitive thing to do. For me, it’s too endemic. My take is that this will just be exploited. Republicans will disrupt, block, and continue a disinformation war. (using attempts of peace and appeasement as Democrats weakness)
For me they need to go hard on anyone associated with Trump. Be it the taxman or abuse of power, or other irregularities. Shame their party into reform. Call them opportunists and not republicans, continually highlight the party they once were, and how far they are from that. At the same time strengthen the traditional pillars of democracy. Separation of powers/independence of government bodies, empower and support free press recognizing it’s importance in reporting the truth. Likewise, go in hard on Twitter and Facebook ensuring they hold some accountability and must act in a reasonable time.
Reform presidency(popular vote), reform the supreme court and selection process, enact the biggest shakeup of how the US governs in our lifetime. Only then can I think you can reach across the divide. Its a process that won’t occur over one term, but take 2 or 3.
I think it’s important to reach out to the people who voted for Trump, while calling out the latter and all his cronies who have actually taken over the GOP, and are leading it on a dangerous path.
So yes, definitely, call out the cheats, the profiteers, the authoritarians. But not the people who voted for them. These need to be educated in a long-lasting process of information.
I suppose that was the core of @gasband 's earlier point. Tackle the people who do harm, not the people who have been mislead by them.
Imo Trump is really good at exploiting the infrastructure that was already there, even before his presidency.
Just had to listen to Fox News or talk radio, insane stuff and incredibly hateful. Majority of Republican voters thought Obama was a Socialist and/or probably a Muslim, some believed he was the actual Antichrist, VP candidate Palin talked about ‘death panels’ etc.
Congress looking worse and worse. Democrat leaning people have as usual, forgotten how important it is to vote. Looking a bit grim now in Congress and people like Thom thinks it is only going to get a lot worse as the votes come in (republicans are a lot more resilient as voters and actually vote for Congress elections traditionally, while centre and left leaning Americans often do not bother, or that is what previous statistcs show anyway):
Isn’t the reason for continually doing this so they can get offered an olive branch,which in turn allows them to exploit what they see as a weakness and this goes on and on and on.As you say,the only way to break that cycle is to play hardball and go after them so as to force them to try cross the divide.
I don’t fully agree with using the popular vote when talking about the us,maybe it’s down to not fully understanding the us political system though,If we had the same type of election in europe then smaller countries with different views may not feel heard if the the top 3-4 populated countries wanted things their way and voted as such,leaving 23/24 other countries having to toe the line.Not saying they would do that ,just that they could.
Meanwhile, I am trying to psyche myself up to talk to David in 30 minutes. He is an (nice) evangelist, believes in the American evangelist creed, has seen the stuff I write on facebook, probably got provoked. I went to a type of boarding school with him for year 20 years ago for a year. He now sent me a messenger post, asking me if we could have a longer talk. I said yes, because that is what you do when old friends contact you. Not looking forward to it, he is going to discuss politics and prophecies and I am sitting here drinking a cup of coffee torturing myself, thinking about how that conversation is going to go. Really, really going to be awkward. He certainly believed that God has chosen Trump due to prophecies and such, and this is going to go just fucking great.
Only 35 min until I am supposed to call him… Ugh…
Always interesting to hear the arguments from the other side… chin up, mate! 
I know the stuff he believes in, read some of those prophecies, but I find it very uncomfortable and difficult to argue against them in ways that do not anger him. Of course, there may be a theoretical chance that he is calling me because he has realised that he has believed in certain prophecies that on the face of evidence, does not hold water, but frankly I don’t believe that.
This is pretty close to “Angels are coming from South America” if you know what I mean. Donald Trump is God’s chosen proxy despite his worldly sins and so on.
But thankfully he is a kind man (David).
goes for more coffee
Is that the answer? Fight fire with fire?
Reason I ask is the UK is also in the middle of a similar battle as you well know. The US has, in part taken the first step out of that hole. We haven’t and the disinformation is still flying thick and fast.
The fear I have is that the Trumps etc. see so much better at than the others.
Sorry. Got to 1:45 and had to leave it there. 
The guardian are reporting a different number. It depends whether you believe Ipsos Mori or Politico.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week of 1,363 adults found that 79% of Americans believe Joe Biden won the election, including about 60% of Republicans. About 72% said that the loser of the election should concede. A separate poll from Politico and Morning Consult, however, found that 70% of Republicans do not believe the presidential election was “free and fair”.
Just remember you can swim the St. Croix River…
I think you can believe that the election wasn’t free and fair (and that some votes were fraudulent) and also accept that Biden won. Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
On the other hand, the House procedural rules mean that a majority is a majority. In the Senate, there is a material difference between 51 and 60 votes. So the Democrats can worth with this reduced majority in the House, they just need to interpret why it happened correctly.
I would suggest that the time to extend that courtesy to those who do not reciprocate is coming to an end all across the West.
Apropo of not very much, a colleague is using a Four Seasons Total Landscaping Zoom background this morning.
How is your background of the White House from 1814 going down?
Still on the phone, we are deep into Paulus, second coming, Satan ruling during these times. Prophecies proving Alexander the great before his time, and so on. He wants me to find Jesus again.
Call finished now. 1H and 11 seconds it was, we managed to talk for that long without touching upon Trump directly. He alluded to “what I know you think of as conspiracy theories, Magnus”, with me trying to convince him that that those have a burden of proof. We did indeed also talk about 9/11 and an interesting video he had seen concerning dollar bills that showed the towers collapse.
I have long ago come to the conclusion that the Evangelistic movement in Europe, takes all of their ideology from American “prophets”, and that this is big, big, big problem given how wacko those Americans are.
The call was not as bad as I feared. And now I can breathe again.
By the way, on this forum I am often a bit confrontational as we all debate freely here. If you had filmed me when I was talking to David, you would all have lauded me for my stoic patience 