Tag: 2020 election

Trump touts misleading video as ‘proof’ of Georgia voter fraud

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“I don’t run to see if people are walking in with suitcases and putting them under a table with a black robe around it. I don’t do that. That’s up to your government here.”

— President Trump, during a campaign rally in Valdosta, Ga., Dec. 5, 2020

President Trump continued to make baseless accusations of voter fraud on Saturday night, many of which we have already fact-checked. During a campaign rally for GOP senators facing runoff elections in January, he pushed a video he called “proof” of Georgia poll workers illegally stuffing and counting ballots at the State Farm Arena on Election Day. That’s where absentee and military ballots were counted in the state.

The minute-long clip he references — which was uploaded to Trump’s personal YouTube account from an OAN broadcast — is part of longer testimony presented by Trump’s legal team at a hearing Thursday in Georgia.

The footage, which was referenced directly at the rally in support of incumbent Sens. David Purdue (R-Ga.) and Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), was part of a litany of falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims surrounding Trump’s election loss. Continue reading.

Georgia leaders rebuff Trump’s call for special session to overturn election results

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Top Georgia Republicans criticized President Trump on Sunday for spreading falsehoods and misinformation about the election, warning that his comments could make it harder for the GOP to win its upcoming Senate races and arguing that his continued attacks on the process put local officials in danger.

On Sunday night, Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) issued a joint statement in response to a call for a special session of the legislature to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state, saying that “doing this in order to select a separate slate of presidential electors is not an option that is allowed under state or federal law.”

The criticism comes a day after Trump headlined a two-hour rally in the state. The event was designed to whip up support for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are locked in tight Jan. 5 runoff races with their respective Democratic challengers. Instead, Trump railed against Kemp, the news media and Democrats, baselessly suggesting that the election was plagued with widespread fraud and falsely claiming that he had defeated Biden. Continue reading.

Trump slammed for waging ‘narcissistic crusade’ over election loss while remaining silent on surging pandemic

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While President Donald Trump has long been blasted for hiswell-documented tendency to lie to the public, he is facing fresh criticism this week for continuing to baselessly attack the November election results while also staying largely silent on the coronavirus pandemic, even as Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are surging across the country.

By Friday afternoon, the United States had recorded more than 14.2 million Covid-19 cases and over 277,400 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University’s global tracker. On Thursday alone, 2,879 people died nationwide—breaking the daily record of 2,804 that was set just one day earlier. The previous record was from mid-April.

As the rising infections, hospitalizations, and death toll garnered alarmed headlinesand elicited warnings from public health experts, Trump—who was decisively defeated last month by President-elect Joe Biden—has kept much of his focus on sowing doubt about the security and validity of the election. On Wednesday, the president posted a 46-minute video rant to Facebook, claiming without any evidence that the U.S. electoral system is “under coordinated assault and siege,” and “this election was rigged.” Continue reading.

Pentagon spy agencies to meet with Biden transition team

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Pentagon officials said Saturday that leaders of the military’s intelligence services will begin meeting with members of President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team Monday, ending what some current and former officials said was an impasse that undermined the transfer of control.

Officials said that advisers to the incoming Biden administration are scheduled to meet with officials at the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other spy services at their headquarters.

The Defense Department and acting defense secretary Christopher Miller issued statements Saturday denying that the Pentagon had resisted giving the Biden team access to the agencies or information about their operations and budgets. Continue reading.

Trump’s Final Days of Rage and Denial

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The last act of the Trump presidency has taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern White House.

WASHINGTON — Over the past week, President Trump posted or reposted about 145 messages on Twitter lashing out at the results of an election he lost. He mentioned the coronavirus pandemic now reaching its darkest hours four times — and even then just to assert that he was right about the outbreak and the experts were wrong.

Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work, ignoring the health and economic crises afflicting the nation and largely clearing his public schedule of meetings unrelated to his desperate bid to rewrite the election results. He has fixated on rewarding friends, purging the disloyal and punishing a growing list of perceived enemies that now includes Republican governors, his own attorney general and even Fox News.

The final days of the Trump presidency have taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern White House. His rage and detached-from-reality refusal to concede defeat evoke images of a besieged overlord in some distant land defiantly clinging to power rather than going into exile or an erratic English monarch imposing his version of reality on his cowed court. Continue reading.

Senate GOP brushes off long-shot attempt to fight Biden win

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Senate Republicans are shooting down a long shot effort to challenge the Electoral College vote early next year. 

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, grabbed headlines when he announced that he would challenge the votes when Congress officially certifies President-elect Joe Biden‘s victory on Jan. 6.

But GOP senators are dismissing the effort, even as President Trump publicly praised Brooks. Continue reading.

Trump calls Georgia governor to pressure him for help overturning Biden’s win in the state

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How Trump’s fraud claims could backfire on the GOP in Georgia’s runoff elections | The 2020 FixThe Fix’s Amber Phillips analyzes how some of the rhetoric from Trump allies could depress Republican turnout ahead of the Georgia Senate runoff elections. (Blair Guild, JM Rieger/The Washington Post)

The governor later referred to his conversation with Trump in a midday tweet, noting that he told the president that he’d already publicly advocated for a signature audit.

Kemp’s spokesman, Cody Hall, confirmed that the two men spoke. Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh declined to comment. Continue reading.

Pentagon blocks visits to military spy agencies by Biden transition team

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The Trump administration has refused to allow members of President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team to meet with officials at U.S. intelligence agencies that are controlled by the Pentagon, undermining prospects for a smooth transfer of power, current and former U.S. officials said.

The officials said the Biden team has not been able to engage with leaders at the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other military-run spy services with classified budgets and global espionage platforms.

The Defense Department rejected or did not approve requests from the Biden team this week, the officials said, despite a General Services Administration decision Nov. 23 clearing the way for federal agencies to meet with representatives of the incoming administration. Continue reading.

Donald Trump’s brutal day in court

Several of the most devastating opinions, both Friday and in recent weeks, have come from conservative judges and, in some federal cases, Trump appointees.

President Donald Trump and his legal allies earned a platinum sombrero Friday, striking out five times in a matter of hours in states pivotal to the president’s push to overturn the election results — and losing a sixth in Minnesota for good measure.

It was another harsh milestone in a monthlong run of legal futility, accompanied by sharp rebukes from county, state and federal judges who continue to express shock at the Trump team’s effort to simply scrap the results of an election he lost. Several of the most devastating opinions, both Friday and in recent weeks, have come from conservative judges and, in some federal cases, Trump appointees.

The losses included a rejection in Wisconsin from the state Supreme Court, where the majority was gobsmacked at the effort by a conservative group to invalidate the entire election without any compelling evidence of voter fraud or misconduct.

Fascism expert: Donald Trump has turned destructive and vindictive — like all dictators

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 I have often dubbed “fascism” mental pathology in politics, and as a fascism scholar and author of the new book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is as psychologically-minded as historians come. The way mental health professionals have brought the context of our experience with patients to understanding the turbulent presidency of Donald Trump, she has brought the context of historical figures. I interviewed her at our recent town hall.

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University; a frequent commentator on CNN; an expert on fascism, authoritarian leaders, propaganda, and threats to democracy around the world. She is also a World Mental Health Coalition Board member who has helped guide members in applying our mental health knowledge to the political domain as well as within the currents of history, to achieve our mission of bettering societal mental health.

Lee: Your work and ideas have always impressed me for their psychological sensitivity, and here again you get straight to what many historians or political scientists miss, which are the commonalities, patterns, and personality consistencies across different leaders. How have you come to such psychological awareness in your work?

Ben-Ghiat: I grew up in Pacific Palisades, Calif., which is an idyllic seaside town. It might seem a strange place to start thinking about fascism and pathologies, but it was a place where many anti-Nazis, Thomas Mann and others, came to settle. So I was always aware of this pain of exile, and perhaps being a child of immigrants and the closest family member an eleven-hour plane ride away, perhaps I was interested in what kinds of regimes force people to flee their country. So I started investigating individuals, Otto Klemperer or Schoenberg, who had had to resettle. Then my first book out of my dissertation was on Italian fascist culture, but it was really a study in intellectual and cultural collaboration, how did the regime pressure people, intimidate people to work with them. Continue reading.