The circus, led by the ever more desperate ringmaster, Donald Trump, continues. The Washington Post obtained a recording of a call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, in which the president is asking Raffensperger to ’find’ votes to help overturn Biden’s win in Georgia. In one excerpt, Trump said, “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”2 Think about how extraordinary this is. Never before in my life would I have imagined that a sitting president would so blatantly try to intervene in an election by basically asking someone to cheat. Make no mistake about it, that is what this is.
Remember, there have been three – yes, count them – three efforts to count ballots in Georgia and each and every one has been certified with the same result – Trump lost and Joe Biden won. Period. But Trump is so out of control that he feels no compunction about asking people to cheat on his behalf. Now that this is out in the open, Trump and his spin doctors at Fox News, will defend this outrageous behavior by arguing that Trump was simply discussing potential voting irregularities in Georgia and voicing an opinion that they should be looked into.
This episode is eerily reminiscent of Trump’s call with President Zelensky of the Ukraine. That call resulted in Trump’s impeachment and ultimate acquittal by the Republican-controlled senate. Republican Senator Susan Collins from Maine voted for acquittal and justified her vote by stating that she thought Trump had ‘learned his lesson.’ I wonder what Senator Collins would have to say now? There is going to be so much spin coming out of Trump’s Republican supporters that it could have some small impact on the jet stream!
And speaking of spin, yesterday I finished a book,” HOAX: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of the Truth”2, by Brian Stelter which was a very sobering read. Given that Fox is one of the most watched networks and many people’s sole source for news, it is extremely disturbing that most of the solid journalists have left the network and the ‘talking heads’ have an incestuous relationship with Trump which has turned Fox News into nothing more than a Trump propaganda arm. There is absolutely no doubt that by downplaying the severity of the pandemic in concert with Trump’s statements, Fox contributed to massive problem we have now. There is also absolutely no doubt that the current thoughts by people whose primary news source is Fox that the election was ‘rigged’ and there was wide-spread voter fraud were fueled and hardened by the Fox talking heads continuously echoing Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories. This is not journalism – it is propaganda!
In a previous post I used the term ‘FrankenTrump’ to describe the monster that has been created. So, I was amused to read the following quote near the end of Stelter’s book. “Trump is like Fox’s Frankenstein,” one of Fox’s stars told me. “They helped make him and he’s out of control. And no one knows how they will do once he’s gone.”2
Tomorrow there will be the much-anticipated runoff elections for the two senate seats up for grabs in Georgia. It’s hard to imagine how this latest revelation could help the Republican candidates, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who have been ardent supporters of Trump. If either of the two Republican candidates lose, you can just imagine the wrath that Trump and his sycophants will unleash on Georgia Governor, Brian Kemp, and Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger. It will be ugly. Ironically, if that happens, Trump and the Republicans will have no one to blame but themselves but, of course, they will find plenty of others to point their fingers at.
To punctuate the seriousness of what is going on with the Trump and Republican circus, all 10 living former Secretaries of Defense signed a letter published in The Washington Post declaring that the election is over. The letter — signed by Dick Cheney, James Mattis, Mark Esper, Leon Panetta, Donald Rumsfeld, William Cohen, Chuck Hagel, Robert Gates, William Perry and Ashton Carter — amounts to a remarkable show of force against Trump’s subversion efforts just days before Congress is set to count Electoral College votes.
“Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted. The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived,” the group wrote.3
We are witnessing the biggest assault on democracy since the Civil War. The 10 Secretaries of Defense listed above, who are both Democrats and Republicans, recognize the threat. I only wish more Americans would recognize how close to the brink of tyranny we are.
- Washington Post: In call, Trump demands Georgia official ‘find’ votes to tilt election – CNNPolitics
- HOAX: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of the Truth, Brian Stelter, One Signal Publishers/ Atria Books, 2020.
- All 10 living former defense secretaries declare election is over in forceful public letter – CNNPolitics
Trump once again has made an impeachable statement by saying to the Georgia Secretary of State “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.” The Constitutional law of impeachment has to change. Congress voting on if high crimes and misdemeanors were committed is a joke because legally there was. Too many Congress cronies make it impossible to ever have a fair and impartial trial.