January Fools - A "Stolen Election" Fairy Tale

 

A “STOLEN ELECTION” FAIRY TALE 

We here, living in reality as best we can, continue to gather information regarding the fairy tale of the “Stolen Election” of 2020. At this point, both skeptics and believers can agree on one element of the saga. Donald J. Trump (and goofy Mike Lindell) will carry a belief in that myth to the grave. 

“No candidate who ever lost both Ohio and Florida, was ever elected president,” Trump’s tombstone might read. 

That’s what he has claimed. Biden lost both states – so the election had to have been rigged. Like so many falsehoods that have poured from his pouty lips, the former president got that glaringly wrong.

John F. Kennedy lost both Ohio and Florida and won.

(See explanation for this symbol below.)

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It’s also important not to draw conclusions based on logic. 

The question at this point is how does one support one’s belief in such an obvious fairy tale? Powerful hallucinogens, perhaps? Ignoring current events – for example, recent hearings in Congress – and dozens of cases in state and federal courts in the last nineteen months – are priorities. It’s also important not to draw conclusions based on logic. To wit: In the most recent Republican primary in Pennsylvania, Trump’s favored candidate for an open seat in the U.S. Senate, finished with the thinnest possible lead, just over a thousand votes out of 1.3 million. 

If you have been living with your head stuck in a bucket, or busy pumping gas and wondering if you need a second mortgage, here’s the situation. Ex-President Blubber endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz to run in the general election in November. (Since Trump has long favored insulting nicknames, like “Sleepy Joe,” we felt he should be slapped with a juvenile descriptor of his own. So: “Blubber,” it is!) 

David McCormick found himself in shadow-close second place. 

This was Trump talking, so, long before all the votes could be counted, he suggested that Dr. Oz “declare victory” and… 

What? 

Call for Pennsylvanians to storm the legislature in Harrisburg, if they tried to deny him the “victory?” 

“It just makes it harder for them to cheat with the ballots that they ‘just happened to find,’” Trump explained on Truth Social, his new media site, although he didn’t have any evidence of actual fraud.

 

Should anyone be surprised? Former Pennsylvania state GOP chairman Rob Gleason said he was. He told reporters it was “just shocking” for Trump to call for canceling Republican ballots cast in a Republican primary. That is: to stop the counting of mail-in ballots, with the candidate he endorsed ahead. 

“Just shocking?” Consider Trump’s history. Gleason should have been shocked if Ol’ Blubber didn’t try to stop the counting. 

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We’ve been down this dusty highway many times before. Trump insisted that the 2016 presidential election was going to be rigged – and then won. Think about that. 

And Hillary won the popular vote. And Trump insisted that was rigged, too.  

Going back a bit, to February 2016, Candidate Trump claimed that the Iowa Republican primary was rigged, because Sen. “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz eked out a win. Frankly, if anything fails to go his way, Blubber insists the contest was rigged. If the man clogged a toilet, he’d claim the plumbing was rigged. 

 

I have blogged about this repulsive human being for seven sad years – because I believe the danger that he represents should be clear to all. Yet, even I had forgotten, until I was editing my work not long ago, that President Blubber claimed the 2018 midterm elections would be rigged. 

In those days, I kept studying the polls. I didn’t want to be surprised again, as I had been in 2016. (Unlike Trump, I am not prone to delusional behavior.) In April 2018, I knew the Democrats were in solid position. In what is known as the “generic ballot,” which asks voters if they would prefer Democrats or Republicans to control the next Congress, Democrats had a 7.5-point advantage. Not a single poll, and there had been more than 150 since Trump plunked down in the Oval Office, had shown the public with a preference for the GOP in the midterms. 

In keeping with his style, the president simply claimed that the polls were…wait for it… “phony,” and “rigged.” 

I kept checking the numbers because I’m not a dope. As a white guy, I was embarrassed in July 2018, to see that a solid majority of men approved of the job Trump was doing. I was waiting for Trump to claim that the Nineteenth Amendment had been rigged – but, then again, he doesn’t know much American history and probably doesn’t know what that amendment did. A poll that month showed that men preferred Republican candidates by eight points in the midterms, and women preferred Democrats by a margin of…58 percent to 33 percent.

 

In August, Trump warned that if Republicans lost the midterms there would be violence. That seemed kind of nuts. 

Meanwhile, the president kept predicting that a “big red wave” was coming in November. It was going to break over the Democrats’ heads, and wash them all away. 

If Donald was living in Cloud Cuckoo Land, I was not. I kept checking. A Quinnipiac poll late that summer asked respondents if they felt proud to have Trump as president, embarrassed, or didn’t know. Only 31% said they’re proud; and that figure was inflated by the 69% of Republicans who weren’t bothered by a pussy-grabbing president who locked up children along the border. 

Almost half of all Americans, 49%, choose “embarrassed.” That included most white men with college degrees (54%) and most women (55%). More than half of Americans, ages 18-49, said they were embarrassed. So did six in ten Hispanics and three of every four African Americans.

 

Finally, Election Day! The average of all polls on November 6, 2018, showed Trump with an approval rating of: 

42.9 percent. 

As expected, President Blubber refused to face reality. Or perhaps, crippled by narcissism, he just couldn’t. He claimed a CNN poll just out a few days before, showing Democrats leading in most congressional races, was a “Fake Suppression Poll.” His fans should “watch for real results Tuesday.” 

In fact, a wave was coming, but not red. Voters turned out in huge numbers, thirty million more than voted in the 2014 midterms. And the polls turned out to be quite accurate. The Republicans maintained a grip on the U.S. Senate, but barely, as experts predicted. Overall, Democrats outpolled Republicans by 8.6 million votes in the combined House races, or 7.9 percent, meaning poll averages were right on target. In the House, it looked like the GOP would lose 40 seats. 

Stop here and ponder one number for a moment. Thirty million. Thirty million more voters had turned out in 2018, than in 2014. Both parties had to know. Turnout in 2020 election was going to be huge.

 

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The “frivolous side of the line.” 

A couple of “humorous” notes first. Then we’ll dive into the story of how Trump spent his time leading up to the 2020 election, and how he has spent it since his ignominious defeat. He has been trying (successfully) to poison as many minds as he can with ever more ridiculous claims, and prove that Joe “Let’s go Brandon” Biden is not the rightful occupant of the White House. 

Before we move on, it’s fun to point out that Trump first endorsed Sean Parnell as his choice to run for and fill the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania. Parnell didn’t last long, and had to drop out after losing a custody battle in court, just because his estranged wife accused him of domestic violence. 

See also: Trump’s choice for a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia – namely Herschel Walker. Yes, the party of “law and order” is running a man for high office, who once beat up his wife, threatened to kill an ex-girlfriend, and warned he might have to engage in a shootout with police. 

Then, this past May, a federal judge – appointed by Ex-President Blubber – slapped aside another “stolen election” claim filed by the perpetually-deluded-and-cluelessly-loyal Mike Lindell. The legal language was abstruse, but boiling it down as best I can, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols ordered poor Mr. MyPillow to pay court costs and legal fees for Smartmatic, the voting software company currently suing Mike for defamation. This wasn’t a total defeat for Lindell, but did not bode well for his case. Judge Nichols said in his ruling that at least one of Lindell’s stolen vote claims was “frivolous,” and noted that “other claims” fell on the “frivolous side of the line.” 

 

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“You can’t live in a world where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by specific evidence, that there was fraud in the election.” 

Attorney General Bill Barr

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Now, let’s dive into the massive record made up of Trump claims that victory in the election of 2020 was cruelly stolen from his grasp. What do you have to believe, to remain as delusional as Lindell? 

And the former Narcissist-in-Chief? 

Here’s an easy one. You have to be fool enough to believe that a man who cheated on all three of his wives, and repeatedly lied to them, and in sequence, would feel a need to tell voters the truth. 

Throughout this post, we will insert little pictures of Trump (as seen above) every time you are required, if you believe in the fairy tale, to accept a ridiculously unbelievable statement, swallow an absurdity as fact, overlook a lie, or ignore common sense. In honor of his bone spurs, we shall use this symbol (reduced in size), a picture of a younger, less blubbery Trump leaping in the air on one of his golf courses. 

We know, in recent days, that members of the Trump cult, Fox News apologists, neo-Nazis, assorted racists, and QAnon kooks have been ignoring the hearings conducted by the House Select Committee on January 6. 

“Show trial,” one Republican congressman howled. And that reaction is a template for the party of Trump. 

Only, the hearings are not a show trial, or a sham, and they aren’t “rigged” or “phony” or “Fake News.”

 

If you haven’t been watching, you missed all of the following: 

Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, has testified that he met with Trump three times in the wake of his bitter defeat at the polls: November 23, December 1, and December 14, 2020. On that final occasion, he decided to resign. He told the president his repeated claims of a stolen election were “bullshit.” As for his decision to step down, he explained to investigators, “You can’t live in a world where the incumbent administration stays in power based on its view, unsupported by specific evidence, that there was fraud in the election.” 

He told lawyers for the committee that there was “zero basis for the allegations” that Dominion Voting machines had been rigged to steal votes. Such claims, he said, were “complete nonsense,” “crazy stuff.” Making such claims, he added, represented a “grave disservice to the country.”

In the first two hearings, a parade of Trump lawyers, Trump campaign workers, and White House staff – even Ivanka Trump – followed Barr, and bolstered his position. Former White House lawyer Eric Herschman was asked about claims of rigged machines. “The Dominion stuff was…I never saw any evidence to sustain those allegations.” 

As for claims by put forward by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who eventually became the faces of the Trump legal team fighting to overturn the vote, regarding Dominion, he added, “What they were proposing, I thought was nuts.”

 

Matthew Morgan, former general counsel for the Trump 2020 campaign, said he investigated all the allegations as they came to him. He found nothing that would have been “outcome determinative.” 

He testified that everyone in the room – “at least among the staff” that had been tracking down all the falsehoods – agreed.

Bill Stepien, who took over a foundering Trump reelection campaign with only 115 days left, was featured in video testimony. On the night of the election, he said Rudy Giuliani began telling Trump he should declare victory – and not wait for the votes to be tallied in every state. A cut to Jason Miller, was inserted. Had anyone been drinking that night, anyone in meetings with Trump? 

“Uh, Rudy Giuliani,” Miller said. “He was definitely intoxicated.” 

Stepien explained. “It was far too early…ballots were still going to be counted for days,” if not weeks. “I always told the president the truth,” he said. “We’re going to have to wait to see how it turned out.” 

Miller also advised the president not to declare victory. 

Yet, in the early morning hours of November 4, Trump did just that. Appearing angrily before a gathering of supporters, he claimed loudly, “Frankly, we did win this election.” 

His own people believed he had not. Stepien mentioned all kinds of accusations of fraud that started coming in. One: that illegal votes from other countries were coming in by the thousands. What had really happened, he had to explain, were ballots from Americans living overseas were still being received and counted. 

Not fraud.

 

 

It might make sense to contest results, and ensure the numbers were accurate. Stepien wasn’t optimistic though, He said he believed the president had lost. The numbers, he said, were “very, very, very bleak.” He thought, at best, Trump had a 5-10% chance of contesting results, and securing a win. 

Unfortunately, the voices of reason were drowned out. Rudy appeared on television, screaming about hundreds of thousands of fake ballots being brought in in “garbage cans” and “shopping carts.” Sidney Powell was unleashed to make all kinds of wild claims on television. Herschman summed up one stolen election theory as “completely nuts.” Morgan explained that Trump’s original set of lawyers began bowing out. “Law firms,” he told investigators, “were not comfortable with claims Rudy was making.” Stepien, himself, left his post. “I didn’t think that what was happening at that point was honest or professional,” he explained. Barr concurred. He described “an avalanche of accusations,” and said the Department of Justice tried to track any credible claims down. Most proved “completely bogus,” and “silly,” he said. And then he gave a laugh. 

  

 

On November 29, the president attacked Barr and DOJ and said they weren’t doing their jobs, weren’t doing enough to help him get the win. The attorney general issued a statement on December 1, 2020, in response. DOJ had been investigating – but had found no proof of significant fraud. 

Later that day, he had a meeting at the White House with Mr. Trump. He said the president was madder than he had ever seen him, “trying to control himself.” Trump fumed. “You must hate Trump,” he said. 

The president insisted that he had seen “boxes” of bogus votes being delivered in Detroit, in the dark hours after polls closed on November 3. Barr explained that no fraud was involved. Detroit, he said, had 630 voting precincts, but it was standard practice for precincts to deliver all ballots to a central location, where they were tallied. “The stuff that his people were shoveling out to the public,” Barr said again, was “bullshit.” Perhaps most damning of all, he said that on the part of the president there was never really any “indication of interest in what the actual facts were.” 

Unable to cope with defeat, Trump only wanted to steal the win. 

Lawyers for the committee asked Barr what he though of claims of stolen votes put forward in the movie, “2,000 Mules.” 

At that point, Barr laughed out loud. 

Like so many others, Derek Lyons, a former counsel to President Trump, supported the “no fairy tale” position. He said that “Eric and Pat” told him allegations of fraud didn’t hold up. (I believe “Eric” was Herschman. “Pat” was Pat Cipollone, Chief White House Counsel at the time.) Alex Cannon could see no proof of systemic fraud. When he refused to say that he did, and cited a report by Chris Krebs, another Trump appointee, to support his contention, Peter Navarro, a Trump loyalist, stormed into his office and accused him of being an “agent of the Deep State.”

    

  

Once Barr stepped down, Trump upped the pressure on the Department of Justice to do his bidding. Richard Donoghue and other top DOJ officers met with Trump at the White House. Trump claimed at one point, that votes in places in Michigan had an error rate of 68%. Donoghue demurred. The actual rate, he said, was “0.0063,” or one error for every 15,000 votes. Trump simply chose to switch to another example – to throw out another wild claim. What about the “suitcase” full of votes in Georgia? What about that? The president said the votes had been rolled out – and counted three times – something like 54,000 fake votes, all going to Joe Biden. Donohue said that accusation was also false. Bjay Pak, who had been the U.S. District Attorney with jurisdiction over the matter, spoke next. He said his team had looked into the story, and found the “suitcase” was actually an “official lock box.” The F.B.I. and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had both looked into the question of fraud. “Nothing irregular” had been found. Donoghue told the president several times that these allegations “were false.” A hand recount of Georgia ballots had show that the story of fake ballots run three times, was “not true.”

         

 

Al Schmidt was up next. The only Republican on the board that oversaw voting in Philadelphia, he, too, said claims of fraud were untrue – and untrue by leaps and bounds. Rudy was out there, claiming that 8,021 dead people had voted in Pennsylvania. Schmidt said that “there wasn’t evidence of eight.” No matter how “fantastical or absurd,” election officials had tracked down these claims and found them false. Trump insisted that more people had voted in Philadelphia than there were people living there. Schmidt said that this was patently false. Barr, before he resigned, called that claim “absolute rubbish.” The president soon attacked Schmidt by name in a tweet. After that, Schmidt said, the kinds of death threats he was getting changed. Before, they had been generalized. Now, threats he received included his family’s address, the names of his wife, of his children, and their ages, and where they went to school. 

President Trump should have cared, should have been careful. He didn’t care about Schmidt or the safety of his family. He only cared about himself.

 

In terms of court battles, as a dutiful blogger, I had picked up some of the bottom line numbers before. I knew Trump’s lawyers had filed roughly five dozen challenges to the vote in various states. I knew they lost all but one time. 

The committee provided details: 62 cases were filed, and 61 losses were the result. (The lone exception was a temporary “victory,” soon overturned by a higher court.) Nor were the courts “rigged” against the president – although, of course, he insisted they were. Twenty-two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents, including ten appointed by Trump himself, rejected his various claims) All three of his picks for seats on the U.S. Supreme Court denied him legal redress. At least two dozen elected Republican state judges refused to provide the president with legal relief – because there was no evidence to support the kinds of claims his lawyers were carrying into court.

      (x 10 + 1 ½)  

 

Benjamin Ginsberg, a prominent Republican lawyer and expert in election challenges, bolstered the same line. There was no handsome prince on the way, to kiss the sleeping beauty at Mar-a-Lago and awaken him to the fact he was still President of the United States. There was no glass slipper to stick on a foot. There wasn’t even a “Tooth Fairy” to come stick money under a pillow. 

Not even a MyPillow. 

Trump lost in 2020 – and lost badly, in fact. Ginsberg scoffed, for example, at the work of the “somewhat farcical Cyber Ninjas” recount conducted in Arizona. It was duly noted that in three of four states where recounts were conducted, Biden actually gained votes.

  

 

Finally, Trump and his team should have known what was coming, long before the election itself. Chris Stirewalt, who used to be in charge of election numbers for Fox News, said it was clear before November 3, that this battle would be different. Early balloting had increased by 50%. Stirewalt and his team knew that in-person voting would trend red, favoring Mr. Trump. That would be the “red mirage.” Trump’s people knew it too, and they told Trump as much. Stirewalt explained that in every election for the last fifty years, Democratic votes in cities come in late, whereas red rural districts count their fewer votes first and report. “People had been talking for weeks, and everyone understood for weeks, that that was going to be what happened on Election Night.” 

Yet, as Mr. Barr noted, the president was standing before the American people, just hours after the polls closed, and most had bedded down for the night, and howling that the vote counting should stop at once. He was, Barr noted, claiming fraud “before there was an actual potential looking at evidence.” 

That is: He was making shit up.