Trump’s Disgraceful Endgame

“There are legitimate issues to consider after the 2020 vote about the security of mail-in ballots and the process of counting votes…but make no mistake: The chief driver of the post-election contention of the past several weeks is the petulant refusal of one man to accept the verdict of the American people. The Trump team (and much of the GOP) is working backwards, desperately trying to find something, anything to support the president’s aggrieved feelings” - National Review

Discussion

Does Trump know he’s lying or does he really believe this stuff? Is he profoundly dishonest, or profoundly out of touch with reality? (Or maybe some not-profound combination of the two?)

More from the editors of NR (emphasis added):

Almost nothing that the Trump team has alleged has withstood the slightest scrutiny. In particular, it’s hard to find much that is remotely true in the president’s Twitter feed these days. It is full of already-debunked claims and crackpot conspiracy theories about Dominion voting systems. Over the weekend, he repeated the charge that 1.8 million mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania were mailed out, yet 2.6 million were ultimately tallied. In a rather elementary error, this compares the number of mail-ballots requested in the primary to the number of ballots counted in the general. A straight apples-to-apples comparison finds that 1.8 million mail-in ballots were requested in the primary and 1.5 million returned, while 3.1 million ballots were requested in the general and 2.6 million returned.

Flawed and dishonest assertions like this pollute the public discourse and mislead good people who make the mistake of believing things said by the president of the United States.

I sincerely hope that many of the misled are finally beginning to wake from their Trump trance.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

I do wonder why no judge is interested in counting the absentee ballot envelopes and comparing them to the absentee ballot counts themselves… Doing that would seal a lot of the theories of ballot stuffing out. Seems simple to do.

[Mark_Smith]

I do wonder why no judge is interested in counting the absentee ballot envelopes and comparing them to the absentee ballot counts themselves… Doing that would seal a lot of the theories of ballot stuffing out. Seems simple to do.

They probably could. The problem is that they can’t just randomly rule from the bench. If you look at most if not all of these cases, they are so far out in left field that there is nothing the judge can really take action on. If the Trump administration or the campaign had done this with more logic and seriousness, they could have had some rulings (although nothing to change the outcome), that might have resulted in this. The problem is that they are going to courts and saying. Here is 1-2 examples of where someone noted an inconsistency, or a vote wasn’t counted, please throw out all of the votes. You just can’t do that. A judge even said in one case, I would have ruled in your favor of the 2 people getting their voted counted, but I can’t just throw out all of the votes without something else here.

Mark, the ballot envelopes have been separated from the ballots—it’s part of the genius of the “Australian” or secret ballot that simultaneously makes it difficult to clean up suspected vote fraud. All you can do, if they haven’t destroyed the envelopes, is to compare the signatures on them to those given during voter registration. So at this point, if there’s fraud, there’s a chance of cleaning things up somewhat for 2022, but not really correcting whatever did or did not happen in Detroit, Philly, Milwaukee, and Atlanta.

Regarding “does he really believe that?”, let’s just say that’s a question I’ve asked about a lot of politicians, including the guy who beat Trump this year and the lady Trump beat in 2016. Trump certainly doesn’t hide his tracks like the others, and I’ve got nothin’ on how to reduce the likelihood that we get narcissist types in Washington. Seems like they infest the whole place, really.

Regarding his election lawsuits specifically, my take is that Trump is comfortable with the “long shot” that our system compels, and he’s seeing for the first time how many big cities like to count their votes in the middle of the night, and how Michigan and Pennsylvania elections can turn by morning because Detroit and Philadelphia report later than do Kalamazoo and Erie. Mix that with a general lack of restraint, and that’s what you get.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

[Aaron Blumer]

Does Trump know he’s lying or does he really believe this stuff? Is he profoundly dishonest, or profoundly out of touch with reality?

He is profoundly out of touch. There are a number of articles that point to his psyche and how that operates. I think many people think that Trump is just a normal person, and he really isn’t. The crux of the issue is that 1) He cannot believe that someone as bad as Biden got 80M votes, 2) He cannot believe that he “lost”, 3) there must be something wrong with the system, 4) He surrounds himself with those that feed him information that supports #1. Even when Trump filed his numerous bankruptcy, he never saw himself as failing. It was all planned. He has something deep inside of his brain that puts up a barrier around failing. He doesn’t fail. Everyone else does. He has been this way his entire life. I truly don’t believe that he thinks he is dishonest or lying. His brain operates closer to Hitler than it does to Abraham Lincoln. I am not saying that Trump is Hitler, there are definitely differences, but there are a surprising number of similiarities in how they thought and operate. That to me is the scary thing that a lot of conservative Christians miss. If our democracy had not been established, we could have veered into what Germany did. (Germany had a very young democracy and the country was not even 50 years old).

The funny thing is, that Trump setup teams to ensure there was no voting fraud. These teams and departments were setup more than 3 years ago, to ensure cross agency alignment and interconnectivity with state election officials to ensure fraud did not exist (like Trump claimed in 2016). These agencies did such a good job that Homeland Security, DOJ and FBI all announced that the election was very secure, and no indications of any widespread fraud took place. What happens? Trump fires Mr. Webb via tweet, and today the campaign said that AG Barr, DOJ and FBI don’t know what they are talking about. Trump is getting mad, but it is his team that actually pulled this off, and very well by the way.

Trump claims the Georgia election system was fraudulent and now he is backpedaling because if he continues no one is going to vote for the Republican Senators that need to win in order to keep the Senate. Madness!

“Chris Krebs should be shot”

This is what Trump inspires! This is an attorney on his legal team saying this. Sad, sad, sad! I don’t like Biden, but this is why Trump should not be President. The whole time the Republican party is sitting by silently. The entire Republican party, needs to be purged. And if it takes Biden winning, than so be it. We can’t sit by and accept this type of behavior from the Republican party / leadership.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-lawyer-joe-digenova-chris-krebs-s…

How many of you have listened to any of the testimony before the legislatures in PA, AZ, and MI? I understand that Trump is so despised that that many of you will not listen to anything he is involved in. I get that, but please do not slander and ignore other people. Not all of them are even republicans. They are people who saw fraud and want it exposed. It is not right to just call them liars because Trump is despised. It is dangerous to just stand back and plug our ears concerning violations of election law because we like the results.

[dgszweda]

The entire Republican party, needs to be purged. And if it takes Biden winning, than so be it. We can’t sit by and accept this type of behavior from the Republican party / leadership.

And this is our major disagreement. You would rather see the entire country be set back years, at the expense of pretty much everyone except the elites and interests outside the USA, just to reform/purge the Republican party? Now I know who the real radicals are, and compared to them, Trump’s a pretty great guy…

Dave Barnhart

[dcbii]

And this is our major disagreement. You would rather see the entire country be set back years, at the expense of pretty much everyone except the elites and interests outside the USA, just to reform/purge the Republican party? Now I know who the real radicals are, and compared to them, Trump’s a pretty great guy…

No, I already view that our country has been set back years. What is a few more. I am fine derailing the ultranationalism and subsequent facism that is starting to pervade this country as a result of the Republicans.

[JD Miller]

How many of you have listened to any of the testimony before the legislatures in PA, AZ, and MI? I understand that Trump is so despised that that many of you will not listen to anything he is involved in. I get that, but please do not slander and ignore other people. Not all of them are even republicans. They are people who saw fraud and want it exposed.

Oh, you mean the circuses in the hotel ballrooms? Yes, listened to them all. People who saw fraud? Awesome, get them to talk to the FBI, DOJ and start filing some lawsuits. I am 100% in favor of that. I guess the problem right now is that, with all of the evidence presented (not circus evidence, real evidence), the DOJ, FBI, Homeland Security all led by Trump appointees have seen no real fraud or evidence of fraud. Even Trump’s right hand man, AG Barr, just stated that no substantial evidence of fraud has been found. And the 40+ court cases have all been thrown out for lack of any evidence of someone seeing fraud. In fact about 95% of them never claimed fraud. If there is some fraud, please, please, please get Rudy to file a fraud lawsuit with some evidence. That would really help them out right now. Unfortunately there is a big difference between “circus fraud” and real fraud. It has been a few weeks ,but Rudy might just get there. Either he will realize he has nothing. Or. Maybe he can get a lawsuit filed that claims fraud with some evidence of fraud.

The cognitive dissonance seems to be catching up with Dr. Michael Brown, frequent Trump defender…

https://mychristiandaily.com/have-we-lost-our-minds-and-souls-trump-att…

Eric Metaxas seems to be a hopeless case, though.

If I didn’t already believe in miracles, I’d be convinced if I saw Metaxas, Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham wake from their Trump trances. Even one of them smelling the coffee would be proof of divine intervention at this point.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Webster’s definition of fascism: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

Although Trump has pushed back against his opposition, he has not forcibly suppressed them. It is the media, Google, and Twitter that has forcibly suppressed other viewpoints. Further it was during the Obama administration that the press was attacked not just verbally, but legally by the executive branch (look up James Rosen). Further during the Obama administration the IRS was used against political opponents. That sounds a lot more like fascism than Trump tweeting late at night. As far as race, Trump has reached out to people of different races and has implemented many policies that they asked for. He gained support in both the black and hispanic communities. There are plenty of reasons to criticize Trump, but it is wrong to slander.