What a spectacle! One says this is the most fraudulent election in US history. Who says that? The president who is currently in office. His rival says Trump intends to rig the election! This is how #USElections & US democracy are.
Tweet from Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
"We will pursue this process through every aspect of the law to
guarantee that the American people have confidence in our government.
I will never give up fighting for you and our nation.”
Donald Trump’s statement, released by the White House on November 6th, as Joe Biden’s
lead suggested his almost certain victory, even after recounts and legal challenges
.“Can a Biden presidency put an end to Russiagate, or will Democrats continue to wield Neo-McCarthyism to consolidate power?” and “Russiagate crumbles, scapegoating has begun, but American left-liberal media isn’t willing to eat crow or halt new Cold War” are leads on an RT.com (November 6th) OpEd. The “R” is Russia; it is Russian television network that telecasts in English in the United States. Russian officials are clearly concerned at the loss of the Trump commitment to support his buddy Vladimir Putin. The official Russian press is also amplifying Donald Trump’s allegation of election fraud as evidence of the United States as a corrupt rogue state that has lost any pretense to legitimacy.
That’s in their headlines, but Trump’s allegations of fraud have also given the Russian dark-web manipulators ammunition to fire up American conspiracy theorists, right-wing and populist extremists and well-armed white supremacist militia. Putin’s broad smile is stretched wide at the prospect of truly destabilizing Russia’s greatest foe. “Social media accounts tied to a group of Russian trolls are amplifying claims of election fraud, according to researchers at the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of misinformation experts.
“‘Assets linked to the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) have been promoting unverified or false claims of massive ballot tampering, often with lurid, hyper-partisan headlines,’ according to the report the coalition published Tuesday [11/3]. The Russian agency was linked by federal officials to a wide-ranging disinformation campaign during the 2016 election.” New York Times, November 3rd.
Russian election interference may not have been able to deliver a victory to their favored candidate, but their disinformation and misinformation campaigns have otherwise been wildly effective (here and in elections of other democracies). Their disinformation is repeatedly cited by pro-Trump extremists as verification of voter fraud.
And then there was the Trump-promised “October surprise” reflected in the above October 14th edition of the New York Post tabloid. As the Post purported to have exposed texts and email from a “missing” Hunter Biden laptop somehow provided to Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, by a clearly identified Russian agent, that story has simply not generated any major traction. Oh, and there is no evidence that somehow Hunter Biden left a laptop for repair in Ukraine and somehow just forgot to pick it up.
Unfortunately for the Trump campaign, not only did the actual author of the Post article opt to attribute the article in the above NY Post piece [10/14] to an entirely different writer who denied having had anything to do with the piece, with rare exception, most legitimate news sources (on both sides of the aisle) have refused to treat the “evidence” presented in that Post piece as credible. The Post article did not seem to have had even a slight impact on the election.
Even as the Trump administration has attempted to attribute the Russian disinformation campaign to Iran, holding Russia basically blameless, it seems that Iran has been little more than an inept and minor distraction: “[In mid-October], the [U.S.] director of national intelligence detailed how Iran is allegedly interfering in the election by sending intimidating emails to some voters while pretending to be members of a far-right group. But national security officials say Russia still poses the biggest threat, spreading disinformation about Joe Biden and generally trying to sow chaos.” KCRW.com, October 23rd. But as the above tweet from the Ayatollah illustrates, Iran certainly has no problem mocking the United States during this election process.
The President, speaking from the White House at a podium under the presidential seal, continues to insist he has already won a clear majority of all the “legitimate” votes in the key swing states, that the mail-in ballots that are tipping the election clearly in Joe Biden’s favor are fraudulent and part of a rigged election that will be undone in the courts, particularly by the Trump-stacked Supreme Court. The Democrats, he states, are “stealing” his “legitimate” victory. There will be recounts. Georgia has already initiated that process.
There have been and will continue to be lots of court actions, most recently a November 6th effort that seemed to have generated little more than a token result that cannot be a game changer: “Pennsylvania Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and require election officials in the state to segregate ballots that arrived after Election Day and not to include them for now in the vote totals in the largest and most critical of the swing states… On Friday [11/6] evening, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. agreed to the request.
“But the move was almost entirely for show: Pennsylvania is already segregating those ballots, counting them separately and not including them in the announced vote totals. The secretary of state, over the objections of Republicans and Mr. Trump, has said they can be counted if they arrived by 5 p.m. on Friday [11/6], in line with a state court ruling that the Supreme Court has left open the possibility of reviewing again… A state official said the ballots in question number in the thousands but not tens of thousands.” New York Times, November 6th. However, the US Supreme Court refused stop Pennsylvania “late ballots” from being counted.
Local courts have also rebuffed GOP attempts in Nevada and Philadelphia to allow any member of the public to enter vote-counting rooms in order to stand close enough to election workers to see each ballot and hear everything said. There will continue to be challenges and widespread skepticism from the base. Populist-supported members of Congress also continue to back Trump’s perspective, even as many other elected Republicans are simply willing to accept the election no matter how it falls. Official and final certification is still weeks away.
Despite the Trump-motivated lawsuits against various state election officials in states and districts where Trump appears to be losing, there has been no real evidence of substantial election fraud. As Trump openly excoriates Philadelphia as legendarily corrupt, he has not even attempted to explain why he has garnered a greater percentage of the Philadelphia vote in this election than he generated in 2016. Hmmmm.
Can Trump reverse the trickle that seems to have delivered Joe Biden more than enough electoral votes to seal his victory? It is a possible but highly unlikely result. Time will tell, but if Trump will not vacate the White House if and when the election results are certified in favor of Biden or calls on his well-armed populist supporters, who did “stand back” having been willing to “stand by,” to initiate active support of his position, we just might have the beginning of a possible civil war (which I would hope would sputter fast).
And if that were to happen, Donald Trump faces legal liability far beyond anything he has ever faced before. “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.” 18 U.S. Code § 2381. I do not believe that Donald Trump can pardon himself against such a crime.
I’m Peter Dekom, and if large segments of the American electorate refuse to accept and abide by certified election results, we may indeed be finished as a country.
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