Jay Ashcroft flopped when faced with the most dreaded predicament amongst grandstanding blowhards: a follow-up question

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s attempt to justify his ludicrous threat to have President Joe Biden removed from the state’s electoral ballot spiraled into chaos over the most basic of questions: “How so?”

During a Monday interview with CNN’s Boris Sanchez, the Republican was asked how he justified his threats to have Biden removed from the state’s ballot in retaliation for recent attempts to remove Trump from state ballots on grounds that his actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election constitute insurrection. The constitutionality of such a removal will soon be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

“What would then be your justification for removing Joe Biden from the ballot in Missouri. Has he engaged in your mind in some kind of insurrection?” Sanchez asked.

“There have been allegations that he’s engaged in insurrection,” Ashcroft replied. He was then met with the most dreaded predicament amongst grandstanding blowhards: a follow-up question.

“How so?” Sanchez asked, prompting Ashcroft to demand that Sanchez stop interrupting him. “You can’t say something like that and not back it up,” Sanchez countered.

“You interrupted me before I could back it up,” a flustered Ashcroft complained. “Are you scared of the truth?”

  • Nougat@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    Ashcroft: “Are you scared of the truth?”

    Sanchez: “Oh, I am not terrified of the truth at all, seems like you might be.”

    You need to watch those clips in the Xitter link. Sanchez is on fucking fire and does not let up.

    • ripcord@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      I’ll watch it somewhere, but it’s not going to be at TwitX.

      Edit here: https://youtu.be/pIsVB-H_M_8?feature=shared

      The most relevant part starts around 4:22 but the whole thing is good (well, up until the YouTuber jumps in with his take, which fortunately is after the CNN segment)

      • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Holy shit that was embarrassing for Jay Ashcroft. He proved he’s a legal scholar equivalent of a nepo baby because he is so grossly incompetent at understanding how state law works. If this guy was your attorney, the very real question of capability and competency would come up.

        Hopefully his dad will help him understand the law better because having 2 J Ashcrofts be that hilariously dumb is a bad look.

        • NovaPrime@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          I’ve heard better arguments from an L1 than this bozo. But you know what they say: if the law is on your side, pound the law. If the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If neither is on your side, pound the table. All he has is the table.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          In the sense of being genuinely ignorant of the proper way to act, no. In the sense of being petulant brats throwing a tantrum, yes.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        10 months ago

        I couldn’t get over his use if the word “extrajudicial” to describe what’s happening in court cases. What a bumbling moron.

      • Infinity187@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        BTC is actually a pretty well established political YT’er and has some great rundowns of the political climate. I’m sure you’d change your tune if you watched a few vids.

        • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          He’s got a very intense delivery style that comes off very used-car-salesman to me. I don’t think he’s wrong about stuff, I just don’t enjoy watching his presentation style.

        • RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          But I don’t want to watch any Youtubers talk. They are all annoying, and I don’t care to see their talking faces.

          Any information that they could present by talking it to a camera with their face, could be more efficiently delivered as a blog post. There’s no reason but self-promotion for these people to be talking to their camera. Videos that show things happening, and are about actual stuff, are what Youtube should be for. Not a bunch of talking heads giving their opinions to a camera.

      • jpreston2005@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        “b-b-but, but twump was taken off for allegations, and allegations mean stuff someone said, so I heard someone say Biden bad so slippery slope then I take bidens name off”

        He said “well if they do it, slippery slope, I’ll do it!” He SERIOUSLY used a well known logical fallacy to prove his point.

        my grasp upon my own native tongue is a failure, as I simply don’t have the words to describe the level of idiocy we see regularly from republicans.

      • deweydecibel@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        We certainly do, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves into thinking that would accomplish much with these fuckers. They’ll just start avoiding the journalists that refuse to stay neutral or lob them softballs.

        It’s not like their supporters are going to shame them for doing that, either. I’m shocked any Republican talks to any reporter that isn’t from Fox News anymore.

        • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world
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          They’ll just start avoiding the journalists that refuse to stay neutral or lob them softballs.

          The problem with that is thinking that the follow-up question, “How so?” is anything BUT neutral or a softball. It’s just a basic question; it literally could not be MORE neutral.

          This fool could have been on Newsmaxx or OANN and gotten that same question from a friendly interviewer trying to offer him the space to lay out more slanderous innuendo, unaware that Jay Ashcroft is completely unprepared for even that tiny amount of latitude.

          I know that’s not your position or what you personally are advocating, but jesus fucking christ that’s an easy one. “So-and-so did something bad.” Response: “How so?”

          To blatantly twist a quote from The Godfather, Jay Ashcroft showed up for that interview with nothing but his dick in his hand . . . and his hand wasn’t even full.

        • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id
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          10 months ago

          They already do avoid most journalists, for precisely that reason. Neutrality, to the insane Republican party, is the same thing as a far left bias.

        • Asafum@feddit.nl
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          10 months ago

          Hell even within Fox news… Shepard Smith was one of a handful of actual journalists at Fox news, surrounded entirely by opinion shows.

          Fox news viewers HATED Shepard Smith because he was “too opinionated.”

          I can’t stand this reality.

        • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I’m sure they dream of a day in the not-to-distant future where they can just have journalists like this killed.

  • MammyWhammy@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    The follow-up question was literally “What accusations are you making against Biden to justify removing him from the ballot?”

    Like dude, you can literally make up anything and your base would eat it up. You couldn’t even do that. What a moron, and he’ll still lose almost zero support from his base because they didn’t actually pay attention.

    • RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      The Ashcrofts have always been smooth-brained. But Jay’s is so smooth that quarks could ice skate on it.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      It shouldn’t be all that surprising that John Ashcroft’s son has a total lack of imagination and creativity.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Like dude, you can literally make up anything and your base would eat it up.

      The reason doesn’t matter. This is purely a tit-for-tat because Trump fell off the ballot in Colorado, Maine, and… I guess now Nevada? His base will still eat it up. Nobody who regularly votes for him is going to see the back end of this interview, just the headline, because they all think CNN stands for “Communist News Network”.

  • Fapper_McFapper@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Isn’t Missouri the show me State? Is this fucktard going to show any evidence of insurrection or just blather on about how other governors have made the claim of insurrection against Biden? My god Republicans are stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid to the fucking core.

    • sndmn@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      That’s why they attack education constantly. Education prevents conservatives.

      • S_204@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        We’re seeing a lot of conservative action and behaviour on college campuses these days though. Go far enough to the liberal side and you end up standing right next to the conservatives!

          • S_204@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            It’s not both sides. What we’re seeing is that it’s human nature. It goes well past whatever your political beliefs are…

          • S_204@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            I’m talking about the banning of certain ideas and speech.

            20 years ago when I was in university that was an entirely conservative ideal. Today we don’t see that being the case…

              • S_204@lemm.ee
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                10 months ago

                They’re not being banned technically, they’re being run off campus which amounts to the same. The congressional hearings covered some of this, it’s not like I’m putting forward a new idea here. There’s testimony of student groups having their spaces taken away.

                • Jazzy Vidalia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  10 months ago

                  They are being “ran off” because they no longer hold muster and they refuse to provide any new ideas. This is how the marketplace of ideas work. Their ideas failed and are being rejected because they are unserious. Now they are demanding these ideas which have failed to be inserted back into the academic space by force.

                  If only there were other opinions and ideas we could discuss implementing other than “liberalism” and “conservatism” but academics won’t let other ideas replace those in the marketplace because the failures are refusing the leave the square and are threatening violence if they don’t get their way.

                  Don’t both sides this. They weren’t banned. They weren’t mobbed. They lost and refused to leave.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        10 months ago

        The problem here is the ambiguity of “Republicans”. If you mean politicians, then yes, they’re malicious AF and often pretty competent about it. If you mean their voters, then most of them are just abysmally stupid (and arrogant enough to think they’re smart).

      • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Sure, but he sucked even at that. “How so?” could have been Ashcroft’s opening to lay out even more baseless slander, but he couldn’t even get that right, lol

    • Optional@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Missouri is one of the last and proudest slave states (followed only by Arkansas, Texas, and Florida - go figure?). They routinely slaughtered Kansans for their refusal to brutalize and own other humans. Rush Limbaugh is from there. Ferguson police just shoot black people for sport and openly laugh about it. It’s an infected polyp on the anus of racist America with some of the worst, most hateful people scowling and lurching around in it.

      That this chud would be representing the people of Missouri is not a surprise at all.

      They do have some lovely scenery though, and there are a few decent people there as well. Just - on the political front, you can pretty well expect when you hear Missouri it won’t be good news.

        • nomous@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Finally, something I can speak to, crime!

          Most large cities follow the trend where the city center is higher crime than the surrounding areas, because crime is strongly correlated with population density and poverty. St. Louis crime follows the exact same trend.

          However, in other places the city center + surrounding areas are considered to be one political entity, the higher crime stats in the city center are “diluted” by the lower crime stats in the surrounding area.

          In St. Louis, the city is a distinct political entity from the county. As a result, the amount of “dilution” is much less than in other areas, leading to St. Louis City having an abnormally high crime rate per capita, and St. Louis County having an abnormally low crime rate per capita. If you combine the City + County crime stats, you get a picture that looks very much like all the other rust belt cities (Philly included).

          There are other factors as well. For example- St. Louis City is not a residential city- very few people actually live downtown compared to its size, and there is much less night life and nighttime activity compared to other cities of our size. In the 2020 census, just 5400 people lived in the “Downtown neighborhood.” This is a commuter area that might have 200,000-300,000 people moving through it on a daily basis. When you look at the crime stats for Downtown on a per-capita basis, they’re computed against a population size of 5,400, even though there are 50 times that many people using the area. If Busch Stadium sells out a game they seat 60,000 people- more than 15 times greater than the recorded permanent population of the area. All these effects are true for the larger St. Louis City crime stats as well. The population of the city is only 300,000 or so, but there are 200,000 people or more that commute to the city every day.

          And every city is different, criminologists and the FBI consistently and adamantly say that crime stat comparisons across different locations are not meaningful. Despite that, people love to compare crime stats and find out what city is most dangerous or the homicide capitol because they can’t stop themselves.

  • moog@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    Ashcroft got absolutely roasted holy Christ. “Duh duh duh huh what??? There have been allegations! I just don’t know them”

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        10 months ago

        I’m not surprised. I’m in Virginia and I see MAGAts argue that having the gall to ask why is in and of itself an admission of guilt.

        “Bidens a traitor!”

        “Why?”

        “YOU KNOW WHY IF HE’S INNOCENT WHY YOU SO WORRIED ABOUT IT HUH?!”

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          10 months ago

          “innocence is supposed to be a legal defense, but you’re refusing to let somebody defend themselves even if you have no reason to think they did anything wrong - everybody should be worried!”

  • mastefetri@infosec.pub
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    10 months ago

    Gosh, how rude. Ashcroft wanted to ride out the clock with a gish gallop and the mean interviewer wouldn’t let him. What happened to journalistic standards?

  • RestrictedAccount@lemmy.world
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    Why would Rolling Stone link to Shitter rather than directly to the CNN interview?

    They are enabling their oppressor

    Edit: I tried to post the clip from CNN. After it hanging because it was stuck on the pop ups to allow it to track me even off their site and requests to push non stop ads to my cell phone in the middle of meetings and dinner I gave up.

    There has to be a way.

  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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    ‘What’s your legal argument?’

    ‘Your honour, it’s the perennial argument of I’m Rubber, You’re Glue, as put forth in the case of Billy vs Jimmy in the schoolyard, 1954. The teacher in that case argued that Billy was, in fact, glue…’

    • Tbird83ii@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      I’m sorry, but Billy v Jimmy is not consistent with this nations Historical Traditions. Your argument needs to include a valid ruling from between 1776 and a time period that justifies my argument, whether or not the precedent at that time was to provide justice only to land-owning white men.

      So sayeth we Court Supreme.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Didn’t watch the video, but from the quotes he did wait…

      The Republican just claimed he was cut off so he couldn’t answer, and then still wouldn’t answer.

      He wants to have the “let me finish” argument where it just devolves to that. When given time to answer, they don’t, just keep saying “let me finish” until they walk away.

      Remember, Republicans are toddlers, and they argue like that

      • ThrowawayOnLemmy@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        The host did cut him off a few times, but he cut him off specifically to keep him on focus to the questions at hand and not let him bloviate.

        • maniclucky@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Yeah. When a secretary of state positively asserts that there have been allegations that the sitting president of the United States has engaged in insurrection, making them answer “what did he do?” is the only next thing that should be asked and no deviations should be allowed.

      • rynzcycle@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        I just watched, he does jump in once or twice, but seems like satellite delay awkwardness mostly.

        After laying out the question, “what are the (details of the) allegations of Biden’s supposed insurrection” Sanchez gives him loads of time to look like the fool he is.

      • Waluigis_Talking_Buttplug@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        but from the quotes he did wait

        didn’t watch the video

        Okay buddy. Good for you I guess. You didn’t watch and yet you have an opinion that’s specifically related to watching.

    • PoopingCough@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Yeah i think the problem is when you just let them talk they will quickly change the subject and start up the gish gallop so interrupting is the only way to actually stay on topic. Otherwise you’re just giving them a platform to spew a hundred lies without having a chance to refute anything.