Commentary: I’ve mostly ignored Donald Trump’s whining about alleged “election fraud.” His lawyers can’t show courts reasoned legal arguments or even a hint of factual evidence to support his claims. Recently, a district judge’s opinion trashing Trump’s case was unanimously upheld by a three-judge panel of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, all Republican appointees. The decision was written by the judge Trump had appointed.Courts are laughing. Trump is laughing – all the way to the bank. His election-fraud fairy tales have brought in $200 million. People contribute to keep elections pure, and Trump will use the money as he likes. One big donor has sued Trump for fraud, having donated $1.5 million to fight election fraud before realizing there’s no there there. (Get in line, pal!)
Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell are downright comical. Facebook friends post Trump’s attorneys’ promises to provide evidence tomorrow that will rock the world. When no evidence gets provided, my Facebook friends fall silent about that, and repost some investigative report that Joe Biden shot Santa Claus in the gut and buggered one of the elves.
More serious people keep reminding me that not only do elections have consequences, but widely-disseminated manure can too. The analysis that has me breaking my resolution not to mention Mr. Trump is by Jochen Bittner, a co-head of the debate section for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit.
When Germany lost World War I, the conservatives who’d started the War refused to accept the loss. Their denial started the “stab-in-the-back” myth that liberals and Jews had betrayed the Nation. Like Trump’s denials, it made no sense; but it was emotionally satisfactory to returning soldiers, and, years later, Adolf Hitler brilliantly exploited it.
Notes Bittner, "Without a basic consensus built on a shared reality, society split into groups of ardent, uncompromising partisans. And in an atmosphere of mistrust and paranoia, the notion that dissenters were threats to the nation steadily took hold.” (Sound familiar?)
Already, Trump’s claims of cheating have inspired Trump partisans to threaten to execute civil servants who are counting the votes. The problem has become so serious that Georgia Republicans are begging Trump to stop, lest lives be lost. The backlash could affect Georgia’s two U.S. Senate campaigns, but Trump doesn’t care. He’s showing, yet again, that Trump cares only about Trump.
Even Trump’s lapdog, Attorney-General William Barr, who violated DOJ norms to help Trump, has had to admit there’s no sign of significant fraud. Meanwhile, two convicted felons Trump got out of jail are singing Trump’s song. Roger Stone (whom Barr got released early) stated this week, "I just learned of absolute incontrovertible evidence of North Korean boats delivering ballots through a harbor in Maine." Meanwhile perjurer Michael Flynn (pardoned by Trump) urged Trump to “temporarily suspend” the Constitution and redo the election. Says Flynn, “Today, the current threat to our United States by the international and domestic socialist/communist left is much more serious than anything Lincoln or our nation has faced in its history – including the civil war.” (Say what!?!?)
People believe these clowns. Like poisonous chemicals oozing downhill from an industrial accident, this stuff will damage us. Meanwhile, the spectacle distracts from immediate and substantial harms: Trump eviscerating the non-partisan civil service and illegally pushing Congressionally-authorized emergency COVID-19 funds out of Biden’s reach.