WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2023
...to discuss the new indictment: We had some family visitors this morning. They arrived here live and direct from Maine, on their way to Durham.
We'd already watched two hours of Morning Joe, where the new indictment was being discussed. Before our family visit continues, we offer a few reactions:
Concerning Trump and the violence: In this new indictment, Donald J. Trump has not been charged with conspiring to cause the violence which occurred on January 6.
Did Trump take part in any such planning? The January 6 committee offered no evidence to that effect. At least to date, Jack Smith seems to be making no such allegation.
As we noted a few months back, the fact that Trump wanted to go to the Capitol that day leads us to think that he didn't know that a riot would be occurring. At any rate, no one has accused him, at least to date, of any such direct knowledge or planning.
Concerning Trump's endless (unsupported) claims: At roughly 7:20 A.M., Claire McCaskill made an excellent point. We'd like to transcribe her full presentation, but we can't find videotape at this point.
Long story short:
McCaskill stressed the fact that there is still "no evidence" of any significant fraud in the 2020 election in any of the disputed states. With respect to that basic point, we wish / wish / wish that journalists would stress a point we first made some time ago:
By now, Donald J. Trump has had almost three years to present a detailed "white paper" supporting his various claims. He has made no attempt to present any such evidence.
Almost three years later, Donald J. Trump has made no attempt to offer evidence in support of his claims! We'd like to see Trump supporters reminded of that glaring fact.
We regard Trump supporters as our neighbors and friends. That said, Trump's refusal to offer evidence suggests an obvious conclusion—as McCaskill said, there actually is no actual evidence in support of his endless wild claims.
What Rusty Bowers (and quite a few others) did: During this morning's program, Joe Scarborough stressed the way "one Republican officeholder after another Republican officeholder" went on the record in the disputed states. These officials said that, though they'd supported Candidate Trump in the 2020 election, they refused to undermine our democratic systems by saying—by saying falsely—that significant election fraud had occurred in their respective states.
Mike Barnicle had cited the conduct of Rusty Bowers, the former Speaker of the Arizona House who refused to play along with claims about significant fraud in Arizona's statewide election. To appearances, Bowers lost his political career when he refused to play along with Trump's unsupported claims about Arizona's election.
Barnicle described Bowers as an "evangelical conservative." We ourselves are neither, but we very much respect Rusty Bowers for what he refused to do. We regard the former Speaker as an American neighbor and friend.
The current state of the discourse: Why do so many other people believe the unfounded claims of former president Trump?
In large part, they do so because of our current, propagandized news environment. Within our tribalized news environment, certain facts and claims will be mentioned, and other facts will be disappeared.
It all depends on where you get your diet of the day's "news."
Can a democracy hope to survive when major news orgs function in the ways they currently do? Quite possibly, the answer is no—and it seems to us that our own blue tribe's news orgs could vastly improve their performance.
We're alive at a dangerous time. Anthropologically, we humans are strongly inclined to believe the things we're told by the people we've come to trust.
That's a dangerous tribal impulse. How might we all learn to abide by that important old rule:
Trust but verify.
Tomorrow: Later today, our family visit continues. Tomorrow, it's back to possible tribal impulses concerning the Florida schools.
Somerby focuses on what Trump didn't do (no white paper) and what he has not been indicted for (telling falsehoods about who won the election and whether there was fraud). The indictment says right at the beginning that Trump has the right to say and believe what he wants about who won the election and whether there was fraud in voting.
ReplyDeleteSomerby needs to focus and discuss what Trump was actually indicted for -- his actions that interfered with election vote counting and the process of orderly transition from one president to the next, including certifying the vote by Congress. The actions on 1/6 were only one part of that interference, which also included pressuring Mike Pence and officials in various states responsible for vote counting, submitting false slates of electors, and encouraging others to interfere with congress in its certification of the election results. Somerby needs to be talking about obstruction and tampering, not what Trump believes or even what he said. That stuff has nothing to do with the media or what Trump's followers think about Trump's statements about election fraud.
This is misdirection on Somerby's part. He perhaps hopes that those who have no read the indictment (available on the front page of the NY Times) will chase his red herring instead of understanding what Trump is being accused of that is illegal, criminal, not a matter of speech or thought but of misdeeds against the American people.
Yes. Bob is back to his old lame ways. Civil court will be open, and is being pursued, by cops who Trump led to attack them. If Trump wanted a “peaceful” protest, there were many things he could have done to that end, he did none of them.
DeleteSo Bob plays Trump lawyer once again. But as is easily understood, Smith streamlined his charges to make them straightforward and damning. Bob finds his pathetic way to ignore their obvious substance.
Here is one place in the indictment where Trump is accused of lying to his followers in order to instigate the 1/6 insurrection:
ReplyDelete"After it became public on the afternoon of January 6 that the Vice President would not fraudulently alter the election results, a large and angry crowd including many individuals whom the Defendant had deceived into believing the Vice President could and might change the election results violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding. As violence ensued, the Defendant and co-conspirators exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay the certification based on those claims.
Bob wrote: "Almost three years later, Donald J. Trump has made no attempt to offer evidence in support of his claims!"
ReplyDeleteNot true. Yes, Trump has not offered such evidence, but he made efforts. Trump made several attempts to get states to audit their results. These were all (or almost all) thrown out on procedural grounds without any audit being made.
BTW I continue to wonder whether it's possible to identify the fraud after the fact. If fake absentee ballots were submitted, how could that be proved now? I have not seen an answer to this question. if one of you knows an answer, I would be grateful to see it.
Do you suppose those attempts by Trump to get states to audit their elections was where he first heard the words "witch hunt" and "abuses of power" that he keeps repeating?
DeleteAudits are done when a race is very close, when a candidate requests one (and will pay for it), or when a court finds evidence of irregularities brought by voters. People from out of states insisting there is fraud without any evidence is not exactly “procedural grounds”. It is a complete lack of any grounds except partisan harrassment and interference in the election process.
DeleteDavid, good to see you back. I must admit, you called it. Trump will never be indicted, you confidently predicted. Bwahahaha!!!
DeleteStill on your audit kick, huh?
This is David's new physics, labeled David's Principle of Uncertainty in Presidential Elections, to be employed when sore losing whiny jackasses like David see their fascist racist criminal lying sack of shit conman candidate lose. GFY, DinC.
David needs to read the indictment itself. He would not say the things he does here, had he read the document and seen Trump's behavior described.
DeleteFirst you need to back up and explain how a "fake" absentee vote can even be submitted. This is the same as voting by mail: a barcoded envelope with your signature must be submitted. How can it be faked?
DeleteIlya -- no doubt your description of how absentee votes could be submitted is accurate in normal situations. However, due to covid, special arrangements for absentee voting were hastily made. Do you know if those arrangements included the usual safeguards?
DeleteBTW one hypothetical way to evade the safeguards would be for a corrupt election official to dump a bunch of fake ballots into the mix, without bothering about envelopes. After the fact, I doubt that there would be any way to distinguish the fake ballots from the valid ones.
I also wonder whether it would be possible to create bar-coded envelopes with fake ballots.
The kind of fraud suggested by David is not really possible, in 2020 there were the same safeguards as always, there are voter registries and security cameras, etc. Audits were done by states and by outside parties, no fraud was found, all the numbers matched up, tallies equaled the voter rolls, etc.
DeleteElection experts say that 2020 was the most secure election in American history, in part due to mail in ballots.
Biden won in 2020 mostly due to higher turnout made possible by a reduction in impediments to legal voting - there are more Dem voters than Repubs; Repubs combat this via efforts at voter suppression and other weapons like gerrymandering.
Policy-wise, America is a majority progressive country, however, the Right has been very effective at gaming the system to continue to win.
Papadopoulos gave polling data to Rulon Jones.
DeletePoppinopolis colluded with Manischewitz's laptop
DeleteAnd just because someone with imagination can concoct a fantasy about how fraud could happen, doesn’t mean it DID happen at all. Trump works backward from his assumption that there was fraud because he lost, then figures out how it happened, but that reasoning is not evidence, much less proof. Non-supporters of Trump do not accept that Trump won, so it makes no sense to question the results in the absence of evidence. Courts start out neutral, so they are not convinced by “possibilities” the way Trump followers may be. They require evidence, not suspicion or accusations.
DeleteThe indictment of Trump is full of evidence of his wrong doing. So will his trial be. David needs to keep an open mind and not assume Trump’s innocence or that the election was stolen, then pay attention to the actual evidence.
"David needs to keep an open mind ...."
DeletePretty tough to do since he's never had one.
Trump's attempt at deconditioning America from the Democratic values and the programs of the society and putting his values and programs in place. His power grab to control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content inevitably make Papadopoulos a tool of coercion, brainwashing, and manipulation through Cokie Blaylock.
DeleteDavid: Not possible. I don't know all the procedures, but there's never a single point of failure as you're suggesting. Barcoded envelope must be scanned. The barcode reveals the name and the signature of the voter. Dumping unauthorized enveloped would result in discrepancy between number of votes and number of people who have showed up to vote, either by mail or in person. This is all fantasy land.
DeleteThat aside, there's absolutely -- none, zero zilch -- reason to believe that it happened during the 2020 election. The fact that you're even bringing this up suggests that you were willing invest yourself into a a pack of nonsensical lies.
I dread the 2024 election. Both sides will feel that the future of the country is at stake. Dems will obviously point to Trump being a criminal and possibly insane. Reps believe that the Deep State is depriving us of democracy by their unfair treatment of Trump. This will be the ugliest election in my lifetime.
ReplyDeleteThe future of the country is always at stake. Even Somerby says Trump is insane. How is that any uglier than last time?
DeleteAnd if you want someone to blame for it, take a look in the mirror David.
DeleteThis is why Republicans are so susceptible to election fraud conspiracy theories, because they don't know how elections work. No, you can't just 'dump a bunch of fake ballots into the mix.'
DeleteBallots have to be matched with a name/address of someone on the voter rolls. And this fraudulent official would have to know that the names/addresses they were submitting fake ballots under had not already voted or were going to vote.
And balloting takes place within precincts. So you'd have to dump some ballots at one precinct then dump some more at a different precinct and then more at another precinct, et cetera et cetera, making sure that the total ballots in each precinct didn't exceed registered voters due to your fake ballots or you'd get caught.
Republicans know how elections work, they are simply prone to false claims about election fraud. The Heritage Foundation has a database of over 1200 convictions of voter fraud dating back to the 1980s stating that it is a bipartisan crime but not clarifying how much by party affiliation. No widespread absentee ballot fraud was recorded by them. In the 2020 election the cases of fraud exposed in the presidential election were almost entirely Trump voters. Despite this, Trump organized a voter integrity commission after the election, believing fraud accounted for him losing the popular vote. It disbanded after less than a year. No corroboration of his nonsense. But for the record, let's consider post election fraud. In the 53 years of presidencies BEFORE Trump (25 D, 28R) the following is true: Democratic administrations: 3 indictments, 1 conviction, 1 jail sentence. Republican administrations: 120 indictments, 89 convictions, 34 jail sentences.The Republican party has historically been guilty of far more post election fraud by a factor of about 2 orders of magnitude over the Democrats in the last half century. This is the fraudulent behavior that Republicans don't dare talk about, and Trump voters can lay claim to adding to that disparity considerably.
DeleteOur media is tribal. On one side are the NewsmMax's and QAnon's of the world spreading lies, and on the other side is the corporate-owned Right-wing mainstream media (AKA the media) refusing to call out the Republican Party for the lying fascists they are.
ReplyDeleteIf Somerby actually cared about children, he might be discussing this news item, instead of FL's revisionist history standards on slavery:
ReplyDelete‘Moms for Liberty’ Clash with DeSantis
August 2, 2023 at 2:23 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard
Tallahassee Democrat: “In Florida, mental health care has been a top bipartisan priority since 2018, when a shooter killed 17 children at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.”
“But the push to fund mental health initiatives has frustrated Moms for Liberty… and other conservative parents who consider mental health care as another version of social emotional learning and are campaigning to remove it from schools.”
Summing up Bob’s idiocy today: After an impossibly damming, years long subservience to self serving lies, many Republicans recklessly parrot Trump’s nonsense. And this is the fault of liberals, though there is nothing offered to support this.
ReplyDeleteHow the Republican Party went full authoritarian is an interesting question, one virtually never explored in the corporate press. But how they went nuts is at least as interesting as Trump’s mental health problems. Could it be as simple as losing the Popular vote 7 out of the last eight times? Did we embolden them by being too good natured in 2000? Do we mention enough that Trump has also lied about his Emmy loses, his loses in the Iowa primary, and his popular vote loss in 2016?
A serious political writer might want to explore these things, but Bob’s purpose here is to bash TV liberals. It’s about the only song he knows….
On Bob’s pals: where the friend’s Bob had over MAGA types he considers friends and neighbors? Does Bob ever challenge them with their endorsement of Trump’s attempt to destroy the Country in his naked self interest? Or does he rather explain to them that there actions are justified by their hatred of Nichole Wallace?
ReplyDeletePerhaps he first regales them with his insanity diagnosis of Trump, which must be a pleasure for them, and then proceeds to justify their support of him and the naked authoritarianism of the R party…because liberals something something racism.
DeleteThe way Republican right wingers have flip flopped through the decades makes it clear it’s not about what they believe, it’s clear they have no ideology, it’s clear the are driven by a singular impulse of attaining and maintaining dominance, an emergent impulse borne from unresolved trauma.
ReplyDeleteToday Somerby pretends to roll over and play dumb, it wasn’t cute yesterday, it won’t be tomorrow.
At least Bob didn’t repeat the “peaceful” talking point. But, give him a few days…
Delete