June 27, 2021: Vice President Pence Calls Trump "Un-American"

 

6/27/21: If Rejected-President Trump has been watching the news lately, he has to feel like he’s getting punched repeatedly in his tangerine-tinted face.

It took Pence four years to figure out: Trump was only in it for himself.

 

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“There’s almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.” 

Former Vice President Pence

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Speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Thursday, former Vice President Mike Pence did a little slut-shaming, without naming the slut. Once again, he described January 6 as “a dark day in our nation’s history.” 

Then he added: 

Now, there are those in our party who believe that in my position as presiding [Senate] officer over the joint session, that I possessed the authority to reject or return electoral votes certified by states. But the Constitution provides the vice president with no such authority before the joint session of Congress. And the truth is, there’s almost no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president.

 

Especially when that “any one person” with the “un-American” notion was Donald J. Trump.

 

That’s one shiner for Trump. Then he gets a second. A Republican-led Michigan Senate committee completes its investigation into accusations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. The top-line conclusion: “This committee found no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud in Michigan’s prosecution of the 2020 election.”  

Second, the committee report suggests that the Michigan attorney general, a Democrat, “consider investigating those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends.” One typical conspiracy theory, pushed to the max by Trump-nut fans, was that a mistake in transposing numbers in Antrim County, quickly rectified, was proof of rigged voting machines. 

Third: The right-wing Voter Integrity Project had claimed that 289,866 illegal votes were cast in Michigan. The committee selected 40 at random from the list of those who had supposedly received absentee ballots without asking. 

Let’s see how VIP did: 

o   38 said they did request absentee ballots, and everything was cool. 

o   One said he or she did not (but happened to be on Michigan’s permanent absentee ballot list. 

o   One said he or she voted absentee in the 2020 primary election, and may or may not have  checked the box to request an absentee ballot in the general election.

 

Meaning, VIP had an impressive 95% error rate, at least, and very possibly an unbeatable 100%.

 

Conclusion Four: Yes, there was chaos at one large vote-counting center in Detroit. That chaos was the fault of…Trump supporters, who tried to storm the location. “The Wayne County Republican Party and other, independent organizations, ought to issue a repudiation of the actions of certain individuals that created a panic and had untrained and unnumbered persons descend on the TCF Center.” 

Five: The committee examined the claim by Jovan Pulitzer, who said he had access to allow him to manipulate vote tallies on Dominion Voting System machines, if he wanted. Mr. Pulitzer’s testimony, the Republican-led committee found, 

has been demonstrated to be untrue and a complete fabrication. He did not, at any time, have access to data or votes, let alone have the ability to manipulate the counts directly or by the introduction of malicious software to the tabulators. Nor could he spot fraudulent ballots from non-fraudulent ones.

 

Six: A widely-circulated photo of “bogus ballots” being “secretly” delivered to a vote-counting center in the dead of night turned out to be a picture of…a “WXYZ-TV photographer hauling his equipment.” 

Seven: Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy and Trump supporter most in favor of having the U.S. military overturn the November vote – let’s just say the report labels him “ignorant.” 

Eight: Speaking of ignorant, Rejected-President Trump’s claim, repeated multiple times, that more people voted in Detroit than people living there was amazingly false. Not only did more people not vote in the city than lived there, only 50% of eligible voters cast ballots in 2020, at all. 

Of course, Mr. Trump read the report and took his medicine like a man… 

Oh, hell, no. 

He insisted the Republicans in charge were carrying out a “cover up.” They were doing everything possible to “hide the truth.” They were all “RINOs” and he would make them pay in the 2022 election. (See: 5/18/21, for Trump’s claim that Michigan’s investigation was going to blow the lid off the “Stolen Election Coverup.”)

 

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SO: WE NEED to be perfectly clear. No loser in any presidential race in U.S. history – and let’s say this loud – no loser except

 

LOSER DON

 

has ever had the audacity to claim that he was cheated out of victory by members of his own party, and in multiple states. (See also: Georgia and Arizona.) 

The man is nuts.

 

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Exactly that kind of sleazebag administration. 

THE PUNCHES to the faces of members of Team Trump kept coming. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s favorite attorney, has had his license to practice law in the State of New York suspended. That was punishment for his efforts to spread falsehoods about the “rigged” election in November. (See, for example, the above list.) 

Then you have former Trump appointee, and EPA Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson. Jackson is alleged to have made sure two other Trump appointees were paid, back in 2017 and 2018, even after they were terminated from their posts. 

Total payout: $14,181.38 to one. 

And $23,731.85 for the other. 

Or to put it another way: Your taxpayer dollars and cents at work for people no longer at work. 

(This is not to be confused with the story of former Trump bud, Scott Pruitt, his first choice to head the E.P.A., who resigned from the Cabinet in the face of thirteen federal inquiries into questionable spending and management practices. Even Fox News couldn’t avoid reporting on that mess.)

 

The parade of allegations continues. This week Anthony Scaramucci, who worked on the 2016 Trump campaign and severed, albeit briefly, as White House head of communications, testified in a bribery case. According to Scaramucci, during the 2016 campaign and shortly after, Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign head, pushed to get Chicago banker Stephen Calk a top post in the incoming administration. 

Why was Manafort so keen on helping Calk (there was hope he might land a place as Treasury Secretary or Secretary of the Army)? Calk had made $9.5 million in loans to Manafort. Manafort was in hock to a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska is the guy who boasted about having a rival murdered. 

Then Manafort colluded with a Russian agent, Konstantin Kilimnik, who got indicted, but fled the U.S. just hours before he could be arrested.

 

Next, Manafort got convicted by a jury of, like, 100 felonies, and got sentenced to spend seven-and-a-half years in prison, but President Trump said he wouldn’t take a pardon off the table. 

Which was weird, because Manafort was a prime target at the time of the Mueller investigation. 

Which meant Manafort never spilled the beans about what Trump might have known about all his campaign’s Russian connections. 

So, on his way out the White House door, Trump did pardon Manafort. Because that was exactly the kind of sleazebag trick you had to accept from his administration.