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Just like all the other times, he never had any intention of taking the stand. That was show for his base -- the same base that now believes that the gag order somehow prohibits him from testifying. He's appealing to the dumbest of the dumb because they're going to stick by him no matter what, and are also the ones who are likely to make the most noise and most likely to commit acts of violence in his name.
There's also some tactical value in pretending youre going to testify - the prosecution team will spend a lot of time and effort preparing for it and how to best conduct the cross examination. In this case I doubt it made much difference on that front though.
I just hope they're outnumbered when November rolls around.
At least half of the population is below average intelligence. So the smarts better get out and vote.
I'm more hoping that Democrat communities in swing states are prepared. All it takes is one or two attacks on a couple of minority districts in battleground states to dissuade enough people from voting to tip the scales in favor of Trump. And it doesn't take a majority of Republicans to do that. All it takes is a few lone wolves to take matters into their own hands, and that's what Trump is targeting. He doesn't care if he's scoring 50% at the polls or 5%. If those 5% have a bunch of lone wolf idiots willing to launch a couple of attacks, that could easily be enough, and I'm willing to bet that's what Trump is banking on.
And they don't even need to be "violent". Just drive by a polling place with a couple of smoke bombs and some automatic rifle sound effects playing out of the car speakers and let the ensuing hysteria do the rest.
I'm in california in a reddish town in a "blue" county. The saturday and sunday before election day, during early voting, one of those "convoys" drove by our polling places in lifted trucks with trump flags and fired off a few rounds. They made a loop around town all day to all the polling places, went by the one by my home seven or eight times. Law enforcement did jack shit, because one of the folk in the "convoy" lives three streets over and is one of those problem "always driving through the 25 and by the school at 60, rolling coal" neighbors. We'd have noticed if he was arrested. Trump still lost easily in our county. Probably because all us blue voters had already voted.
Everything I've seen from these traitor trash asshats suggests they're bullies and cowards so I'm not sure I buy your lone wolf theory. They're far more comfortable in a group where the opponent is outnumbered, that's when they really show their colors.
There have been plenty of lone-wolf attacks over the past few years. They just typically don't get as much attention because the damage they cause is typically minimal. The attack on Paul Pelosi is probably the most high-profile example. And we've seen plenty of lone-wolf attacks from people for other causes (abortion, most commonly). There's no reason to believe that the MAGA movement is immune from people considering similar attacks.
I guess we'll see. The examples you point to don't seem numerous enough to potentially affect turnout though. Like I said, they're cowards so they don't attack large groups such as people waiting to vote.
On average, the US has I think 1.5 mass shootings per day. Schools, places of worship, supermarkets, parades, and even a children's hospital got threatened. Especially at what will be a political flashpoint in this country, there's no reason to believe that polling places would magically be immune. If anything, the chances of a polling place getting attacked is significantly higher than normal.
And those large groups of people waiting to vote....you know what they don't have? Guns. A large group of unarmed people all gathered in one place to vote makes for a perfect target for someone with a poiltical chip on their shoulder, especially if they're looking for targets that are unable to fight back. A gang-style drive-by could easily take out a dozen or so people, and even a "non-lethal" drive-by (my example above; a couple of smoke bombs and sound effects) would be enough to at the very least disrupt the election and at worst cause injury or death in the hysteria and confusion.
And it doesn't have to be more than one or two. The margin in most swing states hovered around 10,000 votes per state. Drop a smoke bomb or two in the middle of a couple of minority districts and that alone could be enough to swing an election while the polling place is shut down for hours and people throughout the area who would have otherwise voted decide to stay home out of fear.
I’m not really interested in arguing about hypotheticals, suffice to say that direct assaults on voters during an Election Day is far from common and I hope it says that way.