NOTE: Throughout this post, we will insert pictures of Trump (as seen below) every time you are required, if you believe in the fairy tale, to accept a ridiculously unbelievable statement, swallow an absurdity as fact, overlook an outright lie, or ignore common sense. In honor of his bone spurs, we shall use this symbol, a picture of a younger, less blubbery Trump leaping in the air on one of his golf courses.
FAIRY
TALE WITH NO FAIRY – PART I.
In this lengthy post, we pile up evidence to show that President Trump planned all along to say the election was rigged, because he could never admit defeat. He didn’t need evidence from the start.
He only needed the suckers to swallow his
line.
*
2/21/20: U.S. intelligence experts warn Congress that Russians are already meddling with the coming election.
As NPR explains,
And at the briefing, the election threats executive, Shelby Pierson –
she’s the intelligence community’s coordinator for election security against
foreign threats – she relayed that there was intelligence that Russia
essentially wanted to see Trump re-elected, that Russia had developed a, quote-unquote,
“preference” for the incumbent, for Donald Trump.
The fact that the Russians might be interfering again (and let’s not forget it took Trump more than two years before he admitted they meddled in 2016) barely dented the president’s consciousness. He refused to heed the warning and order defenses against the Russians bolstered.
Instead, we had a flurry of sometimes bizarre, sometimes dangerous decisions. First, Trump went to work tweeting. “Another misinformation campaign is being launched by Democrats in Congress,” he growled. “Hoax number 7!”
A keen observer would quickly note that “Democrats in Congress” weren’t responsible for what Pierson said. What Pierson said was that the Russians were again messing in our elections.
Next, Trump moved “decisively” and fired Joseph Maguire, the Director of National Intelligence.
___
5/22/20: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, backed up by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, makes an appearance on Fox News. Paxton wants everyone to know he isn’t going to stand for mail-in voting, just because people might be afraid of showing up in person and catching COVID-19. Lt. Governor Patrick is really, really upset about Democrats trying to get people to vote by mail. It’s a “scam,” he says. They want to “steal votes.”
On Fox, of course, Paxton and Patrick are allowed to say whatever they like without cross examination. Paxton could have said, “Democrats plan to bring in illegal immigrants from Ireland and allow leprechauns to vote.” But one might be forgiven for thinking these fools were crying “illegal voting-wolf” once too often.
One could recall the claxon of alarm these same knuckleheads sounded in January 2019. On Fox News, of course! It was then that Paxton said he had evidence that 95,000 non-citizens were enrolled in Texas to vote. Governor Greg Abbott flipped at the news and promised to prosecute under law. Patrick flipped too.
President Trump watched Fox News. He saw those eye-popping numbers and he flipped, as well.
And, lo, he did tweet: “58,000 non-citizens voted in Texas, with 95,000 non-citizens registered to vote. These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. All over the country, especially in California, voter fraud is rampant. Must be stopped. Strong voter ID! @foxandfriends”
And it came to pass. The search was on for non-citizen voters…and, verily, did they turn out to be just about as common in Texas as leprechauns.
 |
Yeah, they don't exist, either. |
Lists of non-citizen voters were rushed out to all 254 Texas counties. Clerks were tasked with checking their voter lists. Within days, counties found error rates of 60 percent and weren’t even done. Sparsely populated McClennan County had one of the shorter lists: 366 names, the “tip of the iceberg,” so to speak. Like Santa Claus, county officials checked to see who had been naughty and nice and voted illegally. It turned out all 366 individuals listed were…U.S. citizens…giving state officials an impressive 100% error rate.
The entire affair turned out to be such a huge embarrassment that Abbott and Paxton and Patrick dropped the matter for good.
Trump, of course, moved on to the next lie in his bag of tricks.
___
7/30/20: President Trump suggests delaying the 2020 election. In a tweet (of course) he floats his authoritarian idea:
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020
will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a
great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly,
securely and safely vote???
“I don’t want to delay. I want to have the election” he tells reporters. “But I also don’t want to have to wait for three months and then find out that the ballots are all missing and the election doesn’t mean anything.”
The U.S. Constitution gives the power to set the times and places and rules for elections to the states.
Trump should have looked it up.
___
8/6/20: Team Trump sues the State of Nevada to stop officials from expanding a vote-by-mail program. Under this plan all active registered voters in Nevada would be sent mail-in ballots for the November 3 election. The Trump campaign claims the measure “makes voter fraud and other ineligible voting inevitable.”
If the decision stands, Nevada will join seven other states that have plans to send ballots to all active, registered voters.
Now, consider Florida, where Trump himself is registered. Trump tweeted on Tuesday that he was encouraging mail-in balloting in the “Sunshine State.”
Whether you call it Vote
by Mail or Absentee Voting, in Florida the election system is Safe and Secure,
Tried and True. Florida’s Voting system has been cleaned up (we defeated
Democrats attempts at change), so in Florida I encourage all to request a
Ballot & Vote by Mail!
Yes, Trump fans, in the coming election, your boy Don, was going to vote by mail. And his vote was going to count.
___
8/17/20: Trump is trailing Biden in all the polls, and by a margin of nearly eight points. Ignoring the grim evidence, he tells supporters at one of his endless rallies: “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
Or: the polls are right, which they almost always are.
___
8/20/20: White House Press Secretary “Birther” McEnany is asked if her boss is prepared to accept the results of the coming election.
(Like her boss, McEnany long argued that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States. So that’s another lie to drop into the stew.)
(One lie for Kayleigh, one for Donald.)
“The president has always said he’ll see what happens, and make a determination in the aftermath,” she responds. “It’s the same thing he said last November [last election, she means]. He wants a free election, a fair election, and he wants confidence in the results of the election.”
That means: “No.”
Trump lied for five years.
___
8/26/20: President Trump warns again that foreign nations plan to manipulate the mail-in vote. He hints darkly that it will be “the scandal of our times.”
The Office of the Director on National Intelligence, now under new Trump-appointed management, responds with this statement: “We have no information or intelligence that any nation-state threat actor is engaging in any activity to undermine the mail-in vote or ballots.”
___
8/27/20: For the first time in U.S. history, Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is forced to come out and say that the military will have no hand in settling a disputed election. “I foresee no role for the U.S. armed forces in this process,” he tells members of Congress. “We will not turn our backs on the Constitution of the United States.”
Who do you think Gen. Milley feared might turn his back on the Constitution of the United States?
Hint: His initials are not “JRB.”
___
9/17/20: The president is hedging his bets, regarding the coming election. With almost every poll showing him going down to flaming defeat, Trump claims we’ll never know who won. In a tweet, he warns that the “result may never be accurately determined, which is what some want.”
Sen. Marco Rubio and other Senate Republicans are forced to clean up after their standard bearer again.
“I don’t think we’ll
have inaccurate election results,” Rubio contradicted. “They may take a lot
longer than they ever have because of the amount of mailed ballots that are
going to come in and so forth. But I don’t have any concerns about the accuracy
of the election.”
In a recent report on Russian interference in the 2016 election,
members of the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously endorsed the
conclusion that U.S. officials and candidates “should use the absolute greatest
amount of restraint and caution if they are considering publicly calling the
validity of an upcoming election into question.”
“Such a grave allegation can have significant national security and electoral consequences,” including aiding foreign intelligence services, the report adds.
Um. Trump doesn’t care.
___
9/13/20: Michael Caputo, Trump-chosen spokesperson for Health and Human Services, suffers a complete Facebook meltdown.
He suggests that scientists at CDC and HHS are fomenting “sedition.” Left-wing hit squads are forming. “And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin. … If you carry guns,” he tells right-wing fans, “buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”
“There are hit squads being trained all over this country” to mount armed opposition to a second term for Mr. Trump, he says.
Worst of all, Caputo insists, “There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president. … To allow people to die so that you can replace the president is a grievous venial sin, venial sin,” Mr. Caputo adds. He is so badly rattled he forgets that venial sins are minor; and only mortal sins are tickets to eternal damnation.
“And these people are all going to hell,” he says, to emphasize whatever unhinged point he is making.
___
9/22/20: Gen. H. R. McMaster, Trump’s second National Security Advisor, says the president is “making it easy” for Russia to interfere in the November election.
“It’s
just wrong...it’s just really important for our leaders to be responsible about
this.” Putin, he said, is our enemy and wants to sow division.
___
9/23/20: Reporters ask Mr. Trump, if he lost the election, would he commit to a peaceful transfer of power.
His answer:
“Well,
we’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said. “You know that I’ve been
complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.”
Pressed
further, Trump responded: “We’ll want to have — get rid of the ballots and
you’ll have a very — we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer,
frankly. There’ll be a continuation.”
That’s
a “No,” again.
___
10/16/20: With
all the talk of “civil war” among Trump supporters, should he be defeated at
the ballot box, and all the calming words offered by Mr. Trump regarding the
coming “rigged” election, gun sales skyrocket. In June, a
record 3.9 million background checks were conducted. That would be the most for
any single month since the system was created in 1998.
___
10/27/20: Reports are circulating. If Trump wins a second term he’s going to fire F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray. As Axios explains, “A win, no matter the margin, will embolden Trump to ax anyone he sees as constraining him from enacting desired policies or going after perceived enemies.”
Wray testified in front of Congress recently and said the F.B.I. had not seen any evidence of widespread voter fraud, not even involving mail-in ballots.
Twenty former U.S. attorneys, all Republicans, sign a letter, warning, in a way, that this blogger has been right from Day 1. President Trump, they say, is “a threat to the rule of law in our country.”
___
10/28/20: Six days until the election and
more than 66 million Americans have voted early, in person, or by mailing
ballots.
The aptly named James Blight, of
Haines City, Florida, decides he might be able to widen the president’s path to victory, at least in his
hometown. First step: Drink all afternoon.
Second: Steal a front-end loader
with a backhoe arm.
Third: Drive through town digging
up people’s Biden/Harris signs and vandalizing their properties.
___
10/30/20: At a campaign rally in Minnesota, President Trump makes clear. He is going to win. “We have to win the election. We can’t play games. Go out and vote,” he shouts. “Do those beautiful absentee ballots, or just make sure your vote gets counted. Make sure because the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
Rigged by what? “Those beautiful absentee ballots,” I think.
The president spends the rest of his day clogging his Twitter feed with half-truths and frantic lying:
“Watch the Great
Red Wave!”
(Biden has an
average lead in the national polls of 7.8
points.)
“The Election should END on November 3rd.”
(So, if he’s losing, he’s not going to go to court?)
“Joe Biden has vowed to abolish the entire U.S. Energy
Industry.”
(Does this include the use of fire?)
___
10/31/20: President Trump is a master in
the hateful art of dehumanizing foes. He
has, for example, labeled Sen. Kamala Harris a “monster.”
Saturday, he said again that his
political foes were guilty of “treason.” The penalty for such a crime is death.
After he lambasts CBS’s Leslie Stahl for conducting what he felt was an “unfair” 60 Minutes interview of himself, she is deluged with death threats. Stahl is now shielded by a round-the-clock security detail.
___
November
1, 2020: With only two days left until
Election Day, I continue poring over polling data, as I have for weeks. As a
result, I have started drinking more and I’m still not sure what to expect.
I have argued
repeatedly that the polls, in aggregate, have rarely been wrong. Whenever I
point this out, Trump fans respond with fury, and insist, because I believe in
evidence, that I must be a commie.
I’m a believer in
facts – sometimes referred to as “math.” I have been checking polls as far back
as the 2000 election. In the first column (below) we see who had the lead in
the final average of polls. The second column is the actual margin of victory.
The third shows the difference between prediction and actual vote.
Final
Presidential Polling Averages (2000-2020)
Lead
in the final polls Real margin Difference
Bush +0.6 0.5 1.1**
Bush +1.5 2.4 0.9
Obama +7.3 7.6 0.3
Obama +0.7 3.9 3.2
Clinton +3.2 2.1 1.1
Biden (with
one day left): +6.7.
Still haunted by
the ghosts of 2016, I checked to see how accurate midterm polling had been. RealClearPolitics
reports on what is called the “generic ballot.” That is, which party do voters
prefer to control the next Congress?
Midterm
Election Polls
Average lead Final result Difference
2002 Republicans +1.7 +4.6 +2.9
2006 Democrats
+11.5 +7.9 –3.6
2010 Republicans +9.4 +6.8 –2.6
2014 Republicans +2.4 +5.7 +3.3
2018 Democrats +7.3 +8.4 +1.1
2020 Democrats +6.8
? ?
In the last five
midterms, the party leading in polling on the generic ballot went on to pile up
more votes when people cast actual ballots. The biggest margin of error in
any of the last eleven national elections was 3.6 points.
We might note that
in 2018, President Trump insisted a “red wave” was coming. When the waters receded, Democrats
had outpolled Republicans by 8.8 million votes, largest midterm
margin ever recorded.
We’ve said this
before, and in days and weeks, and months – and years – Trump will prove that
Trump Math is really just math he makes up.
___
11/2/20: Let’s give it up for the
Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. If Mr. Biden wins, it’s
going to be because of the ladies. I have always been fond of the women
demographic, myself, and would never grab any of them you know where, because I
am not a classless jerk. Female Americans are going to go big for Joe Biden
tomorrow.
In an average of 21
polls since the start of September, women prefer the Democrat over President Pussy Grabber by an average of
18.7 points.
Voter turnout among
young people could also be huge, since, to cite one example, most young
Americans believe climate change is real and a grave threat. If a “red wave” is
coming, it’s going to have to be led by folks with walkers. Americans, age
18-29, voted at a rate of 36% in the 2018 midterms, almost double the rate
from 2014. A Pew Research study puts the turnout figure in 2018 even higher,
42%, or 26 million millennials. At that point, this youthful cohort made up
one-fifth of the vote. “By making our
voices heard,” one told a reporter last week, “it will send a message to those
in power: We’re not going anywhere, and we’ll continue raising hell.”
If you’re a Republican you have growing reason to
sweat, because 63% of voters under 30 say they plan to vote this time
around, vs. 47% during the last presidential election. According to a study by
Harvard University, those young voters will break 63% to 25%, for Biden. A
second study predicted a more modest 59% to 37% split. Still, the more the
young show up, the worse it is for Trump.
FUN FACT: Four former communications directors
for the Republican National Committee explain that they have cast early ballots
for someone not named Trump.
One, Ryan Mahoney, even posts this picture
on Twitter:
Trevor
Francis and Lisa Miller join Mahoney in casting ballots for Biden. Doug Heye writes in the name of Sen. Mitt Romney.
The National Committee of Asian American Republicans also announces it will support the challenger.
Signs of trouble ahead for Team Trump abound.
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