Voter Fraud

Trump Knows He’s Losing and It’s Driving Him Crazy(er)

Posted by on September 17, 2020 at 12:58 pm. 5 Comments :

There is an almost pitiable factor to the very public descent of Donald Trump into an abyss of anxiety and debilitating terror. His fragile mental state is so obviously decaying before our eyes as he unleashes ever more bizarre rants and transparent, implausible falsehoods.

Donald Trump Circling the Drain

There may never have been a more conspicuous case of a public figure sucked into a downward spiral of emotional decomposition than what we are witnessing with Trump. He has been reduced to whining about an election that he’s already concluded he’s lost even though it’s still more than a month away. By his own estimation, the election has been rigged against him and the results will therefore be invalid. And not a single person has yet to cast a vote.

Trump is venting his rage at having lost in advance in an avalanche of tweets that all say essentially the same thing: “I’m a hapless victim of people having the audacity to vote against me.” He is baselessly warning that the “election result may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED,” and imploring to anyone who might be listening to “Stop Ballot Madness!” For instance…


So Trump wants to interfere with states’ rights in order to demand that all voters be forced to go to the polls amidst a deadly viral pandemic. He asserts that it would be “like always before” even though mail-in voting has been a part of the electoral process for decades.


For the second time Trump is threatening some unspecified “MAYHEM” if people vote the same way they have been for years. And he also repeats the vague admonition that these states had better obey him “before it’s too late.” Or what?


Now Trump is repeatedly alleging, without any evidence, that foreign countries will disrupt our election if voting by mail is permitted. But the only foreign interference that has been documented is that conducted by Russia with Trump’s cooperation. Also notable is that all three of the tweets above were flagged by Twitter for dispensing misinformation.


And to top it all off, Trump is now trying to persuade his cult followers to vote by mail themselves, after having declared the whole thing an invitation to fraud and espionage.

These attacks on mail-in voting are simply Trump’s way of priming his deplorable disciples for what he clearly realizes is a historic electoral defeat. Rather than display some measure of dignity and patriotism, Trump is determined to incite civil unrest as he advances his aspirations for authoritarian tyranny.

So it’s up to the American people to prevent such an outcome by producing the sort of landslide victory for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (and Democratic senators and congresspersons and state representatives) that will make it impossible for Trump’s impotent accusations of fraud to be taken seriously. That means unwavering commitment and hard work. Because the clearer it is that Trump is a loser, the more insane his assaults on his political foes – and America – will become. Stay Strong!

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Throwback Trump: If You Told a Republican to Vote Twice They’d Get Sick at the Thought of It

Posted by on September 3, 2020 at 1:10 pm. 3 Comments :

On Wednesday Donald Trump’s desperation and fear drove him to suborn felony voter fraud by telling his cult followers to vote twice this November. That would not only be a crime for anyone who tried it, it’s also a crime for Trump to make the solicitation. An honest Justice Department would indict him immediately, but the Justice Department of the Trump administration is nobody’s idea of honest.

Donald Trump Red Face

Not surprisingly, Trump has had fluid opinions on this subject that change whenever he perceives the opposite opinion to be more to his benefit. Or maybe he’s just to cognitively challenged to recall his own views from one moment to the next. He doubled down on these felonious solicitations Thursday morning on Twitter. But last May he was interviewed by Senior Fox News Trump-Fluffer Maria Bartiromo and he told her that…

“The level of dishonesty with Democrat voting is unbelievable. If you told a Republican to vote twice, they’d get sick at even the thought of it. And you have people that vote numerous times. What’s happening is crazy. So now they want to send out vote-by-mail. Who knows who’s signing this stuff?”

If what Trump said then was true, there are a lot of sick Republicans running around the country right now. Well … more than usual. And that isn’t even counting those with the coronavirus (which Trump thinks you can get from voting).

Due to the complicity of Trump’s traitorous Attorney Genuflect, Bill Barr, and the Senate GOP, Trump appears to be getting away with his crimes again – for now. But the record is clear and will be preserved for the next attorney general to investigate and prosecute. As is often the case, Trump documents his criminality on national television. “Let them send it in and let them go vote,” Trump said to the press. “And if their system’s as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote. If it isn’t tabulated, they’ll be able to vote.”

Trump’s babbling about how mail-in votes would be tabulated before in-person voting is pure nonsense. In some states that process doesn’t even begin until after the polls close. Anyone who takes Trump’s advice will be in a heap of trouble. This isn’t a gray area. Both state and federal statutes unambiguously state that even attempting to vote twice is against the law. And every reputable law enforcement official will affirm that. For instance…

Karen Brinson Bell, Executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections: It is illegal to vote twice in an election … Attempting to vote twice in an election or soliciting someone to do so also is a violation of North Carolina law.

Michigan Attorney General Nessel: Don’t try this at home. I will prosecute you […] Let me be perfectly clear: voting twice is illegal, no matter who tells you do to it. The president’s idea is a great one for people looking to go to jail.

Ellen L Weintraub, Federal Elections Commissioner: It is illegal in all 50 states and under federal law to vote twice. As any federal officeholder or law enforcement official should know.

Well, any federal officeholder or law enforcement official other than Barr. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Barr staggered around awkwardly as he tried to avoid contradicting his boss. He trotted out diversions about the point he thought Trump was trying to make, and absurd claims about not knowing state laws. Eventually, Blitzer had to educate him:

Trump was right about one thing. This is “crazy.” It’s so crazy, in fact, that it should trigger an indictment and his immediate removal from office. Or at least the 25th Amendment and a straitjacket. Unfortunately, Trump’s GOP confederates are as crazy as he is and wouldn’t hear of it. So we’ll just have to wait until November (actually January 20) to rid the White House of this madness. If we survive that long.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

In Desperate Reversal Trump Pleads with His Supporters to ‘Vote By Mail’

Posted by on August 4, 2020 at 12:22 pm. 5 Comments :

For several weeks Donald Trump has been ranting in his customary incoherent manner about the risks of voting by mail. He insists that it is a process that is rife with fraud, despite not having any evidence to support his alarmist raving. To the contrary, all the evidence shows that it is safe and secure, and has been for decades.

Every study conducted to ascertain the reliability of mail-in voting has concluded that there is no problem other than trivial numbers of incidental errors. David Lublin, an elections expert and professor at American University in Washington, D.C. told ABC News that…

“Voter fraud has not been a widespread problem in the United States. It’s just not remotely a widespread problem that, in fact, usually when claims are made, the more they’re investigated the more they disappear.”

Even a Commission on Election Integrity set up by Trump himself in 2017 failed to document any fraudulent voting and, humiliated, was disbanded a few months later.

So it is with particular curiosity, although not remotely surprising given his penchant for hypocrisy and lies, that Trump has reversed himself completely and is now embracing mail-in voting, but only because it is now in his interest to do so

Trump’s tweet starts off with the tacit admission that he has been deliberately misrepresenting an alleged difference between mail-in voting and absentee voting. But everyone other than Trump knows that there is no difference whatsoever in the processes for requesting or casting ballots. They are just different names for the same thing. What’s more, Trump concedes that voting in this manner is both “Safe and Secure, Tried and True.” While he singles out Florida, the same is true for every other state.

This striking turnaround comes just hours after Trump reiterated his baseless charge that voting by mail is an attempt to rig the election and will result in massive fraud. A few days ago Trump unleashed a maniacal tirade declaring that, due to mail-in voting, “This is going to be the greatest election disaster in history.” He likely meant that not as a warning, but as a promise of what he intends to do.

The reason for this frantic u-turn is likely that Trump has finally been convinced that his anti-voting harangues are actually hurting his own reelection prospects. Republicans across the country have been begging him to stop this rhetorical nonsense because they see how badly it is affecting their campaign efforts for both the White House and down-ballot races for Congress, the Senate, and local offices.

The real purpose of Trump’s assault on democracy has been to suppress the vote. He and the GOP have been focused on reducing voter participation for years. They know that when more people vote, Democrats win. Trump even admitted this last April when he told Fox News that it “doesn’t work out well for Republicans.” He went on to complain that Democrats were “crazy” for supporting vote-by-mail, saying that “They had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” For once, he’s right.

To achieve his nefarious anti-democratic ends, Trump is attempting to sabotage the Postal Service. He is refusing to allocate necessary funding for continued operation. He has advocated for privatization, which would utterly destroy the 250 year old, constitutionally mandated institution. He recently installed Louis DeJoy, a major campaign donor, as the new Postmaster General. DeJoy is already ordering slow-downs and other measures to impede service with the intention of disrupting the election.

Trump obviously doesn’t care about the adverse effect this will have on voting. And he certainly doesn’t care that a majority of Americans support mail-in voting. But he is also ignoring the fact that a crippled post office would have trouble delivering Social Security checks, prescription medicines, and other critical necessities. It could literally cost lives. But Trump’s purposeful mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic has already taught us that he couldn’t care less about any of that.

However, now that Trump has become aware that he might also suffer some ill effect of his campaign against mail-in voting, he is callously and selfishly changing his tune. Whether this will have any effect on his cult disciples is another question. They have already initiated demonstrations to protest mail-in voting by burning their own applications. If MAGAts don’t want to vote, that’s something Democrats should eagerly encourage. Feel free to retweet/share this:

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump is Right About Changing Election Day – Make It Sooner

Posted by on July 30, 2020 at 12:53 pm. 3 Comments :

On the day that civil rights hero John Lewis is being laid to rest, Donald Trump is ranting incoherently on Twitter. But then why should today be any different for him? He didn’t even send a representative to pay respects at the service. The depths to which Trump’s desperation is sinking is profoundly disturbing and predictive of his dangerously devolving psychoses. And the worst is yet to come.

Donald Trump Circling the Drain

The reference to John Lewis is not tangential. He was an iconic fighter for voting rights for all Americans. But on Thursday morning Trump posted another round of tweets attacking the legitimacy of mail-in voting. Never mind that it has been done safely and securely for decades. Or that it is used by Trump and many in his family and administration, and the military. Or that his own commission on the matter found no evidence of fraud. Or that Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, just testified this week that he has no evidence supporting assertions that voting by mail is susceptible to foreign interference.

Despite all of that, Trump still sought to sow doubt about the election. It’s a position he’s taking due to his well-founded fear that he is going to lose bigly. And he’s working hard at it. Trump has tweeted his opposition to mail-in voting at least 22 times so far this year. And he is simultaneously trying to sabotage the Post Office in order to disrupt the election. So he tweeted that…

First of all, there is absolutely no difference between “mail-in voting” and “absentee voting.” That’s just a pitifully illogical dodge that Trump invokes in order to excuse the fact that he frequently votes by mail.

More importantly, Trump’s suggestion that the election be delayed is another brazen example of his tyrannical aspirations. The president has no authority to delay an election. However, Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, a graduate of West Point and Harvard Law, was asked by Sen. Tim Kaine about Trump’s tweet. Pompeo refused to acknowledge that Article II, Section I of the Constitution states explicitly that only “The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.” Pompeo’s pathetic evasion perfectly exemplifies the Trump regime’s aversion to constitutional law.

It is unarguable that the power to set election dates resides exclusively with the Congress. What’s more, the date that the president’s term ends is set by the Constitution as January 20, and is immovable. In fact, if a new president is not sworn in by January 20, then the Speaker of the House (currently Nancy Pelosi) becomes president. Even Chris Stirewalt, politics editor at Fox News, refuted Trump’s ludicrous proposal as “a flagrant expression of his current weakness.”

However, if we were to humor Trump in his dictatorial ignorance, there is a case to be made for changing the election day. Not to delay it, but to advance it. The harm that Trump is doing to America is escalating with each passing day. His negligence and incompetence with the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic is producing more illness and death that would otherwise be preventable. He continues to suck-up to Vladimir Putin, and refuses to hold him accountable for putting bounties on the heads of American soldiers. He is cozying up to our enemies and alienating our allies. Domestically, he is deploying his StormTrumpers in cities around the country to assault people exercising their rights to protest. He is issuing executive orders that cut regulations intended to protect America’s air, water, and workplaces.

Every day that Trump remains in office is another day that he makes the nation weaker. And the prospect of removing him sooner by scheduling an earlier election would be an enormous benefit to all citizens, and to the world. Unfortunately, we will have to wait until November 3rd to vote Trump out, and then another two and half months to inaugurate his successor, Joe Biden. Until then, we must remain vigilant and determined to suppress Trump’s worst tendencies. That isn’t going to be easy, but it is necessary and an obligation for all patriots.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Admits to Presiding Over ‘The Most RIGGED Election In Our Nation’s History’

Posted by on June 22, 2020 at 2:43 pm. 7 Comments :

Like a wounded grizzly bear, Donald Trump is exhibiting the sort of ultra-aggressive behavior of an animal that is desperate and mortally fearful. He knows that the American people are overwhelming repulsed by his noxious antics and totalitarian aspirations. He knows that every poll shows him trailing Joe Biden nationally, as well as in the crucial swing states. He knows that his political demise is imminent.

Donald Trump, Vote By Mail

In response to these facts, Trump has initiated a frantic and dangerous campaign to undermine America’s democracy. At a time when voters are understandably concerned about the deadly COVID-19 coronavirus, Trump and his Republican confederates are plotting to suppress votes in the upcoming presidential election. They are on a crusade to deny voters the right to cast their ballots by mail.

Even worse, Trump is attempting to delegitimize the election if mail-in voting is permitted. His intent is to lay the groundwork to challenge the results when he loses in November. Never mind that every study (including one by a Trump White House commission) found no evidence of fraud or any other problem. On Monday morning Trump pounded out four tweets condemning mail-in voting as rife with fraud. For instance…

Trump’s all-caps tirade sounds eerily like a threat. Is he soliciting foreign countries to print ballots? Is he proposing it as a tactic for his campaign or its devotees? It’s reminiscent of when he asked Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s email. Not that any of that would work. The security features of vote-by-mail systems would catch those fakes easily. But Trump would claim that just the fact that they existed was proof that cheating occurred. Even though their existence would most likely be due to his involvement. The “scandal of our times” indeed.

Trump’s assertion that “MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history” is supported by nothing but the hot air steaming from his lying lips. And his attempt to compare it to voting during previous world wars is simply asinine. Besides being a call to revert to voting systems that are as much as 100 years old, it ignores the fact that there were no impediments to voting because of the wars. There were no German soldiers lurking around polling places in Kansas. However, our soldiers, and their families stationed abroad, did vote by mail. That’s hardly analogous to the current situation with the presence of a highly contagious virus spreading throughout the country.

Trump also tweeted an article from the rabidly right-wing Breitbart News that quoted the Attorney General, Bill Barr, agreeing with Trump that mail-in voting would lead to a “rigged election” and would “absolutely open the floodgates to fraud.” Once again, there was no effort made to back up that claim with any proof. Very much like another of Trump’s morning tweets that was just another crackpot outburst about alleged “millions of mail-in ballots being sent out,” that no one “knows where they are going, and to whom.”

In reality, it is well known and documented where all vote-by-mail ballots are going, and who is receiving them. It is a tested and secure method of voting that is currently used by the military, most (but not all) states, and even Trump and his family.

That hasn’t stopped Trump from illegally threatening governors (ala Ukraine-style quid pro quo) with the withholding of federal funds if they disobey him and implement mail-in voting. He has explicitly admitted that his reasoning for opposing the practice is purely political due to his baseless belief that it benefits Democrats. And he has embarked on a campaign to destroy the Postal Service in order to achieve his goal of vote-by-mail prohibition.

Trump’s un-American determination to deny citizens their right to vote needs to be resisted in the strongest possible terms. Democrats in Congress are trying to pass legislation securing these rights, but they are being obstructed by anti-democratic Republicans. Organizations like the ACLU are working hard to make sure that mail-in voting is available to all Americans. They need our support now.

However, there are some idiotic Trump disciples who actually have a plan that we can all happily get behind. They are burning the applications they receive for vote-by-mail ballots. In their diseased minds they think that they are getting the better of Democrats who support mail-in voting. Okay, fine. That’s the sort of deranged behavior that we should all encourage. If they are so convinced that voting by mail will result in fraud, then they are free to opt out. And if Trump thinks that 2020 will have historic levels of election fraud, it’s only because he knows exactly what he is capable of. It isn’t a warning. It’s a threat.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

PROOF: Trump is Lying About Vote-By-Mail Fraud to Suppress Turnout

Posted by on June 1, 2020 at 12:26 pm. 2 Comments :

For several weeks Donald Trump has been accelerating his disinformation campaign to delegitimize mail-in voting. Never mind that it has been in practice since the Civil War, is used extensively by members of the military, and millions of people have voted safely for decades with only extremely rare incidents of misuse.

Donald Trump, Vote By Mail

Nevertheless, Trump is obsessed with what he is falsely maligning as a process rife with fraud. He has zero evidence to support that claim, but facts were never very high among his priorities. Instead, he simply tweets his flagrant lies hoping that repetition (such as this and this and this and this and this) will persuade the dimmest of his cult followers to buy into his fictional narrative. Take this one tweet for example:

Notice that Trump is focused solely on the partisan argument that Republicans need to oppose mail-in voting. Ironically, he’s admitting that greater access to the ballot box is detrimental to the GOP, which is actually true. That’s the real reason that Trump and his confederates are so worried about it. They know that they must suppress the vote in order to win.

However, that doesn’t stop Trump from taking advantage of mail-in voting when he determines that it’s in his interest to do so. Recent fundraising letters sent out by his campaign explicitly encouraged his supporters to request mail-in ballots and use them. “For the FIRST TIME EVER,” it reads, “every single eligible voter can now request a primary ballot and safely vote for President Trump from the comfort of their own home.” Well, is that special? It’s safe and so convenient and free of any potential for fraud. What’s more, Trump himself appealed to his glassy-eyed disciples to “Make sure you mail in those ballots before election day..”

So it’s clear that Trump is a flaming hypocrite on this issue. He wants his Klan to vote by mail, but is working furiously to prohibit it for everyone else. His ludicrous claims that Democrats favor it because they intend to cheat fall apart in light of these remarks.

Equally ludicrous are his shills on Fox News who back his lies. On Monday morning Brian Kilmeade of Fox and Friends suggested that Trump add the words “in my opinion” to avoid making his lies about election fraud controversial. Huh? How does that in any way change the fact that he’s fear mongering about election fraud with allegations he’s made up from thin air?

This is typical of the right-wing effort to suppress the vote and prevent Americans from exercising their most precious right as citizens. It’s what Republicans have been trying to do for decades. They know that the majority of the American people support progressive principles, and if they vote the GOP (Greedy One Percent) will suffer the consequences of their unpopular, self-serving, elitist agenda. But Trump cannot pretend that he’s ideologically opposed to voting by mail after having been caught promoting it. And we the people cannot let him forget that.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

BLACKMAIL: Trump Threatens American Voters in Scheme to Suppress Voting

Posted by on May 20, 2020 at 1:20 pm. 5 Comments :

Every recent national poll is showing Joe Biden with a significant lead over Donald Trump (for instance). Biden is even leading in most of the crucial swing states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Arizona, and Florida). That’s obviously bad news for Trump. However, the best indication that Trump is scared witless of losing the upcoming election is his frenzied and feeble attempts to prevent the American people from exercising their right to vote.

Donald Trump

Trump knows that the more people who vote, the less likely it is that he – or his Republican confederates – will prevail in November. So his only option is to try to prevent voters from casting ballots. That’s a particularly complicated endeavor this year with the coronavirus making many people nervous about exposing themselves to infection at in-person polling sites. The obvious solution to that problem is to expand mail-in voting across the country.

Consequently, Trump and the GOP (Greed and Oppression Party) are committed to prohibiting this safe and secure method of voting. They are bellowing about imaginary election fraud as the reason for their obstructionism. But, try as they may, they’ve been pitifully unable to make that case with any factual evidence to back up their wild claims. And in the absence of proof, Trump is now posting Twitter rants that are flagrantly untrue. Trump tweeted…

Breaking: Michigan sends 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! [NOTE: Trump deleted this tweet and reposted adding the word “applications” after “absentee ballot.”]

State of Nevada “thinks” that they can send out illegal vote by mail ballots, creating a great Voter Fraud scenario for the State and the U.S. They can’t! If they do, “I think” I can hold up funds to the State. Sorry, but you must not cheat in elections. @RussVought45 @USTreasury

First of all, Trump is lying about absentee ballots being sent out. What has been sent is only applications for absentee ballots that voters can fill out and return. Trump is also lying about this being illegal. The states have every right to do this and to conduct their elections as they see fit. The federal government has no jurisdiction over this whatsoever.

Worst of all is Trump’s brazen threat to withhold federal funds from states that choose to permit mail-in voting. That’s the same sort of blackmail that Trump tried to impose on Ukraine in order to get them to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. That’s what got him impeached. What’s more, Trump doesn’t even have any legal authority to withhold such funding. Congress would have to do it, and it’s a pretty safe bet that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t cooperate with Trump’s extortion plot. Also it is distinctly repulsive that Trump would even consider denying critical funds during a raging pandemic. That would only increase the suffering and the death toll.

It’s notable that Trump’s threat was narrowly cast only at states with Democratic governors. That’s an observation that was made by the woman who Trump snidely referred to as Michigan’s “rogue Secretary of State.” In response to his blatantly partisan tantrum, she tweeted…

Not only have those Republican-led states approved mail-in voting, the American people are overwhelmingly in favor of it. A recent poll showed that “72% of all U.S. adults, including 79% of Democrats and 65% of Republicans, supported a requirement for mail-in ballots.” And members of the military have been doing it for decades. And guess who else is in favor of it? Donald Trump, who actually votes by mail himself.

So is Trump confessing to committing election fraud? Or he is just saying that it’s okay for him, but not for any other American citizens? Trump’s relentless assertions that mail-in voting is rife with fraud has never been supported by facts. He even formed a White House committee to certify his charges, but it was later disbanded having found nothing untoward. Yet he continues to make the same charges.

Trump, however, recently gave away his deceitful game by admitting that Democrats participating in mail-in voting “had levels of voting, that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” He is so determined to clamp down on voter’s rights that he embarked on a campaign to do away with the Postal Service in order to make mail-in voting impossible.

And there you have it. Trump is openly confessing that the real intent of opposing mail-in voting is to suppress voter turnout. This is something that Republicans have been trying to do for decades. They likewise have sought to prohibit early voting, weekend voting, and any other method of making it easier for citizens to cast ballots. And they engage in extreme gerrymandering in order to disenfranchise voters they disapprove of.

This is more proof that Trump and the Republican Party are actually scared of voters being able to express themselves. They are, in fact, scared of democracy. They know that the only way they can win is to shut down access to the ballot. That’s particularly true for low income people, working people, and people of color. And now it’s also true for people who have concerns about exposure to a deadly virus that has already taken the lives of more than 92,000 Americans due to Trump’s negligence and incompetence.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Trump Lies About Voter Fraud In Desperate Attempt to Recover from Caving on the Shutdown

Posted by on January 27, 2019 at 10:46 am. 3 Comments :

If there is one thing that Donald Trump can’t stand, it’s being exposed as the loser that he really is. He refuses to acknowledge his six (at least) bankruptcies. He pretends that he wasn’t played for a fool by Kim Jong Un. And the trail of failures – from his businesses to his marriages to his politics – just gets longer with each passing day.

Donald Trump, Loser

Consequently, getting beat to shreds by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who he deridingly calls “Nancy”) is surely gnawing at his substantial gut. He was forced to abandon his pledge to decline any deal with Congress that didn’t include his precious vanity wall – a wall that by his own argument isn’t necessary. Nevertheless, he insisted on building it in order to hurt innocent people.

Now, among the lies he’s telling about the imaginary “emergency” on the border, and his blatant scam in statements explaining how it is being paid for, Trump is diverting to an old and utterly fictional narrative on voter fraud to distract the public and the press from his recent embarrassment at the hands of Speaker Pelosi. It’s a pathetic diversionary device considering his previous attempts resulted in the humiliating disbandment of his phony election “integrity” commission because it couldn’t find any evidence of voter fraud. Undeterred by this shame, Trump tweeted this:

This is, to no one’s surprise, a bundle of outright lies, presumably gathered from his obsessive concentration on Fox News. The data was produced by Ken Paxton, the Texas Secretary of State who has been trying furiously to push the unsupportable case for rampant voter fraud. And Trump, of his own accord, tries to drag California into the controversy without the slightest bit of proof.

However, the Texas Tribune quickly came forward with some of those pesky facts that journalists rely on in order to debunk Trump’s dishonest ranting. In their analysis they wrote that:

“In an advisory released Friday afternoon, the office said it was flagging individuals who had provided the Texas Department of Public Safety with some form of documentation — including a work visa or a green card — that showed they were not a citizen when they were obtaining a driver’s license or an ID card. Among the individuals flagged, about 58,000 individuals cast a ballot in one or more elections from 1996 to 2018, the secretary of state’s office said.” […]

“It’s possible that individuals flagged by the state — who provided DPS with documentation that indicated they were authorized to be in the country — could have become naturalized citizens since they obtained their driver’s license or ID card.”

So while Trump is implying that rampant voter fraud took place in recent elections, the information that he’s basing his lies on was actually accumulated over a period of twenty-two years. And during that time anyone who might have not been a citizen could have become naturalized before ever casting a vote. The Texas Secretary of State didn’t bother to check a single voter to see whether or not they were a citizen at the time they voted. But he still released a report that implied that all 58,000 voted illegally.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Of course, Trump parroted this irresponsible and poorly documented report as if it were valid. Because it fits nicely into his flagrantly racist narrative that nefarious brown-skinned villains are plotting to invade and take over America. And it also serves as convenient distraction from his border wall debacle that is, not coincidentally, aimed at maligning the same group of people. At least Trump is consistent in his raging dishonesty and bigotry.

Massive Voter Fraud? Via Fox News, 19 Non-Citizens Voted in 2016 – Trump’s Off By Only 2,999,981

Posted by on August 24, 2018 at 3:53 pm. 1 Comments :

This week Donald Trump laid into his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, chastising him for having properly recused himself from the Russia investigation, and for not persecuting Trump’s perceived enemies. In Trump World the Department of Justice is his personal legal team who should be pursuing only those matters that advance his interests. That’s not the way the Constitution sees it.

Vladimir Putin Voted

Perhaps to mollify Trump, Sessions is throwing him bone in the form of a set of indictments for voter fraud. This is an issue that has been close to Trump’s shriveled heart ever since he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by more than 3,000,000 votes. The egocentric President has claimed repeatedly that this loss was the result of millions of illegal Clinton voters. But every study that has researched this has concluded that no such widespread fraud exists. That even includes the commission Trump empaneled, which was quickly disbanded having proved nothing. But none of that stopped Trump from exercising his active imagination:

The charges that Fox News is reporting involve nineteen (19) people who allegedly registered and/or voted in 2016, despite not being American citizens. The accused are from all over the world, including Mexico, Nigeria, Italy, Korea, and Poland. Which puts to rest the right-wing conspiracy theories that Mexicans are swarming into the country to take it over. Additionally, there is no indication who these people voted for, and it is just as likely that some of them supported Trump as Clinton.

Given that Trump has variously claimed that between three and five million people voted illegally, he’s only off by between 2,999,981 and 4,999,981. That’s actually not a bad effort by a president whose record for being 100% wrong (i.e. lying) is unmatched in American history. And while Trump was adamant about stopping non-citizens from south of the border tainting our elections, he had no objections to Vladimir Putin doing it.

To make matters worse, the Republican Party just voted to kill “A bill that would have significantly bolstered the nation’s defenses against electoral interference” and they did so “at the behest of the White House.” So Trump’s GOP cannot credibly claim to be interested in fair elections. And these new charges from the Justice Department really just reaffirm how rarely the sort of voter fraud that has Trump all verklempt actually occurs.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

FEC Commissioner Calls Trump’s Bluff, Demands Evidence Of Voter Fraud

Posted by on February 11, 2017 at 10:38 am. 5 Comments :

Three months ago Donald Trump managed to corral more electoral college votes than his opponent, Hillary Clinton. He also lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes. And he’s still whining about it. His obsession with the historically unprecedented popular vote deficit has glommed onto his psyche like a fetid leech that won’t let go. And despite having the burdens of the office weighing on him, he’s still yowling about it.

Donald Trump

Trump’s reaction to the popular vote loss was to assert that 3-5 million people voted illegally in November. That blatantly false contrivance has been thoroughly debunked. PolitiFact rated it a “Pants-On-Fire” lie months ago. Repeated requests for documentation of his claim have been ignored, but for a promise to launch a federal investigation. That inquiry, Trump said last week, would be led by Vice-President Mike Pence. Much like the claim of voter fraud itself, there is no evidence of any inquiry. Even the Republican majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, is skeptical. On CNN he said that “I don’t think we ought to spend any federal money investigating that.”

Which brings us to Trump’s Friday meeting with a group of senators and former New Hampshire senator, Kelly Ayotte. Proving that he’s still controlled by his image-conscious ego, Trump offered a new version of the voter fraud lie. According to Politico, Trump blamed his loss of the state of New Hampshire on “thousands” of people who were ‘brought in on buses’ from neighboring Massachusetts to ‘illegally’ vote.” Once again, he refused to provide any documentation of the claim.

This time, however, the allegation was noticed the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). Ellen Weintraub, a George W. Bush appointee to the commission, made a public request for Trump to fess up. Her letter said in part that:

“President Trump has alleged an astonishing voter-fraud scheme [that] would constitute thousands of felony criminal offenses. [And that] democracy rests on the faith of the American people in the integrity of their elections. […] I therefore call upon President Trump to immediately share his evidence with the public and with the appropriate law-enforcement authorities so that his allegations may be investigated promptly and thoroughly.”

Trump’s allegations of voter fraud are problematic for more than their dishonesty. It is irresponsible to foment distrust of the election process in ways that are demonstrably false. There are indeed flaws in the process of voting. They include gerrymandered districts, campaign financing, and voter suppression through registration obstacles. But every credible study done on voter fraud shows that it occurs so infrequently as to be irrelevant.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Nevertheless, Trump and his sycophants in the White House and the press continue to disseminate lies. It is part of a concerted strategy to deceive and confuse the public. They want people to doubt democracy. Just like they want people to doubt academia, science, the media, and government in general. By sowing suspicion of society’s institutions, the Trump regime aims to exert ever greater control of a frightened populace. He must not be allowed to succeed.