February 22, 2019: Voter Fraud, and a Non-Disclosure Agreement of Questionable Legality

 

2/22/19: President Trump proves once more that he is one of the least-informed human beings ever to take a seat – and that includes visitors – in the Oval Office. Reporters ask him about voter fraud in North Carolina. That is: Republican orchestrated, proven voter fraud. Trump responds by saying he’s opposed to all voter fraud, including made up voter fraud cases. 

For example: Texas! (See: 1/31/19.) 

It turns out Mark Harris, the Republican candidate in the Ninth Congressional District in North Carolina, was warned by his son (a lawyer) that he was breaking a variety of campaign laws. Dad decided to break them anyway. He rolled up a 905-vote victory margin, out of a total of 275,000 votes cast. Next stop, Washington D.C. where Harris planned to help drain the swamp. 

Instead, an elections board voted unanimously to overturn the results and called for a new election.

 

* 

YET ANOTHER former Trump campaign aide is fighting enforcement of a non-disclosure agreement, which all persons working for this president are required to sign, even though courts may decide such NDA’s are illegal in the realm of government. The aide in this case is Jessica Denson, who ran into trouble in the early days of the Trump administration. 

Her claim is that her boss, Camilo Sandoval, a former senior staffer at Veterans Affairs, harassed her and then tried to steal and hack her electronic devices. Denson alleges that Sandoval tried to engage others in a plan to snatch her personal laptop, and slandered her reputation. 

“I went to the campaign, thinking that they would support and protect me, and instead the chief information officer, Jeff DeWit, and the human resources director, Lucia Castellano, completely retaliated against me,” she alleges, “took away all the work I was doing, banned me from Trump Tower, told people to keep me away from Donald Trump and ultimately prevented me from being able to continue any kind of career or opportunity to serve in the administration.” 

“In retrospect,” she tells CNN, “what I feel is that these NDAs created an environment where people like Camilo Sandoval, who wanted to commit abuses on other people, felt they could act with impunity and engage in illegal conduct [emphasis added] and it would never see the light of day.”

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: The Trump campaign eventually sued Denson for $50,000, for violating her NDA, and won a temporary judgement. During the 2020 campaign, Denson lambasted the president. She described Trump’s first campaign as “a vile, self-serving branding exercise for one man and his family.” 

On March 31, 2021, a federal court ruled, in a class action lawsuit filed on her behalf, that the NDAs required by the Trump campaign stood in violation of free speech guarantees in the First Amendment.)

Jessica Denson.

September 11, 2019: On This Anniversary, Trump Focuses on Real Pain - Caused by Polls

 

Trump is incapable of admitting error or accepting fault.

9/11/19: It is a day for solemn memories – of Twin Towers imploding – of a Pentagon in flames – of heroism on Flight 93 – and so much more. It’s a time for reflection and introspection. Unless you are Donald J. Trump.

 

____________________

 

It has never bothered Donald Trump that the 2018 election in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District was definitely rigged.

____________________

 

 

The president is up early on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. By 5:14 a.m. he’s tweeting. China is “being hit very hard” by tariffs! Trump is winning! He attacks Jay Powell, his choice to lead the Federal Reserve, and calls him naïve. But what really has the president riled up are a series of recent opinion polls. Those polls show that if the election were held today, he and the Republicans would get smoked. 

First, the “good news,” as far as Trump is concerned. The Republicans did eke out a narrow win in a special election in the Ninth Congressional District in North Carolina the night before. This allows the president to boast, because, as he insists, he saved the day himself.

 

For those who prefer facts, it pays to check his math. He didn’t save the day, so much as the blood of a bleeding patient clotted. That’s what blood does. The Ninth has long been a GOP bastion. In 2016, the GOP candidate for Congress won by 16 points, 58 to 42 percent. Trump carried the district by 12 points. In 2018 the Republican congressional candidate won again, but by less than a point. Even that narrow victory was a result of rank ballot fraud perpetrated by the “winner’s” campaign. The results were tossed by the courts. 

Oddly enough, while Trump often complains about “rigged” votes, without any evidence votes were rigged, it has never bothered him that the 2018 election in the Ninth was definitely rigged. 

So, on Tuesday, Trump wanted everyone to believe he had pulled a little magic out of a red MAGA hat. He rallied hard for Dan Bishop, the new GOP candidate in the race. (The old candidate was facing felony charges.) And, with the weight of the presidency thrown into the balance, Bishop did defeat his opponent by a whopping two points, 50.7 to 48.7 percent.

 

Still, the president, could not resist the itch to bitch. It took three tweets to get the hurt off his chest. What he wanted all Americans to know was that he was winning, and winning, and the polls couldn’t be right. 

First angry tweet: 

In a hypothetical poll, done by one of the worst pollsters of them all, the Amazon Washington Post/ABC, which predicted I would lose to Crooked Hillary by 15 points (how did that work out?), Sleepy Joe, Pocahontas and virtually all others would beat me in the General Election.... 

 

Trump was lying again. 

I checked Trump’s math. No poll done by the Washington Post and ABC ever had him down 15 points in 2016. In fact, on the eve of the election, the same poll had him down only 3. (He lost the popular vote by 2.) 

Second angry tweet: 

....This is a phony suppression poll, meant to build up their Democrat partners. I haven’t even started campaigning yet, and am constantly fighting Fake News like Russia, Russia, Russia. Look at North Carolina last night. Dan Bishop, down big in the Polls, WINS. Easier than 2016!

 

First, Mr. President, stop attacking the free press. Second, for god’s sake, check your facts! Bishop’s win was in no way “easier” than the Republican win in 2016, as already mentioned. For that matter, polls in North Carolina had never shown Bishop “down big.” Three polls showed the election was likely a dead heat. Bishop was expected to garner 44.67 percent of the vote, Dan McCready, his opponent, 44.33 percent. Another 8 percent of voters were unsure. 

Third angry tweet: “If it weren’t for the never ending Fake News about me,” he sobbed (if you can sob in a tweet), “and with all that I have done (more than any other President in the first 2 1/2 years!), I would be leading the ‘Partners’ of the LameStream Media by 20 points. Sorry, but true!” 

It was clear, then, that the president was having a rotten day. Even trashing John Bolton, his ousted National Security Advisor, during a question and answer session with reporters, did not assuage the hurt in his heart. 

The polls painted a painful picture for Trump and his party. Even Rasmussen, his favorite poll, showed him with an approval rating of only 47 percent, and a disapproval rating of 53 percent. 

And that was the best poll of all. 

In an average of all polls, Trump had an approval rating of 43.1 percent, and a disapproval rating of 53.9 percent.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: To be fair, Trump has time to recover. He could look to his nemesis’ success in 2012. On September 11, 2011, President Obama had an approval rating of 43.3 percent, and a disapproval rating of 50.7 percent. 

The difference? Obama didn’t believe the polls were rigged and didn’t whine as if they were.

This guy never once claimed the polls were phony or rigged.