A Liberal in Trumpistan: Part IV: These People Are F**king Crazy

Part IV: These People Are F**king Crazy.

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“Each of us swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We did not swear it to an individual or a party.”

The ten living secretaries of defense, offering warning on January 5, 2021.

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Team Trump toys with a "Tiananmen Square" Plan.

WITH the United States Supreme Court having slammed the door on Donald Trump’s dreams of a second term (see Part III), and lower courts having tossed out dozens of Team Trump challenges to voting results, desperation spreads among the MAGA faithful. Diamond and Silk, two buffoons who host a show on Newsmax, offer up a novel plan to keep the incumbent in power.

“If the Supreme Court can’t save our Republic,” they tweet, “then where is the Military?” In fact, they insist, “There needs to be a Forensic Audit done by our Military in all the Swing states in question. The ballot boxes need to be open, and the Dominion machines need to be examined for irregularities. All Illegal Ballots and Illegal tabulation counts should be removed!”

December 13: Sen. Lamar Alexander says he hopes Trump will put the country first and congratulate President-Elect Biden.

(Ha, fat chance!)

Sen. Bill Cassidy tells reporters that on January 20, 2021, Mr. Biden will be taking over. He has the necessary electoral votes. “As we’re a nation of laws, and this is the Constitution, and this is the law,” the senator explains, “and this is how it breaks out, and the courts have ruled[.]”

December 14: The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects President Trump’s fourth and final appeal to overturn the state’s November results. Ten electoral votes go to Biden.

Michigan electors ignore “credible threats” of violence and record their votes (16) for the former Vice President. One elector wears a bulletproof vest on the way to vote.

Trump suggests locking people up, even if we never bother with a trial. He retweets a post by L. Lin Wood, who suggests jail time for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Their crime? Counting the popular votes in their state three times (two recounts, one automatic, one demanded by Team Trump) and reporting that Mr. Biden won.

Three times.

Sen. Mike Braun (R-In.) looks at the handwriting on the Electoral College wall and says that December 14, “marks a watershed moment where we must put aside politics and respect the constitutional process that determines the winner of our Presidential election.” (Sedition Hunters by Ryan J. Reilly, p. 161.)

With all electoral votes now certified, Reilly later explains, “Trump and his constituents reached a new level of desperation.” At TheDonald.win forum, which had its own website, the extreme MAGA types were gearing up for war. “Daddy says be in DC on Jan. 6th,” read a popular thread.

“I want it to be peaceful but if our ‘leaders’ do the wrong thing and we have to storm the Capitol, I am going to do it,” promises another Trump fan.

In the meantime, Team Trump has created sets of fake electors to cast votes for Trump in seven states he lost, in an effort to gum up the system, and spread doubt about Mr. Biden’s victory.

(Jumping ahead, for fun, in December 2023, the ten Wisconsin fakes are hauled into court, where they are forced to admit Biden did win the state’s popular vote.)

December 13-15: Trump supporters rally in Washington D.C. That rally comes with lots of angry shouting, and chants of, “Lock them up,” now in reference to nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Having already suggested that the president declare martial law and call for a new election, Gen. Michael T. Flynn speaks from the steps of the Court. Flags are waved and “patriotism” stressed and shouted.

Flynn again advocates sending in tanks.

“Second Amendment supplies.”

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska), speaks for most sensible Americans, when he issues the following statement:

Since Election Night, a lot of people have been confusing voters by spinning Kenyan Birther-type, “Chavez rigged the election from the grave” conspiracy theories, but every American who cares about the rule of law should take comfort that the Supreme Court – including all three of President Trump’s picks – closed the door on the nonsense.

The last desperate battles are being fought and lost by Team Trump attorneys. A Trump appointee throws out another challenge to November results. Describing the latest lawsuit as “extraordinary,” U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig rules that Wisconsin officials followed state law when they conducted the 2020 election.

On the flip side, L. Lin Wood offers up a new strategy. If lawsuits won’t suffice, gunfire might. He suggests that like-minded “patriots” who love America so much they’d be happy to kill fellow Americans to save a second term for Trump, stock up on “Second Amendment supplies.”

“Our leader is Donald Trump, not Joe Biden,” he adds.

(What kind of leader wouldn’t condemn such calls?)

This guy.

December 15: Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, visits Trump in the Oval office. He is there to urge his God-chosen leader to rise up. A cameraman gets a long-distance shot of Lindell as he enters the White House. Notes he’s carrying can be partially read. “Insurrection Act now as a result of the assault on the … martial law if necessary upon the first hint of any…”, Lindell’s scrawl reads.

Like Diamond and Silk, and General Flynn, the MyPillow doofus is all in favor of troops in American streets.

Lindell, left: selling both pillows and authoritarianism.

Drafting a plan to seize voting machines.

We won’t know this for fifteen months, but Trump allies are secretly drafting a plan which would allow Trump to seize voting machines in several states in an attempt to prove the election was rigged.

A draft report circulating at the time states, in part:

I, Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, find that the forensic report of Antrim County, Michigan voting machines, released December 13, 2020, and other evidence submitted to me in support of this order, provide probable cause sufficient to require action…

The above order would have given the Department of Defense authority to seize all machines in states Trump lost. Such as Georgia. But not states he won. Such as Texas. When the idea is broached to the Department of Defense, the plan is shot down by people Donald appointed.

December 17: In Antrim County, where Trump has claimed 6,000 votes were stolen, a hand recount is completed. Donald gains eleven votes. Joe Biden loses one! Donald nets 12 measly votes!

Donald is only off by 5,988.

(And this is what we needed martial law for?)

We won’t know until September 2021, but a report produced by a Republican-led Michigan Senate committee blows to bits the idea that there was massive voter fraud in Antrim County – or anywhere else in that state. As the GOP committee chair explains, “We must all remember: ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof’ and ‘claiming to find something extraordinary requires first eliminating the ordinary.’”

December 17 (again): At 8:44 a.m. Russell Ramsland, a Texas entrepreneur, emails a plan, almost identical to the one above, to have voting machines seized in states Trump lost. Ramsland suggests, however, that the seizure be handled by the Department of Homeland Security. Fortunately, top officials at DHS also pass on the chance to murder democracy.

“Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election.”

December 18-19: In the late hours of Friday, on into early morning Saturday, the President of the United States is angry and awake. At 12:42 a.m. Donald announces that Peter Navarro has handed him a 36-page report (which I think we can be sure Donald didn’t read). According to the president, Navarro has proven it was, “Statistically impossible [for him] to have lost the 2020 Election.”

Trump issues a call for action – even violence. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6,” he exclaims. “Be there, will be wild!”

(Navarro will eventually refuse to comply with a subpoena from congressional investigators to talk about what he knows about events leading up to the January 6, 2021, attack on Congress. He will fight the subpoena in court and be found guilty of contempt by a jury of his peers.)

Dobbs receives the first legal wedgie.

On Fox News, Sean Hannity continues to make it clear where he stands (publicly). During one of his nightly harangues, he howls, “There’s no doubt this [election] was stolen. No doubt whatsoever.”

Behind the scenes, as we will later learn, Hannity and other top hosts are parroting the “Stolen Election” narrative because they fear ratings will crash if they don’t feed listeners the fattening junk food “news” they crave. The top people at Fox know Team Trump is peddling lies.

Meanwhile, Fox News is forced to air a rebuttal of “the-election-was-stolen-narrative” that multiple hosts and guests (Lou Dobbs, et al.) have been selling. Smartmatic, which supplied software for Dominion voting machines that hosts like Dobbs adamantly insist were rigged, has threatened legal action.

(As of March 2024, Smartmatic’s defamation case against Fox is pending.)

(A similar defamation case filed against Newsmax, is also pending.)

Fox lawyers, knowing Dobbs and their stable of hosts have no evidence to support claims of massive voter fraud, agree to air a point-by-point response by Eddie Perez, a voting technology expert. Mr. Perez quickly debunks all the nonsense Lou & Co. have been spewing. Dobbs receives the first legal wedgie, with the Perez segment aired during his Friday afternoon show.

“An act of war.”

December 20: Down in Texas, Mark A. Aguirre, 63, a former Houston police captain, is working for a conservative group on high alert to ferret out massive ballot fraud. He starts his morning by ramming the cargo truck of air-conditioner installer David Lopez-Zuniga and forcing it off the road. Lopez-Zuniga is suspected of transporting 750,000 fake ballots – the very kind of fraud that Texas Attorney General Paxton loves to talk about but never manages to find.

A search of the truck reveals zero ballots, neither fake nor real.

December 21: U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr tells reporters that while he is “sure there was fraud in this election,” he has seen no evidence to indicate that it was so “systemic or broad-based” that it would change the outcome. He can see “no basis now for seizing [voting] machines by the federal government.”

Talk of violence is spreading online. In an email sent to the F.B.I. by a source, a Trump supporter is telling friends, “We must all join/link forces and be ready to leave our lives behind…Blood is the price of freedom.”

(Or you could run a better candidate and get more votes.)

Christmas Eve, 2020: The President of the United States continues to stir the fury of his fanatic followers. “VOTER FRAUD IS NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORY. IT IS A FACT!” he tweets.

On Twitter – just because he lost the election – Mr. Trump says our nation has suffered “an act of war.”

December 29: Election officials in Georgia conduct a spot check of voter signatures in Cobb County to test how the signature check system worked. Biden won 56% of 387,000 votes in Cobb County, so an audit of 15,000 absentee ballots should turn up, according to the most stubborn MAGA types, 400,000 illegal votes. Alas, only two (2) signature mismatches are found.

Two.

New Year’s Eve: The last-ditch effort to save Lame Duck Don’s ass has come into focus. On January 6, the certified electoral votes of the fifty states and District of Columbia will be accepted by Congress, tallied, and results announced: 306 votes for Joe Biden, 232 for Trump.

Ah, not so fast! Those votes can be challenged. See the election of 1876, when Samuel Tilden got stiffed by Rutherford B. Hayes.

In a disputed count, Tilden lost the electoral vote 185-184.
The blogger's grandfather was named after the victor: Rutherford Hayes (Viall).

FUN FACT: The blogger’s grandfather, born in 1877, was named Rutherford Hayes Viall. His own father, James R. Viall probably voted Republican all of his life. There are plenty of good, sincere Republicans, and there always have been. The blogger, as you may surmise, is not one of them.

“The orderly transfer of power is a hallmark of our democracy.”

To contest the certified electoral votes of a state, in Trump’s case, he will need one chucklehead in the House of Representatives and one dunderpate in the Senate to lodge protest on January 6. In the House, Rep. Louis Gohmert is just one of dozens of chuckleheads ready to step to the fore.

Gohmert has an interesting, one-man-rule kind of theory about how we count electoral votes. That is: the vice president can decide on a whim what to do. Ohio cast its 18 electoral votes for Trump. Sure! Mike Pence counts them. Pennsylvania cast its 20 for Biden. Pence doesn’t feel like counting those.

“Under the Constitution, he has the authority to conduct that proceeding [the tally of the votes on January 6] as he sees fit,” Gohmert argues. “He may count electoral votes certified by a state’s executive, or he can prefer a competing slate of duly qualified electors. He may ignore all electors from a certain state [emphasis added]. That is the power bestowed upon him by the Constitution.”

Republican fools in the Senate are harder to find, but there are several to pick from. (There’s always Ted Cruz!) Sen. Josh Hawley makes clear. He will protest the vote!

In a phone call to end the year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasts Hawley for promising to challenge the counting. “I’m finishing 36 years in the Senate and I’ve cast a lot of big votes,” McConnell tells a reporter. “And in my view, just my view, this will be the most consequential I have ever cast.”

(It’s an extremely rare show of courage by Sen. McConnell.)

(Today, he has lost his nerve again and supports Trump in the 2024 election.)

Sen. Ben Sasse is blunt, warning that “the president and his allies are playing with fire. Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government.”

Sen. Rob Portman tells a reporter, “I think we need to respect this process the Founding Fathers established, and we must respect the will of the voters. The orderly transfer of power is a hallmark of our democracy.”

January 1, 2021: The president has not received the message about respecting the process. “Massive amounts of evidence will be presented on the 6th,” he promises. “We won, BIG!”

“He will face execution by firing squad.”

January 2: The President of the United States continues to pump up the fury of the MAGA faithful. “An attempt to steal a landslide win. Can’t let it happen!” he tweets at 6:15 p.m.

Since L. Lin Wood and Trump’s other lawyers have been spanked in court, Wood has a new plan. “When arrests for treason begin, put Chief Justice John Roberts, VP Mike Pence & Mitch McConnell at [the] top of the list.” He has no doubt what should come next. “Pence will be in jail awaiting trial for treason. He will face execution by firing squad. He is a coward & will sing like a bird & confess ALL.”

(This recipe is straight out of the fascist cookbook.)

These people are f**king crazy!