Evidence—Not What The Fascist “Strongman” Desires—Determines What Is True...
And The Evidence Says Trump LOST!
| revcom.us
Faced with the fact that Trump lost by six million popular votes and 74 electoral votes, Trump and his backers are spinning a fantasy that the election was “stolen” through massive “fraud.” Their aim is to whip up Trump’s hard-core base (most of whom believe this insanity), spread confusion and doubt among a larger section of people, and provide cover for moves to retain power by illegitimate, illegal, and perhaps violent means, as gone into in the article, “Trump’s Ridiculous ‘Victory’ Claim Is No Laughing Matter: A Deadly Serious Attack on HOW People Think... with Lasting Harm.”
But they keep getting shot down by reality. Here is a sampling of what has happened when the actual evidence—the vote count—has been tested by Trump’s lunatic, fantasy-driven, and pitiful challenges.
The Election Process and Results Are Affirmed by Objective Observers As Well As Trump Backers and Appointees
Chris Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (appointed by Trump), was in charge of preventing foreign or domestic interference in the election process. On November 17, Krebs tweeted a statement from what AP describes as a “broad coalition of top government and industry officials,” saying that “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised,” and that the election was “the most secure in American history.” He also set up a website to debunk false information—much of which was being generated by Trump and his allies. Trump fired Krebs on November 17.
Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State, who describes himself as a Trump supporter and a “conservative Christian Republican,” oversaw the Georgia election that Trump and his allies are contesting. He faced death threats and calls for his resignation for insisting that the election went smoothly. He was successfully pressured into ordering a recount, and then unsuccessfully pressured by Senator Lindsey Graham to tilt it in Trump’s favor. When the count was finished, Raffensperger said, “I wish he would have won, and especially in Georgia. I certainly cast my vote for him, but the results are what the results are ... at the end of the day, our office is to make sure the election is run fair and accurately, and it’s what we’ve done.”
Secretaries of State in all 50 states—Democrats and Republicans—were contacted by the New York Times and none reported any significant election fraud. The Republican secretary of state of Ohio said, “There’s a great human capacity for inventing things that aren’t true about elections. The conspiracy theories and rumors and all those things run rampant.”
Court Cases Without Evidence
Pro-Trump forces have filed over 30 cases contesting different aspects of the election in states Trump lost to Biden, and so far they have won exactly one—a minor case that had very little effect on vote count. Attorneys have been repeatedly dressed down by judges for showing up without evidence or for claiming “fraud” in press conferences, but then not daring to make those false claims in court (where it can get an attorney in a lot of trouble).
In the most important of the cases, a Pennsylvania lawsuit was “dismissed with prejudice”1 by a federal judge who is a conservative Republican. The judge said that the suit demanded that he “disenfranchise [throw out the ballots of] almost seven million voters,” but provided no evidence of corruption, and was based on a “strained legal argument without merit and speculative accusations.”
In Arizona, a suit was filed based on a conspiracy theory that Republican voters were given Sharpie pens for the ballots that then were not recorded. Completely false, the case was dropped.
In Detroit and in Georgia, claims that mail-in ballots that came in after the deadline were still counted were dismissed for lack of evidence.
Efforts to validate Trump’s November 11 tweet—“... Pennsylvania and Michigan didn’t allow our Poll Watchers and/or Vote Observers to Watch or Observe. This is responsible for hundreds of thousands of votes that should not be allowed to count. Therefore, I easily win both states”—also crashed and burned due to the reality that large numbers of poll watchers from both parties were present when votes were counted.
Fascist Lawyers and Their Lunatic Theories
One result of this is that some of the high-priced, talented, and reputable law firms like Porter Wright that have enabled and collaborated with Trump over the years are now backing away, leaving only the conspiracy theory ravings of people like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell to pursue the fascist program in court. Among other things, Powell claimed that the election was rigged by “The Dominion Voting Systems, the Smartmatic technology software, and the software that goes in other computerized voting systems here as well, not just Dominion, were created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez.” Days later, Powell released a heavily redacted affidavit from a Venezuelan military official who “was with Chavez when he saw [the voting machine] operated.”
One problem with this theory: Chavez has been dead for seven years! [Since the uproar about this theory, Giuliani began claiming that Powell is not part of the Trump legal team.]
1. “Dismissal with prejudice” indicates the court thinks the suit was filed in bad faith or at least without any credible basis, and that it cannot be refiled. [back]
Trump’s Trying to Stay in Power? Oh HELL NO!
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