Yup…we haven’t trusted any part of his administration’s grifting ways. Must be all of his motives.
Yup…he’s got to run faster than the law, and to have a cash cows available to you, that really helps.
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MI County R, Palmer who cast her vote to say all the votes should be certified, but initially held out to hold the certification said she received a call from Trump who asked if she felt safe and obviously thanked her.
And then, she wanted to rescind that vote as @Windthin noted
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/19/wayne-county-rescind-certifying-election/
In an interview, Palmer estimated that she talked with Trump for about two minutes Tuesday. She said she felt no pressure to change her vote. Palmer has said she received messages threatening her and her family during and after the tense Tuesday meeting.
“His concern was about my safety and that was really touching. He is a really busy guy and to have his concern about my safety was appreciated,” she told The Post.
Asked if they discussed the presidential vote count, she said: “It’s hard for me to describe. There was a lot of adrenalin and stress going on. There were general comments about different states but we really didn’t discuss the details of the certification.”
Asked again about possible pressure from such a call, Palmer said: “It was not pressure. **It was genuine concern for my safety
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So Trump apparently CALLED Palmer to appeal to her inner Karen?
“Are you okay? Did they hurt you with their vicious voting? They did? Well, I want you to do me a favor…”
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He is not a busy man. He has barely done a GD thing since the election.
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Some shifts in support for Trump…finally people.
One Republican - Sen Mitt Romney
Two Republicans
Three Republicans
And the dummies who are leading the charge.
What we are really dealing with here and uncovering more by the day is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and likely China and the interference with our elections here in the United States.”
— Sidney Powell, attorney for the Trump campaign, Nov. 19
This is just a snippet of a truly bonkers presentation made by attorneys for the Trump campaign alleging massive fraud in the U.S. voting system.
Powell described a convoluted scheme under which an “algorithm” manipulated by Democrats switched votes from Trump to Biden. But she claimed it broke down because support was so strong for Trump, so Democrats were forced to use a “back door” method to manipulate the vote with mail-in ballots slipped in during the dark of night.
If this sounds crazy, that’s because it is.
There is no evidence to support any of these conspiracy theories. It would require election workers across many states to be engaged in a massive fraud scheme that won Biden the presidency but failed to flip the Senate from Republican control and cost the Democrats seats in the House.
Meanwhile, her colleague, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, made other allegations that have largely been rejected by judges when presented with the supposed evidence. There’s no law against lying to the news media, of course. But in court, Trump’s attorneys have been more circumspect, saying they were not alleging fraud or a stolen election.
Here’s a guide to some of the key claims made at the news conference, mostly in the order in which they were presented.
“I can prove to you that he [Trump] won Pennsylvania by 300,000 votes. I can prove to you that he won Michigan by probably 50,000 votes. When I went to bed on election night, he was ahead in all those states, every single one of those states.”
— Giuliani
Trump’s lead disappeared because absentee and early votes largely could not be counted until election night because of rules set by the GOP-controlled legislatures in those states. So in-person votes, which leaned Republican, were reported first. Just in Pennsylvania, more than 1.4 million votes still needed to be counted after midnight. Because these votes were overwhelmingly for Biden, Trump’s lead was wiped out as the hours ticked by.
Meanwhile, her colleague, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, made other allegations that have largely been rejected by judges when presented with the supposed evidence. There’s no law against lying to the news media, of course. But in court, Trump’s attorneys have been more circumspect, saying they were not alleging fraud or a stolen election.
Here’s a guide to some of the key claims made at the news conference, mostly in the order in which they were presented.
“I can prove to you that he [Trump] won Pennsylvania by 300,000 votes. I can prove to you that he won Michigan by probably 50,000 votes. When I went to bed on election night, he was ahead in all those states, every single one of those states.”
— Giuliani
Trump’s lead disappeared because absentee and early votes largely could not be counted until election night because of rules set by the GOP-controlled legislatures in those states. So in-person votes, which leaned Republican, were reported first. Just in Pennsylvania, more than 1.4 million votes still needed to be counted after midnight. Because these votes were overwhelmingly for Biden, Trump’s lead was wiped out as the hours ticked by.
The opposite nearly happened in Arizona. On election night, Biden had a lead of more than 130,000 votes, with 750,000 to be counted. But in this case, the remaining votes leaned Republican, so by the time all of the votes were counted, Biden’s lead had fallen to 10,000.
But Giuliani is arguing that all of those mail-in ballots should be tossed out in Pennsylvania and Michigan, giving the victory to Trump.
“Joe Biden told us a few days before the election that he had the best voter fraud team in the world.”
— Giuliani
This is false. Giuliani is referring to a bit of manipulated video that originally started with a tweet from a Republican National Committee official and then was quickly spread by Eric Trump, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and others. It was blocked on Facebook, and Twitter labeled it as misleading.
Biden actually was talking about his campaign’s effort to combat voter intimidation, not an organization to commit voter fraud. In a section of the interview that the RNC removed from its clip, Biden even referred specifically to the campaign organization: “We have over a thousand lawyers, over a thousand of them, they’ll answer the phone, if you think there’s any challenge to your voting.”
“They made significant mistakes, like all crooks do. And we caught them. One of them was pushing out Republican inspectors.”
— Giuliani
Judges in Pennsylvania and Michigan have rejected this claim. Trump’s own attorneys have attested in court that his campaign was granted access and observed the process, both in Philadelphia and in other cities, and has found no evidence of fraud.
“The recount being done in Georgia will tell us nothing because these fraudulent ballots will just be counted again because they wouldn’t supply the signatures to match the ballots.”
— Giuliani
False. The signatures were already looked at — and verified — when the ballots were originally counted.
Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, rebutted this claim on Facebook when Trump first raised it in a tweet: “Let’s address this disinformation about signature match. We strengthened signature match. We helped train election officials on GBI [Georgia Bureau of Investigation] signature match — which is confirmed twice before a ballot is ever cast.” (The signature is checked when a person requests an absentee ballot and then again when the ballot is returned.)
“We have 17,000 provisional ballots cast in Pittsburgh.”
— Giuliani
In the news conference, Giuliani suggested these were mostly cases in which Democrats had already cast fraudulent ballots on behalf of someone who unexpectedly turned up to vote. But there is no evidence that is the case; instead, there were a variety of issues, such as a missing signature on a form, that cause a provisional ballot to be used.
“She [Jesse Jacob] was assigned to voting duties in September, and she was trained by the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan. She’s basically trained to cheat.”
— Giuliani
A Michigan judge on Nov. 13 already found Jacob’s presentation was unpersuasive.
“The allegations made by Ms. Jacob are serious. In the affidavit however, Ms. Jacob does not name the location of the satellite office, the September or October date these acts of fraud took place, nor does she state the number of occasions she witnessed the alleged misconduct. Ms. Jacob in her affidavit fails to name the city employees responsible for the voter fraud and never told a supervisor about the misconduct,” wrote Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny. “Ms. Jacob’s information is generalized. It asserts behavior with no date, location, frequency, or names of employees. In addition, Ms. Jacob offers no indication of whether she took steps to address the alleged misconduct or to alert any supervisor about the alleged voter fraud. Ms. Jacob only came forward after the unofficial results of the voting indicated former Vice President Biden was the winner in the state of Michigan.”
“They swear to you that at 4:30 in the morning, a truck pulled up to the Detroit center where they were kept counting ballots. The people thought it was food, so they all ran to the truck. Wasn’t food. It was thousands and thousands of ballots.”
— Giuliani
This claim largely stems from a single affidavit that was filed by an alleged witness, Melissa Carone, a contract IT worker for Dominion. But Carone, who made a number of voter-fraud claims, does not even leap to the conclusions that Giuliani drew.
In her affidavit, Carone simply says that food was brought in on two vans, but “I never saw any food coming out of the vans, coincidentally it was announced on the news that Michigan had found over 100,000 more ballots — not even two hours after the last van left.” Kenny also concluded that Carone’s “allegations are simply not credible.”
The Michigan Court of Appeals panel Monday denied an appeal of Kenny’s decision. Two of the three judges on the panel were appointed by Republican governors.
“A case that we dismissed today because that case was attempting to get the Wayne County Board of Supervisors to decertify. Well, they did. They decertified.”
— Giuliani
The Wayne County board initially split 2 to 2 on Tuesday but eventually certified the vote 4 to 0 after an uproar ensued. The next day, the two Republicans on the board said they wanted to rescind their votes, which the Michigan secretary of state’s office says is not possible. The statewide board must still certify the statewide total.
“The Dominion voting systems, the Smartmatic technology software and the software that goes in other computerized coding systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of [former president] Hugo Chávez.”
— Powell
Chávez has been dead for seven years, but he’s influencing the U.S. election from his grave? Seriously, the Trump attorneys are offering up a stew of misinformation derived mostly from Internet rumors and right-wing blogs.
Dominion Voting Systems, which makes software that local governments use to help run their elections, is a Canadian company that effectively has its headquarters in Denver.
The company says it is nonpartisan. “Dominion has no company ownership relationships with any member of the Pelosi family, the Feinstein family, or the Clinton Global Initiative, Smartmatic, Scytl, or any ties to Venezuela,” the company says on a webpage debunking election rumors. “Dominion works with all political parties; our customer base and our government outreach practices reflect this nonpartisan approach.”
The company operates in 28 states, including Florida and Ohio, two states that Trump easily won. But the contracts are often with individual counties. For instance, Dominion software was used in only two of the five counties that had problems in Michigan and Georgia — and the problems in Michigan were due to human error, according to a detailed account posted by the Michigan secretary of state’s office. (The Trump campaign has requested a recount in Wisconsin, but strangely not in counties that used Dominion systems.)
Smartmatic, on its own fact-check page, also says this is crazy. Smartmatic, an election technology company, was founded and incorporated in the United States in 2000, inspired by the hanging-chad debate in the 2000 election. It is headquartered in London.
“Two of the founders, Antonio Mugica and Roger Piñate, continue to run the company as CEO and President, respectively,” the company says. “The majority of shares (83%) are held by SGO, a company owned by the Mugica and Piñate families. The remaining shares are held by employees (10%) and angel investors (7%).”
“Smartmatic’s software is not licensed or otherwise used by other companies,” the company says.
There is a long-ago corporate connection to Venezuela, according to news accounts in 2006. Smartmatic replaced Venezuela’s election machinery before a referendum that confirmed Chávez as president in August 2004, and the Venezuelan government made a $200,000 loan to another technology company owned by some of the same people as Smartmatic. With the money from its contracts with Venezuela, Smartmatic in 2005 bought Sequoia Voting Systems, which had contracts in 17 states. But it sold Sequoia in 2007 after an investigation was launched by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States into the company’s possible Venezuela ties. (Dominion eventually purchased assets of Sequoia in 2010, a company spokesperson said.)
In 2017, Smartmatic reported that the Venezuelan government had announced a false turnout figure for a contested election, adding at least 1 million votes to the number. The company said the absence of election monitors from the opposition — which boycotted the election — allowed for the manipulation of turnout figures. The Venezuelan government, which needed a large turnout figure to lend legitimacy to the election, denied the numbers had been manipulated. The company stopped its work in Venezuela in 2018.
“Our votes are counted in Germany and in Spain by a company owned by affiliates of Chávez and [current president Nicolás] Maduro. Did you ever believe that was true?”
— Giuliani
It’s not true. Votes in U.S. elections are not counted in Germany and Spain.
“You couldn’t possibly believe that the company counting our vote, with control over our vote, is owned by two Venezuelans who were allies of Chávez, are present allies of Maduro, with a company whose chairman is a close associate and business partner of George Soros, the biggest donor to the Democrat Party, the biggest donor to antifa and the biggest donor to Black Lives Matter.”
— Giuliani
More baseless insinuations. Mark Malloch-Brown is chairman of SGO, the parent company of Smartmatic. Malloch-Brown is also on the board of Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which makes grants to civil society groups such as Black Lives Matter. Soros is a billionaire backer of liberal causes but otherwise has no connection to Smartmatic. (Antifa, short for “anti-fascist,” is not an official organization and, thus, would not receive donations.)
“China also has a substantial presence in Venezuela and substantial interest in making sure that President Trump does not continue in office.”
— Powell
This is how Powell slips in a Chinese connection, but it’s ridiculously weak, especially given the nonexistent connection between Venezuela and Dominion.
“That is true. [Reports that a server was seized in Germany.] It is somehow related to this, but I do not know whether good guys got or bad guys got it.”
— Powell
Here, the Trump attorneys embrace an especially ridiculous claim, already debunked in numerous fact checks and flagged by Facebook as false. But it demonstrates how many of their claims are derived from blog posts or Internet posts — and how the Trump team is grasping at straws.
The story was that the U.S. Army raided the Spanish election software company Scytl in Germany and seized its servers for evidence of manipulation in the 2020 U.S. elections. But Scytl denounced it as “fake news,” noting that it has no offices in Germany. The Army denied it, too. The story was elevated after Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) said he was told there was “a tweet in German from Germany that the U.S. Army had gone in and seized the Syctl server,” and then Trump’s new favorite network, One America News, aired a report on the claim, claiming that the server would show that Trump actually won 410 electoral college votes, including turning California red.
The federal Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council Executive Committee and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council said in a joint statement that there is “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Chris Krebs, who headed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency before being fired this week by Trump, tweeted after the news conference: “That news conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history. And possibly the craziest. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lucky.”
“President Trump won by a landslide.”
—- Powell
False. Trump lost the electoral college vote, 306 to 232. That’s exactly his margin in his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton — which he constantly called a landslide. Biden has also received more than 6 million more votes than Trump.
The Pinocchio Test
This is one of those days when we wished we had more than Four Pinocchios.
Four Pinocchios
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Can’t remember, but I think it’s $18M, the price.
$3M is supposed to just be “first payment”, we can bet it will never be paid in full!
Might even end in the middle.
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More Trump lawyer incompetence.
Michigan, Minnesota, what’s the difference? They both can share MI, right? Might as well toss WI in there… it’s just MI upside down, right?
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They do, technically. WaPo created the “Bottomless Pinocchio” for things Trump lies about over and over again consistently.
I slightly altered their graphic for this:
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YES!
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The Michigan State Legislature group who visited T today will not change the outcome of their State’s votes. It will go on as expected, and with no sway from T.
Thank you!
President Trump on Friday suffered another blow to his unprecedented effort to undo the election results when a delegation of Michigan Republicans, after meeting with Mr. Trump at the White House, said that they would “follow the normal process” in certifying the vote results and honor the outcome.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. won Michigan, and a state board is scheduled to consider certifying the vote on Monday.
While Mr. Trump has made baseless charges of voter fraud in Michigan and elsewhere, Michigan’s top two Republican lawmakers — who had been summoned to the White House by the president — said after the meeting that they had “not yet been made aware of any information that would change the outcome of the election” in the state. In a statement, they vowed not to interfere with the certification process.
“As legislative leaders, we will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding Michigan’s electors, just as we have said throughout this election,” said the two officials, Mike Shirkey, the leader of the State Senate, and Lee Chatfield, the speaker of the State House.
“Michigan’s certification process should be a deliberate process free from threats and intimidation,” they added. “Allegations of fraudulent behavior should be taken seriously, thoroughly investigated, and if proven, prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And the candidates who win the most votes win elections and Michigan’s 16 electoral votes. These are simple truths that should provide confidence in our elections.”
The lawmakers stopped short of affirming Mr. Biden’s victory in the state in the statement. But they also sent a clear signal that they would abide by the election results.
Here is what we know about the meeting:
- Mr. Shirkey, Mr. Chatfield, and several other Michigan Republican lawmakers met with Mr. Trump; the length of the conversation, and the details of what was said, are not yet known. Both legislative leaders had said they would not interfere with the certification process but created a joint committee to look into alleged reports of irregularities.
- At least two other Republican state lawmakers, Tom Barrett, a state senator, and Jason Wentworth, a state representative who will take over as House speaker in January, were also believed to be at the meeting. Mr. Barrett has been a vocal supporter of Mr. Trump and critic of Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. He has called for an investigation into what he claims are irregularities in the November election before the results are certified.
- Notably, Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and a Michigan native whom Mr. Trump has pressed repeatedly about the state, did not attend Friday’s meeting.
- The state is currently the focus of Mr. Trump’s dubious efforts to give Republican legislatures the reins to appoint pro-Trump electors in states that Mr. Biden won, tipping the Electoral College in the president’s favor when it meets on Dec. 14. Legal experts say the strategy is virtually sure to fail.
- It was not immediately clear who attended the meeting from Mr. Trump’s staff. But multiple people briefed on the event said the White House Counsel’s Office was not sending anyone to attend, partly because it was not a White House issue.
— Kathleen Gray and Maggie Haberman
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The MI State Legislators post Trump meeting at the Trump Hotel.
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The Long Odds Facing Trump’s Attempts to Get State Legislatures to Override Election Results
State representatives in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia could do the president’s bidding. But the political and legal obstacles are formidable.
Biden’s margin of victory widens as Trump’s subversion efforts grow more frantic
Michigan lawmakers pop Very Pricey champagne after Trump meeting
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T 'n co want the RNC to step in and delay the voting certification in MI. For two weeks.
The leaders of the Republican National Committee and the Michigan Republican Party have asked the state Board of Canvassers to delay the certification of Michigan’s election results for 14 days.
The request from Ronna McDaniel, the national party chairwoman, and Laura Cox, the state chairwoman, was sent to the board on Saturday. On Monday, the board, which is split between two Republicans and two Democrats, is scheduled to meet to consider certifying the results.
And while election law experts have said that the board’s job is a perfunctory task to review the results already certified by the state’s 83 counties, Republicans and the Trump campaign have been lobbying to stop the certification. The letter came the day after President Trump met with seven Michigan lawmakers, led by the Republican leadership of the State Senate and the House of Representatives, who said afterward that they have seen nothing yet that would change the outcome in Michigan.
Both Ms. McDaniel and Ms. Cox, as well as Mr. Trump, have repeatedly raised questions, without providing evidence, of widespread voting issues, especially in Wayne County and its biggest city, Detroit. There were minor discrepancies with roughly 350 ballots in the city, out of more than 250,000 votes cast.
On Saturday, multiple state legislators from Michigan were photographed departing the Trump International Hotel in Washington after a meeting with the president on Friday.
Several lawmakers including Mike Shirkey, the leader of the State Senate; Lee Chatfield, the House speaker; and State Senator Tom Barrett were known to have traveled to Washington to attend the meeting. State Senator Aric Nesbitt also appeared to have been seen leaving the hotel. Photos of Mr. Chatfield and others having drinks in the Trump hotel lobby Friday night were shared on Twitter on Saturday.
If the board deadlocks on certifying the election results, Democrats will most likely take the matter to the State Court of Appeals with a request to order the Board of Canvassers to do its statutory duty and certify the results. If the board still deadlocks, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer could act to remove the board members for failing to do their jobs.
A spokesman for Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state, said that Republicans could request a recount after certification of the vote, but there was no evidence to corroborate Ms. McDaniel’s claims of irregularities in the election.
“At this time, no evidence of widespread misconduct or fraud has been reported, and judges initially appointed by both Republicans and Democrats have found allegations of widespread fraud to be wholly meritless,” the spokesman said.
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RNC chair urges Michigan board to pause certification of election results
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel and Michigan Republican Chair Laura Cox urged the board to adjourn for 14 days to allow a full audit and investigation.
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Judge Brann has some scorching words for Trump’s defense team - Sideshow Rudy…“Trump’s campaign had used “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations.”
Yes, no dice…
In his order, Brann wrote that Trump’s campaign had used “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” in its effort to throw out millions of votes.
“In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,” Brann wrote.
Trump was beaten in Pennsylvania by President-elect Joe Biden, who currently holds a lead over the president of more than 81,000 votes. Counties are due to file their official results on Monday to Boockvar, who will then certify the statewide tallies.
from the Judgement
This Court has been unable to find any case in which a plaintiff has sought such a drastic remedy in the contest of an election, in terms of the sheer volume of votes asked to be invalidated. One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption, such that this Court would have no option but to regrettably grant the proposed injunctive relief despite the impact it would have on such a large group of citizens.
That has not happened. Instead, this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence. In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state. Our people, laws, and institutions demand more. At bottom, Plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Therefore, I grant Defendants’ motions and dismiss Plaintiffs’ action with prejudice.
opinion
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One more Republican -Senator Toomey (R-PA) recognizes Biden/Harris as incoming adminisration.
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This is a brutal reality, or unreality. No getting around convincing those who believe in the Trump conspiracies on voter fraud, backed by OAN Network and Newsmax. An inflamed and biased group who are not going to budge. These are the prize voters that the R’s want to keep and R leadership will stay silent in the face of absurd voter fraud claims.
Fryar didn’t much like Donald Trump at first, during the U.S. president’s 2016 campaign. He voted for Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the Republican primaries.
Now, Fryar says he would go to war for Trump. He has joined the newly formed South Plains Patriots, a group of a few hundred members that includes a “reactionary” force of about three dozen - including Fryar and his son, Caleb - who conduct firearms training.
Nothing will convince Fryar and many others here in Sundown - including the town’s mayor, another Patriots member - that Democrat Joe Biden won the Nov. 3 presidential election fairly. They believe Trump’s stream of election-fraud allegations and say they’re preparing for the possibility of a “civil war” with the American political left.
“If President Trump comes out and says: ‘Guys, I have irrefutable proof of fraud, the courts won’t listen, and I’m now calling on Americans to take up arms,’ we would go,” said Fryar, wearing a button-down shirt, pressed slacks and a paisley tie during a recent interview at his office.
The unshakable trust in Trump in this town of about 1,400 residents reflects a national phenomenon among many Republicans, despite the absence of evidence in a barrage of post-election lawsuits by the president and his allies. About half of Republicans polled by Reuters/Ipsos said Trump “rightfully won” the election but had it stolen from him in systemic fraud favoring Biden, according to a survey conducted between Nov. 13 and 17. Just 29% of Republicans said Biden rightfully won. Other polls since the election have reported that an even higher proportion - up to 80% - of Republicans trust Trump’s baseless fraud narrative.
Trump’s legal onslaught has so far flopped, with judges quickly dismissing many cases and his lawyers dropping or withdrawing from others. None of the cases contain allegations - much less evidence - that are likely to invalidate enough votes to overturn the election, election experts say.
And yet the election-theft claims are proving politically potent. All but a handful of Republican lawmakers have backed Trump’s fraud claims or stayed silent, effectively freezing the transition of power as the president refuses to concede. Trump has succeeded in sowing further public distrust in the media, which typically calls elections, and undermined citizens’ faith in the state and local election officials who underpin American democracy.
In Reuters interviews with 50 Trump voters, all said they believed the election was rigged or in some way illegitimate. Of those, 20 said they would consider accepting Biden as their president, but only in light of proof that the election was conducted fairly. Most repeated debunked conspiracy theories espoused by Trump, Republican officials and conservative media claiming that millions of votes were dishonestly switched to Biden in key states by biased poll workers and hacked voting machines.
Many voters interviewed by Reuters said they formed their opinions by watching emergent right-wing media outlets such as Newsmax and One American News Network that have amplified Trump’s fraud claims. Some have boycotted Fox News out of anger that the network called Biden the election winner and that some of its news anchors - in contrast to its opinion show stars - have been skeptical of Trump’s fraud allegations.
“I just sent Fox News an email,” Fryar said, telling the network: “You’re the only news I’ve watched for the last six years, but I will not watch you anymore.”
The widespread rejection of the election result among Republicans reflects a new and dangerous dynamic in American politics: the normalization of false and increasingly extreme conspiracy theories among tens of millions of mainstream voters, according to government scholars, analysts and some lawmakers on both sides of the political divide. The trend has deeply troubling long-term implications for American political and civic institutions, said Paul Light, a veteran political scientist at New York University (NYU).
“This is dystopian,” Light said. “America could fracture.”
Adam Kinzinger, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives, is among the few party members to publicly recognize Biden’s victory. He called his Republican colleagues’ reluctance to reject Trump’s conspiracies a failure of political courage that threatens to undermine American democracy for years. If citizens lose faith in election integrity, that could lead to “really bad things,” including violence and social unrest, he said in an interview.
David Gergen - an adviser to four previous U.S. presidents, two Democrats and two Republicans - said Trump is trying to “kneecap” the Biden administration before it takes power, noting this is the first time a sitting American president has tried to overthrow an election result.
It may not be the last time. Many Republicans see attacks on election integrity as a winning issue for future campaigns - including the next presidential race, according to one Republican operative close to the Trump campaign. The party, the person said, is setting up a push for “far more stringent oversight on voting procedures in 2024,” when the party’s nominee will likely be Trump or his anointed successor.
Other Republicans urged patience and faith in the government. Charlie Black, a veteran Republican strategist, does not believe Republican lawmakers will continue backing Trump’s fraud claims after Biden is inaugurated. They will need White House cooperation on basic government functions, such as appropriations and defense bills, he said.
“People will come to see we still have a functioning government,” Black said, and Republicans will become “resigned to Biden, and see it’s not the end of the world.”
The Biden campaign declined to comment for this story. Boris Epshteyn, a strategic advisor to the Trump campaign, said: “The President and his campaign are confident that when every legal vote is counted, and every illegal vote is not, it will be determined that President Trump has won re-election to a second term.”
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The Trump campaign just stated Sidney Powell is NOT a member of Rudy Giuliani’s legal team.
Should… should this be under Humor?
Wow.
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During the limited recount in WI, Trump poll ‘watchers’ were in some cases escorted out for bullying-type behavior and obstruction in the recount. Trump wants the ballots thrown out and will do anything under the sun to get them.
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Election officials in Wisconsin’s largest county accused observers for President Donald Trump on Saturday of seeking to obstruct a recount of the presidential results, in some instances by objecting to every ballot tabulators pulled to count.
Trump requested the recount in Milwaukee and Dane counties, both heavily liberal, in hopes of undoing Democrat Joe Biden’s victory by about 20,600 votes. With no precedent for a recount reversing such a large margin, Trump’s strategy is widely seen as aimed at an eventual court challenge, part of a push in key states to undo his election loss.
A steady stream of Republican complaints in Milwaukee was putting the recount far behind schedule, county clerk George Christenson said. He said many Trump observers were breaking rules by constantly interrupting vote counters with questions and comments.
“That’s unacceptable,” he said. He said some of the Trump observers “clearly don’t know what they are doing.”
Tim Posnanski, a county election commissioner, told his fellow commissioners there appeared to be two Trump representatives at some tables where tabulators were counting ballots, violating rules that call for one observer from each campaign per table. Posnanski said some Trump representatives seemed to be posing as independents.
At one recount table, a Trump observer objected to every ballot that tabulators pulled from a bag simply because they were folded, election officials told the panel.
Posnanski called it “prima facie evidence of bad faith by the Trump campaign.” He added later: “I want to know what is going on and why there continues to be obstruction.”
Joe Voiland, a lawyer speaking to commission members on behalf of the Trump campaign, denied his side was acting in bad faith.
“I want to get to the point of dialing everything down … and not yelling at each other,” Voiland said.
At least one Trump observer was escorted out of the building by sheriff’s deputies Saturday after pushing an election official who had lifted her coat from an observer chair. Another Trump observer was removed Friday for not wearing a face mask properly as required.
Trump paid $3 million, as required by state law, for the partial recount that began Friday and must conclude by Dec. 1.
His team is seeking to disqualify ballots where election clerks filled in missing address information on the certification envelope where the ballot is inserted, even though the practice has long been accepted in Wisconsin.
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