Part II: Baby Steps: Trump's First "Stolen Election" Lies

Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote,
but lost in the Electoral College.

Baby Steps: Trump’s First “Stolen Election” Lies.

 

__________ 

“We should march on Washington and stop this travesty.” 

Donald J. Trump

__________ 

 

YOU MAY NOT recall, but Donald has been peddling “Stolen Election” lies for more than a decade. Again, what does experience prove? Donald will always say elections are stolen if he doesn’t like the results. 

 

“We should have a revolution in this country.” 

Early 2011: Donald hops the racist bandwagon, and spends the next five years insisting that Barack Obama is an illegitimate president. He claims he can prove Obama was not born in Hawaii. 

Across the right-wing universe the story spreads: Obama was born in Kenya. 

(Millions of the future MAGA faithful, believed this lie.) 

(See: September 16, 2016.) 

 

November 6, 2012 – Election Night: Twenty minutes after polls close on the West Coast, Trump has already worked himself up into a tweeting tizzy. Millions of votes are still being tallied, but he jumps to the conclusion that Obama has lost the popular vote. “He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election,” Donald howls. “We should have a revolution in this country!” 

“The phoney [sic] electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation,” he fumes. “The loser one [sic]! We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” 

Obama goes on, once all the ballots are counted, to win the popular vote. No revolution required. 

(Trump, of course, loses the popular vote four years later.)

Trump claimed the election was stolen from Mitt Romney.

 

February 3, 2016: Now running for president, himself, Donald finishes second in the GOP primary caucus in Iowa. 

“Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa,” he whines, “he stole it.” 

 

September 16: Trump realizes that his perceived racism is hurting him with open-minded voters. “President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period,” he finally admits. That’s it. Nine f**king words. 

He never apologizes for spreading birther lies. 

(Millions of the MAGA kind don’t get the message.) 

(They still think Obama was born in Kenya.) 

(Today, some MAGA folk believe Biden is a robot – controlled by Mr. Obama!!!) 

 

Fall 2016: Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pays off Stormy, the Bunny, and a doorman who knows about the impregnated housekeeper. 

(Cohen later goes to jail for breaking campaign finance laws.) 

 

Candidate Pussy Grabber is accused of grabbing the body parts of 16 or 22 different women, depending on how you count. 

Trump ally, Roger Stone, creates a group called “Stop the Steal.” He’s preparing to spread the lie that the election in November has been stolen. 

(Stone goes on to rack up seven felonies in service to President Trump.) 

(He later gets a Golden Pardon.)

Stone's tattoo says it all.

  

November 8 – Election Day, 2016: Donald  insists, while votes are still being counted, that the game is “fixed” against him. 

Yet he wins. 

 

November 9: Hillary Clinton calls Mr. Trump in the early morning hours and concedes defeat. “We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead,” she tells supporters. 

November 27: The president-elect decides claims he won the popular vote. Donald insists millions voted illegally, especially in California, and says machines switched his votes to Hillary. 

Mrs. Clinton carried that state by four million votes.

 

A reasonably intelligent individual would ask why Democrats bothered to steal millions of votes in California, but not 10,705 in Michigan, a state which Mrs. Clinton lost by 10,704 votes. 

Or 23,000 in Wisconsin. 

Or 54,000 in Pennsylvania. 

 

January 25, 2017: On Mr. Trump’s fifth day in office, he relates the sad saga of Bernhard Langer, a golfing pro. Mr. Langer so wanted his vote to count in the 2016 election, but he was denied his rights! 

The free press checks out his story; and we learn that Mr. Langer never tried to vote. Mainly because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen. 

Two days later, top White House aide Stephen Miller tells reporters that the problem of illegal voters swarming to the polls is real. He insists that “millions of people who were registered in two states or who were dead were registered to vote” and flocked to the polls. The free press soon reports that these criminals, registered in two states, include White House aide Steve Bannon, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, White House Son-in-Law Jared Kushner, and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Even Tiffany Trump is registered twice, in Pennsylvania and New York. 

 

All politicians make exaggerated claims, but during his 2016 campaign, Donald makes claims that defy all math. He variously claims that the real unemployment rate under Mr. Obama is 18%, 28%, or even 42%. He insists that 93 million Americans are still looking for gainful employ. 

Sean Hannity thought that number, 93 million would look even worse, if he just claimed the real ranks of unemployed Americans numbered 95 million. Goddam that Obama! 

(Millions of the MAGA faithful accept these #’s without question.) 

(Remember these numbers. See below.) 

 

February 2017: Speaker of the House of Representatives Paul Ryan assures the American people that there is “no evidence” to support the new president’s claim that millions of illegal voters had shown up at the polls in November. Sen. Lindsey Graham has not been neutered yet, and he agrees. 

The election wasn’t stolen. 

At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the unemployment rate is 4.7% in January 2017, when Obama steps down from office. 

Donald insists the numbers are “phony,” and “rigged,” and warns that the people at the Bureau are commies. 

(I made the “commies” one up.) 

 

March 2017, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 206,000 jobs have been added in February. Unemployment ticks down to 4.6 percent. Suddenly, Trump loves the numbers reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. At a minimum, however, we must believe that he has cut the jobless rate from 18% to 4.6% in one month, by adding 206,000 jobs. 

Who knows at that point, that Donald has been lying? The people at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Also math teachers. 

No one on Team Trump ever explains what happened. If Donald added 206,000 jobs, what happened to the other 92,794,000 Americans he swore were unemployed under Goddam Kenyan Obama? 

(The MAGA folk never puzzle over any of this.) 

 

May 11, 2017: Trump signs an executive order to create a Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity. The Committee is tasked with uncovering all the skullduggery that Donald says occurred during the 2016 election. Mike Pence is chair, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is vice chair. Kobach is famous for cleaning up “massive” voter fraud in the “Sunflower State.” He secured nine convictions, over the course of multiple elections, in a state with a population of 1.8 million. At least three of the nine are known to have cast votes for Trump. 

(The Committee meets only twice, never issues a final report, and disbands in January 2018.) 

 

The Russia investigation in a nutshell. 

July 7, 2017: On this day, Trump meets with Vladimir Putin for the first time. Putin is the man who likes to have political opponents thrown off high balconies. Donald and Vlad hit it off from the start. Donald tells reporters he believes Vlad when Vlad says Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election. 

At that exact moment the following Trump advisors and/or family members know the Russians interfered. All of the following will eventually admit having meet with Russians during the campaign: Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Felix Sater, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone. 

Also: Gen. Michael T. Flynn. 

Even Vladimir Putin knows Trump is lying. 

(Manafort and Flynn will also get Golden Pardons.)

  

August 22, 2018: Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, takes a plea deal in the case of the illegal hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, and a Trump Tower doorman. He gets sent to the slammer. Trump is listed in court documents as “Unindicted Co-conspirator 1.” 

(Department of Justice protocol holds that a sitting president cannot be indicted.) 

(Trump has now been indicted for his role in this payoff scheme.) 

 

Turnout in 2020 is going to be huge. 

November 6, 2018 – Election Day: Trump has promised a massive “red wave” is coming in the midterms. Instead, Democrats outpoll Republicans by 8.6 million votes in all U.S. House races combined. Thirty million more voters turn out than in 2014. Every political advisor with an ounce of brains understands that voter turnout is going to be huge in the 2020 election. 

(Four years later, the MAGA faithful still refuse to grapple with this reality.) 

 

January 26, 2019: Fox News sounds the alarm! Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says he can prove that 95,000 non-citizens are enrolled to vote in Texas, and 58,000 have!!! Mr. Trump gazes upon that story and freaks. “These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg!” 

Paxton rushes out lists of non-citizen voters to all 254 Texas counties. Within days, county clerks find error rates of 60 percent or more, and they’re not done. McClennan County has one of the shorter lists: 366 names, the “tip of the iceberg.” It turns out all 366 individuals listed are U.S. citizens, giving Team Paxton an impressive 100% error rate. 

Initial reports from across the state are so embarrassing Paxton has to drop the whole mess and hope voters won’t notice. 

(Most MAGA folks don’t.) 

There is no tip of the Texas iceberg. There is no iceberg.