Donald Trump May 'Turn Off the Internet' if Elected, Former Staffer Says

"We're losing a lot of people because of the internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."
He said this in 2015, folks. And we still elected him. We're fucked.
- 'We' didn't elect him. A horde of deluded, ignorant douchebags in just the right states did.
  
  No, a bunch of empty land elected him.
  
  Don't forget the tens of millions of Americans who stayed home because "both parties are the same"
- We have to go see Bill Gates
  This line... Lol
  "Hi Bill, you're the CEO of the internet, right? I'm going to need you to turn it off for me. Thanks."
  
  He saw that South Park episode and thought it was a documentary.
  
  Well he doesn’t know Al Gore personally, for some reason he never seemed to show up to Epstein’s parties
  
  tfw someone breaks it to him that he'll have to call Al Gore...
- It’s amazing, he’s said so many terrible things, I’m still learning about stuff like this he said years ago.
- That's just locker room talk...
- Ironically he got elected in large part because of his always online meme army. I'm guessing that part of the Internet sticks around.

"He could invoke powers we've never heard a President of the United States invoke—potentially to shut down companies or turn off the internet or deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil," he added. "We don't know because the things that are in there, the emergency powers of the president, aren't widely known to the American people.
Wow, it’s almost like we’ve consolidated too much power in the Executive Branch and should do something about it before a despotic asswipe gets elected by an unhinged, manipulated populace.
- Again. With nothing to lose this time...
  
  Worse, he's got everything to lose if he doesn't find power to abuse to get him out of the hole he's currently hanging over.
- This was on the principle that only the most intelligent and qualified would serve....wich tbh....they should have seen it comming

No matter where an election is coming up - people tend to vote against their interests. This meme popped up in my head when I read this thread:
- Unless their interest are not obvious to you in so far as that they are voting to maintain a racist hierarchy and privilege that equates to tangible benefits.
  More than 50% of white american women voted for trump. Trump is a sexist, they know this. They also know that he will maintain their racist advantages over blacks, mexicans, jews, natives, asians you name it. So they voted for the ability to call the cops on you and have the police shoot you if they see you in their neighborhood.
  It is basically a cast system that they voted for. Just in this case the cast system is based on racism.
  Anybody knows a better explanation, please, feel free to reply and give your view what the benefits or expected pay-offs were for voting trump as a poor white woman.
  edit: i forgot to mention what the expected reward is: if blacks, gays, jews, mexicans, asians, natives are beaten into submission and constantly harassed, then they can't compete with them for jobs as well, and their kids won't be able to compete with their kids either, as they will be constantly harassed, bullied and even murdered by the police and other racists.
  
  Regarding your edit: This might be the reason, why people tend to vote against their interests. To weed out competition. For instance, people would happily vote against free school lunch - even if the option of free school lunch would benefit them - just because some different ethnical and/or political group would not receive that benefit either.
  I see a very similar behavior in German politics right now: The right-wing party (AfD) is gaining popularity and the conservative party (CDU) is going to lose voters towards them. In order to appeal to voters they want to (very oversimplified) alter social welfare benefits to the worse and keep minimum wage from rising, all while claiming that immigration (among other things) is the issue. But those who are voting for the right wing party and the conservative party as well are the ones who clearly would benefit from better social welfare an a higher minimum wage. These people would rather decline any improvements regarding social welfare and minimum wage, so that others (immigrants for example) would not benefit from them either.
  Edit: typos
  
  More than 50% of white women voted for Trump? Do you have a source for this?!
  I'm genuinely asking here, because that's gross as fuck if true. I'm a white woman. I couldn't imagine voting for that POS, however, my mother is suuuuuuper into the "Bible" so I know she did. My parents are unfortunately super fans of his. I didn't think that there were that many like her though.
  Edit: I was so appalled I looked myself. I did find a bunch of stuff supporting it like truthout andthe guardian, which is absolutely fucking infuriating to me.
  I did see that when it came to women with college, more did vote for Clinton than Trump, but it wasn't enough to outweigh when combined with those who lacked a college education.
  FFS. This stat actually massively upsets me.

He's also promising to go into people's houses at night and wreck up the place.
- Arrroooooo!!
  
  I feel a jowl movement coming on!
- And sell our children's organs to zoos for meat?
- I literally just watched this scene minutes before I read this.

"Things the person speaking does not fully understand for $200."
- Wait until he hears about amatuer radio licensing, unlicensed spectrum, and experimental radio. It will blow his fucking mind.
  I bet he actually thinks that all data is transported by fortune 500 companies that will do as he says "or else."

If Trump elected, America has "turned off its brain", I say
- If Trump elected again*
  
  Turned its brain back off
  
  No, I'm pretty sure he got it right the first time.

Thankfully, he thinks unplugging the router in the Oval Office breaks it for everyone else, too.
- He'll just keep hitting the reload button in his browser. Makes it hard for anybody to read anything.

My thoughts and prayers have started ringing to the tune of "please gods may Trump have a heart attack / stroke at the worst possible time for the Republicans and spare the rest of the world another term of American foreign policy behaving as though it was conceived by racist, classist and eight kinds of phobic Elmer Fudd "
- Another term? If he gets in again, he ain't leaving until he's dead. It's glaringly obvious that he plans to become a dictator like his friends Putin and Kim.
  
  Dude is 77 years old and eats like a garbage panda. Gods willing he at best lasts like 4 years
- If thoughts and prayers actually worked, Donald Trump's head would have exploded like a scene from "Scanners" on one of his countless TV appearances.
  
  That actor is my friend's dad!

Please Donald piss off the wrong people. I double dog dare you.
- If the Internet goes off, it means most of the US will be pissed off at him. Cellphones would be basically useless.
  His followers wouldn't be able to access their favorite propaganda and conspiracy theories, either, so maybe they'd sober up a bit. Either way, it would not be good for him.
  
  I mean, he can't. Even if he claims to have the executive power, even if he found a bunch of lackeys willing to try to do it for him, he can't do it. Whatever he did would be unenforceable. You can't just turn off the Internet. That's literally the reason we invented it in the first place, it's a communication network resilient against nuclear strikes and war and bad-faith governance all at once.
  He could probably make it very hard to use, given a lot of time, but he'd be eaten alive by the angry populace long before it ever reached that point.
- Who are the wrong people? Have people similar to them offered significant resistance to past fascist regimes?
  
  Yes.
  The first time they lost because liberals actively embargoed them while selling guns and oil under the table to the fascists.

It was built to survive a nuclear war.
It will survive Trump.
Even if I have to drive a station wagon full of backup tapes myself.
- There are countries that turn off the internet all the time. There's a only a few major Telcos that control all backbone infra. It could definitely happen
  
  once the internet is off the rest of the world will not be witness to the awful crimes they will commit against the public... :/
  
  External connections? Probably.
  Low-latency internal connections? Sure.
  But when you can send IP packets over pigeons things get harder to disrupt.
  Hence the station wagon.

He already turns everyone else off, so why not?

The internet has gone to shit. Let’s hear him out. Speaking as a web developer who just sat through a wireframe meeting, I’m not completely averse to the internet disappearing.
- computers were a mistake (I'm a software engineer)
  
  I'm starting to lean towards the industrial revolution should never have happened.
  
  DevOps Engineer here and I sometimes want to be Amish and surround myself with nothing but wood and stone.
  
  damn right they were. who thought that giving lay people tools that relied on parts with magic smoke?
  I vote for the Great CME 2024!
- https://www.xkcd.com/1454/

Please, ask him to download it before turning it off.

That's the sort of thing that leads to actual unrest.
- That’s how rulers consolidate loyalty and power.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
Donald Trump may turn off the internet if elected to a second term in the White House, a former staffer has warned.
Miles Taylor, Trump's former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, was asked on MSNBC about what potential damage the former president, who is the frontrunner in the GOP primaries, could do in government without breaking the law.
I think Americans still don't understand the full extent of the president's powers and things Donald Trump could do, bubble-wrapped in legalese, that would be damaging to the republic."
"He could invoke powers we've never heard a President of the United States invoke—potentially to shut down companies or turn off the internet or deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil," he added.
In a Republican debate later that month, Trump said he was "open to closing areas" of the internet to prevent terrorism.
Removing internet service in certain areas of the U.S. would require multiple companies to turn off their cell towers and fiber networks, and to restrict satellite access to people living in those regions.
The original article contains 636 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Who here is old enough to remember the "internet kill switch"?
- many countries have them. they are used to orchestrate media blackouts.
  
  Not sure why you are downvoted. Some countries even use them during testing times so students don't cheat or get distracted or whatever when taking tests. I'm not even kidding
  https://pulse.internetsociety.org/blog/tracking-internet-shutdowns-in-2023
  
  Back when that bill I linked was introduced, the generally-accepted narriative was that "sure most governments can shut off the internet to their own countries, but the U.S. can shut off the internet for the whole world." So, yes, other countries have internet kill switches, but if that's (still) true, probably no country can more drastically hobble the worldwide internet as a whole.
  The root DNS servers are in the U.S.. The first internet backbone is in the U.S.. In 2010, it seemed like the U.S. government did have the power to make virtually the entire internet grind to a rapid halt.
  IIRC there was also language in the bill saying all kinds of bullshit things about how since the internet was started in the U.S. by a U.S. government agency, the U.S. "owned" the internet and thus... had every right to shut off the internet if they so chose or some shit.
  Since I first saw your comment, I did a little googling. Not a ton, and the sources I've found so far aren't all that reliable. But mostly the answers I've found say that the U.S.' ability to shut down the internet to other parts of the world is more limited than I'd heard it was in 2010. I'm not sure if it was overstated back then or if things have changed since then (or if the sources I found are wrong and the U.S. government could pretty much destroy the whole internet if it chose to.) But hopefully it's true that the U.S. doesn't have that kind of power.

His MAGAlings must be shocked that he said he'd consult Bill Gates. Of course, cognitive dissonance is like water off a duck's back to them, so that won't last long.

Oh shit he's been watching south park
- I mean he wanted to attack a hurricane with nukes likely because he saw it in Sharknado, so not that unlikely.