Trump Has Lost It (Not Just the Election)

I voted for Trump and wanted him to win.  I even made a whole website dedicated to it.  But I am not on board with what is going on now because it's not even close to reality. This is not about “let's do some recounts to make sure Biden won.” Trump is out there making many absurd and unsubstantiated claims of victory every day, most of which has already been debunked. And the things that are real are misleading because they wouldn't come close to changing the result.

I feel like I'm watching the Russia Hoax 2.0, except this time from my own side. In Russia Hoax 1.0, Democrats fled to the echo chambers of MSNBC and CNN which repeated ridiculous conspiracies that had no supporting evidence. Frequent guests included people like Adam Schiff and others who repeatedly claimed they had evidence that they never produced. They banned people like Glenn Greenwald and others who, although they were liberals, poked holes in their fake news. They got in their bubbles and convinced themselves that it was all real. Boy were they surprised when Mueller released his report...

Now I am seeing the same thing from many Republicans. They want to believe that Trump won and they will only listen to those who are telling them that he really did. They are fleeing Facebook, Twitter, and even FoxNews, headed for outlets like OANN and Newsmax which are essentially the MSNBC and CNN of the right. Trump is claiming that if not for fraud, he would have won at least 3 other states which would mean many tens of thousands of stolen votes per state.

Was there voter fraud? Some, although nothing major has been proven yet. A lot of it has been debunked (see articles below). For example, postal worker star witness Richard Hopkins who claimed that he overheard supervisors talking about back dating ballots has recanted his claim probably after finding out the penalties for lying under oath.

Did dead people vote?  A few, but even less than they originally thought because one of their high profile examples featured on Tucker's show turned out to be false. Certainly nothing remotely close to the tens of thousands of votes per state that would need to flip the election.

Were there some votes not counted due to human error?  Yes.  That is why they do recounts in close states but again, nowhere near enough to change the result in any one state. And to win, Trump needs to win PA and at least 2 other states where Biden is currently leading.

So with recounts not able to find nearly enough votes, they have gone all in on this conspiracy theory that bad actors were able to manipulate the counting inside the voting machines using "Dominion" software that they control behind the scenes. There has been thus far 0 evidence provided to back that up and equally problematic, every single time they've checked the hand recounted counties against the Dominion count, they have matched exactly or nearly exactly.

Trump started off citing an OANN report that claimed that a mere 2.7 million of his votes were deleted:

Now Trump and his lawyers are claiming it could be almost 7 million votes that were stolen from him! Here is Sydney Powell on Newsmax. "Dominion has a long history of rigging elections.  That's what it was created to do to begin with... Donald Trump won in a landslide.  If we can get to the bottom of it, and I am determined to do that, I think we'll find he had at least 80 million votes."  <-- None of that statement is true.

Here are two articles on what the audits of Dominion found:

Dominion Voting Systems Didn’t Cause Voter Fraud In Michigan Or Georgia

Georgia secretary of state: Audit of Dominion voting machines shows no signs of tampering

In response to these audits clearing Dominion, Trump attorney Lin Wood has called for the Governor and Secretary of State of Georgia to be put in prison!

Trump fired DHS Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Chris Krebs for saying, "On allegations that election systems were manipulated, 59 election security experts all agree, "in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent." Trump is purging anyone around him not telling him what he wants to hear in addition to calling for state Governors and Secretaries of State to be jailed.

All of this is not just embarrassing for Trump and his voters, it is very dangerous. These unsubstantiated claims have more than 40% of the country believing the election was stolen and fraudulent. Its not hard to think of where this can lead. The founder of The Oathkeeprs, the largest militia in the US, said they refuse to recognize Biden as the legitimate president.

“What that means is that everything that comes out of his mouth will be considered not of any force or effect, anything he signs into law we won’t recognise as legitimate. We’ll be very much like the founding fathers. We’ll end up nullifying and resisting,” he said.

Democrats never accepted the results of the 2016 election and put up this constant "resistance" based often on Fake News. They behaved disgracefully. Hopefully Republicans don't become like them.

Some more articles that debunk many of the false claims that have been circulating. Espeically the first one debunks over a dozen.

https://checkyourfact.com/2020/11/06/fact-check-election-fraud-voting/

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/no-there-were-not-95000-biden-only-ballots-in-georgia/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/do-not-buy-bad-arguments-about-election-fraud/
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/a-careful-voter-fraud-review/

The Pennsylvania Lawsuit

 The Trump campaign has been trying repeatedly to stop the election certification in Pennsylvania as being a violation of equal protection because some counties were allowed to "cure" ballots that arrived after the deadline but others were not. But their claims do not withstand the slightest bit of scrutiny. The case was first dismissed first by Republican judge Matthew Brann but the campaign kept appealing. It been rejected for the third time, by Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee.

The maximum number of ballots effected was 655 (not all of which were Trump votes). So Trump was asking the court to disinfrahchise 7 million voters because 655 voters may not have been able to fix ballots that arrived after the deadline while being down by 82000 votes. An absurd remedy to a tiny problem. Andrew McCarthy says there is an argument that equal protection was not even violated but it is totally irrelevant because the remedy being sought is so far out of whack to the problem that they couldn't possibly consider it. A solution that may have been considered would be to have those 655 votes fixed, rather than having all 7 million thrown out, but this one obviously cannot.

Here is an excerpt from Judge Bibas' devastating opinion.

Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here. The Trump Presidential Campaign asserts that Pennsylvania’s 2020 election was unfair. But as lawyer Rudolph Giuliani stressed, the Campaign “doesn’t plead fraud. . . . [T]his is not  a  fraud  case.”  Mot.  to  Dismiss  Hr’g  Tr.  118:19–20,  137:18.  Instead,  it  objects  that  Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State and some counties restricted poll watchers and let voters fix technical defects in their mail-in ballots. It offers nothing more. This case is not about whether those claims are true. Rather, the Campaign appeals on a  very  narrow  ground:  whether  the  District  Court  abused  its  discretion  in  not  letting  the  Campaign amend its complaint a second time. It did not. Most of the claims in the Second Amended Complaint boil down to issues of state law. But  Pennsylvania  law  is  willing  to  overlook  many  technical  defects.  It  favors  counting  votes as long as there is no fraud. Indeed, the Campaign has already litigated and lost many of these issues in state courts. The Campaign tries to repackage these state-law claims as unconstitutional discrimination. Yet its allegations are vague and conclusory. It never alleges that anyone treated the Trump campaign or Trump votes worse than it treated the Biden campaign or Biden votes. And federal law does not require poll watchers or specify how they may observe. It also says nothing about curing technical state-law errors in ballots. Each of these defects is fatal, 3 and  the  proposed  Second  Amended  Complaint  does  not  fix  them.  So  the  District  Court  properly denied leave to amend again. Nor does the Campaign deserve an injunction to undo Pennsylvania’s certification of its votes. The Campaign’s claims have no merit. The number of ballots it specifically challenges is far smaller than the roughly 81,000-vote margin of victory. And it never claims fraud  or  that  any  votes  were  cast  by  illegal  voters.  Plus,  tossing  out  millions  of  mail-in  ballots would be drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a huge swath of the electorate and upsetting all down-ballot races too. That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised. So we deny the motion for an injunction pending appeal.

Sydney Powell is Julie Swetnick

Democrats never had a real case against Kavanaugh. There was no evidence Ford ever even met Kavanaugh. Next the New Yorker ran with another so called accuser with a story so problematic that even the NYT and Washington Post wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. Then along came Julie Swetnick claiming that Kavanaugh was some kind of secret serial gang rapist. The story wasn't even remotely plausible but Democrats did not appear to realize this.  Or those who did may have just keep quiet hoping her stunt would "work". They destroyed their “Believe all women” narrative by promoting a woman who was impossible to believe. Time and again, Democrats torched their credibility with insane narratives like the Russia Hoax, the Ukraine Hoax, Kavanaugh, Jussie Smollett, etc. The Fake News was happy to play along but here's the thing about the Fake News. They don't always lie. It's not the truth that matters. Its the agenda. When their agenda is contrary to the truth, they lie. But when the truth happens to line up with the agenda, they are all too happy to tell the truth. Republicans are now in the process of ceding the truth over to the Democrats after having it on their side for 4 years.

Sydney Powell was peddling a story even more ridiculous and implausible than Julie Swetnick’s Kavanaugh story. She claimed the system stole 7 million votes even though its hardware and software have been audited and the hand recounts match the dominion count.  Now its Republicans who seem to be willing to buy a load of bull from someone they never even heard of 2 weeks ago. I can't tell you how many people have said they're "Done" with Tucker because the guy simply asked Powell for just a shred of evidence. How dare he? And the plot described by Powell was a grand conspiracy, not simply one where the Democrats can steal 7 million votes. Venezuela was involved. Chavez was involved. Maduro was involved. Germany was involved. Cuba was involved. China was involved. George Soros was involved. Even the Trump supporting Governor and Secretary of State of Georgia are 'in on the Dominion scam' according to Powell. That accusation may have been the last straw as the Trump campaign started to distance itself from Powell. Probably too late to salvage credibility. Most Republicans are remaining silent to avoid Trump's anger directed at them. Liz Cheney also simply said that now would be the time to see some evidence and Trump responded with "You’re just unhappy that I’m bringing the troops back home." This is seriously embarrassing.

Ignoring the harm of all of this to the country and democracy, it is also politically very harmful to Republicans. For one thing, torching credibility is never helpful. But the more immediate problem is that the difference between a livable Biden administration and Armageddon is two senate runoff elections in Georgia. While Democrats are focused on putting everything they have into winning those seats, Trump is syphoning off untold millions of dollars to spend on this futile "Stop the Steal" operation and is making enemies out of people who should be allies in Georgia.

The only angle that makes ANY sense is a story from Dana Bash whose sources say that Trump knows he lost and knows that this effort is futile but he is doing it to "payback" to the Democrats for what they did to him. They called his 2016 win 'illegitimate' and in probably the most disrespectful moment in presidential history, many democrats skipped his inauguration because he was an "illegitimate president" they claimed. They followed it with the Russia Hoax and impeachment. Truly disgraceful behavior and Trump cannot forgive it. His plan is to take revenge by making as many people as he can believe that Biden is an "illegitimate president." I kind of hope this explanation is true.  But I fear its not...

Update: Trump tweeted: "Biden can only enter the White House as President if he can prove that his ridiculous “80,000,000 votes” were not fraudulently or illegally obtained. When you see what happened in Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia & Milwaukee, massive voter fraud, he’s got a big unsolvable problem!"

So now Trump doesn't have to prove that he lost due to fraud. Biden has to prove that 80 million votes were "not fraudulent" or he won't be allowed to enter the White House. Prove you didn't cheat. It obviously can't work this way (prove a negative). Trump would have to prove that Biden did cheat.

Trump has got a LOT of people believing that he really won "big" if not for the fraud that Democrats were able to commit right under the noses of Republican election officials and overseers. With critically important runoffs in GA coming up, the RNC is starting to panic because the logical conclusion to this way of thinking is "Why vote?"  If you really believe that the Democrats have the power to make the vote totals come out however they want via "rigging" and have just done so on such a large scale that they made Biden win, not one but several states that Trump really won, then why on Earth would you waste your time voting in the GA runoff elections? Your vote doesn't matter. The "rigged" system is not being ripped out and replaced with a new "fair" one. It will be the same system. The Secretary of State who Trump has branded "an enemy of the people" will still be there. Disgracefully, he and his wife are getting a large amount of death threats and other vile messages. The Governor, who Trump's lawyer called to be imprisoned will still be there.

Trump is going to make it very hard to win those Senate seats by 1) depressing the turnout of people who now believe it’s pointless to vote in a rigged system where their vote doesn't matter, and 2) by diverting a tremendous amount of money away from those races into Trump's "Stop the Steal" campaign. Democrats are laser focused on those seats and are not flushing their money down the drain tilting at windmills.