🌊 Both Sides' Points on Democracy

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This email continues our Trump-Harris debate series. To create this newsletter, we went through hundreds of recorded conversations with swing voters and synthesized each side’s arguments. Today, these hypothetical voters debate the most contentious issue: Democracy.

Both sides have cast the current election as a referendum on democracy.

Trump’s opponents have labeled him a “fascist” who thinks favorably of Hitler and will end America as we know it. Trump’s supporters have called Harris a threat to democracy: “My view is that if Trump doesn’t win this election it’s the last election we are going to have,” Elon Musk recently said.

Harris Voter (HV): Trump has utterly disregarded all Democratic norms. He did it before getting into office, inviting Putin to hack Hillary; he did it in office, pressuring Zelensky to investigate Biden; and he did it when leaving office, inciting a riot at the Capitol. He is the first president who did not accept the election results. We can’t have him in office.

Trump Voter (TV): First off: January 6 has been blown out of proportion. The hacking line was a joke. And “pressuring Zelensky” is not a big deal. He was impeached because of politics.

HV: You don’t see a trend here? You don’t see the danger in having someone who does this stuff run the country?

TV: He already ran the country and we were fine. In fact, he’s far more democratic than the Democrats, who pressure Big Tech to censor speech they don’t like; say that those who challenge them are spreading “misinformation”; and use labels to cow people into submission.

HV: People – and foreign countries – do spread information. They’re sowing division and interfering in our elections. The FBI has proven this. We need to take steps against it.

TV: You trust the FBI? The FBI is an entrenched opposition to Trump. That’s why when the New York Post reported on Hunter Biden’s laptop, dozens of “former intelligence officials” declared it “misinformation,” prompting Twitter to take it down and the entire legacy media to censor the story. Or how about the time the Democrats and media spent YEARS reciting the made-up story that Trump colluded with Russia? 

HV: They didn’t prove Trump colluded with Russia, but people from his administration literally went to jail for lying to investigators about their ties to Russians.

TV: I’m not saying those people were all perfect, but Russia did not get Trump elected. Trump was the democratically elected president in 2016. It was the DEMOCRATS who refused to accept his election. Remember “Not My President”? Or when Stacy Abrams ran for governor of Georgia, lost, and then she and the Dems said it was rigged? 

HV: Trump still says he won the 2020 election.

TV: It was a flawed vote. Big Tech and the media slanted the landscape, and voting laws were changed too quickly and made too loose.

HV: Every court that heard the voter fraud claims – even those overseen by Trump-appointed judges – rejected them. How can you not accept that a sitting president refusing to accept an election result is in a class of its own? That that’s simply unacceptable?

TV: Look: A lot of sketchy stuff happened in 2020. I think it’s fair to ask questions.

HV: Election aside, Trump calls the press the “enemy of the people.” He says there's an “enemy within.” Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, said himself that Trump is a wanna-be dictator who has said positive things about Hitler and wants only “yes-men” around him.

Editor’s Note

A lot of you said you enjoyed yesterday’s newsletter, so we wanted to follow up with this today. We hope you enjoyed it and are eager to hear your thoughts. Once we finish up this series, we’ll get out a few more pre-election reports from the swing states. 

-Max and Max

RocaNews co-founders