Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Trump's Derangement On Mail Ballots Signals A Potential Effort At A November Election Coup


"BWAAHAAHAHA! We got to stop mail voting! It would be the end of me! Melania, change my diapers!"

"How is it that  this man is even president?" - Maureen Dowd, Sunday NY Times 

"So Trump is worried about his reelection prospects and eager to attack mail-in voting that pretty clearly does not give Democrats any particular leg up, raising the possibility that he is setting himself up to accuse Michigan and Nevada of rigging the system if he loses in November." - Heather Cox Richardson,  'Trump's Twitter  Threats On Voting: Is There Really A Bite Behind The Bark?', smirkingchimp.com blog

After yet another weekend with endless histrionics from a "leader" with the moral compass of a slug and self-control of a two year old on a sugar high, even closet Trumpers have to admit the obvious: The nation is saddled with a degenerate whose vile depravity and excesses know no bounds.  This is especially after we beheld the fungus -infested maggot  relentlessly using his Twitter feed to spread slurs and slander about MSNBC host Joe Scarborough.  This in connection to the death of Lori Klausutis who worked for him when he was a congressman, inventing outrageous conspiracy ideations about Scarborough being somehow responsible (despite coroner's finding  it was a cardiac condition causing her to fall and hit her head on a desk).   

Even worse, this unhinged swine continued his drumbeat despite  Timothy Klausutis pleading with  Twitter  to take down the offensive Trump posts that have caused deep pain to him and his family.  But Trump, white trash vermin that he is, wouldn't hear of it. Instead ramping up his squalid attacks while drawing next to zero rebukes from the Reepos eager to look the other way as Dotard wreaks havoc.  So again what we have seen the past few days is a swine who calls himself "president" willing to spout almost anything - no matter how inflammatory or untrue - in order to be used in his tawdry political battles.  So  Timothy Klausutis has become yet more collateral damage of Trump's war against critics and we know he has lost it since the COVID-19 pandemic usurped his one sure  track to re-election. Exposing him as the grifting con man and reality show pretender resident he really is.   As the NY Times also noted:

"Among other things on Tuesday, he boasted about the rising stock market and tried to sow doubt about the results of the coming fall election that polls currently show he would lose, saying, “This will be a Rigged Election.


  The last, of course, is tied to his endless jihad against mail ballots and voting.  His latest ploy has been to create so much turmoil, angst and confusion over mail ballots that state governors bow to his whims and whining and halt the march forward: to making mail balloting a viable option for most citizens in November.  That is, incidentally, when the COVID second wave could be at its peak - thanks to the hundreds of thousands of idiots who think masks are for Halloween, and COVID  intubation scenes in ICUs on the news are medical play acting.

According to a Denver Post piece a week ago, Trump is escalating his assaults on mail voting, with animus especially directed at states like Nevada and Michigan. The foul fungal imp, unable to bluff or intimidate the COVID virus, is trying his best to get as many states as possible to back off a move to mail ballots.  In the course of his tilting at mail ballot 'windmills' he has unloaded so many lies, tall tales and disinformation that even his GOP enablers are starting to worry he's gone too far. After all, Reepo voters like and use mail voting as much as Dem voters, as I pointed out in a previous post, e.g.

Skewering The Strawmen Surrounding Mail Voting

This is important, all Trump's huff and puff and hysteria to the contrary. For example, therein I cited  University of  Florida professor Michael McDonald - who tracks balloting in his own ex post facto research, and found that "Republicans rather than Democrats are most likely to vote by mail".  

So, in effect, the bombastic buffoon brat is trying to kneecap his own voters in the process of trying to halt blue states' efforts like in Michigan.    In regard to that state, Trump really took a brain dump as he went after Jocelyn Benson,  the Michigan Secretary of State, bellowing in one nutso tweet (cf. Denver Post, ibid.):

"Michigan sent absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of primaries and the general election. This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this voter fraud path!"

An hour later, the Post article notes he made similar threats to Nevada.

Several wacko aspects to note here which are germane to this discussion:  First Ms. Benson did NOT send mail ballots to Michigan residents, she sent applications for mail ballots "just as election officials have done in other states."  That also includes, btw, more than a dozen R-governed states. This alone shows Trump doesn't even know what he's talking or tweeting about before he pulls it out of his fat ass.

Second, the threats made to withhold funding, are exactly the classic impeachable offenses that professor Pamela Karlan of Stanford  cited in a House  impeachment committee hearing last fall.  In her words:

What would you think if, when your governor asked the federal government for the disaster assistance that Congress has provided, the President responded, ‘I would like you to do us a favor.’ I’ll... send the disaster relief once you brand my opponent a criminal.” 

 That is, trying to extort a political favor  via the threat of no critical funding if said favor wasn't delivered. 

Interestingly, as the Post article points out, all this kerfuffle and flailing from Trump has occurred as polls show him trailing Biden nationally and in key swing states. In Wisconsin alone, polls take before his rage tweets showed him losing over 65 voters by nearly 18 points.  And yet Trump's own campaign staff - writing their own op-eds (D. Post May 17), also are casting baseless suspicion on mail ballots.

I refer to two Trumper campaign clowns, Jenny Ellis and Justin Clark, writing in that Post op-ed ('Mail Ballot Cheating Is Real', ibid.) claiming that: "ballot harvesting creates an environment for potential fraud and election illegitimacy"

Then targeting Democrats in our state (Colorado) for "paying ballot traffickers to go door to door to collect ballots".  It appears these two geniuses neglected to mention the most monstrous such "ballot trafficking" offense occurred in North Carolina. An investigation found that such "trafficking" had been done in the NC 9th congressional district election in 2018.

The result? Leslie McCrae Dowless Jr. was indicted for tampering with mail ballots. Again, this was a GOP lackey in the service of the campaign he was seeking to help get elected. No thanks to these shenanigans the Republican Mark Harris narrowly defeated Dem candidate Dan McReady.

To my knowledge, no Dem candidate has benefited from such tampering - even in low level elections to a school board.   The two Trumper propagandists could as well have saved their time and brain power because no one here in Colo. is going to drop mail voting. It's too convenient and too important an option to be left off the table. And as one former election official responded in a Post letter to Ellis and Clark:

"Mail ballots in Colorado are totally secure. A signature is required for validation and this is always compared to the signature at voter registration. Also, a tab is provided which can be removed before mailing and allows the voter to check to see if anyone else has attempted to vote in their name."

Let's also point out, as Oregon Governor Kate Brown did on All In last week, that mail voting is safe from hacking, and also that paper record provides proof of the process being sound.   This skewers the claims of the two Trumpers that "there is a risk of losing the chain of custody of the ballots."   No, there is not, given the response of the Colorado state election official, specifically the signature and the tab to mark custody of the actual ballot. Hence, any voter can determine at any time if his ballot is being misused or copied.

Trump's fulminations are clearly also being done to deliberately undermine trust in the November general election. If he can sow enough distrust of the process, especially if mail ballots are allowed in most states, this slimey despot can try to claim the election was rigged.  As a recent NY Times article  ('Trump Sows Doubt On Voting - It Keeps Some People Up At Night') by Reid J. Epstein put it:


"The president attacked mail balloting again Sunday morning, with a baseless claim that it would lead to “the greatest Rigged Election in history.” And the Republican National Committee said on Sunday that it and other G.O.P. groups had sued to stop Gov. Gavin Newsom of California from mailing absentee ballots to all of the state’s voters... “We’re setting ourselves up for an election where neither side can concede defeat,” Professor Foley said. “That suggests that the desire to dispute the outcome is going to be higher than ever.”

The piece went on to note how Democrats and others are game planning for Trump refusing to leave the White House after a marginal Electoral College loss - and we know he'll be slaughtered in the popular vote. As for the risk of Trump not leaving office if he endures a "narrow" loss, I side with former AG Eric Holder on Real Time some weeks ago: we dispatch the Capitol police and/or SWAT teams, to remove him by force. 

In the meantime, Twitter has at least flagged Trump's false tweets about mail voting - giving an addendum 'Get the facts about mail voting'.  Well, I have provided a lot of them in this and earlier posts.  And btw, should this cockroach try remain in office after being voted out, or try to claim the election results were "rigged" , we will need Americans to erupt in fury in the streets.

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