December 1-2, 2017: White House Labels General Flynn a "Former Obama Administration Official."

 

December 1, 2017: General Flynn pleads guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and agrees to become a cooperating witness in the Mueller investigation. 

 

Court documents show Flynn lied repeatedly. 

Trump immediately announces that this proves he never colluded with Russians, grabbed women by the pussy, failed in the casino business or cheated on all three wives. On Fox News, every host agrees with his assessment. Sean Hannity insists Trump won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. 

Court documents show Flynn lied repeatedly about a variety of matters. Also, the plea deal immunizes him only in regard to matters therein mentioned (which this dimwitted blogger just learned is how plea deals work). There are all kinds of matters left out and still hanging over “Old Lock Her Up” Flynn’s head. Nothing, for example, is said of his agreement to help the Turkish government kidnap a dissident living in Pennsylvania and return him to Turkey for trial. In return for such efforts Flynn (and his son) were to be paid more than $530,000. 

That would mean Flynn and Flynn 2.0 were working for the Turks, even against U.S. interests.

General Flynn has a court date.

The White House tries to make it sound like Obama did it. 

In a press release after Flynn’s plea deal is announced, he is described as “a former Obama administration official.”

___ 

 

12/2/17: President Trump has a bad weekend as he begins to feel the heat. What is Flynn about to say? 

Trump turns to Twitter to defend himself with all the logic you can pack into 560 characters (Twitter doubled the maximum length of posts to 280 characters a few days ago; and Trump tweets twice). First, we have: “So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday ‘interrogation’ with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times...and nothing happens to her? Rigged system, or just a double standard?” 

Second: “Many people in our Country are asking what the ‘Justice’ Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and ‘acid washed’ 33,000 Emails? No justice!” 

In other words, Trump fans, you can no longer trust the F.B.I. You cannot expect justice from the Department of “Justice.” 

You may only trust in Donald J. Trump. 

And God? 

No, not Him, either. Only Trump. (See also: 12/15/17.)

December 15, 2017: The Trump Cult

 

12/15/17: Republicans step up attacks on the F.B.I. and the Russia investigation. According to right-wing hacks everybody at the top of the Bureau and all the leaders at the Department of Justice and all the men and women involved in the investigation have turned out to be liars. 

You know who you can trust? Donald J. Trump! Trump would never grab women by the pussy (locker room talk). Trump would never cheat on his taxes (eternally under audit). Trump would never screw students (Trump University) or workers (hiring undocumented immigrants to build Trump Tower). Trump would never lie about Obama’s birth certificate (for five years) or get a doctor to write him a note excusing him from military service (bone spurs). 

He would never lie to his first wife. 

Or his second wife. 

Or his third. 

Everyone else is lying. Trust in Donald J. Trump! It’s a Jim Jones-kind of weird political cult.

December 14, 2018: Gen. Flynn's Lawyers Insist FBI Tricked Him into Lying - Even Though He Was Already Lying to VP Pence

 

12/14/18: With this president and with this miscreant crew, there’s always more legal news to be discussed. And Special Counsel Mueller has been making plenty. Last Thursday, lawyers for General Flynn filed court papers insisting that even though their client had pled guilty to one charge of lying to the F.B.I. he hadn’t really been lying. 

 

Trump tweets support for lying to the F.B.I. 

Flynn, his lawyers insisted, had been tricked into lying when F.B.I. agents interviewed him about contacts with Russians during the 2016 campaign. Flynn, they said, did not know it was a crime to lie to F.B.I. agents. 

Naturally, Trump’s radar ears picked up the news and he had to tweet support for lying, which was not, apparently, lying: 

They [prosecutors] gave General Flynn a great deal because they were embarrassed by the way he was treated - the FBI said he didn’t lie and they [Mueller’s team] overrode the FBI. They want to scare everybody into making up stories that are not true by catching them in the smallest of misstatements. Sad!...... 

 

On Friday Mueller’s team filed a blistering rebuttal. Prosecutors pointed out that Flynn lied to Vice President Pence and several White House officials about this matter – secret contacts with Russians – long before he talked to agents from the F.B.I. 

Flynn was heavily to that set of lies when he first met with federal agents. He couldn’t turn back and keep his position. They didn’t need to “trick” him into repeating those falsehoods. He had no choice – save honor. 

Flynn lied multiple times during multiple interviews (see: 12/6/18). Investigators pointed out that the general had covered up the fact he had received more than half a million dollars from the government of Turkey. They noted that he agreed to plead guilty to one felony because his son was implicated in the money-making scheme. They added that both father and son had failed to report such income, and that this was the best deal the father could expect, when he knew he might have been charged with a half-dozen serious crimes.

Gen. Flynn was tricked into moving his lips.

June 16, 2019: The Reasoning Skills of a Watermelon

 

6/16/19: The full interview with President Trump and George Stephanopoulos airs this evening. 

In a quick bit of work, Trump blows to bits the conspiracy theory (pushed ad nauseum by screamers on the right) that President Obama and F.B.I. leaders tried to keep him from winning the 2016 election.

Smarter than Rep. Jim Jordan.

 

As writers at Vox explain, Trump labels top F.B.I. officials “lowlives” during the interview. The entire investigation into Russian interference was a “set up.” Obama “must have known about” it. 

Stephanopoulos puts the question directly: “If they were determined to prevent you from becoming president, why wouldn’t they leak it [news his campaign was being investigated for suspicious contacts with Russians] beforehand?” 

 

You must have the reasoning skills of a watermelon. 

As Vox explains, “instead of pushing back, Trump acknowledged that Stephanopoulos’s premise was correct.” 

“You know what, you’d have to ask them,” Trump said. “And you know what – had that gone out before the election, I don’t think I would have had enough time to defend myself.”

 

In other words, even Trump agrees that had top FBI officials leaked word about the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia being under investigation in the months leading up to the election, it likely would have been fatal emphasis added] to his presidential hopes.

 

The gaping hole in Trump’s FBI conspiracy theory that Stephanopoulos identified in his line of questioning has long been one Trump allies have struggled to explain – at least in contexts where interlocutors are willing to challenge them. For instance, during an interview in late 2017, CNN host John Berman quickly debunked Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Oh.) when he echoed Trump and claimed the FBI had it out for Trump.

 

“You think James Comey – it went all the way to the top of the FBI – [wanted] to keep Donald Trump from being president,” Berman said. “If that’s true, why then did he come out, again, and open up the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, and never even tell us before the election about the investigation into alleged Trump collusion? If he was trying to keep Donald Trump from getting elected, don’t you think he might tell voters that?”

 

All Jordan could say to Berman was “we’ll find out” – a response nearly as vacuous as the “you’d have to ask them” Trump offered to Stephanopoulos. 

Let’s just put it plainly. You have to have the reasoning skills of a watermelon to miss the point. Jordan did. 

Trump does. 

So do Trump’s biggest fans.

December 17, 2019: Two Important Documents Released Regarding Impeachment

 

12/17/19: Two important documents are released today. One is a warning to all Americans. The other is – well, frankly, another inadvertent warning to all of us – that the President of the United States is kind of a loon. The first is a scathing editorial written by William Webster, 96, the only man ever to serve as both director of the F.B.I. and later director of the C.I.A. Webster outlines the threat posed to the rule of law by Trump and his Trumplican enablers. The second warning comes in the form of a letter Trump pens himself.

Webster, 96, felt compelled to speak out.

 

____________________ 

“The rule of law, something so precious it is greater than any man or administration.” 

Former F.B.I. Director William Webster

____________________

 

 

In an opinion piece titled, “I Headed the F.B.I. and C.I.A. There’s a Dire Threat to the Country I Love,” Webster calls on all of us to awake. He was originally chosen by President Jimmy Carter to head the F.B.I. – because he was a Republican and the F.B.I. had fallen into disrepute during the Watergate years. Later, Webster served under President Reagan, a man he says he “revered.” 

Now he says he considers it his duty, 

to speak out about a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love. Order protects liberty, and liberty protects order. Today, the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order are, tragically, under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them.

 

Webster finds President Trump’s attacks on the current F.B.I Director deeply troubling. A ten-year tenure granted to F.B.I. directors is meant to insulate them from political pressure. The “president’s thinly veiled suggestion that the director, Christopher Wray, like his banished predecessor, James Comey, could be on the chopping block, disturbs me greatly.” 

“The independence of both the F.B.I. and its director are critical,” he continues, “and should be fiercely protected by each branch of government.” 

During his years at the F.B.I. helm, 

I reported to four honorable attorneys general. Each clearly understood the importance of the rule of law in our democracy and the critical role the F.B.I. plays in the enforcement of our laws. They fought to protect both, knowing how important it was that our F.B.I. remain independent of political influence of any kind.

 

Attorney General William Barr’s “charges of bias within the F.B.I., made without providing any evidence and in direct dispute of the findings of the nonpartisan inspector general,” also trouble him. Such attacks “risk inflicting enduring damage on this critically important institution.” 

Barr has said that the F.B.I. investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was based on a “totally bogus narrative.” 

Webster vehemently disagrees. 

In fact, the report conclusively found that the evidence to initiate the Russia investigation was unassailable. There were more than 100 contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russian agents [emphasis added throughout, unless noted otherwise] during the 2016 campaign, and Russian efforts to undermine our democracy continue to this day. 

 

He also expresses “profound” disappointment with Rudy Giuliani, a man he once considered a friend. “I hope he, like all of us, will redirect to our North Star, the rule of law, something so precious it is greater than any man or administration.” 

Webster discusses challenges he has seen the nation overcome during a long and eventful life. This current challenge is as dangerous as any heretofore. “This is not about politics,” he warns. “This is about the rule of law. Republicans and Democrats alike should defend it above all else.”

 

* 

There was a quid pro quo. 

WITH the House of Representatives poised to vote on articles of impeachment the next day, President Trump fires off a six-page letter meant to offer a defense from what he considers a scurrilous attack. That letter bolsters the case that Trump has lost whatever few marbles he had left. 

First, you have to wonder what possessed the President of the United States to sit down and start haranguing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the recipient of the original copy of his bizarre missive. 

And what were the main points Trump hoped to make? Mainly, he wanted to scream about all the horrible people out to get him. There was Chairman Adam Schiff, who “cheated and lied.” There was “a ranting and raving Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib,” who called him a “mother****r.” Plus, Pelosi! She was the worst! “You do not know, nor do you care, the great damage and hurt you have inflicted upon wonderful and loving members of my family,” Trump cries. Hillary! She was terrible too. So was the F.B.I., which spied on his campaign (an inspector general’s report just said that that charge was unfounded). And James Comey. What a lowlife. Firing him was “one of the country’s greatest decisions.” Trump made that decision. One of the greatest decisions! Of course. Many Democratic lawmakers were “deranged and radical representatives of the far left.” In other words, forget Ukraine. Forget military aid to an ally. Forget U.S. national security – which would be harmed by a delay in the aid. Anyone who voted to impeach the next day, the president howled, was really showing they “revile the voters” and “detest America’s Constitutional order.”

 

Mostly, the letter was nothing more than presidential whining. This was an “invalid impeachment.” Pelosi and the Democrats were “violating” their oaths of office. His opponents were “spiteful.” And, boy, did it piss him off when Speaker Pelosi kept telling reporters that she prayed for him. “You are offending Americans of faith by making that claim. It is a terrible thing you are doing,” he wailed, “but you will have to live with it, not I!” 

(Actually, he was going to have to live with it; he was going to go down in history as one of only three presidents ever impeached.) 

The man accused of abusing his power and threatening the rule of law, did his best to turn the tables on Pelosi and her party – even though he was the one who asked a foreign power to interfere in a U.S. election (again). 

He labeled the impeachment inquiry “an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power.” In other words, he still didn’t know what the U.S. Constitution said. The House of Representatives is granted “sole power” to impeach. 

Second, he said that the articles of impeachment were no good because they “include no crimes.” Again, he failed to understand what the Founding Fathers had said. 

Besides, Ambassador Sondland said there was no “quid pro quo.” He said it!!! That meant, Trump had to be innocent. 

He had to be! 

(BLOGGER’S NOTE: Sondland later testified in what some people would call “plain English.” He said there was a quid pro quo.)

 

If the Democratic standard for impeachment had been applied in the past, Trump continued to wail, “every American president would have been impeached many times over.” Obama would have been impeached probably ten times. That would be nine more times than Trump. George Washington would have been impeached at least twice. Maybe more. Bill Clinton’s penis would have been impeached – multiple times. Only William Henry Harrison would have avoided impeachment, dying after just 31 days in office, before the House could put together an impeachment case. 

Trump wanted to be clear. The Democrats couldn’t impeach him because he won in a landslide in 2016. Pelosi and her crew should back off and respect the 62 million voters who put him in office. 

Forget the 65 million who voted for Hillary. 

They weren’t good Americans.

 

Besides the whistleblower, “started this entire hoax with a false report of the phone call that bears no relationship to the actual phone call that was made,” the president claimed. Once he “presented the transcribed call” (actually a call memorandum) “and shocked the fraudsters” then “the so-called whistleblower, and the second whistleblower, disappeared because they got caught, their report was a fraud, and they were no longer going to be made available to us.” 

Anyone not too lazy to check could peruse the original whistleblower complaint and study witness testimony and see that almost every claim the whistleblower made was validated by more than one witness. Those witnesses all testified under oath. You could even find the whistleblower complaint at Fox News. 

Well, you know who the real victim was in this whole Ukraine affair? Donald J. Trump! “More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials,” he cried, than Democrats gave him.

 

Then – back to bitching about Nancy Pelosi. She and her party were putting on a “false display of solemnity.” “No intelligent person believes what you are saying,” he writes in his letter to the Speaker. This impeachment is a partisan “coup.” It’s a “plot.” Pelosi has transformed “the House of Representatives from a revered legislative body into a Star Chamber of partisan persecution.” 

Finally, Trump closes: 

It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American People. While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.

 

One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.

 

Then he adds that giant signature of his:

 

 

* 

DEMOCRATS aren’t the only ones who believe Trump should be impeached. Former GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina tells a reporter that Trump’s conduct has been “destructive to our republic.” 

“I think it is vital,” she adds, “that he be impeached.” 

She says she voted for him in 2016, but she’d be open to voting for a Democrat in 2020, depending on who it is.

 

* 

AT A MICHIGAN TOWNHALL, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a first-term lawmaker, faces a divided crowd. Trump fans in the audience hoot and wave signs. “Impeach Slotkin,” reads one. Supporters stand and applaud. 

Slotkin, a former C.I.A. officer, understands that her announcement, that she will vote to impeach may bring a speedy end to her political career. “In the national security world that I come from,” she tells the crowd, “we are trained to make hard calls on things, even if they are unpopular, if we believe the security of the country is at stake. There are some decisions in life that have to be made based on what you know in your bones is right. And this is one of those times.” 

“On September 19, the President’s lawyer announced proudly on live TV that he had encouraged Ukraine to investigate the Bidens,” she says. 

“On September 22, in response to a reporter’s question, the President affirmed it,” she adds. She tells her audience she was appalled when Trump encouraged China to jump into the fray and investigate a political rival. 

“As a former C.I.A. officer, I believe this lies at the very heart of impeachable conduct,” she concludes. 

She’ll stand on principle, and if it means her time in Congress comes to an end, principles mean more to her in the end.

 

* 

SLOTKIN PROVES not to be alone in her thinking. We already know nearly 900 legal scholars agree. 

Trump should be impeached. 

 

“The mercenary instruments of foreign corruption.” 

Today, 750 historians sign a letter outlining their nearly identical conclusion: 

President Trump’s numerous and flagrant abuses of power are precisely what the Framers had in mind as grounds for impeaching and removing a president….The President’s offenses, including his dereliction in protecting the integrity of the 2020 election from Russian disinformation and renewed interference, arouse once again the Framers’ most profound fears that powerful members of government would become, in Hamilton’s words, “the mercenary instruments of foreign corruption.”

 

Signatories include Pulitzer Prize winners Robert Caro and Ron Chernow and documentary film maker Ken Burns.

November 29, 2021: Trump Calls Maria Bartiromo to Vent

 

11/29/20: If Saturday was a tough day (minus the golf outing) for President Trump, Sunday was no better. A two-county recount demanded by his campaign in Wisconsin ended. At a cost of $3 million, with the bill going to his campaign, the recount in heavily Democratic Milwaukee and Dane counties proved that if there was massive voter fraud, and machines magically cheated the president out of millions of votes, it didn’t happen in Milwaukee and Dane. 

Joe Biden gained 87 votes.

Trump does his first interview since the election.

 

* 

STILL, REALITY can be an ugly place. Trump decided not to visit Sunday. Instead, he placed a call to Maria Bartiromo of Fox News for his first interview since his bitter defeat. It would be hard to say whose performance was more pathetic, Lame Duck Don’s or the pseudo-journalist’s.

 

____________________ 

“I don’t think we even have to prove this.” 

President Trump

____________________

  

Straightaway, Ms. Bartiromo asked the president to be “as precise as possible” and explain exactly what evidence he had that the election was rigged. This was the starting gun for a lengthy evidence-less diatribe. 

Since Bartiromo failed to challenge the president, or even ask fundamental follow-up questions, I have included a few helpful observations of my own.

 

*** 

Trump: Well, first of all, I have to start by saying the whole world is watching, and nobody can believe what they’re seeing. And you have leaders of countries that call me say [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted], that’s the most messed-up election we have ever seen.  

Blogger: Trump doesn’t mention any of the leaders by name. This is not evidence. Bartiromo doesn’t notice. 

(I am thinking, maybe Putin called?)

 

Next, the president complains about the “Dominion machines,” which he says cheated him out of millions of votes.

 

Trump: We have affidavits on – from many people talking about what went on with machines….we had glitches where they moved thousands of votes from my account to Biden’s account. And these are glitches. So, they’re not glitches. They’re theft. They’re fraud, absolute fraud. And there were many of them, but, obviously, most of them tremendous amounts, got by without us catching. We got lucky to catch them. I think we caught four or five glitches of about 5,000 votes each, and different states. 

Blogger: You didn’t catch most of the glitches? But still, you know they happened? Why not be precise and specify the local jurisdictions where the four or five 5,000-vote “glitches” occurred? Because then people could look up the facts for themselves.

 

Trump is on a roll and Bartiromo decides her job is to stay out of his way: 

Trump: That was fraud. And they got caught. But, for the most part, they got away with it. And what happened, if you watched the election, I was called by the biggest people, saying, congratulations, political people. Congratulations, sir. You just won the election. It was 10:00 [p.m. on Election Night]. And you looked at the numbers. 

Blogger: At 10:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, polls in many Western states would just be closing. North Carolina, one of two battleground states Trump would win in the end, would not sort out its final count for a week. 

By midnight, Eastern Standard Time, Biden would have already built decent leads in Arizona and Nevada at a time most people had headed for bed.

 

Trump rambled on about “dumps, big massive dumps” of votes, in “Michigan, Pennsylvania, and all over.” These dumps went against him in almost every battleground state. He complained about the Dominion machines again. He insisted one of the “great pollsters” said he would win Pennsylvania, but you had to allow “at least five percent for cheating, because they cheat.” 

Blogger: A reasonable observer might remember that President-Elect Trump did not complain about “cheating” in Pennsylvania in 2016, when he won the state by a little more than 44,000 votes. 

We also know on Saturday (see: 11/28/20) that the Trump campaign’s lawsuit in the state was pitched by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in part because no voter fraud was alleged. 

Trump’s just making s*** up.

 

Bartiromo: Right. 

Blogger: That’s her journalistic contribution. One word. She doesn’t ask questions. She lets the president rant.

 

Trump: The mail-in ballots were – are a disaster. They sent millions and millions and millions of mail-in ballots. 

I’m sure you know people that got two, three, or four, because I do, where they said, you know, we got four ballots. They got one at a country home. Dead people were seeing ballots. Even worse, dead people were applying to get a ballot. They were making application to get ballots, many. 

Blogger: Here in Ohio (a state Trump won handily) my wife and I did receive multiple ballots each. My daughter Sarah, who moved to Washington D.C. in 2008, and to Oregon this year, received one. (She notified the local election board years ago that she was no longer an Ohio resident.) 

My wife and I each sent in one. We signed our names, one safety feature, to protect the integrity of the vote. We included one or the other: last four digits of our Social Security numbers, or our driver’s license numbers. 

The state would count our ballots and add us to the computer. A second ballot in either of our names would set off alarms. 

Mail-in balloting made safe.

 

Trump talked next about tens of thousands of dead people voting. Fourteen thousand corpses supposedly shuffled to the Michigan polls, according to one right-wing news story going the rounds. Some, Trump agreed, had been moldering in their graves “ten, fifteen years.” 

Blogger: There was only one problem. CNN did what any news organization could have done. They examined this claim, amplified by several stalwart Trump supporters, including Newt Gingrich. And if you can’t trust Newt, a man who cheated on his first wife, then discussed divorce with her while she was hospitalized and recovering from cancer, and then cheated on his second wife to be with his third, if you can’t trust Newt, defending another man, who cheated on all three of his wives, who can you trust? 

So, CNN did what Bartiromo could have done. They checked the list of “Dead Men Walking” to the polls. They checked the first 25. Then they checked 25 at random. 

Thirty-seven of the alleged dead voters were in fact dead. Sadly, none had arisen, Christ-like from the grave, to vote. 

Five of the fifty had voted – those dead rats – except that CNN found those five were very much alive. 

That left eight others, all of them still walking the earth. None of those eight bothered to vote. 

When CNN checked back again, they discovered that the list of 14,000 had been “removed from the site hosting it.” 

But the zombie story of voter fraud refused to die. Trump, for one, still believed it, much like a five-year-old who still believed Santa Claus brought all the toys for good girls and boys in a sled.

 

The president soon dropped another bombshell, although, like all the others, this one was a dud. 

Trump: And how the FBI and Department of Justice – I don’t know. Maybe they are involved. But how people are allowed to get away from this stuff – with this stuff is unbelievable. This election was rigged. This election was a total fraud. And it continues to be, as they hide. And the problem we have, we go to judges, and people don’t want to get involved. 

Blogger: So now the F.B.I. (led by a Trump appointee) and the Department of Justice (led by a Trump toady) were involved in a plot to steal the election?

 

Trump whines about the media next, and how “the media doesn’t even want to cover” this story. He compliments his host, however. 

Trump: I mean, you’re doing something. You’re actually very brave, because you’re doing something.” He talks about how only the New York Post went after the story of Hunter Biden. No one else in the media would. 

Bartiromo: Yes. 

Blogger: Hunter Biden is totally irrelevant, unless maybe he voted three or four times. And we might note, since Bartiromo won’t, that the New York Post has already published an editorial, telling Trump to stop with the “stolen-election rhetoric,” and all the “conspiracy-addled talk.”

 

Trump: (Fill in with blather here.) 

Bartiromo: Yes.

 

Next, the president turns his hand to math. He says “we don’t have freedom of the press in this country. We have suppression by the press.” 

Trump: This is the whole ball game. And they cheated. Joe Biden did not get 80 million votes. Now, we were – we were planning – we – I got 63 million votes four years ago and won quite handily in the Electoral College, won quite handily.” 

We did very well. I got 63. We were hoping to get 68 or so. And we felt that was a path to an easy victory. I got 74 million votes… 

Bartiromo: Yes. 

Blogger: The Fox News shill doesn’t ask Trump about his claims, in 2016, that even though he won the Electoral College, he still believed the election was “rigged,” and that he actually won the popular vote. Hillary Clinton won by almost three million votes. 

Second, Biden got 81 million votes. He won by seven million. 

If Bartiromo had been on her toes, she might have asked about Trump’s claim in 2016, after Ted Cruz won the Iowa Republican primary, that that vote was rigged. “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it,” Trump tweeted at the time. “That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!”

 

Back to the president: 

Trump: …the largest in the history of a sitting president, so much more, many millions more than anyone thought – you know, than we were even trying to get. And everybody said, this is over. I’m telling you, at 10:00, everybody thought it was over. 

Bartiromo: Right. 

Trump: And then the phony – the phony mail-ins started coming in, Maria. But, just so you understand, I got 74 million votes. It was over. And then mail-in started happening. 

Bartiromo: Yes. 

Blogger: Even the dimmest wits who followed the news would have known the mail-in ballots would be counted last. In Pennsylvania, the Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled legislature had agreed in the act that created expanded mail-in voting, that mail in votes would not be counted until polls closed on Election Day. 

They were, by law, going to be counted last. 

By mid-October, ABC News was already noting that 2.8 million requests for mail-in ballots had been filed in Pennsylvania, including 693,670 from registered Republicans. There were 216,971 requests from unaffiliated voters, and 1,794,448 requests from Democrats. In other words, it was crystal clear that once the count of mail-in ballots started the totals were going to change drastically, and Biden would be slashing into Trump’s 10:00 p.m. “victory” lead.

 

Bartiromo (responding to the president’s tirade): Yes. 

Trump: This election was rigged. This election is a total fraud. 

Bartiromo: Mr. President, these are obviously very serious charges. And I want to walk through them and ask you how you will prove this in the courts, because, as you know, what I have been saying on the air is that elections are the reason that our young men and women go on battlefields across the world and, in some cases, lose their lives, because they believe that their vote, my vote matters just as much as your vote. 

Blogger: The host has finally asked a “follow-up question.” She’s really setting up Trump to respond as he chooses. 

I should also point out that “our young men and women” on the battlefields aren’t just protecting Trump votes. They’d be protecting mail-in ballots like mine, tallied in the red state of Ohio, or mail-in ballots in the blue state of Minnesota. They’d be serving on the battlefield for those extra 87 votes, now tallied in Wisconsin. They’d be serving for the 81 million votes Vice President Biden piled up, just as much as the 74 million garnered by Mr. Trump. 

Bartiromo misses the point again.

 

Bartiromo: So, this is no longer about you, President Trump. This is about America. And many people agree with you. According to Reuters, 68 percent of Republicans and 28 percent of all Americans – that includes Democrats – believe there was fraud in this election. 

Blogger: Of course, 68 percent of Republicans believe there was fraud. The president has been howling “wolf” every day since November 3. People like Bartiromo have been regurgitating his cries. 

At this point, Republicans will believe almost anything. In one recent poll, 56% said they believed QAnon conspiracy claims were “mostly or partly true.” If you went back to December 2017, you had a poll indicating that 51% of Republicans believed President Obama was born in Kenya, even after their Orange God admitted in September 2016 that Obama was, in fact, born in America. 

Besides, judges don’t agree. They keep tossing Trump campaign lawsuits out of both state and federal courts.

 

Even Bartiromo would like the president to focus. She asks about the six key battleground states. What proof has he that the election was stolen? 

Trump: Well, we’re trying to put the evidence in. And the judges won’t allow us to do it.  

Blogger: Trump claims next that Democratic “thugs” threw poll watchers out of vote-counting rooms in “many cases.”

 

Trump: Maria, there’s never been anything like this in history. And it all started with the mail-in. But it also goes to Dominion. It goes to a lot of things. But the mail-in, millions and millions of ballots being shipped all over, and ballots – as you know, there were a lot of ballots where it was just Biden on top. They [Democrats supposedly stuffing ballot boxes] didn’t do anything else because they were in a rush. And from what everybody is saying, and from what – I don’t think we even have to prove this. They say that I was doing so much better than they thought that they panicked, and they started just doing ballot after ballot very quickly and just checking the Biden name on top. 

And they were just checked on top. Tremendous numbers of ballots like that. And that was done for the sake of speed. We have stories that are unbelievable. But we’re not allowed to put in our proof.  

Blogger: Did Trump just say, some of these stories “are unbelievable,” and “I don’t think we even have to prove this?” And the courts keep refusing to allow his campaign to “put in our proof?” 

He did.

 

Trump: Look at the election – look at the election you have coming up right now. You’re using the same garbage machinery, Dominion. And she’s going around, [Stacey] Abrams, she’s going around screaming that she’s got 800,000 or 850,000 ballots. 

Bartiromo: Right. 

Blogger: What Abrams is saying is that voters have already sent in 750,000 requests for mail-in ballots for a special election in January. In fact, in every tweet, she links to Georgia’s online “Absentee Ballot Request Form.” 

A completed, mailed in ballot is the political equivalent of money in the bank. You’d think either Trump or Bartiromo would get that. 

They may. They just don’t want the viewers to think about it, because it undercuts the whole Trump narrative.

 

Trump: What kind of an election is it? She’s going around collecting votes. What kind of an election is this? What kind of a country are we living in now, where you can vote for months ahead of schedule? 

Blogger: A legal system? I check the website for the National Council of State Legislatures. Even red states like Texas and Florida, which Trump won, allow early voting by mail. 

Only five states have resisted the move to make voting easier, and not limit it to Election Day.

 

 

Trump: And they had judges making deals. And they had electoral officials making deals, like this character [Secretary of State Raffensperger] in Georgia, who is a disaster. And the governor’s done nothing [Republican Brian Kemp]. He’s done absolutely nothing. I’m ashamed that I endorsed him. 

Blogger: If you’re keeping track, Trump had already called Raffensperger “an enemy of the people.” At best, he sounds like a fascist in sheep’s clothing. He has now insisted that the F.B.I. might be involved in fixing the election, and the Department of Justice. Now you have this “character” messing with the vote and “judges making deals” and “electoral officials making deals” too.

 

Trump: Joe Biden did not get 16 million more votes than Barack Hussein Obama. He didn’t get it. 

Joe Biden did not get 14 million more votes than Hillary Clinton. And, by the way, he didn’t beat Obama in the black communities. 

Blogger: Trump doesn’t believe it because he doesn’t want to believe. If he admits to himself that Biden won, his narcissistic personality may unravel. You could easily find a story that debunks this kind of claim; but at this point it’s not worth it. 

You could dissect the causes of his defeat if you wished. Part of the reason Trump lost was that he got trounced by a growing youth vote (voters aged 18-29), 61% for Biden, 37% for Trump. In fact, young people “voted majority blue” in all but six states (with seven more not reporting data).

  

Trump also got thumped by women voters, losing that half of the electorate by nine points. 

Again, no rigging required. Democrats have won the majority of women by an average of 8 points in the last ten elections.

 

Trump: But he beats Obama in swing states. Now, think of that. He beat Obama in swing states. You know that didn’t happen. They stuffed the ballot box. Everybody knows that. 

Bartiromo agrees, at length, citing a story from The Federalist, explaining that based on five “election norms” there was no way Biden could have won. “They call it Biden magic,” she scoffs. 

Blogger: See youth vote, above, etc.

 

Bartiromo: Biden won despite Democrat losses everywhere else in the House. Kevin McCarthy is still celebrating wins in the House of Representatives….So, there are certainly statistic impossibilities…Mr. President, will you be able to prove that the computers can circumvent the controls that are in place? A lot of people say, oh, no, we have controls in place. There are paper ballots. The computers cannot get through the controls that are in place. 

Blogger: Yes, for example, paper ballots in Georgia, which also showed the president was defeated there.

 

Even Trump seems to realize he’s running out of options to steal the election himself. He insists that despite his campaign’s bleak record in the courts, it’s not really that bad. “A lot of the cases that have been lost haven’t been our cases,” he says, even though they’ve been filed in his behalf. In other words, the losing record isn’t as bad as it looks, legally speaking. 

Blogger: It’s actually terrible.

 

Bartiromo let’s his comment pass. Trump talks next about “the most dishonest political places” in the country, all Democratic-run, of course. He cites Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee. 

She does not bring up the Milwaukee County recount vote (part of the recount in which Biden gained votes). Trump complains about the media again, and taps into his inner-fascist for real. 

Trump: The – our – our newspapers, major newspapers and major networks are truly the enemy of the people in this country. 

Bartiromo lets that attack on the First Amendment buzz right past her head. (If Obama had ever called Fox News, et. al., “enemies of the people,” she would have shrieked for a week on her show. Then she would have caught her breath and shrieked for another week. Ignoring that point, she asks Mr. Trump, if you take out the six “tainted” states, is that the plan? If Trump can win six separate cases, then Biden has only 227 electoral votes. Trump has 232. 

Is that the plan?

 

Trump: Everyone knows that people were not allowed to vote when they walked in, so preciously, so beautifully, to vote. An elderly woman – we have her deposition – was told – who longed to vote, looked forward to the day of November 3, was told when she got in there, I’m sorry, you voted. And then they give her another ballot to sign, which they don’t use, because she already voted. 

That’s how brazen they are. They will actually vote people, knowing that there’s a good chance that those people will come. And there were thousands of those people. 

Blogger: Not a single top state election official has claimed that there was significant fraud in their state. In the case mentioned above, the poor elderly woman would receive a provisional vote. Her provisional vote would count if records showed in the end that she had not voted already.

 

Despite losing the machine vote in Georgia, and then losing the hand recount on top of that, Trump tells Bartiromo, “if I lost Georgia by, let’s say, 12,000 votes, we have tens of thousands more votes than that.” 

The president starts babbling about dead people who voted again. Well, screw those zombies! We have “hundreds of thousands of votes more than we need in every swing state that we’re talking about,” he says. 

He calls Chris Krebs, who he appointed to head the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity unit, whose job was to protect the election, “a fraud.” Krebs will be appearing on 60 Minutes later that evening. He has already called the 2020 election the most secure in U.S. history, and labeled Trump campaign lawsuits to overturn the results “farcical.” 

Bartiromo: Where is the DOJ and the FBI in all of this, Mr. President? 

 

Trump: Missing in action…You would think, if you’re in the FBI or Department of Justice, this is – this is the biggest thing you could be looking at. Where are they? I have not seen anything. I mean, I just – they just keep moving along, and they go on to the next president. 

You know, the votes in Dominion, they say, are counted in foreign countries, OK? Can you believe this? 

Blogger: No. What an asshole this guy is. Bartiromo doesn’t challenge. Fox doesn’t pay her to challenge the Trumpian narrative.

 

Trump: There are many mailmen that are in big trouble for selling ballots, getting rid of ballots. This is the craziest thing you have ever seen. 

But many ballots – many ballots with the name Trump on were thrown out. You have read that. They found ballots in a river with the name Trump on from the military. They were signed. And they were floating in a river. They found ballots under rocks that had the name Trump on. They were signed. They were signed with Trump. 

Blogger: I decided to check out these “mailmen” claims. I found a story about a mailman in West Virginia who changed absentee ballot requests from “Democrat” to “Republican. A total of nine votes were involved. 

In New Jersey, another carrier was arrested after 1,875 pieces of mail were found in two dumpsters. But only 99 mail-in ballots were involved. In a deep blue state those votes would make no real difference and possibly hurt Democrats.

 

A Kentucky mail person was arrested for throwing “a large quantity of mail” in a construction dumpster, including 111 mail-in ballot requests. No actual ballots were involved. 

In addition, you had the case of a Massachusetts man setting a fire inside a ballot drop box outside the main library in Boston. Authorities retrieved 122 charred ballots, 87 of which were legible and would still be processed. 

Last, but not least, two USPS employees in Pennsylvania were arrested in early October and charged with tossing mail in the trash. In one incident federal agents recovered “314 items of First Class Mail, seven items of Certified Mail, one item of Priority Mail and 1,311 political advertisements or similar items of campaign mail.” One request for delivery of a mail-in ballot was found, but no completed ballots. The second arrest led to recovery of “75 items of First Class Mail and 25 items of political advertisements or similar items of campaign mail. The seized mail did not contain any mail-in ballots, but it did contain one request for a mail-in ballot.” 

None of these cases involved any “widespread election fraud,” and certainly there was no proof of a plot to screw Mr. Trump. 

Two days after the election, a New York postal worker was arrested and found to have delayed delivery of 813 pieces of mail, because he was too lazy to finish his route. Three ballots were involved. 

I kept going down the rabbit hole, hoping to find the elusive proof of massive mail-in fraud. There was the Ohio postal employee charged with dumping and destroying letters and newspapers he didn’t feel like delivering, and 32 Dolly Parton book club books. Only one absentee ballot request was lost. 

As for the Trump votes “dumped in the river,” a claim the president made during his first unhinged debate with Joe Biden, ABC News had already followed that claim to the river’s source. When White House Press Secretary “Birther” McEnany was asked which “river” the votes were found floating in, she accused reporters of “missing the forest for the trees.” 

In reality, three trays of mail had been found by a Wisconsin roadside, including “several” absentee ballots, but none from Wisconsin voters. 

No flowing water was involved.

 

No matter. Bartiromo finally asked what cases, specifically, Trump thought would make it to the Supreme Court? He’d need six. One to overturn the vote in Wisconsin. One for Nevada. One for Arizona. One for Michigan. One for Georgia. And one to block the Pennsylvania vote. 

Trump: Well, the problem is, it’s hard to get into the Supreme Court. I have got the best Supreme Court advocates, lawyers, that want to argue the case, if it gets there. But they said it’s very hard to get a case up there. Can you imagine? Donald Trump, president of the United States, files a case, and I probably can’t get a case, even with – and we have tremendous proof. 

We have hundreds and hundreds of affidavits, sworn affidavits. And it’s very hard to get a case to the Supreme Court.  

Blogger: You can get a case to the highest court in the land; but you have to have a case that has merit. 

So far, the Trump campaign has only ridiculous claims to spread. But the president isn’t quitting. He has Rudy Giuliani on his side.

 

Trump: Well, I’m going to use 125 percent of my energy to do it. You need a judge that’s willing to hear a case. You need a Supreme Court that’s willing to make a real big decision, based on everything that – it’s not like you’re going to change my mind. In other words, my mind will not change in six months. There was tremendous cheating here.” 

Blogger: No one expects the president to change his mind. If his head were filled with cement instead of brains, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. 

His mind is set.

 

Bartiromo thanks him for his call, and that’s it.

 

* 

Sunday evening, at least one former Republican member of Congress has had all he can stand. Paul Mitchell describes himself in his Twitter bio as an “Opinionated defender of our Constitution and nation.”   

He tweets:

 

MITCHELL TWEET HERE…